Diabolik - A short history of Diabolik (as seen in Body Movin')

If you love the video for Body Movin’ then you’ll be happy to know that it was based on a movie called Danger : Diabolik and a lot of the footage from that film were used by the Beastie Boys in their video.

I found out about Diabolik last year when I was discussing my Beastie Boys website with the owner of Comics R Us ( Ringwood, Australia) and he gave me a copy of the movie on VHS. Since then I have been awaiting a DVD to be released by Paramount and just recently the finally did announce it. So I thought it was finally time to write this article for $5 Extra.

Diabolik was created by two sisters, Angela and Giuliana Giussani in early 1962 while working as school teachers in Italy and the first issue followed on November 1, 1962 with art by Gino Marchesi.
Originally Diabolik would kill anyone who would get in his way with knives or poisons, never with a gun, but after some public out cry the Giussani sisters toned the violence down and later Diabolik denounced killing altogether.

In 1967 Mario Bava directed the movie Danger : Diabolik which now has quite a cult following and starred John Phillip Law as Diabolik and Terry-Thomas as the Minister of Finance.

The movie starts with Diabolik stealing a million pounds and we get to see not only how cool Diabolik is but how cool, and beautiful, everything he is related to is. His car, a Jaguar E-class, his hideout, a massive beautifully sculptured underground lair, and Eva, his girl, played by Marisa Mell who sadly died of cancer in 1992.

Diabolik’s next job is to steal a necklace for Eva, who has also been kidnapped. Diabolik rescues Eva but has to fake his death to escape. They are brought back together and Eva gets her necklace.
Diabolik then plans on stealing some gold which is being transported. He does manage to steal it but Inspector Ginko, Diabolik’s arch nemesis, has laced the gold with a radioactive substance allowing them to trace the gold.
As Diabolik is melting the gold, Ginko and his men storm Diabolik’s hideout and Diabolik gets covered in liquid gold when the thing holding the gold explodes.

Diabolik is thought to be dead but at the end of the film he winks at us, letting us know he is ok and will be back for further adventures.

Unfortunately there was never a sequel and the movie was only big in Italy and a lot of Europe.

Not only was the film visually beautiful but the soundtrack was amazing as well. It was scored by Ennio Morricone (most famous for his work with Sergio Leone on the Dollars trilogy starring Clint Eastwood). Unfortunately the soundtrack was never released. Rumors say that either it was destroyed in a fire or that Ennio Morricone has a copy but hates it so much that he will never release it.
Either way a soundtrack was released but all the music was recorded from the film. The official version was released by Pallottola foro and another version was released by Sycodelic (Syco 0011). The Sycodelic version has 33 tracks were the 33 rd is just a bunch of samples showing how Valmont treats his women.

The film probably became most famous in the US after is appeared on the last episode of Science Theatre 3000, a TV show were a group of friends in space sit around watching movies and commenting on them as they go. Unfortunately the show was rushed and no one particularly liked the movie so it is said to be the worst episode. Rhino is currently releasing the MST3000 episodes on DVD so hopefully it will be released as well.

When Yauch was interviewed in December 2000 by Barnes & Noble about the DVD Anthology he had this to say about the Body Movin’ video:

“I found out about Danger: Diabolik from Evan Bernard, the video director. The idea came up at a time when I was immersed in action-adventure movies from that period, the mid-'60s. I noticed that they kept on doing this thing where they'd shoot whole scenes with stuntmen in long shot, then later insert close-ups of the stars on the sets with fake backdrops or rear projection. I thought it would be an interesting thing to take an old movie, use only the establishing long shots, shoot our own close-ups, then cut it all together. We ended up doing it with Bava's Danger: Diabolik, though we added things from a few different films -- some Matt Helm stuff is in there, too. It was very tightly storyboarded, because we had to match the shots to the original films.”

At the same time in 2000 the animated series of Diabolik, Diabolik: Track of the Panther released by Saban, was released in France but should have also been released in Italy, US and Japan. Larry Brody, creative consultant on the Tv show, explains why it didn’t work:
"First, someone who had never done animation before and had no real affinity for comics was hired to develop/supervise the series (not me; I replaced him later). Then, the network exec who had championed the show was kicked off it in a power struggle. And then there was the fact that there were 5 partners, French, Italian (2), American, and Japanese, all of whom had contracts giving them 'final approval' of each episode."
The end result was what Brody called "a series that was too childish for Italy and Fox Family, too adult for France and Fox Kids, and too expensive for Japan. Yet the show was a certified hit in France anyway, and would have been a moneymaker if the toys had ever come out."

I have read that the animated series was also translated to Italian but I sadly don’t think there will be a DVD release with English dubbing or subtitles because it was cancelled in France due to a lack of episodes.

In 2000 a show was also produced and aired for radio but I have only found one website with information on it and it was in Italian so I was unable to get what it was really saying although Google’s Translate tool helped a bit. The website has a few of the shows up online which you can download in Real or Windows Media format.
The show aired on Radio 2 in Italy and according to this site it was still on air May 13.

So finally after years of waiting, Paramount has released Danger : Diabolik on DVD. Although for some reason Amazon says it won’t be out till 2010, diabolikclub.it says it will be out on July 13 th. It will have no special features though which is a pity.

After 38 years the comic still goes strong in Italy and Diabolik is probably one of the countries most recognized icons (in the country) and has featured in all sorts of ads and promotion, more recently a car ad.
There was an English version at one point in the US but that has since been discontinued.

The one thing that would be interesting to know is were the idea for adding the recipe to the Body Movin' video came from as it has nothing to do with Diabolik.
To those interested, the recipe is from the Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library and is for Mock Cheese Fondue. Here is the recipe:

Amount	Ingredient
2 cans (10 3/4 ounces each)	condensed cheddar cheese soup
2 cloves	garlic, minced
4	egg yolks, beaten
1/2 cup	apple cider or juice
Dippers:	Cut-up cooked frankfurters, cooked mini meatballs, dill pickle chunks, cut-up French bread and cauliflowerets

Preparation Instructions:

In earthenware fondue pot, heat soup and garlic over low heat to just below boiling; remove from heat. Stir half of hot soup into egg yolks; blend into remaining soup. Stir in cider; heat through, stirring constantly. Transfer pot to source of heat at table. Adjust heat when necessary to keep fondue warm. Swirl dippers in fondue. 4 servings.

Links and Resources:
Official Diabolik website (In Italian)
Diabolik Fan Club (In Italian)
Diabolik Radio (In Italian)
Amazon.com Diabolik DVD
Amazon.com Diabolik VHS
Larry Brody's Diabolik site (last updated 1999)
IMDB listing
News on animated series (last updated 2000)
Images from animated series
Official Mystery Science Theatre website
Rhino
Beastie Boys Angus & Robertson interview
DVD Talk Diabolik review
Recipe

Props too: Ian at Comics R Us for my VHS copy and FunkyHiFi off the MB for the links about MST3000.