Black Sunday
- Directed by
- Mario Bava
- Written by
- Ennio De Concini, Mario Serandrei
- Produced by
- Massimo De Rita, Lionello Santi, Lou Rusoff, Samuel Z. Arkoff, James H. Nicholson
Why it’s HorroRated
Black Sunday is the film that launched Italian gothic horror as a genuine genre and Mario Bava's directorial debut announced a visual sensibility the whole subgenre spent the next decade chasing. Bava was already an accomplished cinematographer and this was his chance to indulge in the lush horror he loved without collaborating with anyone else, and every frame shows it. Barbara Steele's dual performance made her an overnight scream queen and her presence carries a genuine, unsettling eroticism that most horror of the period wouldn't touch. The opening execution sequence alone justifies the reputation. Essential viewing for anyone serious about the history of the genre.
Synopsis
Asa Vajda and her servant Javuto are sentenced to death for witchcraft and sorcery, and before the spiked mask is hammered onto her face, Asa curses her brother's descendants across the centuries that follow. Two hundred years later, two traveling doctors stumble into her tomb and inadvertently revive her, setting her sights on her own look-alike descendant. Barbara Steele plays both the vengeful witch and her intended victim, and Mario Bava shoots the whole thing in a fog-drenched black-and-white that draws directly from Universal horror while pushing the violence considerably further than anything American audiences had seen at that point.
Filed under
Quick facts
- Release date
- February 15, 1961
- Runtime
- 1 hour 26 mins
- Country
- Rome, Lazio, Italy
- Language
- Italian
- Content rating
- NR
- Entry type
- Movie
Tags
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