Kidnapped (a.k.a. Rabid Dogs)

Following a botched robbery, three ruthless criminals (Maurice Poli, Aldo Caponi and Luigi Montefiori) kidnap a woman (Lea Lander) and highjack a car, forcing its driver (Riccardo Cucciolla) to drive them to safety....

Kidnapped (aka Rabid Dogs) was to have been the start of a new phase in Mario Bava's directorial career - the failure of his recent films at the Italian box office couple with the complete inability to secure his treasured pet project Lisa and the Devil (1972) any kind of distribution convinced the director, then entering his 60s, that the time had come to abandon the heavy stylism of Gothic horror and to embrace a more cutting edge point of view. The film progressed fitfully through casting changes (American star Al Lettieri, of The Godfather and The Getaway, shot for one week before his alcoholism made the situation intolerable) and financial woes, but true to form Bava was able to bring the film in on time. After finishing his first rough cut, however, the production went completely bankrupt - the footage was impounded against the debts owed by the producers (one of whom died suddenly of a heart attack), and a heartbroken Bava was faced with his second tragic project in a row. Having already endured the embarassment of having to transform Lisa and the Devil into a more commercially viable property - which ultimately reached screens as The House of Exorcism, though Bava walked out before the re-shoots or editing were completed - it must have come as a doubly dreadful blow for him to see his "comeback" vehicle shelved when it was so near completion. Sadly, the director wouldn't live to see the project through to the very end - by the time actress Lea Lander (Blood and Black Lace) reused the work print from the creditors, he would have been dead for over a decade.

Enough has been written about this film since its "premiere" in 1996 to make one understand what a key title it is in its director's filmography. With its relative lack of stylization, absence of trick shots, and reliance on absolute verisimilitude, the film is unlike anything else he ever directed - at least on the surface. The film's extreme cynicism and obsession with themes of greed and the deceptive nature of appearances, however, ties it in with the larger body of work. Critics who've long speculated that Bava was a good visual stylist but a poor storyteller who didn't know what to do with his actors have been silenced by this spare, minimalist gem. In terms of content, the film pushes the envelope of sexual humiliation and sadism to the limit - it may stop short of the barbarous excesses of Last House on the Left (1972), for example, but its grim intensity produces an equally strong effect.

Bava is well served by an excellent cast. Riccardo Cucciolla (Perversion Story, Grand Slam) gives what has to be the finest performance in any of Bava's films, as the edgy motorist forced to drive the gang to safety. Cucciolla effectively underplays the role, layering in little nuances that would have escaped a less subtle performer. Without hardly raising his voice, Cucciolla manages to control the frame and direct attention to him at all times. It's a riveting piece of acting and a solid example of "less is more." Lea Lander, who previously worked with Bava in Blood and Black Lace, is also very effective as the terrified hostage. The role requires her to be in a state of hysterics throughout, but she manages to do so without becoming a one-dimensional cipher. It's easy to care about what happens to her simply because Bava so skillfully conveys a situation that would unsettle just about anybody in the audience. The trio of criminals are well played by Maurice Poli (Five Dolls for an August Moon), Luigi Montefiori (Anthrophagous) and Aldo Caponi. Poli is particularly strong as the brains of the group, and he does a fine job of conveying his character's unease as he begins to lose control of the situation. Montefiori, often billed as George Eastman in other projects, is as imposing and hulk-like a presence as can be imagined, but he and Caponi bring humor and slight pathos to their "Abbott and Costello from Hell" routine.

