1966: Knives Of The Avenger

Knives Of The Avenger (Bava, 1966) 2/10

The "Viking Epic" is a strand of the "swords and sandals" genre popular amongst audiences in the 1950's. Finding its mainstream Hollywood roots in Richard Fleischer's 1958 Kirk Douglas vehicle The Vikings, the sub-genre spawned a variety of imitators through to the late Sixties.

Films such as famed British cinematographer Jack Cardiff's The Long Ships and Clive Donner's Alfred the Great were lesser efforts backed by major studios. And although the sub-genre made a brief comeback in the mid-1980s with Paul Verhoeven's Flesh + Blood, its most lasting popularity was found in continental Europe, particularly in Italy. Italian horror director Mario Bava produced two notable European B-Viking films starring American ex-patriate Cameron Mitchell, 1961's Erik the Conquerer and 1966's Knives of the Avenger.

Produced under the Italian title I Coltetti Del Vendicatore, Knives of the Avenger was a troubled production, which Bava attempted to rescue early on through a complete re-write and six additional days of shooting. Often referred to as an Italian version of George Stevens' Shane, Knives of the Avenger is essentially a Spaghetti Western dressed in 8th century period clothing.

Utilizing an unusually complex episodic narrative, Knives of the Avenger follows a presumably widowed Viking woman named Karin (Elissa Pechelli) who along with her son Moki (Luciano Pollentin) goes into hiding from Hagen (Fausto Tozzi): a vicious warrior lusting for Karin's hand in marriage. Believing her husband is still alive, Karin resists Hagen's wrath by hiding with her son in a rural plain. When Hagen's henchmen locate them, she is saved by a passing warrior named Rurik (Cameron Mitchell), whose path has previously interlocked with the exiled family.

More of a character study, than an action film Knives of the Avenger is ultimately a curiosty piece. Replace the film's Scandinavian characters' knives with guns and fur-lined clothing with leather and the film is essentially a western. Disputes and interactions often take place in quasi-saloons, while outlaws roam the countryside .Even Marcello Gombini's score is more fitting of the rural surroundings of the Western than the pomposity of an epic.

Despite being more or less a belated director-for-hire for Knives of the Avenger, Bava imbues the film with a strong sense of his thematic concerns about family relationships and deception. With her family disintegrated by tragedy, Karin aims to protect her son and keep the future of their isolated kinship alive. The well-being of her son and the desire to find her long presumed dead husband are the only instinctual feelings Karin is truly aware of in her maternalistic view on life. Although fearful of the mysterious Rurik's arrival, Karin learns to see him as a protector: a surrogate father figure for Moki.

It is here that the film's comparisons to Shane are most likely arrived at. Like in Shane, an enigmatic figure arrives to protect a family with limited explanation as to why. Alan Ladd's arrival and reasons for aiding a small community are less peripheral to Stevens' film than Rurik's presence in Knives of the Avenger. As with the title character in Shane, Rurik aids in the educational development of the child in the methods required to survival and operate as a man. But in Stevens' film, the mysterious figure also aids in defining the masculine roles of Van Heflin's impotent and weak masculine figure.

Rurik does not engage in such methods in Knives of the Avenger due to the father's absence. Instead he teaches the son life lessons on how to eventually fufill his father's promise. Furthermore, Rurik's motives for aiding the family are more clearly defined. Through an interesting flashback sequence, we see how Rurik's earlier lust for revenge resulted in the defilement of Karin and her former community.

Upon learning of the misinterpreted and deceived past, Rurik feels guilt for his previous actions and thus tries to redeem himself through helping the family. As noted in the flashback sequence, Hagen's earlier deception produced agonizing destruction for countless innocent parties and it is through nullfying Hagen's malevolent tactics that Rurik can compensate for his earlier sins as a rapist and mauradering pillager.

What truly distinguishes Knives of the Avenger from similar films of its era is found in Bava's peculiar cinematography and locations. Characters are often filmed in the foreground to illustrate the feelings of others in the same scene. Often filmed on rolling hills or along sandy coastlines, the director presents a stark contrast between the windswept intensity of the beach and the bucolic tranquility of the hills. Yet, Bava deceives his audience by inverting the meanings of these environments. Through a soothsayer on the beach, Karin acquires an aura of calm, which is almost erased through the aggressive methods used by Hagen's followers.

