Black Sunday (1960 film)

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Black Sunday

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
Arturo Dominici
Music by Roberto Nicolosi
Les Baxter (U.S. version)
Cinematography Mario Bava
Distributed by American International Pictures
Release date(s) Flag of Italy 1960
Flag of the United States 1961
Running time 87 min
Language Italian (U.S. release dubbed into English)
Budget $100,000 (estimate)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Black Sunday (Italian title: La maschera del demonio) is a 1960 Italian horror film directed by Mario Bava, from a screenplay by Ennio de Concini and Mario Serandrei. The film stars Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Arturo Dominici, and Ivo Garrani. It was Bava's directorial debut, although he had helped direct several previous feature films without credit. Based very loosely on Nikolai Gogol’s short story "Viy", the narrative concerns a vampire-witch who is put to death by her own brother, only to return 200 years later to feed on her descendants.

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, one of the film's sequences was voted #40 among the "100 Scariest Movie Moments" by the Bravo Channel.[1] [2]

Contents

[edit] Plot

In Moldavia, in the year 1630, beautiful witch Asa Vajda (Steele) and her lover Javuto (Arturo Dominici) are sentenced to death for sorcery by Asa's brother. Before being burned at the stake, 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.

About 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. Observing her death mask through a glass panel, Kruvajan breaks the panel to remove the curious item. Asa's partially preserved corpse is visible underneath, her face staring out malevolently. Kruvajan is attacked by a bat and he cuts his hand on the broken glass. Some of his 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 Vajda (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 by Kruvajan’s blood. She telepathically contacts Javuto and orders him to rise from his grave. He does so and heads off 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. 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 Vajda’s room and murders him.

Barbara Steele as Katia
Barbara Steele as Katia

Asa’s plan is to drain Katia of her blood, believing that this act will grant 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

In 1959, Mario Bava had taken over the directorial reins 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. 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]

Filming of La maschera del demonio began on March 28, 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 May 7, 1960.[6]

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.[7] 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."[8]

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, "[W]hen we saw the rushes, especially in the close-ups, they looked too fake so film editor Mario Serandrei cut around them."[6]

[edit] Cast

  • Antonio Pierfederici .... Priest
  • Tino Bianchi .... Ivan
  • Clara Bindi .... Inn Keeper
  • Mario Passante .... Coachman
  • Renato Terra .... Boris
  • Germana Dominici .... Sonya (Inn Keeper's Daughter)

[edit] Response

La maschera del demonio premiered in Rome in August of 1960. The film was a modest success, grossing 140 million lire (approximately US$87,000), 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.[6]

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 and objectionable content.[9]

Sequences excised or shortened included the burning "S" branded into Asa's flesh and 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 Javuto were brother and sister; in the AIP version, Javuto 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!"[6]

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. (Barbara Steele's own voice was not heard in any version).[6]

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.[6]

Even in its truncated state, Black Sunday 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.[10] Despite being censored, the film still 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]

U.S. 1-Sheet Poster
U.S. 1-Sheet Poster

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..."[11] 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..."[12] 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."[13] Ivan Butler opined that the film "appears to offer horror, beauty, and the ludicrous in about equal proportions."[14]

Decades after its original release, Black Sunday has continued to maintain a positive critical 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...[The film] remains [Bava's] greatest achievement, without a doubt one of the best horror films ever made."[15] Phil Hardy’s The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror observed, "Bava's first (and best) 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."[16] 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 (but not harmoniously)...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."[17] The All Movie Guide 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."[18] 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."[19] The film has a 89% favorable rating on the "Critical Tomatometer" at the Rotten Tomatoes website.[20]

When released in the U.S. in 1961, the film proved to be a commercial success for AIP, becoming the distributor's biggest box office hit to that time.[6][21] 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 Black Sunday.

