Diabolik
Entry updated 25 August 2025. Tagged: Film.
Film (1967; vt Danger: Diabolik). Dino De Laurentiis/Marianne. Directed by Mario Bava. Written by Bava, Dino Maiuri, Adriano Baracco, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates, based on the Comic Diabolik: il re del terrore ["Diabolik: the King of Terror"] by Angela Giussani (1922-1987) and Luciana Giussani (1928-2001), claimed to be the first example of the fumetto nero ["Dark Comic"] genre; and upon subsequent issues. Score by Ennio Morricone. Cast includes Adolfo Celi, John Phillip Law, Marisa Mell, Michel Piccoli and Terry-Thomas. 105 minutes, cut to 88 minutes. Colour.
This Italian/French coproduction is one of Di Laurentiis's several attempts to film sf Comic strips, others being Barbarella (1967) and Flash Gordon (1980). Law plays a stylish supercriminal after the manner of Fantômas, the Antihero of 32 French thrillers by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, published monthly 1911-1913 and beginning with Fantômas (1911; trans 1915 US/UK). He attempts to steal the entire gold reserves and destroy all the tax records of the Paris-like imaginary City of Clerville. He is caught at the denouement in a shower of radioactive molten gold, becoming his own memorial. Directed with visual panache and a sense of fun by Bava, Diabolik is futuristic but only marginally sf, a focuslessness that pervades the entire series in its various iterations, including a late instalment, Diabolik (2021) directed by The Manetti Bros, later (2025) streamed in America as Diabolik: Who Are You?. Diabolik: Chi sei? (2023) is not the same film. [PN/DRL/JC]
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