Despite its unique construction and Bava's reputation as a master visualist, Knives of the Avengers curiously suffers from static pacing and bland aesthetics. The makeshift brown tones add stagnation rather than diversity to Bava's palette, while the emphasis on character study produces a snail-like conundrum in which movement is sacrificed to address the psychological aspects of this medieval revival of the biblical epiphany story: a narrative in which good paradoxically coincides with evil.

This sense of biblical tragedy is never fully realized in Knives of the Avenger. The film's moral implications and complex psychology are weighed down by the dull language and secondary performances. There is arguably potential for a highly interesting film with ethical dilemmas similar to those proposed in Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, or even Kurosawa's Yojimbo within the material. Ultimately, Bava's inability to cohesively rein in the narrative under a more vibrant tone produces a rather dour and maudlin piece: an appealing investigation of human nature that sadly stupors into mediocrity.

* Knives of the Avenger is available in Anchor Bay's Mario Bava Collection V1.

Other Mario Bava Films Reviewed:
Black Sunday (1960) 9/10
The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1962) 6/10
Black Sabbath (1963) 7/10

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque

1962: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

The Girl Who Knew Too Much (Bava, 1962) 6/10

After the success of 1960 horror classic Black Sunday, Italian director Mario Bava decided to shift tones. Unlike his successor Dario Argento, Bava was far more versatile in his selection of projects, in order if anything to continually put food on his table. In the early Sixties, this led to Bava indulging in two costume adventures in 1961 Erik the Conquerer and Hercules in the Haunted World before later attempts at science fiction and the western.

Bava's most influential case of genre experimentation is 1962's La Ragazza Che Sapeva Troppo or The Girl Who Knew Too Much: the first recognized Italian giallo film. Taking their name from popular lurid, yellow paperbacks, gialli were thrillers that placed ordinary hero(ine)s in the middle of criminal investigation. Often filled with dollops of sex and violence, the cinematic variation of giallo became popular once directors such as Bava, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci added thick layers of colour to the proceedings.

Yet this early entry into giallo is more a loving tribute to Alfred Hitchcock than an exercise in exploitation. Not to be confused with an entirely different film of the same name from 1969 starring Adam West, The Girl Who Knew Too Much infuses the light humour and amateur sleuth sensibilities of Hitchcock's The 39 Steps with the tourist "murder witness" narrative of both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Even Bava's title alludes to Hitchcock's two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much

Beginning aboard a TWA plane high aloft modern Rome, American tourist Nora Davis (Letícia Román) thumbs through her latest giallo. Visiting her sick and eldery aunt Ethel, Nora promises her mother to end this obession with murder mysteries once she has finished with her latest mystery. But when Ethel suddenly dies, a frightened Nora becomes a witness to a murder straight out of one of her favourite gialli.

Shot in harsh black and white The Girl Who Knew Too Much hints at the genre's fleshy future in the film's brazen murder sequence. Draped in a long black plastic raincoat, Nora lies concussed on the wet Roman cobblestones. With her soaked hair sliding upon her brow and the absence of clothing underneath the jacket, the police officer believes her to be an insane, alcoholic prostitute. Nora protests these accusations of drunkeness and insanity: openly telling anybody- including a handsome Dr. Marcello Bassi (John Saxon) and Ethel's friend Linda Craven-Torrani (Valentina Cortese)- willing to listen about the fantastic and frightening crime she has witnessed.

When the inept Italian police are unwilling to investigate the murder, Nora takes action into her own hands: emulating the criminal methodology of her idols found in the works of Chandler, Christie and Mickey Spillane. Bava fashions Nora as an amateur sleuth: an insight into the modus operandi of an adult Nancy Drew. Even the film's storyline featuring the "Alphabet Murders" sounds like a plot lifted directly from a Nancy Drew novel. Sharing the same initials as the young heroine of Carolyn Keene's novels, Nora also hones the spunky charm of Myrna Loy's Nora Charles from The Thin Man films. And thus what appears on the surface to be a Noirish synthesis of horror and thriller contorts into an enjoyable, paranoid thriller infused with uncustomary deft humour.

