Black Sunday (1960)

A tremendous start to what would end up being one of the most brilliant careers in all of horror.

Swirling chiaroscuro, viscous rhapsody

Mario Bava became an iconoclastic director of Italian horror and the Gothic landscape with his directorial debut for Marathon Pictures in 1960. The newly minted director adapted a Russian short story named "Viy" only taking a small amount of the story and characters, and transformed it into a near incomparable story of resurrection, hauntings, and period horror including poltergeists, witches, and demons. Set in Russia, but the dialogue is all in English, the story revolves around a condemned witch and her servant who are tortured, burnt at the stake, and interred in a forgotten cemetery by the witch's brother. After a clumsy man wanders across the crypt, when his carriage breaks down, he pricks himself and bleeds on the desiccated remains of the witch, bringing her back to life to haunt her descendant, who eerily looks exactly like her. The film is also an ode to the black and white monster movies of the thirties and borrows its look and appeal from Universal in particular. It's a savage and grotesque kind of film, which utilizes gore and blood to its advantage, but instead of being gratuitous it's used smartly to scare the audience further. The scenes in the witch's coffin before she's resurrected, are always so interesting to watch because there's something obviously fake about the way her face looks, but at the same time there's an unpleasant realness to her features and the way her skin peels away under the iron maiden's spikes. The scenes where the family is haunted remain very creepy and scary to this day. The way the effects are set up, and the way Bava builds the tension to an excruciating level only make for a more interesting watch. The setting was well set up, but not executed well with the characters being so anachronistic and wooden. The best performances come from Barbara Steele when she's playing the witch and Arturo Dominci as the ever loyal and always frightening Javuto. When he comes to the father's bedside and floats out of the room in a rush it was pretty freakish to say the least. This film exemplifies why Italian directors oftentimes make the best horror films, and why Bava is one of the best at doing it.

Bava's influential tale of gothic horror has aged far better than other horror movies from the time. This is thanks to Bava's atmospheric direction, along with a good use of good ol traditional movie sets. The story gets a bit erratic in the second half, and the resolution is not as thrilling as it could be. Neverless, this one still deserves it's reputation as being a classic of the genre.