Italian film director Mario Bava leaves a big footprint in the foundations of classic cinematic horror.  In particular, he directed two important pieces of work in the genre worthy to share a place with the best of filmed horror. The two Bava films are La Maschera del demonio (Mask Of The Demon, 1960, released in the U.S. as Black Sunday), and "I tre voltl della paura" (The Three Faces of Fear, 1963,   released in the U.S. as Black Sabbath).

Less so with Black Sunday, the film that would come to be known as Black Sabbath was a victim of import and production guidelines suited to the less sophisticated American audiences; hence footage and compelling content had to substituted and tempered to American tastes. To compare the two films, in lieu of the editorial compromises used to produce Black Sabbath, and without the original, I tre voltl della paura, as a reference point, would not be giving Bava his due. Since Black Sabbath is a trilogy based on the original, its strongest and most redeeming performances are found in the sub-feature "The Wurdalak." This colorful (literally) tale, starring Boris Karloff in the title role, runs like a companion piece to Bava’s black-and-white masterpiece, Black Sunday.

There has been disagreements as to which film best illuminates Bava at his apex. If one is to judge on story, both are taken from Russian folk tales: The Vij for Black Sunday, and The Wurdalak for Black Sabbath. Both deal with the destruction of families through vampirism, and both include, to a greater or lesser degree, themes of incest. An examination of the films and Bava's cinematic technique revels how the two films actually compliment each other.

The Story:

In the 1600’s, Princess Asa of the Vijda Clan and Prince Yavutich are executed by the Orthodox inquisition of Moldavia for witchcraft and vampirism. The iron mask of Satan is pounded into their faces as punishment for their crimes. Asa’s final words place a curse on the Vijda family for generations to come.

Two hundred years later, while traveling through the forest by coach, Doctors Kruvajan and Garobe come across the ancient Vijda castle when the coaches wheel is mysteriously dislodged from the axle. A banging door draws the doctors into the ancient crypt of the Vijda ancestry where the resting place of Princess Vijda resides, her satanic mask staring out through a glass plate in the coffin, overlooked by a patriarchal stone crucifix.

When Doctor Garobe leaves to aid the coachman, Kruvajan is attacked and slays a large bat in the crypt, but not before shattering the crucifix which in turn shatters the glass window on the coffin. Garobe returns to the crypt and out of curiosity, Kruvajan removes the mask of Satan from Asa’a spike-pitted and scorpion-infested face, cutting his hand on a piece of the coffin's jagged broken glass.

It is during this time that Princess Katia of the Vijda Clan appears with her hounds, and Garobe is instantly taken with her. With the coach repaired, the doctors leave for the village with Katia’s eyes following their departure.

In the crypt, Kruvajan’s blood has dripped from the glass into Asa’s empty eye socket, beginning the process of rejuvenation after two centuries. Prince Vijda, with his daughter Katia and son Stefan in their castle, has a foreshadowing of doom, while in the village a short distance away, the two doctors lodge at an inn.

The blood of Kruvajan has rejuvenated Asa and she summons Prince Yavutich from his grave. After his resurrection, Yavutich attacks Prince Vijda, and then travels by coach to the village to summon Kruvajan to the Prince’s aid. Rather than delivering the aid of Doctor Kruvajan to the Prince Vijda, Yavutich leads the doctor to the Vijda crypt and Asa’s coffin, where upon Asa’s resurrection she turns Kruvajan into a vampire.

At the castle, Kruvajan kills Prince Vijda as Doctor Garobe arrives looking for him. Garobe helps revive Katia after seeing her father’s corpse, and their bond becomes stronger.

Doctor Garobe and a priest discover Kruvajan's vampirism, and the priest slays Kruvajan in his coffin. As Katia grieves over her father’s body, he comes to life and attacks her as a vampire, only to be thrown into the fireplace and burned by Yavutich. Prince Yavutich carries Katia into the crypt and lays her at Asa’s side; her blood becoming the life force needed to fully animate Asa.