In The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Bava creates a brilliant dichotomy of Rome. Almost immediately, Nora views Rome as a sinister world of criminality: starkly constrasting the notion of a tourist's paradise promoted by the film's omnipotent narrator. At the airport, Nora is witness to a drug bust and after traumatically fleeing Ethel's house, she soon becomes prey to petty theft. Ironically, the dimly-lit flight of steps she descends at night are a tourist hotspot during the day. The postcard image of Rome with its ancient ruins and modern dolce vita are propogated by Marcello, who whisks Nora to these tourist locales to ease her mind. In his opinion the Via Vento or the Colisseum is the real Rome and that crime is a rarity in the city.

Bava manages to extract subtle ironic humour from this notion, as several of the film's principal settings in which criminal acts are discussed or enacted are tourist venues. Through her perpetual engrossment in gialli, Nora however views every character and venue with suspicion. When Ethel's friend Linda Craven-Torrani offers Nora her home, whilst the former visits her husband in Switzerland, the neophyte gumshoe concocts an array of traps culled from within the yellowed paperback sleeves of her favourite authors in order to protect herself.

This self-referential deconstruction of the codes, imagery and plot narratives of mystery novels is done with playful skill by Bava. By acquiring knowledge of police procedure through fictional circumstances, Nora believes she will not only be able to solve the mystery, but also protect herself. Yet, as Bava acknowledges, Nora's schemes often are at the comic detriment of Marcello, who becomes the accidental victim of abuse. Using low angle shots, shadows and a high contrast key light in the film's initial murder sequences, Bava is able to create a swirling and often nightmarish sense of paranoia withiin the film.

Desperate to convey her story and suspicious of everyone, Bava is able to emphasize the sense of cultural dislocation Nora feels not through language (as her character is fluent in Italian), but through physical discomfort. Not even the most serene quarters of Rome are equated with safety in her eyes. Instead through her tomboy antics and utility, Letícia Román is able to fashion a strong and sympathetic female character, who is resourceful and persistent. Fearing the negative response of others, Nora engages in completely acquiring the truth in all its forms: as her need to find a sense of personal and public closure pushes Nora to find the necessary clues.

Using bubbling camera effects and limited backlight, Bava is able to create a hallucinatory world in which nothing may truly appear as it seems. Here the boundaries of meta-physics are broken as the past and the present coalesce. Through her yearning for the truth, Nora refuses to yield to police pressure. Yet via her foreign identity and concussed memories, Nora's dreamlike struggle to piece together the real events plays upon the audience's conceptions of sanity and reality. Even solid primary sources such as newspaper clippings and professional testimonies from doctors, journalists and police officers are called into question as evidence disappears. Even the finale of the Italian version of the film calls into question Nora's search for the truth under highly dubious and unintentionally amusing circumstances.

The cinematic jigsaw Bava creates often feels too clichéd in its positions. Although this allows the picture to work as a satirization and homage to Hitchcock and gialli, there are moments when the film threatens to lose its temperment. Incidentally, when released in the United States under the absurd title The Evil Eye much of the film's darkness, horrific suspense and parodic gilded linings were eliminated in favour of even further comedy.

Letícia Román's performance in The Girl Who Knew Too Much is crucial to continuing its present dark, schizophrenic convictions and she works in establishing a likeble character who veers between calcuation and irrationality. John Saxon's role as the progenitor to the film's romantic sub-plot is less astute, but still useful as is the work of Valentina Cortese; who although arguably threatening to unbalance this picture does add a further degree of impractical intrigue.

Despite the thin absurd notions of its plot, Mario Bava's 1962 film The Girl Who Knew Too Much is highly likeable and enjoyable Hitchcockian thriller. While not anywhere near a masterpiece, the film is an endearing little gem, whose cryptic visuals separate it from similarly innocuous fare. Via an emphasis on tilted aesthetics and nightmarish perceptions of Rome, Bava continues Federico Fellini's caustic appraisals of Rome as a city of sin and immorality. Although Bava would go onto make other giallo films in his career, none would have the same impact or referential filmic odes as this odd little film which sadly was the least commercially successful of his entire career.

