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Black Sunday
by Eric Lindbom
Succinctly describing the allure of Italian director Mario Bava is an uphill climb. Poetic cinematographer? Giallo pioneer? Purveyor of disturbing images with eerie elegance? If forced to play word association, one term comes to mind — color
Britain’s Hammer Films’ CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957), with its Eastmancolor, made it safe for horror filmmakers to open up the paint box and Bava would soon take that liberty into impassioned, sometimes psychedelic directions. In Bava’s omnibus BLACK SABBATH (1964) the varied hues — red, green, blue, lavender and yellow — aren’t just atmospheric but are narrative signifiers that work on a subconscious level. In his BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964), his proto-slasher kills, are stunning and multichromatic.
The success of Hammer’s HORROR OF DRACULA (1958) brought Bava, a DP and sometimes uncredited co-director of Italian sword and sandal Hercules films, the opportunity to make BLACK SUNDAY (1960), his first – and to many his finest – horror film. Ironically, at Bava’s insistence, he shot in black and white. His decision to go old school was technical. Some intended make up transformation scenes needed green and red lights he felt weren’t achievable with color.
BLACK SUNDAY would be immortal if only for its still shocking, pre-credit opening scene. Bound above an impending funeral pyre, 17th century witch Princess Asa Vajda (Barbara Steele) curses her accusers — hooded, torch bearing Inquisitioners. After damning her as a Satanic vampire, an executioner slowly marches a spiked mask (designed by Bava’s dad Eugenio), metal teeth first, towards the camera. Wielding a huge mallet, the executioner pounds the mask onto her face and then onto her servant lover Javutich (Arturo Dominici). Attempts to burn them at the stake fail when a rainstorm douses the flame.
With BLACK SUNDAY, British actress Barbara Steele became one of our most beloved female horror icons. Unlike scream queens old (Evelyn Ankers, Fay Wray) and new (Sally Hardesty, Jamie Lee Curtis), Steele is one of the monsters. She has a hypnotic, cobra attraction. With bulbous eyes and dark locks, she can switch from sexy dark siren to wild-eyed banshee.
With BLACK SUNDAY looks are everything and I don’t just mean Steele. The sets are stunning. While partially shot in Rome, Bava fortunately utilizes an actual castle in Arsoli, Italy. Bava’s roving camera keeps us constantly entranced around foggy forests and dank interiors. A grim, versus Grimm, fairy tale quality infuses every frame.
Two resurrection scenes stand out — one visceral and the other haunting. When Asa rises, she still bears puncture wounds like she face planted in a hornet’s nest. Her visage is smeared with blood (via tomato soup) and befouled by maggots (rice). Brought back 200 years later, when an unfortunate accidentally bleeds on her entombed body, Steele seductively tells him “I can bring you pleasures mortals will never know.” So, when he bends over so she can nibble his neck, we feel some off screen necrophilia will follow. (Her line of dialogue was cut from the American version distributed by American International.)
Soon, her hulky servant emerges from burial in a graveyard. Among howling winds, his hand breaks through the dirt. After he slowly stands, he yanks the mask off his bleeding face and we feel a pain he doesn’t. It’s a majestic Gothic moment.
Steele also plays Asa’s lookalike good hearted twin descendant who Asa naturally wants to possess. If the plot line is unsurprising, BLACK SUNDAY has a dreamlike quality that makes questions of story cohesion mute. Bava, who revised the script on the fly during production, seems unclear if evil Asa is a witch or vampire. For English language viewers, a mordant voice over narration (written by George Higgins III) helpfully announces she’s both. He also supervised the English dubbing which never distracts. While aligning with conventional vampire tropes, Bava brought his own gory wrinkle – the undead could only be killed with a stake not through the heart but the eye!
While BLACK SUNDAY flopped in its native country, its cinematography and atmosphere mesmerized US critics who usually rolled their eyes at now revered horror films. Back in the day, New York Daily News, while turned off by the violence, conceded “there can be no argument on the general effectiveness of (its) special effects and photography.” TIME magazine noted its “brilliant intuitions of the spectral.” Over time, Bava became rightly lionized by super fans like director Joe Dante and embraced by historians. Author Tim Lucas’ book MARIO BAVA: ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK runs more than 1,000 pages!
While announcing Bava as a maestro of the macabre, BLACK SUNDAY also unrolled a blood red carpet for Steele. By all accounts, Steele was a handful on set. She had just fled a co-starring role alongside Elvis Presley in FLAMING STAR and Bava claimed she was “half crazy and afraid of Italians” but the camera adores her and her intensity never flags at least as the bad Asa.
She soon appeared in subsequent Italian horror musts like CASTLE OF BLOOD (where as a ghostly love interest we still don’t trust her) and NIGHTMARE CASTLE. She also made an unsettling impact in one of director Roger Corman’s most enduring Poe adaptations THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. Her duplicitous character is accidentally left to die in a torture chamber’s iron maiden by the survivors of Vincent Price’s madness. Steele long preferred to talk about her work with Fellini in 8 1/2 vs. her horror films but in later years she appeared in David Cronenberg’s SHIVERS and in a new version of TV’s DARK SHADOWS.
Meanwhile, BLACK SUNDAY, a peerless combination of master filmmaker and muse, continues to entrance legions of genre fans of every age. To put it (can’t help it) in black and white terms, its dark and grey pallor makes it a sturdy bridge between the ‘30s/’40s monster classics and our modern horror era.
Eric Lindbom is a hardcore horror buff with a strong stomach, weaned on the Universal classics from the ’30s and ’40s. He’s written film and/or music reviews for City Pages, Twin Cities Reader, LA WEEKLY, Request magazine and Netflix. He co-edits triggerwarningshortfiction.com, a site specializing in horror, fantasy and crime short stories with illustrations by co-editor John Skewes. He lives in Los Angeles.
