For years only available to British audiences in a heavily reworked American edit, the recent release of the Italian original showcases Bava’s genius in its full gothic glory. Black Sabbath (1963)Īfter The Mask of Satan, Mario Bava returned to the horror genre with a portmanteau chiller: three short films, wrapped up anthology-style with an introduction by Boris Karloff. In fact, it’s in I vampiri that the style of the Italian horror film begins to take shape, privileging imagery and atmosphere over logic and realism. The sepulchral grandeur of Canale’s castle is shot with the painterly sensibility that would come so strikingly to the fore in The Mask of Satan. Decadence and decay are wrapped up in the mise-en-scène of its dilapidated interiors, and it makes ingenious use of lighting and shadow play to unsettling effect.
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Their retelling of the Elizabeth Báthory legend, history’s famous real-life vampire, casts former Miss Italy runner-up Gianna Maria Canale as a reclusive grande dame residing in an imposing castle – who might just know a thing or two about a series local murders, whose victims have been drained of blood.įreda’s film fuses modern-day settings with the romantic style of his previous period pieces. But Freda reportedly stormed off the set after just 10 days of filming, leaving Bava to complete the picture in post-production, simplifying the plot and cobbling it all together with stock footage. Riccardo Freda’s collaboration with then-cinematographer Mario Bava was the first Italian horror film of the sound era. With The Mask of Satan now available to view on BFI Player, join us as we lift the lid on the murky world of the spaghetti shocker.
The film’s monochrome photography has a dark, ethereal beauty, punctuated by moments of haunting surrealism. Adapted from Nikolai Gogol’s The Viy, Bava’s film follows the resurrection of a 17th-century witch (played by Barbara Steele, in her first major role) as she sets out to inhabit the body one of her descendants and avenge her death.Įach of the recommendations included here is available to view in the UK.Ī master of light, composition and expressive camera movement, from the outset Bava displays a visual flair that sets him apart from his British and American gothic peers. But in the decades that followed, Italy made up for lost time and the 1960s witnessed an explosion of gothic horror and dark, violent murder mysteries with a distinctly Italian flavour.įreda’s film may have come first, but it took the international success of Mario Bava’s The Mask of Satan (1960 also known as Black Sunday) to kickstart this new wave of Italian horror. During the fascist era, ‘white telephone’ bourgeois comedies were all the rage while strict censorship helped keep horror films in check. Long considered lost, it’s widely believed to be the first Italian horror film – and the last until Riccardo Freda’s I vampiri (1956) three and a half decades later. A handful of publicity material might be all that’s left of Eugenio Testa’s Il mostro di Frankenstein (1920).