[edit] 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 El Baron del Terror (U.S. title: The Brainiac) (1961), La cripta el l'incubo (U.S. Title: Terror in the Crypt) (1963), Bloody Pit of Horror (1965), and Michael Reeves's The She Beast (1966).[6]

Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999) "borrowed" some of the film's imagery, particularly in a scene in which Lisa Marie's face is punctured by an Iron Maiden.[6] 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 - [Bava's] in particular - where the vibe and the feeling is what it's about...[t]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..."[22]

[edit] References

  1. ^ The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. BravoTV.com. Retrieved on 2006-06-29.
  2. ^ Trivia for "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments". imdb.com. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  3. ^ a b Lucas, Tim. Fangoria Magazine, #42, pgs. 20-24, "Terror Pioneer", article on Bava's career
  4. ^ Pulver, Andrew. Fantastic Gore: Mario Bava's The Mask of Satan. Guardian Unlimited.com. Retrieved on 2006-06-29.
  5. ^ a b c d e McGee, Mark Thomas. Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International Pictures, McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. ISBN 0-7864-0137-0
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lucas, Tim. Mario Bava All the Colors of the Dark, Video Watchdog, 2007. ISBN 0-9633756-1-X
  7. ^ Lucas, Tim. Black Sunday DVD, Image Entertainment, 1999, audio commentary. ASIN: B00002NDM3
  8. ^ Dietrich, Christopher and Beckman, Peter. Video Watchdog Magazine, Issue #7 (Sept/Oct 1991) pg. 50, "Karma, Catsup and Caskets: The Barbara Steele Interview"
  9. ^ Erickson, Glenn. Censorship For A Celebrated Horror Film: BLACK SUNDAY. DVD Savant. Retrieved on 2006-06-29.
  10. ^ Erickson, Glenn. Censorship For A Celebrated Horror Film: BLACK SUNDAY. DVD Savant. Retrieved on 2006-06-29.
  11. ^ Pirie, David. La maschera del demonio. Time Out. Retrieved on 2006-06-29.
  12. ^ Clarens, Carlos. An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, Capricorn Books, 1967. Reissued as An Illustrated History of Horror and Science-Fiction Films, Da Capo Press, 1997. ISBN 0-3068-0800-5
  13. ^ Archer, Eugene. "Horrors!: Black Sunday, From Italy, Has Premiere". New York Times, March 9, 1961. Retrieved on 2007-01-11.
  14. ^ Butler, Ivan. Horror in the Cinema, A.S. Barnes & Co., 1967 (revised 1970). ISBN 0-4980-2137-8
  15. ^ Sullivan, Timothy. The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, edited by Jack Sullivan, Viking Penguin Inc., 1986. ISBN 0-670-80902-0 (Reprinted by Random House Value Publishing, 1989, ISBN 0-517-61852-4)
  16. ^ Hardy, Phil (editor). The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror, Aurum Press, 1984. Reprinted as The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Horror, Overlook Press, 1995, ISBN 0-87951-518-X
  17. ^ Peary, Danny. Cult Movies, Delta Books, 1981. ISBN 0-517-20185-2
  18. ^ Firsching, Robert. Black Sunday. All Movie Guide. Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
  19. ^ Erickson, Glenn. The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1: Black Sunday, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Black Sabbath, Knives of the Avenger, Kill, Baby ... Kill!. DVD Savant. Retrieved on 2007-10-16.
  20. ^ Black Sunday (1960). Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2007-03-11.
  21. ^ American Cinematheque Presents The Haunted World of Italian Horror Maestro Mario Bava. American Cinematheque. Retrieved on 2006-10-19.
  22. ^ Burton, Tim. Interviewed in the documentary Mario Bava: Maestro of the Macabre, 2000, Image Entertainment

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Films directed by Mario Bava
Pre-1960s
Anfiteatro Flavio (1947) · Santa Notte (1947) · Caltiki - The Immortal Monster (1959)
1960s
Black Sunday (1960) · Erik the Conqueror (1961) · Hercules in the Haunted World (1961) · Le Meraviglie Di Aladino (1961) · The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) · Black Sabbath (1963) · The Whip and the Body (1963) · Blood and Black Lace (1964) · The Road to Fort Alamo (1964) · Planet of the Vampires (1965) · Knives of the Avenger (1965) · Kill, Baby, Kill (1966) · Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966) · Danger: Diabolik (1968) · Nude ... Si Muore (1968) · Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) · Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1969)
1970s
Roy Colt and Winchester Jack (1970) · Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971) · Baron Blood (1972) · Four Times That Night (1972) · Lisa and the Devil (1972) · Rabid Dogs (1974) · The House of Exorcism (1974) · Shock (1977)
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