Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark

One book that most film connoisseurs most likely haven’t picked up for themselves yet is Tim Lucas’ impressive and meticulously researched history of one of filmdom’s more overlooked auteurs, Italian filmmaker Mario Bava. With an oeuvre that spanned decades, Bava is mostly familiar to aficionados of European cult cinema. But in the interim since his death in 1980, the man’s work has been undergoing a vast critical and artistic re-evaluation. None more complete than with Lucas’ tome, which runs over a thousand pages and weighs in at an impressive 12 pounds. The book is indispensable not only for the insights provided on the man’s work, but also for the broad overview of Italian and even European cinema of the era. This is an important film epic with a page count, and presumably a one-shot printing. Even at 250 bucks, if there’s one film book that you buy the film buff, this is it. Only available through bavabook.com.