1974 crime thriller
Rating: 16/20
Plot: After a robbery-gone-wrong, three-fourths of a crew of criminals are forced to kidnap a woman, a middle-aged man, and the latter’s sick son. They drive and drive and drive.
Note: This has an even more jumbled history than Lisa and the Devil/House of Exorcism. Whoever was financing this thing died before it was finished, and Bava only had a rough cut which was never released during his lifetime. Later, his son added a few scenes that most fans seem to think are not only unnecessary but actually ruin a surprise ending, replaced a sort-of-goofy jazzy score with one filthy with synthesizer, and changed the opening credits, replacing this gauzy pink shot with reverby crying with white letters over a black background and music that does not bode well. I wanted to watch Rabid Dogs, the Bava cut, but couldn’t find a subtitled version and settled for Kidnapped which is easy to find. However, I did watch several chunks of the Bava cut sans subtitles to compare the two and would probably agree with seemingly everybody else that it’s the superior version. The rating above sort of splits the difference and adds a bonus point so that this Mario Bava movie can get the customary 16/20.
This is a tense, mostly single-setting suspense thriller with some terrifying psychopaths. Almost all of it takes place in a car which, despite the fact that they’re driving all over the place, gives it a claustrophobic feel that makes you feel as trapped as the characters. And really, they’re all trapped even though only half of them are actually the kidnapped ones. You can kind of guess from the get-go that this isn’t going to end well for most–if not all of the characters–but the twist Bava gives us is downright nihilistic. This is your typical crime drama in a lot of ways but flavored with enough cynicism to turn off a lot of people. In a way, the story reminded me of something Tarantino would tackle. There’s some dark humor and some genuinely depraved moments like when we find out why the character named Thirty-Two is named Thirty-Two, a bit of dialogue that made me try and fail to figure out how the metric system worked. And there’s a scene with forced urination that made me proud to be a human being. I hated the music in Kidnapped, but I’m not sure the jazzy score would have really worked either. I would probably prefer that sleaze to the sleaze in the re-edited version though. The trio of bad guys are interesting enough. There’s the cool-headed one, a wacked-out younger guy named Blade for obvious reasons and played wide-eyed with just the right amount of insane rage by Don Backy, and Thirty-Two played menacingly by George Eastman. A movie like this isn’t going to work if I don’t feel a little scared for the “good” characters, and the kidnappers are unhinged enough to make that happen. It’s too bad Bava never got to finish this because there’s enough here to convince you that it could have been a classic crime movie. Luckily, the unfinished and bastardized versions suffice, and that ending, especially as we get it in Rabid Dogs, is pretty incredible and quite possibly one of the biggest downers you’re likely to see.