In a secret passage that leads from the castle to the crypt, Garobe and the ill-fated Stefan overpower Yavutich. Once in the crypt, Garobe is faced with two Katias, one wild eyed and vile, the other peaceful and at rest, but lying on the coffin slab. Because the body on the slab wears a crucifix, Garobe realizes the duplicity of the vampire witch and when he grabs Asa, she a reveals her body to that of rotting flesh under her cloak.

The priest and villagers burst into the crypt and capture Asa, burning her at the stake. As Princess Asa burns, Katia’s life force returns to her while lying back in the crypt, and again is revived in the arms of Garobe.

Bava's Best?

Many elements congeal to make Black Sunday arguably Bava’s best film. Those elements are included in direction, performance, and cinematography.

The scenes are paced evenly at the beginning of the film until the resurrection of Princess Asa (Barbara Steele), and Prince Yavutich (Arturo Dominici). From there on, each scene builds on the momentum set in motion by the former, offering suspense, horror, and mystery until a break when Katia (Barbara Steele) and Doctor Garobe (John Richardson) share a romantic garden scene together. It is interesting to note that Bava cast Steele in a dual role as the heroine Katia and the villainous Asa the witch.

The continuity of the film and story remains true, and Bava noticeably was able to get convincing performances from his cast.

In Black Sunday Bava used gore in a way that made the film innovative in the horror genre, and, though tame now, provoked squeamish reactions from the audience. The scenes where the mask of Satan is pounded into Princess Asa’s face, the piercing of Doctor Kruvajan’s (Andrea Checcichi) undead eye, Prince Vajda (Ivo Garani) roasting in a fire, and Princess Asa’s rotting skeletal body primarily stand out as Bava’s early exploration into cinematic gore.

The succession of scenes that move the story forward without letting the film drag in parts is a credit to Bava’s ability to extract credible performance from his actors, while bathing them in the light of gloom and dour ambiance that gives the film its special signature.

The most notable. of course, is Barbara Steel. The dual role allows her margin to differentiate the opposing personalities of Katia and Asa with skill and dynamic force, making her performances intense and immediate, rather than contrived or weak. Bava cast his best Gothic images of her, using shadow with light and cinematic genius.

The introductory scene of Steele as Katia standing in the gloom with her hounds, those few short frames of her with her leashed black dogs, is a superior use of the master shot, establishing both setting and ambiance.

In the resurrection of Princess Asa, a chilling scene when Asa’a tomb bursts open, Bava slowly zooms in on Steele's superbly orchestrated performance and complimenting makeup, creating a vision of raw sensuality, evil, and the horror of disfigurement. Bava’s camera carefully defines her, deliberately slow-panning Steel’s cloaked figure lying on the coffin’s stone slab, the undead awakened, attracting us with an awful and mysterious beauty and repelling us with the fear of intended malice.

In the first scene as the film opens, Steele is the centerpiece for Bava’s visions that set the tone of the film. Her fiery violence as Asa prophesies a return to avenge her tormentors with cold convincing peril, the opposite her role as Katia.

Arturo Dominici as Prince Yavutich delivers a fine performance in support of Steele. There are four scenes in relative close succession in which Dominici is given center stage as his character is introduced.

The master shot that captures Dominici standing next to a garishly sinister coach in a thick mist, along with the master shot of Steele with her hounds among the ruins of Castle Vijda, are the two unforgettable classic images of Bava at his directorial best. These two master shots stand out as more than images on film--they are works of art, like paintings, muted in neutral colors with exciting composition.

Another classic scene has him rising from his grave at Asa’a behest, truly one of the most chillingly macabre and brilliantly constructed scenes in the entire film. A long tracking shot of Dominici wearing the mask of Satan as he walks through a stormy cemetery from his coffin and into the dead light of night further accentuates Bava’s creative penchant for image handsomely dressed in unnaturally murky ambiance.

