Review: Black Sunday (1960)

Cinematographer Mario Bava's first official solo directorial effort manages to combine the trappings of the better Universal horror films--castles, graveyards and deep, cold shadows--with the graphic flourishes of the more recent Hammer efforts--blood squirting, corpses rotting and women whose dresses never quite have enough fabric to cover their ample, um, talent.

The result? A great-looking, surprisingly satisfying effort that succeeds in spite of its plot flaws and limitations.

The opening scene serves notice to the audience that this isn't your parents' monster movie. A witch (Barbara Steele, with luminous skin and slightly wonky teeth) is about to be burned at the stake for her blasphemies when the villagers take the extra precaution to tacking the "Mask of Satan" (the original title of this movie) to her lovely face. Just before the scene fades out for the credits, we see the mask pounded into place and a jet of black blood shooting out the top of the witch's head. Yick!

Fast forward to a couple hundred years later. A couple of doctors are traveling through the countryside when their carriage breaks down in front of the very cemetery where the witch and her vampire assistant (Ivo Garrani) are buried. They run into the descendant of the witch (also played by Steele), and the younger doctor (John Richardson) is immediately smitten.

The older doctor, though, makes the mistake of cutting his hand and accidentally bleeding on the body of the entombed witch, who just happened to be unearthed by a convenient earthquake (and who has scorpions crawling out of her eye sockets--do they have scorpions in Europe?). This revives the evil old broad, who through force of will brings her vampire buddy back to active duty, and the two of them set about bringing her back to full strength so that she can take the place of her young descendent and return to full, real life.

This may all sound pretty stupid--and, let's face it, it really is. But this is one of those rare cases where style really does compensate for lack of substance. There are some scenes in Black Sundaythat give the viewer a significant case of the creeps, such as when the young descendant's father, already fretting over the possible return of the witch and her servant, finds out much to his horror that sometimes, in the black of night, those distant sounds that keep growing closer and closer really are exactly what you suspect them to be and that, once this fact is confirmed, your doom is all but assured.

Despite the crepe-thin story, the bad dubbing (Italian horror films--and westerns, for that matter--are usually shot silent and dubbed later) and the cliched conclusion (with good triumphing over evil), Black Sundayworks because Bava knows how to create great mood and make the most of inexpensive sets, proving once and for all that you don't have to spend a lot of money to make a good movie.

Black Sundaymay not be the overwhelming, classic horror experience that some critics have claimed, but it is a stylish, efficient, brisk little gem, and it established Barbara Steele as a star of the genre for years to come.