* The Girl Who Knew Too Much is available through Anchor Bay's Mario Bava Collection Vol. 1

Other Mario Bava Films Reviewed:
Black Sunday (1960) 9/10
Black Sabbath (1963) 7/10
Knives of the Avenger (1966) 2/10

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque

1963: Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath (Bava, 1963) 7/10

Three years after the worldwide success of Black Sunday, Italian director Mario Bava was offered a unique project. In the deal, horror legend Boris Karloff, whose career was once again on the rise thanks to Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations for AIP, was signed for a package deal in which Bava could create a European anthology film similar to Corman's 1962 Edgar Allan Poe triptych, Tales of Terror.

The result was 1963's Tre Volti delle Paure ( The Three Faces of Terror): a trio of short films based on stories by Guy Du Maupassant, Alexei (not Leo) Tolstoi and Anton Chekov. Released in North America under the title Black Sabbath, the films demonstrated Bava's unique visual flair and thematic interests in deception, frayed relationships and betrayal.

One of the more interesting investigations performed by film historians centers on the film's source material. As with Black Sunday, Bava based his film from work written by a well-respected author in Nikolai Gogol's The Vij. Yet, historians have debated whether either Chekov, Tolstoy or Du Maupassant ever wrote any stories similar to those they are credited for in this picture: leading to speculation the author's names were selected for the purpose of adding further refinement to Bava's often pictureseque aesthetics.

Featuring an introduction and amusing coda by Karloff, Black Sabbath opens with The Telephone: a short film supposedly adapted from a story by Guy Du Maupassant. Set in a modish apartment, the film belongs to the uniquely Italian genre of the giallo. Originally based on German Krimis (thrillers), giallo films came into prominence in the mid-Sixties once directors such as Mario Bava, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci began to infuse heavy doses of rich colour and visual flamboyance into these tawdry crime stories. A pre-cursor to the modern "slasher film," giallo were noted for their overt eroticism and sadistic violence.

In The Telephone a woman (Michele Mercier) repeatedly receives phone calls from a caller claiming to be her now-jailed ex-boyfriend who has escaped jail to seek revenge upon her. With its detailed information from a watchful caller, the film is an obvious influence for Wes Craven's 1996 horror parody Scream. However, within its savage red telephone, one could argue that Bava is providing his own tongue-in-cheek response to the fluffy "white telephone" films that dominated Italian cinema during the reign of Mussolini.

The second film is taken from a story by Soviet writer Alexei Tolstoi entitled The Wurdulak, in which a young Russian aristocrat Vladimir (Mark Damon) comes into contact with an isolated family whose aging patriarch (Boris Karloff) has ventured off his property to kill a Wurdulak- an undead vampire similar to the characters in Bava's Black Sunday- only to become one himself. The third film entitled A Drop of Water involves a rude nurse who is summoned on a stormy night to the home of her deceased patient to prepare her body for burial. Believing she will not be paid, she steals the deceased woman's ring, only for the latter to visit her from beyond the grave.

When released by AIP in 1963, Black Sabbath was severely censored and re-arranged by AIP due to the film's explicit sub-text and graphic imagery. In the original Italian version of the film A Drop of Water featured last in the proceedings, while the AIP edit moved this story first, followed by an re-edited version of The Telephone and then the Karloff short The Wurdulak. Current editions of the film released by Anchor Bay use the superior European version with its chilling violence and explicit sub-text.

Upon its initial North American release, The Telephone in particular was scythed by editors due to is overt lesbian content. In the AIP versionm, the homosexual allusions were removed and replaced by a half-baked notion of a ghost haunting Michelle Mercier's character. While other films of the era, most notably William Wyler's 1961 film The Children's Hour and Robert Wise's 1963 film The Haunting contain sub-textual allusions to lesbianism, Bava's short film was groundbreaking in its nature. In the film, Michelle Mercier's character Rosy believes her ex-boyfriend is stalking her on the telephone, the story takes an unexpected shift as Bava reveals the speaker to be her friend Mary (Lidia Alfonsi). Muffling her voice using a cloth, Mary is able to convince Rosy she is a man.

This subversion of gender roles is interesting as it posits Mary as the masculine element in this homosexual relationship. According to Mary, the relationship was destroyed by Rosy because of her boyfriend. Thus, Rosy attempts to restore the balance through revenge on Mary. The sub-text becomes extremely interesting once Mary enters the apartment and attempts to appease Rosy's fears by offering to sleep in the same bed with her. After Mary obtains a nightgown, Bava pans to a window to demonstrate the shift in time: only to follow it with a lurid jazz soundtrack and Mary commenting on the night before.

