Did they really save the best for last in "Mystery Science Theater 3000"? Was this movie the least awful that was ever featured in the series? Well, it certainly got close. It was pretty weird to see such a well mediocre movie featured on the show and I am still happy to see this either way. This movie features a secret agent or vigilante named Diabolik fighting a villain named Valmont. Valmont is a pretty nice villain. While the story doesn't make much sense, you have to admit that it does have pretty impressive action scenes and it fits the style of the James Bond movies at the times. Unlike so many bad imitators, this does manage to have a distinctive style of its own.The sets are probably what make the film. They even have a pretty interesting plot about stealing gold and some interesting scenes where gold is frozen. I actually do like the ending. It gives off a really nice mysterious vibe and doesn't take the easy way out. Still, it does come off as too silly sometimes. It's a great way to end the series and probably the closest I'd come to recommending a film on its own that was featured on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". **1/2

Candy-colored French-Italian co-production, cops-and-robbers stuff perfectly satisfying for some--though with a tiring amount of set-ups framing its very thin story. Master thief Diabolik steals 10 million dollars from an armored car, making himself enemy number one of gang leader Valmont, who puts himself in-cahoots with the police to bring Diabolik to justice. Terrific art direction and set designs, plus a jazzy-cool music score by Ennio Morricone, nearly make the film worth catching for non-genre fans; otherwise, director Mario Bava's tricks with the camera are in service of so little, and star John Phillip Law can't even find a three-dimensional character to create within the material. Bava also served as producer and had a hand in the screenplay, based on the Italian comic "Diabolik", which bears more than a passing resemblance to the French crime series "Fantômas". ** from ****

Watching the featurette that accompanies this DVD did help me to appreciate this movie more. Namely, that Diabolik (pronounced Dee-abolik in the Italian) is an anti-hero thief rather than a government sponsored spy and is all about 'sticking it to The Man' as befits the 1960s counterculture. Being Italian, it also contrasts with the American idea of a superhero. The Italians lost the last war, they had Mussolini and no faith in the government. This anti-hero is on the same page, whereas Superman is all in favour of the President. I suppose this is the superhero's answer to Burlesconi.Point no 2: unlike Fleming's James Bond, Diabolik is based on a comic strip hero and many of the shots mirror that panel shape in the way they're framed: the shot of the couple talking, reflected in the rear view mirror of a car, for instance. For all that, the style is more dynamic than other comic-based films like Barbarella.Otherwise, it's astonishing how many scenes anticipate similar ones in Bond films, from the opening helicopter car chase along the winding mountaintop road which predates that of The Spy Who Loved Me by nine years, along with other scenes that pop up in Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, A View to A Kill and GoldenEye.Sadly Diabolik (played by John Philip Law, who was the angel in Barberella) is a humourless blank, a charisma-free zone who scarcely utters a witticism in the entire film. I think the only reason such lusty or promiscuous attitudes prevailed in the 1960s is because the likes of Sean Connery and Michael Caine put a positive spin on it.This is a guy in superhero guise who has no alter ego - and therefore no social life. Batman has Bruce Wayne, Superman has Clark Kent. He is just Diabolik and when he retreats to his lair to bang his bird, fine, but he doesn't actually have any mates at all so it's hard to connect with him. It's like if Superman decided to not bother to save lives but just went on Viking-like pillages once in a while, holing up in the Fortress of Solitude every so often to shag his mistress and count the cash.The anti-hero and his girl are so unlikeable and ruthless that you do feel excluded from their activities. They remind me of the charmless pair from Topaki, though the film has more to offer than that and is superior to many Bond knock-offs of the day.

Deliriously psychedelic pop-art crime-spoof mini-masterpiece! Although many people mention the Bond films, Mario Bava borrowed quite a large number of ideas from the brilliant US 'Batman' TV-series of 1964-65, such as Diabolik's underground cave-lair with its secret opening, the use of comic book artwork, and especially the scene at the 'Live on TV Police Press Conference' where the authorities are announcing their new "Anti-Crime" plan designed to catch Diabolik. Diabolik is there, of course, disguised as a news photographer. But his camera actually sprays "Exhilarating Gas", and so to protect himself, Diabolik swallows an "Anti-Exhilarating Gas Pill". Everybody in attendance begins laughing uncontrollably in front of the TV cameras including the Police Commissioner and the Minister of Finance, making total fools of themselves on live TV while Diabolik slips away undetected! This scene is straight out of the Batman TV show, of course.The sets and costumes - like 'Batman' - are wonderfully mind-blowing examples of mid-to-late sixties fashion and pop art; all vibrantly bold colors, weird geometric shapes, huge sunglasses, and transparent plastic furniture. When he started shooting his films in color, Bava always used deep, richly colored lighting with bold, angular shadows. By the early 70's, it seems he (and every area of the arts from fashion to film to music) eschewed this 'plastic' look for a more natural, 'earthy' style. 'Diabolik' (released 1968) is perhaps one of the last of Bava's films to use this Pop Art look. His later films that I have seen are much less colorful.This also may be one of the reasons it did rather poorly at the time; it was more 1965 than 1968, and popular tastes changed very, very quickly in those days. What was cool last week was suddenly considered passe this week, and by 1968 when 'Diabolik' was released, its kitschy style was simply too 'last week'. 1968 saw many films which were "heavy" and addressed social and political issues. 'Diabolik' would've seemed silly and childish in the face of 1968's realities such as MLK and RFK assassinations, Vietnam, and the May '68 revolts in Paris.Time has treated it well, however, and Diabolik is a pure delight. Morricone's score is one of his best - it's tragic the tapes were lost - I could listen to it over and over. Marisa Mell (as Diabolik's girl, Eva) also disappeared, dying early in 1991. She is lusciously foxy in that 60's go-go girl way with the long legs and boots and the various outfits she wears, especially the black one with silver rivets all over it! Diabolik and Eva's underground lair is certainly THE ultimate swingin' pad with a revolving bed, transparent his-n-her shower stalls and about 30 Jags parked around the giant living room.