The director's visual sensibility is evident in the striking compositions, but the lighting (by Bava himself, with the assistance of Emilio Varriano) is much harder and more gritty than one might expect. The realism of the lighting is consistent with the tone of the film, which was ultimately intended to reinvent the perception of Bava as an "old fashioned" studio-bound filmmaker. It's difficult to imagine what impact the film would have created had it been released, as intended, in 1975 - the sad reality is that the double blow of two pet projects meeting such unfortunate final outcomes seemed to have an adverse effect on Bava's passion for filmmaking. He would direct his final two projects in collaboration with his son Lamberto (more of a practical move on Mario's part, who worried that his son would suffer from the same lack of ambition that had been such an integral part of his own character) before passing away in 1980. Even so, fans of the great director can take solace in the fact that this realistic near-masterpiece finally did surface instead of disappearing into the pantheon of legendary "lost" projects, a la Welles' The Other Side of the Wind. When I say near-masterpiece, however, it pays to bear in mind that Bava never really finished the film. It's safe to assume that he would have tinkered with the material and fine tuned it, and there are a few rough edges that betray its status as a rough cut. Completed or not, however, it remains one of his signature works - tough and cynical, but layered with oddly humane moments that give it a resonance beyond the typical sleazy exploitation revenge thriller of the period.

Anchor Bay has opted to release Kidnapped separately from their first Bava Box Set, possibly because the film is so different in style and tone from the other films. Even so, they have done a terrific job with the film, which has hitherto had a very spotty history on home video. Lucertola Media, out of Germany, issued the film as a limited edition DVD in 1997 - its release prompted many viewers, myself included, to make the lead from VHS to DVD, and while it was satisfactory for its time, it was in dire need of an upgrade.

Various other releases, mostly of an illegal nature, have cropped up in the mean time, but none have really done the film justice until now. When Alfredo Leone bought the rights to the film and set about making "improvements" to it, it was feared that the Lucertola edit would go the way of the dinosaur. Luckily, Leone opted to hedge his bets by offering two different edits of the film, which Anchor Bay has sensibly issued as a single, deluxe edition. The disc is being marketed under the Kidnapped moniker, which is properly associated with the Leone re-edit, but the original Bava-supervised rough cut, titled Rabid Dogs, is also preserved in this edition.

Compared to the Lucertola disc, the new release offers a substantially improved image. The Lucertola disc was letterboxed at under 1.66, thus cropping the compositions beyond their already deliberately tight and claustrophobic confines. The non-16x9 disc also suffered from muted color and a softness in detail. This new release offers the film in its proper 1.78 aspect ratio, enhanced for 16x9 TVs, and boasts significantly improved color and clarity. The downside is that Anchor Bay opted not to license the credits sequence prepared for the Lucertola DVD, which followed Bava's notes on the film - he had intended for the film to open with a silhouetted woman crying as the titles unfold; the identity of the woman wouldn't become clear until the end of the picture, but would start the film off on an appropriately downbeat note.

Anchor Bay have created a new, flashier titles sequence making liberal use of tinted footage from the film - it's actually a somewhat effective, pop-art inspired sequence that may well have earned Bava's approval, but it does break from the continuity established by the director in his notes. Beyond that, the transfer is excellent - clean and clear, with only some minor instances of print damage. For a film that was stored away, unfinished, for over 20 years it's in remarkably good condition.

The Kidnapped edit is in the same condition, and it pays to spend a little time explaining the differences between the two cuts. Rabid Dogs is ultimately a rough cut - Bava never had the chance to finish it, and while Stelvio Cipriani wrote some thrilling cues for it, a proper finished soundtrack was never finalized in 1975. As one might expect from a rough cut, it's not perfect - continuity problems manifest themselves on occasion, and it's safe to say that there's more padding than Bava would have liked; this was to have been a tough as nails thrill ride, and while sections of the film are brilliantly paced, some of the midsection tends to sag a bit. These are all problems that Bava would surely have dealt with, given the chance, but what we have is, at the very least, his own rough cut of the picture. Though done with the best of intentions, the re-edit titled Kidnapped presumes to revise Bava's rough cut with the idea in mind of modernizing it, of making it "contemporary" for a young audience. The results are disastrous.

Leone arbitrarily decided to omit some striking material (notably a pinball metaphor that speaks volumes about the relationship between two of the thieves) simply because he didn't like it, and he hired Cipriani to come in and re-score the film. The new score boasts one nice theme - a main titles cue that is, frankly, too soft and genteel for the film - and is mostly consisted of droning synthesizer cues that add nothing to the film's pacing or excitement; the music actively works against the film, whereas Cipriani's original score (which Leone no doubt found to be "dated") fit the film like a black leather glove. Worse still, Leone brought in Lamberto Bava (who, as usual, assisted his father on the film) to shoot some new material.

