Black Sunday 4K 1960

Black Sunday was Mario Bava's first full-length horror film. Before that, he had only made half of the film Vampires, in which his name was not even listed in the credits as co-director, and a few other commercial projects. Finally, in 1960, one of his best films, Black Sunday, was released.

The film is a free adaptation of Gogol's Viy. Bava tried to recreate a similar atmosphere and added several scenes with a witch lying in a coffin. Overall, however, it is a completely original film, which, in my opinion, leans more towards Hollywood horror films of the 1930s than Russian classical literature. The plot of the film is as follows: a professor and his student are traveling to Moscow from Moldova. On the way, they stop at an old, dilapidated estate and, without realizing it, revive a dead witch in the crypt. Now she is free and will take revenge on everyone responsible for her death...

In general, in my opinion, it turned out to be an atmospheric and, unlike the same ‘Vampires’, not at all boring film. It's even strange how quickly Bava adapted to his new profession, having previously worked only on abandoned projects by other directors. In style, ‘Black Sunday’ resembles the second novella in ‘Three Faces of Fear’ (1963). Only here, everything turned out much more stylish and complete. The black-and-white cinematography is very appropriate. It pays homage to all the old classic horror films at once. Of all Bava's early work (from Vampires to his first real giallo, The Girl Who Knew Too Much), this film is the best.