Dominici’s Yavutich, standing at the door to Prince Vijda’s bedchamber strikes to frighten effectively, with Bava using the frequent camera technique of the zoom-in, liberally applied to produce action from sentient characters.

Although the hero of the story, John Richardson at times seems to be a supporting actor compared to the vigor of Dominici’s Prince Yavutich. Despite being the romantic lead, he is not whom we yearn to see. Ivo Garani gives a good neurotic performance as the terrified Prince of the Vijda holdings, who becomes an incestuous vampire, attacking his own daughter. He gives a convincing performance of a man haunted by the families past and prophesies of doom at the hands of Asa. All characters, even Richardson, are cast and played around Steel’s Asa and Katia, the central figures throughout the film. It is no accident that Bava directs these actors with professional skill, complimenting their performances with the performance of the camera.

Filmed mostly on sound stages, the ambiance in Bava’s images are enhanced to the surreal by the use of artificial light, a technique Italian director and genius filmmaker Frederico Fellini was still using as far as into the 1980’s. Settings and lighting for exterior scenes shot on sound stages offered Bava the spectrum of moods he could not have captured on location.

The camera is used to startle and with the zoom technique, to make peril immediate. The wizardry in all this is the use of black and white film to create somber moods mixing neutral colors with light, shadow, and mist to their best advantage.

Few classic films of any genre can boast this success with mere neutral shades; this is Bava's genius. The films of Orson Wells and Frederico Fellini come to mind when we look at images on film that can capture the attention so completely.

In the film genre of horror, Mario Bava has produced and illustrated an abject lesson for any aspiring storyteller using the media of the motion picture camera. The camera in his skillful hands becomes a weapon of fear that plucks the strings of anticipated emotional terror, the mounting buildup to the climax, as one striking image after another is released upon the viewer. The zoom and the slow pan off subject are techniques that instantly initiate or prolong dread. Bava’s camera does as much to create the space for horror as the actor’s performances create a relationship with the viewer. In this aspect the totality of Mario Bava as director is manifested in its fullest potential and force in the classic artistic endeavor that is Black Sunday.

The Story:

A young man traveling the countryside comes across a beheaded corpse with a knife buried in its chest. The man, Vladmir de Urfe (Mark Damon) removes the dagger from the corpse as a trophy, and as he rides on comes across a cottage seeking lodging where the family is awaiting the return of its patriarch, Gorka (Boris Karloff).

The patriarch Gorka has gone out to slay Olibek the Wurdalak (vampire), and warns his children to trust him only if he returns before midnight. The man Vladimir notices the impression of a dagger on the wall matching the one he took from the corpse; the family's situation now becoming clearer.

Shortly after midnight, Gorka returns, pale and wounded in the chest like the corpse. He orders his howling dog slain and demands Olibek’s head to be tied to a post. The question whether Gorka is now a Wurdalak preys on everyone’s mind.

Later that night, Gorka kills is own son Pietro and abducts his small grandson into the night. The boy, Ivan, returns home calling for his mother who kills her husband while struggling to reach the boy. When she runs to meet him, Gorka is there...the family at this point crossing over into the realm of vampirism.

The traveler Vladmir escapes the cottage with Sdenka, the patriarch’s daughter, where they finally find refuge in the ancient ruin of a chapel. Her undead family appears to lure her back with promises of family love and she returns to the cottage with them.

In searching for Sdenka, Vladmir goes to the cottage and finds her in her bedroom. After expressing her affections for him, she bites Vladmir, with Gorka, Ivan, and the daughter-in-law watching the nuptials of the undead.

Bava At His Peak?

I have chosen to concentrate a look at Bava’s principal centerpiece in Three Faces of Evil/Black Sabbath. Arguably Bava at his peak, the familiar images that shocked with stunning beauty in Black Sunday are not diminished in Bava’s second classic vampire tale "The Wurdalak."