Mary's sexuality is one of the many instances of deception in Black Sunday. As in Black Sunday deception and betrayal come from unlikely sources. Rosy expects her former boyfriend to be out for revenge, but unknowingly lures the real attacker into her apartment in the form of another former lover. Such is her comfort around Mary, Rosy even is not perturbed when the former decides to plant a knife under her pillow.

In The Wurdulak, Karloff's aging patriarch convinces his family, he has not been turned into a Wurdulak: only for him to deceive them in the night. In a scene similar to the infamous "corpse kiss" in Black Sunday, Vladimir is falsely seduced by the patriarch's daughter Sdenka (Susy Andersen) through her hypnotic eyes. In One Drop of Water, the angry nurse summizes to procure her former patient's ring as payment for arousing her services on a dreadful night. Yet, this deception fails as the deceased clairvoyant seeks her revenge through alternative methods.

This deception also brings forth ideas of destiny. As with Black Sunday, the short films in Black Sabbath feature notions of celestial fulfillment. In The Wurdulak Sdenka informs Vladimir her destiny is to suffer at the hands of her family. Like in Black Sunday, future generations are expected to fulfill the payment of the errors and misdeeds undertaken by their ancestors or elders. In One Drop of Water, the former patient seeks out her revenge through restoring the supernatural equilibrium.

Crypts and chapels are also utilized with a degree of complexity in Black Sabbath. In Black Sunday, the tattered chapel houses a crypt filled with evil. Only a monolithic stone cross is able to provide a degree of safety and sanctuary for its visitors. In the cobwebbed lair in Black Sabbath this stereotypical notion of sanctuary in a holy building is manipulated by Bava. Despite her fears, Vladimir informs Sdenka that they will be safe in the family crypt. Yet, in this dank building lacking in religious artefacts or paraphernalia, supernatural evil is allowed to subsist and thus the pureness associated with Judeo-Christian burial grounds is broken.

All three films demonstrate Bava's thematic interest in the disruption of relationships. In The Wurdulak, the patriarch's family is destroyed through his evil, yet they are re-united through a heinous sense of familial kinship. One Drop of Water illustrates the fissured trust between medic and patient, while in The Telephone a former lover seeks revenge due to the collapse of a previous relationship. In all three films, the guilty party is punished; yet there is not necessarily a restoration of earthly balance: the film even alludes to the possibility of further revenge in at least one of the stories.

One of the major criticisms regarding Black Sabbath is the thinness of each story's plot. None of the stories are particularly gripping on a pure narrative level. As with Black Sunday, Bava's emphasis on filmic utilities such as sound and cinematography imbue the stories with a decadent sense of accomplishment. In The Wurdulak's snow-covered Gothic forests and cobwebbed chapels, one can visualize how Black Sunday would have appeared had it been in colour.

With its lush matte paintings, twisted sets and fantastic use of colour, Bava's film anticipates the type of unsettling and atmospheric horror that Japanese director and fellow former painter Masaki Kobayashi would perfect in his 1964 Winner of the Cannes Special Jury Prize entitled Kwaidan: a film which also utilizes an anthology format, but whose subject matter is told strictly within a period setting and is taken from one source in Lafcadio Hearn's collection of Japanese folk-tales .

Surprisingly Black Sabbath was the first of Bava's horror films to be shot in colour: he had already directed two low-budget Italian historical epics in colour prior to Black Sabbath. The addition of colour eliminates much of the enigmatic elements of suspense from Black Sabbath, although it is arguably used with brilliance, particularly in One Drop of Water and The Wurdulak. In The Wurdulak one can already see the seeds for Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow with its melancholy trees and rustic surroundings.

Visual imagery is paramount to Black Sabbath. The film's most memorable sequences occur through carefully plotted aesthetic approaches that unlike in Black Sunday are also able to beautifully incorporate sound for a horrific orchestration upon the senses. Although not shown on camera, Karloff's destruction of his grandson is particularly shocking for the era. The infant's phantom crying for his mother to let him from the cold is both heartbreaking and chilling in Bava's skillful abilty to blend the sound of the wind and a young boy.

