Kill, Baby... Kill!

A doctor arrives in a village where people are dying with gold coins embedded in their hearts, placed by the local sorceress to stop the ghost of a child taking their souls.

Bava had almost no money and shot it in a fortnight with sets built from what was standing, and it is the most purely atmospheric film he made: fog, a spiral staircase, an empty square, and a small blonde girl who appears at windows bouncing a ball.

The staircase sequence, in which the doctor pursues a figure through a series of identical rooms and eventually meets himself, is a genuine piece of surrealism.

Fellini put the girl and the ball into Toby Dammit two years later, and Scorsese, Tim Burton and others have all taken from it.

The English title is idiotic. The Italian one means Operation Fear.