DANGER: DIABOLIK (1968; d. Mario Bava, w. MB, Dino Maiuri, Brian Degas + Tudor Gates)

Armored car pulls into building (highly secured psychic information arising into consciousness) + filled w/ blank paper (decoy, mind playing shell-game w/ self) while real $ stashed in Rolls (true objective status for dir clearly identifying w/ antihero), camera zooming in on Inspector Ginko high above (ego, in whose interest material stays hidden), who’s worried about title master-criminal (the thwarting id + subconscious wild-card à la ’66 Bava Dr Goldfoot; name suggesting fallen angel aka lost innocence or forgotten/repressed experience [tho film mercifully free of backstory]); black Jaguar (style over ostentation) releases colored gas (similar weapon to later "exhilarating gas", D ephemeral vexation to real-world Inspector) at wharf (where un/conscious meet) while winch nets Rolls (operating behind smokescreen/metaphor unconscious’s method of smuggling info in+out of consc’ss) + D high-dives off arm (cuing theme song "Deep, Deep Down": sexiness of blind acquisitiveness undermining government/society, he Shadow revealing self to Self), getaway boat + car pursued by helicopter (omniscient consc’ss) then lost in tunnel (vaginal innuendo repeated in tune, title swirl + elsewhere) where he switches Jags w/ lover Eva (reptilian D’s Edenic crush, he/they reveling in world ever held in Fall) + emerges in white (rebirth after mingling fe/male, he purified by her love), sending black Jag over cliff (shirking body on descent into dream; cf similar switcheroo early in Bava’s ’74 heist film Rabid Dogs) + absconding to underground lair (hell + womb [occupation by both characters the primal unity – cf contiguous initials D/E]; again to tune of "DDD," they both vengeful Gaia spirit à la similarly cavern-dwelling Black Sunday Asa) where he scans her bod (as car rotates, à la opening titles: libidinous tremens he calls home) in preparation for lovemaking on similarly spinning bed of $ (aphrodisiac; plainly ambiguous/metaphoric for dir who brought film in for under 1/3 of proposed budget).

Boobish Minister of Finance (superego in chg of flow of valuables in + out of system à la heart/blood + oafish intellect in gleefully, Surrealistically amoral film) announces death penalty for crimewavers while trying not to succumb to laughing gas (losing composure onset of sleep), leading to Ginko’s attempted resignation (exit of rational consciousness) not accepted by superior, who instead gives him "special pwrs" (which might work "indirectly": need to take different – heightened, or oblique – approach than rationality) he uses to put screws to crimelord Valmont (after LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES’s like-named schemer); on V yacht (ocean [as later air] vs Diabolik’s underground: ephemeral + superficial quality to cf D’s imbedded chthonic), he intimidates cold-feet underlings (while ignoring sunbathing babes topdeck: not-D, the violent manifestation of his elemental drive) + offers Ginko employment deal (after latter raided his psychedelic nightclub [logic derailing Dionysian revelry: why V as he is around dames]) reversed by Inspector: will lighten up if V catches D (remotely engaging own "underground" unconscious to rope in livewire libido, he Sunday’s opening priest forcing separation of erotic couple).

While Valmont executing more dissenters on plane (mind eradicating obsolete psychic material, water + air to Diabolik’s earth + fire), D lounges in lair (extremes similarly-vexing Ginko/society caught btwn) after 20-hr sleep (during which machinations occur: w/i own mind, G+V also elements in D’s dream-mvmt twd climactic apotheosis [à la Lisa + the Devil]) brought on by Eva’s pill (he restless when not planning: Inspector’s plot his own, as above), she desiring visiting Minister’s wife’s jewels (serially robbing the Establishment couple caught in eternal oedipal whirl, desire Earth’s yearning to repossess its treasures) for her birthday (regenerating Eve re-creating the world); E recognized by jealous hooker (former sacred whore of ancient temple, whose sex acted as generator for the gods) while casing castle (Using What She’s Got to Get What She Wants; reiteration, also, of Val boat scene w/ chippies outside, equating upperclass party inside w/ Syndicate), who guides her drawing by Valmont’s sketch artist (mind formulating img o/t [unjudged; sexually] Liberated Wmn; shown as progression of comix illos, after source medium: sister-originators elevating selves thru her, + filmmakers returning favor), V then hauling in E’s underworld doctor (unconscious healer) to set up trap (he acknowledging her thru illo: comic-book img of wmn for coward betraying own profession).

