Black Sunday (1960 film)


Black Sunday, also known as The Mask of Satan and Revenge of the Vampire in the UK, is a 1960 Italian gothic horror film directed by Mario Bava from a screenplay by Ennio de Concini and Mario Serandrei, and starring Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Arturo Dominici and Ivo Garrani. It was Bava's official directorial debut, although he had completed several previous feature films without receiving an onscreen credit. Based very loosely on Nikolai Gogol's short story "Viy", the narrative concerns a witch who is put to death by her own brother, only to return 200 years later to seek revenge on her descendants.
By the social standards of the 1960s, Black Sunday was considered unusually gruesome, and was banned in the UK until 1968 because of its violence. In the US, some of the gore was censored in-house by distributor American International Pictures before its theatrical release to the country's cinemas, where it was shown as a double feature with Roger Corman's The Little Shop of Horrors. Black Sunday was a worldwide critical and box office success, and launched the careers of Bava and Steele. In 2004, one of its sequences was voted number 40 among the "100 Scariest Movie Moments" by the Bravo TV network.

Plot

In 1630 Moldavia, Asa Vajda, a witch, and her paramour, Javutich, are sentenced to death for sorcery by Asa's brother. Asa vows revenge and puts a curse on her brother's descendants. Metal masks with sharp spikes on the inside are placed over Asa and Javutich's faces and hammered into their flesh, but a sudden storm prevents the villagers from burning them at the stake.
Two centuries later, Dr. Choma Kruvajan and his assistant, Dr. Andrej Gorobec, are traveling through Moldavia en route to a medical conference when one of the wheels of their carriage is broken. While waiting for their coachman to fix it, the two wander into a nearby ancient crypt and discover Asa's tomb. Observing her death mask through a glass panel, Kruvajan breaks the panel by accident while striking a bat. He then removes Asa's death mask, revealing a partially preserved corpse. He cuts his hand on the broken glass. Some of his blood drips onto Asa.
Returning outside, Kruvajan and Gorobec meet Katia Vajda. She tells them that she lives with her father and brother Constantine in a nearby castle that the villagers believe is haunted. Struck by her haunting beauty and sadness, Gorobec becomes smitten with Katia. The two men leave her and drive to an inn. Meanwhile Asa is brought back to life by Kruvajan's blood. She contacts Javutich telepathically. He rises from his grave and goes to Prince Vajda's castle, where Vajda holds up a crucifix to ward the reanimated corpse away. However, Vajda is so terrified by the visit that he becomes paralyzed with fear. Constantine sends a servant to fetch Dr. Kruvajan, but the servant is killed before he can reach the inn. Javutich brings Kruvajan to the castle under the pretext that his services are needed. Javutich leads Kruvajan to Asa's crypt. The witch hypnotizes Kruvajan and says she needs the rest of his blood. Asa then kisses him, turning him into her servant. By Asa's command, Kruvajan follows up on the request to tend to Vajda. He orders the crucifix removed from the room, ostensibly so it won't upset Vajda; this allows Javutich to return later and murder him.
Asa's plan is to revive herself by draining Katia of her life, since Katia is physically Asa reincarnated. Puzzled to hear that Kruvajan abandoned his patient shortly before he died, Gorobec questions a little girl who saw Javutich take Kruvajan to the castle. She identifies Kruvajan's escort with a painting of Javutich. A priest and Gorobec go to Javutich's grave and find Kruvajan's body inside the coffin. Realizing he is now one of the undead, they kill him by ramming a small piece of wood through one of his eye sockets.
Javutich throws Constantine into a death pit and takes Katia to Asa. Asa drains Katia of her youth. When the witch goes to take her blood, she is thwarted by the crucifix around Katia's neck. Gorobec enters the crypt to save Katia but is attacked by Javutich, who pushes him to the edge of the death pit. Constantine uses the last of his strength to pull Javutich into the pit and push Gorobec to safety. Gorobec finds Asa and Katia. Asa pretends to be Katia and tells Gorobec that Katia is the witch. He accordingly goes to kill Katia but notices the crucifix she is wearing has no effect on her. He turns to Asa and opens her robe, revealing a fleshless skeletal frame. The priest then arrives with numerous torch-carrying villagers, and they burn Asa to death. Katia awakens from her stupor, her life and beauty restored, and is reunited with Gorobec.

