Black Sunday (Mario Bava, 1960)

 

Now Mario Bava is a director that I was introduced to at a relatively old age. Somewhere after 30 I started watching genre films like pigeons eat their bread. I was literally consuming them. I have seen tons of genre movies coming from all the countries around the world. But the three directors that I distinguished more for their work and vision were Dario Argento, Jess Franco and Mario Bava. Now, Black Sunday is not as great movie as it's Blood And Black Lace or Danger: Diabolik, but it is still a very charming horror-vampire movie. And the number one factor for that is Mario Bava himself and his impeccable gothic atmosphere. Black Sunday is a movie that makes you want to dive inside and go to the places the characters go. You want to live in that castle, you want to light that fireplace, you want to see that tomb where the vampiric witch was buried. There is a clear sense while you are watching the movie, that draws you towards it like bees to honey. And that is a characteristic that doesn't happen in every worthy movie. There are great movies that you don't get so attached to them. Black Sunday might be slightly inferior than these great movies, but it definitely got you by the fucking balls.

Mario Bava was a real virtuoso of genre films. He has made great movies, mediocre movies and extremely weak movies also, but all of them even his crappiest, have that Mario Bava touch in them. And this is what you find also in the Black Sunday. There is that sense that the vampire is going to come out of the screen and will start chasing you to kill you. There is that sense that every object in that movie has a different story to tell, a different approach to present. Black Sunday, shot in wonderful black-and-white with a marvelous Barbara Steele in a double role, has that power to take you to places where your imagination and your emotion will really fucking thrive. Black Sunday has the power to make you feel scared, not because you are disturbed, but because you totally dig the chills that the movie so charmingly brings. With a Mario Bava movie you might not know if you will be offered something truly worthy, but you rest assured that the cinematic universe that was created will be something to remember and... brag about. And that's why Mario Bava was a filmmaker that was so distinguishable as a genre filmmaker. He had the way to make you get inside his movie, even if you didn't dig the film. The trip was obligatory, nevertheless.