BLACK SUNDAY Movie Review

La Maschera del Demonio
The Demon's Mask
House of Fright
Revenge of the Vampire

This Brigadoon of terror, in which the devil walks the earth for one horrifying day each century, marks the fully credited debut feature of Italy's Mario Bava. His full-bodied, all-stops-out, Gothic Grand Guignol style produces some memorable images (Bava was also co-cinematographer), most of them built around the striking, sculpted face of Barbara Steele in a dual role as a beautiful princess and a centuries-old evil witch. It's her witch we remember, of course, and that single close-up of her eyes popping open (you'll know it when you see it) may put much of the rest of this ridiculous yet genuinely unsettling horror movie in the background. It's understandable that a Bava cult grew out of Black Sunday, yet few if any of his later films, including the gory Hatchet for the Honeymoon and the wonderfully titled Twitch of the Death Nerve, made the stylish impact of his first. Black Sunday was released in the U.S. in a dubbed version, and the army of kids who saw it nationwide in 1961 at Saturday kiddie matinees were effectively freaked for weeks, if not (in my case, at least) permanently.

NEXT STOP … Suspiria, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Night of the Living Dead (1968)

1960 83m/B IT Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Ivo Garrani, Andrea Checchi, Arturo Dominici, Antonio Pierfederici, Tino Bianchi, Clara Bindi, Enrico Oliveri, Germana Dominici; D: Mario Bava; W: Mario Bava, Ennio de Concini, Mario Serandrei; C: Mario Bava, Ubaldo Terzano; M: Les Baxter. VHS SMW, SNC, MRV