BLACK SUNDAY (1960)

(aka. "La Maschera del demonio")

Starring: Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Ivo Garrani, Andrea Chechi. Directed by Mario Bava. Written by Ennio de Conchini and Bava from "The Vij" by Nikolai Gogol. Italy. 88 minutes.

"Look into my eyes. I can bring you pleasure mortals cannot know."

We open with a tight shot of a flaming brazier, slowly pulling out to see a muscular, shirtless, black-hooded executioner stirring the blaze with a branding iron as two other executioners, exact clones of himself, watch on with their arms folded.  The first executioner carries the branding iron over to a clearing in an eerie wood, where a raven-haired woman in a white dress is tied to a stake, facing it with her back exposed. The "Brand of Satan" is pressed into her back - accompanied with a hellish scream and the delightful sizzle of searing flesh - and held there in loving close-up for what seems like half a minute. The woman turns her head to face us... and what a face it is. Those high, arching cheekbones. Those big, luminous, cat-like eyes. That wide, sensuous  mouth. It is a face of otherwordly, preturnatural beauty. It is the unforgetable face of Barbara Steele.

Standing before her are a row of accusers in hoods and cloaks, chief among whom is the Grand Inquisitor, who happens to be her own brother. He renounces his sister, the Princess Asa Vajda, as a devil-worshiping witch and passes the death sentence. Nearby is the body of her servant in sin, the evil Javutich, tied to a stake with a macabre mask over his face - the "Mask of Satan". Before being put to the torch Asa is given a Mask of Satan of her own, which we see has a set of nasty six-inch spikes on the inside. As it is placed over her face, Asa places a curse upon her persecutors. "My revenge will strike down you and your accursed house, she vows. "I shall return to torment you and to destroy throughout the nights of time!" The executioner lifts a giant wooden sledgehammer and swings it. WHAM! The mask is driven into Asa's face. We hear a piercing scream and see a copious gush of blood. (This image of Sadean savagery was later co-opted by Clive Barker for his film Lord of Illusions.)

So begins Black Sunday, a benchmark film that ushered in a new style in cinematic horror - known as the giallo - that was equal parts ghostly Gothic and gruesome Grand Guignol. ("Giallo" is the Italian word for the color yellow, which happened to be the color of covers of the lurid pulp horror magazines that were popular in Italy at the time.) No director defined this sub-genre more than the great Mario Bava, a cinematographer turned director who became one of the most influential horror filmmakers of all-time with his jaw-dropping imagery and his subtle-as-a-sledgehammer approach.

After the opening credits roll, we see  the attempt to consign Asa and Javutich's bodies to the flames aborted by a sudden, freak rainstorm. Asa's corpse is placed in the family crypt, while Javutich's remains are burried in unhallowed ground. The story proper begins 200 years later to the day. Two Moldavian doctors - the middle-aged Dr. Kubayan (Richardson) and the youthful Dr. Andreus (Checchi) - are travelling to a medical convention when they pass through Asa's old turf. The two doctors come across the Princess Katia (also played by Steele, in the first of what were to be her many famous dual roles).

In his explorations of the immediate vicinity, Dr. Kubayan comes across the tomb of Princess Asa. Can he just leave well enough alone? Of course not! He simply must get a better look at the corpse, so he reaches through shattered remains of the tiny glass window in the stone casket-lid and removes Asa's mask to be rewarded with the heart-warming sight of insects scuttling out her empty eye-sockets. But dumbshit has to go and cut his hand on the glass, dripping blood on the vampire witch and accidentally ressurecting her spooky (but oh-so-squeezable) ass. In a spectacularly over-the-top effect, Asa's coffin EXPLODES, revealing her in all her ghastly glory, bosom heaving with life, her hungry eyes fixed on her prey, the wide puncture wounds from the Mask of Satan still in her flesh. Later on, she bids her satanic servant Javutich rise from the grave (which he does in another spectacularly spooky set-piece) and the two set out fulfill Asa's vendetta against her family's descendants.

Black Sunday is nothing less than a hardcore Gothic tour-de-force. From start to finish it bombards the viewer with an unrelentingly powerful dark atmosphere and just about every great Gothic cliche' imaginable. You've got your dark and scary nights, the ground carpeted with fog, shambling revenants rising from the tomb, trap doors, dark pits, blood-hungry vampires on the prowl, a handsome hero, and a beautiful, imperilled maiden. The viewer is plunged into a moody nightmare world from which there seems to be no escape and no relief. Bava's masterful visual style is in full effect here, with lots of slow tracking shots of Gothic fairytale sets. (Films shot entirely on indoor sets usually have a more dream-like feel than those with on-location exteriors, and this one is a fine example of that sublime phenomenon at work.)

Justifiably, this is the film that made Barbare Steele a horror movie legend. In her dual role as the All-Destroying Bitch Goddess and the Virtuous Maiden, Steele rocks the senses with a seductive dance of attraction and revulsion. As the wicked Asa she makes your skin crawl, as Katia she makes you swoon. In either incarnation - as Madonna or Whore - the mere sight of Steele can't help but make your pulse quicken, your heart pound in your chest. The light and dark sides of her otherworldly beauty were never captured better. It is Steele's performance, every bit as much as the genius of Mario Bava, that make this not only the definitive giallo, but one of the most striking horror movies ever made.

***1/2 Three and a Half Masks of Satan Full of Maggots.

* Dead meat, ripe and reeking.
** Moribund, but showing a slight flicker of life.
*** Good n' healthy.
**** Brimming with vitality.