15 Great Italian Horror Films You Must See Before You Die

14. Kill, Baby... Kill (Mario Bava, 1966)

"It's a chain of bloodshed that there's no use trying to break."

The misleadingly titled Kill, Baby... Kill sounds like a Torso-esque slasher flick (okay, it does begin with an impaling), but it is in fact nothing short of a sublime work of art, saturated with rich, beautiful colours and nightmarish imagery. Its lead, and audience representative, is an outsider and a man of unfaltering logic, who is slowly but surely drawn in and seduced by local superstition and the other-worldliness of his surroundings, as we are.

The sinister, mischievous-looking spectral child at the heart of the mystery, Melissa, is one of the most effective ghosts in horror cinema. She appears at several points during the film, lurking down a hallway or alley, or peering menacingly through a window, but it's not overdone. Bava builds tension and paces his story in such a way that when she appears it never feels silly, which in lesser hands it likely would. He often gets creative with these appearances, such as a very effective POV shot from a swing in a graveyard, which is just as unsettling.