Mario Bava's directorial debut is already an undeniable landmark in italian genre cinema, in which he takes a premise and setting straight out of the 1930s Universal gothic and monster playbook but sends it into visual and atmospheric overdrive, giving the whole thing that certain hazy and dreamlike quality that's going to pervade much of italian horror and giallo cinema in the decades to come - not especially coherent in terms of linear plot but perfectly balanced on a dream-logic level. A dark and twisted fairytale to be understood emotionally rather than rationally.