Frogman Diabolik (cf "Gingko": amphibious trafficker btwn realms, up from primal unconscious), shoots 3 guards (1st violent act: corrupted, introduction of Val character as of trait into Self), sheds black suit (à la skin for reptilian wallclimber) to gray/white (à la earlier Jags; further ambi quality [as ambivalent regard audience might hold]) + scales tower (phallic Empire) to Lady Clarke’s room (oedipal invasion), where he snaps photo from surveillance camera’s perspective (deluding Self that all is orderly + static so covert thwarting of taboo may take place, necessary to appeasing anima) + attaches to lens (trick photog’y Bava’s forte [c/o Tim Lucas’s DVD talk]) while he swipes jewels (both her "eggs" + Lord C’s "family ~"); chased to top of tower from which he catapults suit (ejaculation climaxing "penetration"), emerging naked (having re-conceived self, like sequence-opening frog back to tadpole) + fleeing w/ Eva, their mylar-mirror roadblock (Road Runner gag also another Bavian trompe l’oeil [per Lucas]) sending pursuing cops off cliff (à la opening Jag; now manned, figurative jettisoning of body now literal as dream deepens/intensifies + anti"hero"’s bodycount mounts) but also incurring Eva-wound (screen hymen unmolested by cops, returning virginity – à la D's tad-self [+ own birthday] – coming w/ price) sending her to Doc Vernier next day.

Valmont ambushes Dr’s office (intrusion of negative-id on healing process) + kidnaps Eva (infantile pre-sexual libido appropriating anima: continuing regression), demanding $10m + necklace (latter now fetish over which Self at odds: "enriching" sperm cells, covetousness as btwn rival gametes) 2B handed over aboard V’s plane (not-the-phallus: uprooted + airborne, à la essence + spiritual "meaning") directly above Eva (parachuting down again 2nd ejaculation + conception), where Diabolik grabs V as trapdoor opens (also birth, descending characters Siamese twins to part on impact); frees E from captors (fertilization delayed on separation) + shoots V w/ emeralds (placing value i/t body) then takes gold pill (ditto; death-simulating drug a going-into at same time as transcending body à la sleep/dream [cf Eva’s sleeping tablet]), waking in morgue (naked again, he eternally-reborn Zarathustrian agent of own creation) + returning in guise of Valmont-dad (matured on elimination of infantile-self) to retrieve jewels from son's ashes (transcending body, gems Phoenix-like seeds of regeneration), passing Ginko in elevators (doors opening reborn again again).

Sends message that he will take Minister’s $1m bounty "out of circulation" ($ blood running thru + pwring populace aka Self) to protest use of public funds (beware all populists; his anarcho-Surrealist credentials beginning to pall), accomplished by blowing up several offices of taxation etc (not funny after WTC attack + w/ current administration doing same; sub-Toho destruction of miniatures as of institutions/façades for figure whose Fantomas-cum-Les Yeux sans visage mask obscures latter, he Everyman [including government itself]), necessitating liquidation of all assets into single gold ingot (à la pill: self-destruction prerequisite for society’s rebirth) while Finance Minister pleads w/ public to pay taxes on honor system (non-existent: people get the gov’t they deserve, Mnstr framed btwn two horses’ asses); crashes truck outside train tunnel (cf own earlier tunnel: impeding rebirth) soon dynamited (ditto), forcing train onto bridge also TNT’d (climax of explosive episode, gold going into drink à la D’s earlier swallowing: world itself taking deadly pill, all that remains of country’s wealth), Ginko swimming to safety (cf Eva’s post-cremation dip, he suitably feminized).

Couple retrieve capsule (as antibodies attacking bacteria; cf ’68 Fantastic Voyage) + proceed to melt it down (reducing to its essence as mind moves twd own dissolution), Diabolik’s expulsion hose (ahem; posed btwn Eva’s legs, nudge nudge) pouring out into brick mold (couple’s exultation earth’s orgasmic cries as its riches returned, D finally fertilizing "eggs") as pipe organ (cf Sunday’s similar: alarm at invasion yearned for in earlier film) signals entrance of Ginko’s posse (directed by radioactive agent aka intuition; cf E’s infrared irradiation at Dr’s: she = gold), forcing them to split up (à la Sunday opening); unable to reach locks to drown them (submerse self in unconsciousness), D dowsed in molten gold (apotheosized) when radiating capsule blows (returning consciousness [suit durable enuf to "swim thru the center o/t sun" in], pipes also à la alarm clock), E returning in mourning/morning black (shiny veil à la visor on his helmet: she remaining immersed in darkness) + xchg’g wink w/ still-living lover (as he w/ audience: she + us 1 + same, Bava pulling off artistic coups for love of entertaining, trapped in gold as in lavish budget he to relieve self of immediately after).

Lush subterranean set design, criminal hero’s pipe organ, closing darkness + diabolical laugh – not to mention Terry-Thomas – setting stage for ’71 Abominable Dr Phibes.