Cast

Pre-production

During 1959, Bava had assumed the directorial assignment of The Giant of Marathon from Jacques Tourneur, who left the production before most of the major sequences had been filmed. Bava, who had been that film's cinematographer, completed the film quickly and efficiently. This was not the first time Bava had been able to save a troubled movie for Marathon's production company, Galatea Film. During that same year, Bava had performed a similar salvage job on Caltiki – The Immortal Monster, replacing Riccardo Freda as director after he had abandoned the picture in the middle of production. Even earlier, he had assumed the directorial role for I Vampiri after the temperamental Freda had also walked off the set of that film after only a few days. Bava did not receive director screen credit for any of his work on the three troubled Galatea films. After Bava completed Marathon, Nello Santi, the head of Galatea Film, subsequently offered him his choice of any property for his first directorial effort.

Writing

As a lover of Ukrainian fantasy and horror, Bava decided to adapt Nikolai Gogol's 1835 horror story "Viy" into a feature film. However, the resultant screenplay in fact owed very little to Gogol at all, and seemed to be more a tribute to the atmospheric black-and-white gothic horror films of the 1930s, especially those produced by Universal Studios.
The script takes only the most rudimentary elements from the story—the Ukrainian settings and the idea of a witch coming back to life—and has a completely different narrative.

Casting

For the role of the evil Asa and her innocent descendant Katia, Bava noted: "A strange type was needed, and we chose Steele from pictures." Bava reportedly found Steele difficult to work with. According to Bava, the actress "was somewhat irrational, afraid of Italians. One day she refused to come to the set, because somebody told her I was using a special film-stock that made people appear naked." Steele recalled: "Lord alone knows I was difficult enough. I didn't like my fangs – I had them changed three times. I loathed my wig – I changed that four times. I couldn't understand Italian. I certainly didn't want to allow them to tear open my dress and expose my breasts, so they got a double that I didn't like at all, so I ended up doing it myself – drunk, barely over eighteen, embarrassed and not very easy to be around."

Filming

The production of La Maschera del Demonio began on 28 March 1960 at the studios of Scalera Film. The exteriors, as well as a few interiors, were shot at a rented castle in Arsoli. The final day of production was 7 May.
Steele never saw a complete screenplay for the film. Instead, she was simply handed the scenes she would play, and her dialogue, every morning of the production. According to Steele, "We were given the pages day to day. We had hardly any idea what was going down on that film. We had no idea of the end, or the beginning, either, not at all."
Both Steele and Dominici were originally fitted to wear sharp vampire fangs, but after only a few days of shooting, the fangs were discarded. The film's Production Manager, Armando Govoni, recalled, "hen we saw the rushes, especially in the close-ups, they looked too fake so editor Mario Serandrei cut around them."

Soundtrack

The original Italian score by Roberto Nicolosi was issued by Digitmovies AE in 2005, together with another Nicolosi score for The Girl Who Knew Too Much. A complete version has been released on vinyl for the first time ever by Spikerot Records in 2019, with exclusive liner notes by Lamberto Bava.
A suite from Les Baxter's score was originally released on a promotional LP by the composer, whose contents made an authorized CD debut on a 1992 release by Bay Cities. Citadel Records reissued the same material in 1997 and just like the previous release, this CD also contained a suite of music from Baron Blood, another Bava film which also received a new score by Baxter for its American version. Baxter's complete score to Black Sunday was released in 2011 by Kritzerland, whose CD contains the music in chronological order.

Release

The film premiered in Italy on 11 August 1960. In 1961 it was distributed in the US, France, Japan, Mexico, and West Germany. In 1962 it was shown for the first time in Austria and Denmark. The film was then seen in Sweden and Finland. But it was banned in the UK until June 1968 due to its violent content.

