Remember this?
It's the climactic moment of Mario Bava's I tre volti della paura (Black Sabbath) from 1963. Apart from being a really cool movie and a truly disturbing climax to the "The Drop of Water" segment, it is also something of an obsession of mine.
Sometime in the late 90's, it may even have been early 2000's, there was a TV commercial that used this same scene in their promo. The commercial went something like this; A woman, a young woman in say her twenties, with dark brown hair, sits on a tram. It may have been a buss. She's watching something on her cell phone. Yes, on the small tiny screen of her cellphone she was watching a horror flick... The movie was Mario Bava's The Drop of Water from Black Sabbath. The climactic scene as the dead woman rises from her bed is shown and the young woman screams aloud on the buss. The crowd around her look at her as she smiles and shrugs her shoulders. The punchline being that now you can watch what you want, where you want.
I'm pretty sure that the commercial was for Nokia, I have some recollection of corresponding with a person at a Nokia marketing department and them trying to obtain a copy for me before they slipped back off the radar.
I've mentioned, questioned this TV Promo featuring Bava footage to several Bava experts, but none of them want anything to do with it. I find it to be extremely important in the pop-cultural department. A Mario Bava film in a cellphone commercial! How awesome isn't that? What's the story behind the promo? Who directed it, as they obviously must have had some horror film knowledge. Of all the films out there, why Mario Bava's Black Sabbath? There's no end to the questions.
I've mentioned this promo, and asked so many friends and peers in the genre sphere in Europe, as that's where I guess anyone may have seen it as it was a Euro promo - but nobody has any recollection of it either.
I will make it a personal quest to track down this promo and post it on this site when I finally find it. It has to be out there and I hope to find answers to some of the many questions I have concerning this commercial.
Obviously I'd love to hear from anyone landing here if they have any insight into this, have you seen the promo, do you know anything about it?
I'll keep you posted!
J:
2 comments:
Damn, really interesting! It will be that here in Italy the spot did not arrive (if not on satellite channels, but i do not think), but it's the first i've heard of this thing! I move myself to learn more! For now i have not heard anything like that, not even in several interviews of children and grandchildren of mario, nothing among local pundits.
I know! It's really odd, but I know that I saw it on several occasions as it at the time was something of a task to identify the filmclip! But I will not rest untill i find it!
/J.
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