La maschera del demonio

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La maschera del demonio
Original 1960 Italian release film poster
Directed by	Mario Bava
Produced by	Massimo de Rita
Written by	Ennio De Concini Mario Serandrei
Starring	Barbara Steele John Richardson Ivo Garrani
Music by	Roberto Nicolosi
Cinematography	Mario Bava
Distributed by	American International Pictures
Release date(s)	1960; 1961 in the U.S.
Running time	87 min
Language	Italian (U.S. release dubbed into English)
Budget	$100,000 (estimate)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

La maschera del demonio ("Mask of the Demon"; U.S. title: Black Sunday; UK title: The Mask of Satan) is a 1960 Italian horror film directed by Mario Bava, from a screenplay by Ennio De Concini and Mario Serandrei, based very loosely on Nikolai Gogol’s short story "Viy". The film stars Barbara Steele, John Richardson, and Ivo Garrani. It was Bava's directorial debut, although he had helped direct several previous feature films without credit.

The movie was considered unusually gruesome by early 1960s standards and was banned in the UK until 1968 due to its violent content. In the U.S., some of the film's more gory moments were censored by American International Pictures prior to its theatrical release. Despite its minor censorship problems, the film was a worldwide critical and boxoffice hit, and helped initiate successful careers for both Bava and star Steele. In 2004, the opening sequence of the film was voted #40 among the "100 Scariest Movie Moments" by the Bravo Channel.^{[1] [2]}

Contents 1 Plot 2 Production 3 Response 4 References 5 Other sources 6 External links

[edit] Plot

In the year 1630, beautiful witch Asa (Steele) and her lover Javuto (Arturo Dominici) are sentenced to death in Moldavia for sorcery by Asa’s own brother. Before being killed, Asa vows revenge and puts a curse on her brother’s descendants. A metal mask with sharp spikes on the inside is placed over the witch’s face and hammered repeatedly into her flesh…

Two hundred years later, Dr. Thomas Kruvajan (Andrea Checchi) and his assistant Dr. Andre Gorobec (Richardson), are traveling through Moldavia when one of the wheels of their carriage is broken, requiring immediate repair. While waiting for their coachman to fix the wheel, the two wander off into a nearby ancient crypt and discover Asa’s tomb. Her partially preserved corpse is visible inside, her face staring out malevolently. Kruvajan is attacked by a bat and he cuts his hand. Some of the blood drips onto Asa’s dead face.

Returning outside, Kruvajan and Gorobec meet Katia (also played by Steele). She advises them that she lives with her father, Prince Vaida (Garrani), and brother Constantin (Enrico Oliveiri), in a nearby castle that the villagers all believe is haunted. Gorobec is instantly smitten by the beautiful young woman. The two men then leave her and drive on to an inn.

The witch Asa is brought back to life, rejuvenated by Kruvajan’s blood. She telepathically contacts Javuto and orders him to rise from his grave. He does so and heads off to Prince Vaida’s castle, where Vaida holds up a crucifix to ward the reanimated corpse away. However, Vaida is so terrified by the visit that he becomes paralyzed with fear. Katia and Constantin send a servant to fetch Dr. Kruvajan. But the servant is killed before he can reach the inn. It is the evil Javuto who arrives to bring Kruvajan to the castle. Javuto leads Kruvajan to Asa’s crypt, and he watches in horror as her coffin explodes spectacularly. From its ruins, the vampire-witch rises and attacks the doctor, drinking his blood. Under Asa’s command, the now vampiric Kruvajan enters Vaida’s room and murders him.

Asa’s plan is to drain Katia of her blood, believing that this act will gain her immortality. A little girl who had seen Javuto meet Kruvajan at the inn describes the dead man to Gorobec. A priest recognizes the description as being that of Javuto. The priest and Gorobec go to Javuto’s grave and find Kruvajan hiding inside. Realizing that he is a vampire, they immediately kill the fiend by ramming a long wooden stake through one of his eye sockets.

Javuto finds Katia and takes her to Asa. Asa attempts to drink her blood but is thwarted by the crucifix around her neck. Gorobec enters the crypt to save Katia but finds Asa instead. Asa pretends to be Katia and tells Gorobec that the now weakened and unconscious Katia is really the vampire. She tells him to kill Katia immediately by staking her. He agrees but at the last possible moment he notices the crucifix she is wearing. 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 fully restored.

[edit] Production

Immediately prior to La maschera del demonio, Mario Bava had taken over the directorial reins of The Giant of Marathon (1959) 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. In that same year, Bava had performed a similar salvage job on Caltiki, The Immortal Monster (1959), replacing Riccardo Freda as director after he had abandoned the picture in the middle of production. Even earlier, he had assumed the directorial chores of I Vampiri (1957) 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 .^[3]

As a lover of Russian fantasy and horror, Bava decided on adapting Nikolai Gogol’s 1865 horror story “Viy” into a feature film. However, the resultant screenplay (by Bava, Ennio De Concini, and Mario Serandrei) 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 1930’s, especially those produced by Universal Studios.^[4] The script takes only the most rudimentary elements from the story -- the Russian setting and the idea of a witch coming back to life -- and fashions a completely different narrative.

For the role of the evil Asa and her sweet 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."^[3] 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."^[5]

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.^[6]

Produced on a somewhat limited budget with a short shooting schedule (under two weeks), La maschera del demonio, while undeniably old fashioned in many ways, contained moments of very graphic (for its time) scenes of horror and violence. With bloody scenes featuring a wooden stake being rammed into a vampire's eyeball (Bava's variation on the more traditional stake through the heart), 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."^[5]

Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson, of American International Pictures, were 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 U.S. rights for $100,000, reportedly more than the movie’s budget. In order to make the film more accessible to American audiences, the movie was trimmed of over three minutes’ worth of violence.^[7] Its musical score was replaced by an effective but more generic “horror” sounding one by Les Baxter, and the dialogue was completely redubbed into English. AIP entitled their shortened version Black Sunday.

[edit] Response

Even in its truncated state, La maschera del demonio was considered to contain strong material for its time. In the U.S., the AIP publicity campaign indicated that the film was suitable only for audiences over 12 (although its doubtful that this was enforced). In England, under the title The Mask of Satan, the film was officially banned by government censors until 1968.^[8]

Generally, critics 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."^[5] Time said the film was "...a piece of fine Italian handiwork that atones for its ludicrous lapses with brilliant intuitions of the spectral."^[5] The Motion Picture Herald stated that "A classic quality permeates this gruesome, shocking, horrifying story of a vengeful, blood-thirsty vampire."^[5] 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 60's, and occasioned a long-standing ban by the British censor. The visual style still impresses..."^[9] 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..."^[10] But Eugene Archer in The New York Times 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."^[11] Ivan Butler opined that the film "appears to offer horror, beauty, and the ludicrous in about equal proportions."^[12] The film has a 89% favorable rating on the "Critical Tomatometer" at the Rotten Tomatoes website.^[13]

The film proved to be a commercial success for AIP.^[14] 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 (1961), she returned to Italy the following 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 impact as La maschera del demonio.

[edit] References

[edit] Other sources

• Peary, Danny. Cult Movies, Delta Books, 1981. ISBN 0-517-20185-2

[edit] External links

• Black Sunday at the Internet Movie Database
• All Movie Guide: Black Sunday entry

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