There are a number of versions of Mario
Bava's "Black Sunday" in existence. The one I've just seen is the dubbed
version known as "The Mask of Satan" but whichever version you see it is
still something of a shocker and a classic. It's a tale of witchcraft
and vampirism, photographed in luminous black and white by Bava and
based on a story by Gogol. It was also the film that basically launched the career of Barbara Steele and turned her into a cult figure.
She
plays Princess Asa, a witch condemned to death but not before she's
forced to wear 'the mask of Satan', a kind of facial iron maiden, (the
pre-credit sequence where all of this happens is one of the highlights
of horror cinema). Two centuries later she is resurrected by two
unwitting travellers who happen to stumble upon her tomb, (one of them
played by the very handsome, very wooden English actor John Richardson).
Exchanging gore for more subtle and disquieting imagery the film was,
nevertheless, banned in the UK and established Bava, not just as a force
to be reckoned with in horror cinema, but in world cinema generally.
The material may be deeply silly but the handling of it certainly isn't.
No comments:
Post a Comment