Veteran genre actor Boris Karloff was cast in the title role, as perhaps the last great horror role of his career. Bava was able to coax out a sinister impact from Karloff’s performance, a fitting tribute to the aging actor who passed from this earth in 1969. As Gorka, the family patriarch, Karloff’s introduction is as every bit dramatic as it was in Frankenstein.

Much of the director’s penchant for creative camera work remains manifest in this segment of the trilogy; Bava choosing to film his exterior shots at Titanus Studios in Rome. As In Black Sunday, the indoor shots allowed Bava a wide spectrum of options when it came to ambiance and special tricks of the camera.

The walk-on scene of Karloff, where he approaches the cottage over a bridge, consists of a beautiful long shot, followed by camera pans and close shots of the specter’s boots and hunched back plodding onward with resolve towered his family. Then Karloff’s face is revealed with Bava’s classic zoom-in, a technique mastered to invoke fear as in Black Sunday.

The use of light and setting, achieved through interior shots is best exemplified in the scene where Vladmir (Mark Damon) and Sdenka (Suzy Anderson) seek refuge in a ruined chapel. The set for the establishing shot of the scene was filmed as part stage construction shot and part glass shot (where the image of ruins were painted on a sheet of glass and held before the camera). This illusion is used to good effect where Karloff uses it to place his head between the camera and painted glass, creating the impression of deeper depth to the scene than there really is.

Using color film enhanced Bava’s creativity for enduring images. Two of the most memorable in the film are the scenes where Gorka’s grandson returns as an undead seeking his mother and Sdenka waiting for Vladmir in her bedroom.

The boy arrives on a horse and the scene is heartfelt and emotional as he calls out for his mother, with the crazed mother murdering her husband with a dagger to reach her son, only to find the vampirish Gorka waiting. The shot of Sdenka in her bed when Vladmir finds her reveals Anderson’s wide, unblinking eyes without the contraction of the pupils, surrounded by strong lighting for effect.

The image of Olibek’s severed head tied to a gate post dangling in the wind, especially the expression in its eyes looking into the camera, as well as Sdenka’s staring eyes at the end--scenes that  remain disturbingly lodged in the viewer's memory.

The film's themes--incest, family ties, and vampirism--intertwined into the drama of one family are resolved with the shock of evil triumphant festering hauntingly in the viewer. This film was among the very first to show evil closing the curtain, rather than what filmgoers had expected as "good triumphant."

A turning point in the film is where the viewer begins to empathize with Gorka, as the family is initiated into the undead, not out of evil or malice, but ironically out of family love. The viewer begins to accept the undead family as a "new" family, rather than individual members succumbing to the horror of vampirism. This little family, more or less, lives happily ever after; at the conclusion we are led to ask ourselves at what point does evil become relative (pun not intended), though there is no doubt the  "new" family and its values are founded on unholy ground.

Because of the intensity of the story and the issues it dared to experiment with, the closing is marked with a reminder of the illusion that film is. Karloff is seen on the prop horse rocked by a stage technician, a fan produces wind, and the forest disintegrates into a group of overweight Italian men with branches in their hands, chaotically in motion around an ancient studio camera with the cameraman buried under its cloak. All of this is set to a comedic honky-tonk piano score meant to tell us before the screen fades that it’s all an illusion, that everything is going to be all right.

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Film director Mario Bava left the world creating great horrific images using the media of film. That his work is appreciated to an even greater degree today, nineteen years after his death, places him among many of the worlds most creative and innovative directors despite the genre he chose to work in. For the young and new genre filmmaker of today, these two classics, Black Sunday and Black Sabbath should stand as textbook examples of the mastery of creating mood and atmosphere and maintaining the integrity of good storytelling through cinematography.

We do miss Bava, but we have his startling images and disturbing issues of story to keep us shivering with fright and delight, and that is the best testament to his dark genius.

Thanks, Russ, for giving Mario Bava his devilish due! Readers, you might want to read more about Bava in our history of Italian horror here. Cheers!

Article copyright Russ Pietrowski

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