Having previously ploughed a furrow as an assistant director and cinematographer for some years, Mario Bava finally turned his hand to directing with "Mask of Satan", otherwise known as "Black Sunday": a bold and violent tale of witchcraft and revenge. In doing so he drew upon the best stylistic elements of Golden Age Hollywood horror ("Dracula", "Frankenstein", "The Black Cat" et al) and the violence of recent successes of British production company Hammer Studios ("The Curse of Frankenstein" (1957) and "Dracula" (1958)) to create something familiar in its origin, yet fresh in its bold vision and which would kickstart both Bava's directorial career and the whole Italian horror genre.
Actually, truth be told, the story itself is not original (compared to, for example, the career-ruining Michael Powell movie "Peeping Tom" released the same year): Barbara Steele plays an evocative seventeenth century vampire witch who, along with her lover Juvato are put to death at the beginning of the movie but not before she puts a curse on the family. Two hundred years later, she is accidentally revived by a couple of visiting doctors, resurrects her lover, and begins to enact her terrible curse on the family as a whole and her contemporary look-alike Katia, also played by Barbara Steele. However, whatever the film may lack in originality of plot it more than makes up for in the vividness of its approach. Take for example the opening scene: a witch burning where masks with spikes on the inside are sledgehammered onto people's faces. Grim. The special effects with the recomposing corpse of the witch as well as a later burning head also add to the "ughh" factor in a way that must have seemed scandalous at the time.
However, the thing that is most striking about "Mask of Satan", and is something which would distinguish all his later films, is just how beautifully shot it is. Shot in black and white the composition of the shots has learned all the lessons from German Expressionism and the Universal Horrors they influenced, and plays with light and shadow with the grace of a Caravaggio to effortlessly create a claustrophobic off-kilter dream-like atmosphere. Another feature of the movie is the way the camera glides around the spectacular sets (cavernous labyrinthine castles and gloomy crypts), all of which seduces the viewer into the thinly scripted but lush landscape as easily as Barbara Steele seduces one of the doctors.
Bava would follow up this success with a string of movies including "Black Sabbath (1963), "Kill Baby, Kill" (1966) and "A Bay of Blood" (1971) which all flesh out the Bava universe and influenced countless others (notably Dario Argento) but it all started here.
Actually, truth be told, the story itself is not original (compared to, for example, the career-ruining Michael Powell movie "Peeping Tom" released the same year): Barbara Steele plays an evocative seventeenth century vampire witch who, along with her lover Juvato are put to death at the beginning of the movie but not before she puts a curse on the family. Two hundred years later, she is accidentally revived by a couple of visiting doctors, resurrects her lover, and begins to enact her terrible curse on the family as a whole and her contemporary look-alike Katia, also played by Barbara Steele. However, whatever the film may lack in originality of plot it more than makes up for in the vividness of its approach. Take for example the opening scene: a witch burning where masks with spikes on the inside are sledgehammered onto people's faces. Grim. The special effects with the recomposing corpse of the witch as well as a later burning head also add to the "ughh" factor in a way that must have seemed scandalous at the time.
However, the thing that is most striking about "Mask of Satan", and is something which would distinguish all his later films, is just how beautifully shot it is. Shot in black and white the composition of the shots has learned all the lessons from German Expressionism and the Universal Horrors they influenced, and plays with light and shadow with the grace of a Caravaggio to effortlessly create a claustrophobic off-kilter dream-like atmosphere. Another feature of the movie is the way the camera glides around the spectacular sets (cavernous labyrinthine castles and gloomy crypts), all of which seduces the viewer into the thinly scripted but lush landscape as easily as Barbara Steele seduces one of the doctors.
Bava would follow up this success with a string of movies including "Black Sabbath (1963), "Kill Baby, Kill" (1966) and "A Bay of Blood" (1971) which all flesh out the Bava universe and influenced countless others (notably Dario Argento) but it all started here.