In One Drop of Water, the director applies the concept of Chinese Water Torture to an aural setting in having his culprit become insane through hearing the mere sound of water. However, it is the hideous corpse which is easily the segment's most memorable device: twisted, frayed and mutilated in its own skeletal satisfaction. Despite its rigid nature, the corpse is easily one of the most spine-tingling elements of the film and could possibly be seen as an ode to Hitchcock's Psycho.

In Black Sabbath Mario Bava delievers a curious atmospheric blend of terrific visual scares. Although the stories are lacking in their narrative construction, the visuals are beautifully arranged and filmed in classic giallo and gothic style. Analyzed separately, the three films are compositions in specific styles of horror ranging from the thriller to the period piece to the realm of the supernatural. While they may not always work in terms of plot, they are astute exercise styles in style and composure. The performances, particularly from Karloff are solid, while Roberto Nicolosi's score along with Ubaldo Terzano's cinematography and Giorgio Giovanini's art direction are particularly menacing.

* Black Sabbath is available in Anchor Bay's Mario Bava Collection Vol 1

Other Mario Bava Films Reviewed:
Black Sunday (1960) 9/10
The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1962) 6/10
Knives of the Avenger (1966) 2/10

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque

1960: Black Sunday

Black Sunday (Bava, 1960) 9/10

In 1960, two horror films were released which would change the shape of the genre. In Hollywood, Alfred Hitchcock released Psycho, a stripped bare evocation in which sinister individuals and actions emerge from safe and ordinary settings. In Europe, forty-six year old special effects pioneer and cinematographer Mario Bava cast an entirely different spin on the medium.

Whereas Hitchcock's film was imbued with psychological tension and a quotidian mis-en-scene, Bava's film was an atmospheric paean to 30's Universal horror and Britain's emerging Hammer Studios synthesis of sex and sadism. Utilizing a short story by legendary Ukranian author Nikolai Gogol entitled The Vij, Bava designed a period horror film in which visual aesthetics usurped the narrative as the film's crucial bearer of motifs, symbols and themes.

Beginning in the mid-17th century with the ritual burning of a Moravian princess Asa (Barbara Steele) and her brother Javutich (Arturo Dominici) for their indulgence in satanic and incestuous practices, Bava's film explores themes of broken families, deception and uncertainty. As punishment for their crimes, the pair are not only burned at the stake, but are given the infamous distinction of having the bronze Mask of Satan nailed to their faces. However, the event is falted by a storm, which prevents the dissolution of their evil souls.

Forwarding two centuries later, Bava's camera captures a pair of doctors travelling to a conference by carriage. When the wheel loosens from the carriage, the elder doctor Tomas Kruvajan (Andrea Checchi) tries to satisfy his curiousity in the dark arts by entering an abandoned crypt. There he and his assistant Dr. Andre Gorobec (John Richardson) unwittingly break a stone cross atop the coffin of the condemned witch Asa. With the cross now broken, the witch can now return to fulfill her promise to seek vengence on future generations of her family including the current nobles, including Katia (Barbara Steele) who bears a striking license to Asa.

Despite its low-budget status, Mario Bava creates a film brimming with visual flair. Masking his sets in atmospheric waves of fog and spectacular incogruent rays of light, Bava demonstrates his considerable skill as a cinematographer throughout Black Sunday . Using simple camera tricks involving the dimming of lights and exploring scenes in long, slippery movements, Bava is able to impress a non-existent epic status to his audience.

Via his camera, Bava supplies Black Sunday with an array of peculiar motifs. The two most noticeable ideas are the symbolism related to eyes and crucifixes. The film's infamous Mask of Satan offers its wearers only two solitary eye slits upon which their putrid irises are to gaze at the crucifixes which prevent their corporeal resurrection. During Kruvajan's attempt to injure a bat in the crypt, his temper results in the destruction of the protective cross. Later on, a priest reveals to Kruvajan's assistant Andre that the only way to destroy the ghoulish figures is through gouging their eyes with a stake: demonstrated in one of the film's most notorious visual shocks.