American version

and James H. Nicholson, of American International Pictures, screened the Italian-language version of the film when they were visiting Rome in search of viable, inexpensive European made films to act as second features for their double-bills. They immediately recognized the film as a potential hit and bought the US rights for $100,000, reportedly more than the film's budget.
In order to make the film more accessible to American audiences, AIP trimmed over three minutes' worth of violence and "objectionable" content. Sequences excised or shortened included the burning "S" branded into Asa's flesh, the blood spewing from the mask after it was hammered into her face, the moist eyeball impalement of Kruvajan, and the flesh peeling off Vajda's face as he burned to death in the fireplace. In the original version of the film, Asa and Javutich were brother and sister; in the AIP version, Javutich became Asa's servant. In addition, some dialogue was "softened," including Asa's line, "You, too, can find the joy and happiness of Hades!" AIP modified it to "You, too, can find the joy and happiness of hating!"
Roberto Nicolosi's musical score was replaced by an effective but more generic "horror"-sounding one by Les Baxter, and the dialogue was completely redubbed into English. As the entire cast, with the exception of Checchi and Dominici, had spoken their lines in English, this was a relatively easy task. Galatea had provided AIP with their own English-language version, which had been completed by the Language Dubbers Association in Rome. However, Arkoff and Nicholson felt this version was stilted and "technically unacceptable", so a newly recorded English version was commissioned and produced by Titra Sound Corporation in New York City. Barbara Steele and John Richardson's voices were not heard in any version.
AIP tested several titles for the film, including Witchcraft, The House of Fright, The Curse, Vengeance and Demoniaque, before finally entitling their shortened version Black Sunday. The film premièred in the United States on 15 February 1961; it was presented as the A movie in a double feature that also included Roger Corman's The Little Shop of Horrors.
Even in its truncated state, '"Black Sunday" was considered to contain strong material for its time. In the US, the AIP publicity campaign indicated that the film was suitable only for audiences over 12. In England, with the title '"The Mask of Satan," the film was officially banned by government censors until 1968, when a distributor submitted the full version under a new title, Revenge of the Vampire. The British censor made cuts to most of the scenes of violence, and the film was not released uncut in Britain until 1992.
Despite being censored, the film still had moments of very graphic scenes of horror and violence. With bloody scenes featuring a wooden stake being rammed into a vampire's eyeball, a metal mask hammered into a beautiful woman's face, and other mayhem—the film was "far more graphic in its depiction of murder and death than audiences had previously seen."

Home video

Black Sunday was released on VHS by Image Entertainment unedited on December 14, 1999. This was the first time the European edit of the film was released on home video in the United States.

Reception

La Maschera del Demonio premiered in Rome during August 1960. The film was a modest success, grossing 140 million lire, earning back nearly all of the production cost. It performed much better outside of Italy, and was particularly successful in France and the U.S.
Upon its theatrical release in the United States, critics generally responded with enthusiasm to Bava's film, many of whom recognized the director as a potential master of the horror genre. Variety noted, "There is sufficient cinematography ingenuity and production flair to keep an audience pleasantly unnerved." Time said the film was "a piece of fine Italian handiwork that atones for its ludicrous lapses with brilliant intuitions of the spectral." The Motion Picture Herald stated that "A classic quality permeates this gruesome, shocking, horrifying story of a vengeful, bloodthirsty vampire." Castle of Frankenstein described the film as "one of the best horror thrillers of recent years." David Pirie, in The Time Out Film Guide, called the movie, "A classic horror film The exquisitely realized expressionist images of cruelty and sexual suggestion shocked audiences in the early '60s and occasioned a long-standing ban by the British censor. The visual style still impresses..." Carlos Clarens felt that "the quality of the visual narrative was superb—the best black-and-white photography to enhance a horror movie in the past two decades. Bava also showed himself as a director of a certain promise..." Eugene Archer in The New York Times, however, hated the film, noting that "Barbara Steele, a blank-eyed manikin with an earthbound figure and a voice from outer space, is appropriately cast as a vampire: not the Theda Bara kind, but the genuine blood-drinking variety. Mario Bava, ostensibly the director of this nonsense, allows this female Bela Lugosi to quench her thirst four times before she burns, screaming, at the stake As a setting for unadulterated horror, it will leave its audiences yearning for that quiet, sunny little motel in Psycho." Ivan Butler opined that the film "appears to offer horror, beauty and the ludicrous in about equal proportions."
Decades after its original release, Black Sunday has continued to maintain a positive critical reputation. Pauline Kael described it as "a rich draught of vampire's blood. With its crypts and cobwebs and eerie old castles set in batty, steamy forests, its sumptuous enough to have acquired a considerable reputation." In The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, Timothy Sullivan wrote, "A supremely atmospheric horror film, Black Sunday was Mario Bava's first and best directorial job, and the first of the 1960s cycle of Italian Gothic cinema remains greatest achievement, without a doubt one of the best horror films ever made." Phil Hardy's The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror observed, "Bava's first film as a solo director The movie derives its lyrical force and indeed its sense of horror from the knowledge that a woman's sexuality cannot be eliminated and will return, bearing the scars of the violence with which it was repressed, to challenge the order of things." Danny Peary, in his Cult Movies book, wrote, "Black Sunday is as impressive as it is because it reveals Bava's background – almost everything is conveyed visually...It is with his camera that Bava creates an atmosphere where the living and dead coexist Black Sunday convinced many of us that Mario Bava would be a force to be reckoned with in the horror field for many years to come. Unfortunately, he never made another picture half as good." Allmovie has noted, "Generally considered to be the foremost example of Italian gothic horror, this darkly atmospheric black-and-white chiller put director Mario Bava on the international map... The atmosphere is so heavy and the imagery so dense that the film becomes nearly too rich in texture, but the sheer, ghastly beauty of it all is entrancing." Glenn Erickson, in reviewing the Anchor Bay DVD release of the film, wrote, "Mario Bava's first credited feature is still the number one film of the Italian horror renaissance, startlingly original and genuinely creepy The budget may have been low, but Black Sunday is more atmospheric and cinematically active than any of Hollywood's classic horror films." The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 86% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 21 reviews, with an average rating of 7.51/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Mario Bava's official narrative debut is a witchy nightmare steeped in gothic splendor, shot in chiaroscuro black and white and punctuated with startling gore."
When released in the US during 1961, the film was a commercial success for AIP, becoming the distributor's greatest financial success to that time. It also brought Barbara Steele to the attention of genre fans and was the first of a series of horror movies she starred in over the next several years. Although she would next star in Roger Corman's The Pit and the Pendulum, she returned to Italy the next year and made all of her subsequent horror titles there. While all of her genre titles have their fans, none of the films have had the same effect as Black Sunday.

Legacy

According to Tim Lucas, Black Sunday has had an "almost incalculable influence" on artists and filmmakers. The film's opening Inquisition sequence was a strong inspiration for many similar scenes appearing in such movies as The Brainiac, Terror in the Crypt, Bloody Pit of Horror, and Michael Reeves' The She Beast. Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula recreates several scenes from Black Sunday nearly exactly as they were filmed, in homage to Bava's film. Roman Coppola has cited Black Sunday as an influence on his father's film.
Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow "borrowed" some of the film's imagery, particularly in a scene in which Lisa Marie's face is punctured by an iron maiden. Burton has explicitly cited Bava's film as an inspiration, noting, "One of the movies that remain with me probably stronger than anything is Black Sunday..There's a lot of old films – in particular – where the vibe and the feeling is what it's about... he feeling's a mixture of eroticism, of sex, of horror and starkness of image, and to me, that is more real than what most people would consider realism in films..."
In 1989, Bava's son, Lamberto Bava, made a quasi-remake of the film. While the new Black Sunday has a very similar mask torture sequence to the original, it features a completely different storyline. It was released in the US as , although there is no connection between this and the rest of the Demons series.

Home media

The film was released by Image Entertainment on DVD on December 14, 1999, with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 widescreen, with the following edition details: an audio commentary by Tim Lucas, a photo and poster gallery, and filmographies of Bava and Steele. It was re-released on April 3, 2007 by Anchor Bay, with the same features as the earlier release.
On September 18, 2012, Kino Lorber released the film in the Blu-ray format, once again repeating the same special features that were included in the previous DVD releases.
The UK Blu-ray release by Arrow Films also features the above release’s extras plus the US version of the film entitled Black Sunday and a print of I Vampiri which Bava also worked on.