Grapes of Death

Color, 1971, 83 mins. 2 secs. / 81 mins. 28 secs.
Directed by Mario Bava
Starring Brett Halsey, Daniela Giordano, Pascale Petit, Dick Randall, Michael Hinz, Brigitte Skay
Indicator (UHD & Blu-ray) (UK R0 4K/HD), Shout! Factory (Blu-ray) (US RA HD), Kino Lorber (Blu-ray) (US RA HD), Anchor Bay (DVD) (US R0 NTSC), Image Entertainment (DVD) (US R1 NTSC) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9)

Returning to the Four Times That Nightgiddy comic book haze of his sublime Diabolik, director Mario Bava branched out away even further from his Gothic terrors Four Times That Nightwith Four Times That Night (Quante volte... quella notte), a loose and breezy sex farce borrowing its structure from Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. Bava rises to the task quite well and brings his trademark visual skills into play for some dazzling little flourishes throughout the film, making it a diverting little bon bon in a career lined with masterpieces.

Pretty young Tina (Giordano) finds her afternoon dog walk interrupted by sports car-driving lothario Gianni Prada (Return of the Fly's Halsey), or John in the English dub, who asks her on a date. Despite her convent breeding, Tina agrees to see him that night but returns home much later than planned with her dress torn. In flashback, Tina frantically tells her mother about the evening, which begin with a trip to a nightclub and escalated into Gianni's frantic rape attempt while dressed in leopardskin underwear. However the next day Gianni, sporting a nasty scratch on his face, tells his buddies a quite different story in which Tina was actually a sex-mad panther who demanded hour after hour of satisfaction. Back at Gianni's apartment, the lecherous doorman (Randall) offers yet another variation of the story, Four Times That Nightin which a manipulative, gay Gianni lured Tina in for an evening of debauched sexual antics partially Four Times That Nightinvolving A Bay of Blood's Brigitte Skay. Of course, the fourth version - the whole story, supposedly - proves to be an entirely different affair.

A colorful pop art feast for the eyes, Four Times That Night allows Bava's camera to run rampant and soak in every detail of the mod clothing and sets. Though working with a minuscule budget, the director turns simple settings like a shower or a bedroom into visual playgrounds of bold primary colors and catchy geometric shapes, while inflatable furniture, rope swings, tinted drinking glasses, and wallpapered photo collages become props for each character's Freudian delights. The sexuality itself is very tame with a few bare breasts and coyly concealed fumblings making this a quaint reminder of the innocence of pre-Emmanuelle erotic cinema. More importantly, the film is genuinely funny, alternating hilarious verbal wit (particularly Tina's self-empowering claims while locked in the bathroom during the first episode) with physical comedy in the best tradition of an English bedroom farce. The peppy lounge score by Coriolano "Lallo" Gori adds to the fun and recalls Piero Umiliani's similar work on Bava's similar cotton candy exercise, Five Dolls for an August Moon.

Rarely seen for decades after its initial release, this film became something of a holy grail for Bava completists well into the '90s. Some video dealers at the time circulated a smudgy tape version of the barely released English dubbed edition, which dumbs down the dialogue and brutally crops Bava's compositions but has a couple of additional saucy bits deemed too strong for Italian audiences. Four Times That NightTherefore the Image DVD released in 2000 was a welcome restoration of a film few even knew to look for, and the print by and large was in satisfying shape. Four Times That NightOnly the animated opening credits (an amusing cartoon twist on a Rorsach test, appropriately enough) and the first scene suffer from notable damage, while colors are always vibrant and clearly rendered. The Italian dialogue fares much better than the English version, while the subtitles convey the puckish, rapid fire exchanges surprisingly well. The disc also comes with extensive liner notes from Video Watchdog's Tim Lucas, who provides plenty of historical tidbits to make this an even more cherished and significant release. The film was later included in Anchor Bay's second Bava DVD collection in 2007, essentially looking the same and with zero extras.

In 2019, Kino Lorber premiered the film on Blu-ray with an improved HD scan of the Italian version with the English track conformed to fit it as an audio option as well, switching to subtitled Italian for a couple of bits exclusive to that version. Tim Lucas contributes a typically top-notch audio commentary here bringing his Bava expertise to bear on a thorough history of how the film came about, Bava's always resourceful visual effects trickery, the actors' backgrounds, the strapped budget, the oddness of actor Calisto Calisti's presence which seems to have been mostly jettisoned, the role of Lamberto Bava working as an assistant director, and the weird, easily overlooked release history long after its 1968 production. Also included are the audio of the two saucier scenes from the English version, the English trailer, and bonus trailers for Baron Blood, The Evil Eye, Kill, Baby... Kill!, Hatchet for the Honeymoon, and Lisa and the Devil. In 2025 the film reappeared in Shout! Factory's supposedly limited Mario Bava Blu-ray collection, as a Four Times That Nightcompletely worthless bare bones disc recycling the same scan but with burned-in English subtitles. That set and its Four Times That Nightcustomer-insulting rollout involved a ton of bad decisions, so we'll just move on.

In 2026, Indicator released the most extensive special edition of the film by a long shot as separate UHD and Blu-ray options featuring a new 4K restoration of the film from the original negative with both the complete 83-minute Italian or 81-minute English versions for the first time. Both are worth checking out as they feature exclusive footage, and it's great to finally have those English scenes (the most memorable involving some same-sex steaminess with Skay) in nice quality here at last. The LPCM 1.0 mono tracks for either one sound solid and come with optional improved English-translated or SDH subtitles. As usual the film is a colorful riot for the eyeballs, though some inherent baked-in issues like an on-and-off errant hair in the upper left area of the frame can't be avoided. The Lucas commentary is carried over here for the Italian version, while the English one comes with a new track by Eugenio Ercolani and an uncredited Troy Howarth who manage to avoid overlapping the earlier commentary here with a thorough rundown of the production, its place in Bava's filmography, the surprising presence of Randall who remains notorious as a Euro-cult producer, the merits of the still unreleased score, and much more.

In "Scenes from a Memory" (12m24s), Lamberto Bava looks back at the little he remembers about the film and speaks more broadly about his dad and their working relationship at the time, a flurry of activity making the most of limited means including this rare "non-fantasy, non-horror" outing. Then in "Like Father, Like Son" (13m34s), editor Roberto Colangeli, son of this film's editor Otello Colangeli, chats about his family history and his memories of his father working on films with huge reels of film and hanging on to his favorite studio space he built up from scratch including a projection room. Finally in "The Rashomon Effect" (18m25s), Rachael Nisbet provides an insightful look at how Bava's film adopts the "what is reality?" angle from Kurosawa into an Italian sex comedy template with its truth-shattering narrative ended up in a very different place involving fantasy and desire. Also included are the English trailer and a 17-image gallery, while the limited edition comes with an 80-page book featuring a new essay by Leon Hunt, coverage of the Italian censorship history that delayed its release, archival interviews with Mario Bava, Giordano, and Halsey, and sample critical reactions.

Indicator (UHD)

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Shout! Factory (Blu-ray)

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KINO LORBER (Blu-ray)

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Updated review on June 12, 2026