It's possible that some of this new material was part of Bava's master plan, but it seems unlikely. In any event, the new scenes stick out like a sore thumb and add nothing to the story; they are simply filler, and not very good filler, at that. The ultimate travesty occurs at the end - Bava's original ending is one of the most chilling and savagely ironic imaginable, but the inclusion of some new footage and the exclusion of some very important shots dull its impact... and then a syrupy theme song kicks in! There's no question that Leone and Lamberto Bava were doing their utmost to try and respect Bava's vision, but the end result isn't a patch on the rough cut prepared by Bava in 1975. Fortunately, the DVD includes both versions, so the viewer can decide for themselves.

As mentioned above, Rabid Dogs never had a finalized soundtrack. The money ran out before Bava could get around to doing the dubbing and sound effects work, though fortunately a score was already prepared for the picture. In completing the film in 1996, Lander brought back Cucciolla to loop his performance in Italian, while other actors dubbed the remaining performances, including her own. The Italian track is a bit crude, especially where sound effects are concerned, but it gets the job done. The Anchor Bay soundtrack seems a bit stronger than the Lucertola DVD, but it still has some imperfections.

The copy under review had two bizarre glitches - one happens as Caponi explains to Lander how he'd skin a corpse, the other as Cucciolla makes his final chilling phone call - wherein pieces of dialogue were missing and replaced with music or sound effects, but this could be a copy-specific issue. If not, it's a flaw that deserves to be corrected, if possible - it may, however, be a problem in the elements that is beyond repair. The minor dropouts present on the Lucertola DVD are still in evidence here, meaning that these audio imperfections were the fault of the track itself rather than any mastering glitches. Kidnapped features a completely revamped soundtrack, including new vocal performances with a slightly different script.

It's more polished and professional sounding than Rabid Dogs, but in losing Cucciolla's more sincere vocal performance and in junking the thrilling original score in favor of a tedious replacement track, it doesn't amount to much. The removable English subtitles have garnered some concern. The Lucertola DVD included subtitles prepared by Bava's biographer, Tim Lucas. Lucas attempted to revamp the dialogue ever so slightly, peppering it up with some added profanity while still trying to remain faithful to the letter of the word. The results were admirable, but Anchor Bay oped to go for director translations of the original Italian dialogue, which is, I would argue, as it should be. There are sharp differences even between the dialogue for Rabid Dogs and Kidnapped, though Dogs remains an unusually foul-mouthed film for Mario Bava.

A newly produced featurette, "End of the Road: The Making of Rabid Dogs and Kidnapped," is most welcome, if skeletal in its brevity (16 minutes).

Even so, Lamberto Bava, Lea Lander and Alfredo Leone bring a lot of wonderful annecdotes to the table. Leone reveals how the film resulted in a further rift between him and Bava (he was actively pursuing the rights when they were snatched from him by one of his associates; Bava was so committed to making it that he went with the associate, a move that upset Leone), his disapproval with the casting (he would have preferred a box office name in place of Cucciolla, like Martin Balsam or Ernest Borgnine) and his refusal to bail the film out of acrimony for many years, despite his love for Bava. It's a nicely paced and edited featurette but could easily have been twice as long.

The next substantial extra is a commentary on Rabid Dogs by Tim Lucas. Compared to his earliest commentary tracks for Black Sunday and The Whip and the Body, Lucas' work here is much more sure-footed and engaging. He conveys ample enthusiasm, shares a lot of great stories about the production and generally does a fine job of avoiding dead space. It's a first rate commentary, making one excited to see how he does with future Bava titles. A Mario Bava bio and trailers for other upcoming Bava releases round out the package.

Video	4/5

Audio	2.5/5

Extras	5/5

Overall	2.5/5