Black Sunday on a Tuesday Night

Now that the spring semester is over and I have a little more spare time on my hands, I decided to visit my IMDB movie list to check out a couple of movies that I've been meaning to watch. Unfortunately, a majority of the movies on that list are either extremely hard to track down, a little too expensive (like The Holy Mountain by Alejandro Jodorowski, which is listed at 45 dollars on amazon), or just not available in any source for immediate viewing. So when I logged on to Netflix and saw that Black Sunday was up for streaming, I jumped at the chance to watch it, before it got taken down for whatever reason.

Black Sunday, also known as The Mask of Satan, Revenge of the Vampire or La Maschera del Demonio, is a 1960 Italian horror film directed by Mario Bava. Starring Barbara Steele and John Richardson, this film is about a vengeful witch known as Asa who lays a curse on her brothers blood line for having her and her assistant burned at the stake in a 17th century Romanian town. Two centuries later, she is awakened by Dr. Thomas Kruvajan (played by Andrea Checchi) and his assistant Dr. Andre Gorobec (played by John Richardson) while exploring an ancient crypt. Outside the crypt, they encounter Katia (Barbara Steele) who lives in a nearby castle with her father Prince Vajda (Ivo Garrani), and her brother Constantine (Enrico Oliveiri). Upon Asa's awakening, shenanigans ensue as her assistant known as Javuto begins terrorizing the poor family living in the castle. A battle between the Doctors, and the satanic duo ensues, as Asa attempts to suck out Katia's life force in order to come back to life.

Without giving away too much of the film, the introduction was probably one of the coolest I've seen and it did a really good job at setting the mood for the rest of the film (You can choose to watch it at the end of the post, or you can just watch the trailer if you feel like this will ruin the movie for you). The cinematography was really great too, it involved a lot of great shots of ruined monasteries, gothic castle hallways, haunting shadows cast by tree branches, and an excellent use of darkness giving an eerie feeling of someone constantly watching you. Like when you go to the bathroom late at night, and you feel this odd presence in front of you, and your brain is convinced that there is someone just out of arms reach waiting to drag you off into the dark. The only thing that kind of pissed me off was one of the fights between the doctor and Javuto. A mortal is fighting one of Satans henchmen, and he is able to put up a fight using only his fists? Were his fists magically infused with the power of Christ or something? Aside from that, Black Sunday was a really entertaining film, even if you are not a fan of black and white horror, its still a pretty fun movie to watch late at night.

Black Sunday: Opening Scene

 

Black Sunday Trailer