Showing posts with label vampires. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vampires. Show all posts
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| Barbara Steele in satanic mode |
BLACK SUNDAY (aka The Mask of Satan/La maschera del demonio/1960.) Director: Mario Bava.
This is the first film for which Bava was credited as director. The witch Asa (Barbara Steele) has a spiked mask hammered into her face and is entombed, but many years later some blood drips onto the mask and the witch is revived to get revenge on the descendants of those who destroyed her. Asa would also love to possess the mind and body of her lookalike, Katia (Steele, of course). Katia's brother Constantine (Enrico Olivieri) and doctor (John Richardson) do their best to foil the plans of the hateful and vampiric Asa. Although Black Sunday is a famous and influential movie it's still pretty mediocre, but is bolstered by the appearance of Steele with her distinctive, expressive and sensual face [but, who, sadly, is dubbed throughout] and by Bava's excellent cinematography. Like most of Bava's movies, Black Sunday is rich in atmosphere and has excellent settings, especially the castle where most of the action takes place, but it lacks tension and impact. Bava also directed The Whip and the Body/What three years later, but his best film is arguably Blood and Black Lace.
Verdict: Everything Barbara Steele is in is interesting. **1/2.
Another shameless plug for my latest book, which covers about forty-five years of horror stories told in comic books. Many of these were influenced by films and radio, and sometimes the stories in horror comic books were turned into movies -- without crediting the comic book. Fans of the controversial and vivid EC horror comics will enjoy reading about the stories that were adapted for such series as Tales from the Crypt as well as for the theatrical films Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror. Then there were long-running comics based on The Twilight Zone and Boris Karloff's Thriller. Giant bugs, bloodsucking vampires, flesh-eating fiends, giant voracious man-eating crabs, psychotic wives with axes, deals with the devil, adulterous husbands with murder on their minds, flesh-tearing werewolves, giant spiders with human heads and fangs, dinosaurs out-of-time and on the rampage, Frankenstein and Dracula -- The Horror Comics has it all. You'll read about such stories as "Airboy vs the Rats;" gory classics like "Foul Play;" weird ones like Simon and Kirby's "Head of the Family;" chilling heart-breakers like "Mr. Reilly, the Derelict" and "The Kid's Night Out;" adaptations of Poe, Lovecraft, Stevenson and Ray Bradbury -- and much more, such as the classic terror tale from Dell's Ghost Stories: "The Horror of Dread End," which gave many a kid nightmares back in the day. You can order direct from the publisher's website or from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.