In several moments during the film, Bava's characters utilize crosses to save their souls from their zombified attackers, or in Katia's case would-be assassins. Repeatedly Bava also centers his camera on the fireplaces within the home of the elderly Prince Vajda (Ivo Garrini) to remind his audience of the failure of the 17th century witchhunters to burn Asa's body. The burning of one otherworldly character in particular who stumbles into the fire is done with a superb degree of menace.

The destruction of families is a key theme in Black Sunday. The sentencing and subsequent execution at the stake of Asa and Javutich by their brother is the first sign of this schismatic approach to family relations. Yet, as film historian Tim Lucas notes in his commentary for the film, the original Italian prints of Black Sunday note that Asa and Javutich are not only being executed for witchcraft, but also for incestuous relations. Asa's claim to seek revenge on future generations has resulted in bizarre events occuring on the day of her execution that have maimed or killed future family members.

Once resurrected from their eternal slumber, Asa and Javutich begin their quest to destroy their successors: often utilizing gullible third parties to do their bidding. The physical similarities between Asa and Katia allow for the former to try and deceive the film's mortal characters into believing she is the real Katia. Given the obtuse and awkward nature of Steele's Katia this is astutely realized by Bava in several lucid and perplexing sequences.

Through Steele's dual role as Asa and Katia, Bava is able to insert an aura of uncertainty into the viewer. The first time we see Katia is after Kruvajan breaks the stone cross across her ancestor's tomb. Adorned in black with two giant dogs, the viewer is initially tricked into believing she has immediately reconsolidated her corporeal self. The bewitching nature of Steele's Katia also adds an opaque nature to the film. The cryptic furrows of her brow and perplexed smiles often call into doubt her mortal existence due to Bava's doubling of his lead female protagonist.

Some scholars have claimed Bava intended these sequences to represent Steele's Asa emerging earlier into the picture, but their finalized presence imbues her character with a sense of hereditary iintrigue. In an era, when female horror villains were rare, Steele's portrayal of Asa is imbued with a sexual hunger and menace which would have been viewed as threatening to early Sixties audiences. Kruvajan's encounter with her is filled with a simultaneous sensation of attraction and repellence. Asa's punctured skin, lusty breathing and aggresive erotic necrophilia predates Linda Blair's Regan MacNeill in William Friedkin's The Exorcist by more than a decade.

In 1960, audiences were struck by two major concepts emerging from Black Sunday. The first is Bava's magisterial camerawork allowing for incredible layers of contrasted darkness and light, as well as an array of brilliant effects such as the supernatural carriage shot in slow motion to add a Murnau-esque feeling of fear and wonder. The ambigiuous and otherworldly nature of Barbara Steele also resonated as Federico Fellini quickly utilized her in his film 8½ the same year. The beauty of Bava's images harks back to the feel of early German Expressionists such as Murnau and surrealists such as Cocteau, as well as the more contemporary images pioneered by Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer Sven Nykvist.

The second idea audiences extracted from Bava's film was the malicious violence and visual sadism seen throughout Black Sunday. Whereas Hammer Studios utilized full-blooded colour to heighten gore, Bava's stark black and white is equally more terrifying. Upon its release in the United States, several of the more violent sequenes in Black Sunday were omitted, such as the blood-splatted hammering of the Mask of Satan onto Steele's face, the gouging of a character's eye, a human face doused in flames and a kiss between a wart-strewn corpse and an entranced victim. Remarkably, Bava's effects still hold up extremely well, despite their low-tech nature: as seen in the resurrectio carnis of Steele's decayed body using eggs, rice and jello.

Also released under the title The Mask of Satan, Black Sunday is one of the greatest horror films ever produced: a fantastic debut brimming with suspense, intrigue and inventive cinematography. Featuring a star marking turn by Barbara Steele, Black Sunday is one of cinema's most atmospheric and enigmatic films. A key influence on directors as varied as Tim Burton, Martin Scorsese and David Lynch, Black Sunday is an aesthetically gorgeous blend of fluid and angular black and white cinematography that whose visual splendour is an obvious template to films such as Burton's Sleepy Hollow and Lynch's The Elephant Man.

* Black Sunday is available in Anchor Bay's Mario Bava Collection Vol 1

Other Mario Bava Films Reviewed:
The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1962) 6/10
Black Sabbath (1963) 7/10
Knives of the Avenger (1966) 2/10

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque