La maschera del demonio
Encyclopedia
Black Sunday also known as The Mask of Satan, is a 1960
Italian
horror film
directed by Mario Bava
, from a screenplay by Ennio de Concini
and Mario Serandrei
. The film stars Barbara Steele
, John Richardson
, Arturo Dominici
, and Ivo Garrani
. It was Bava's directorial debut, although he had completed several previous feature films without credit. Based very loosely on Nikolai Gogol
's short story
"Viy
", the narrative concerns a vampire
-witch who is put to death by her own brother, only to return 200 years later to feed on her descendants.
By the social standards of the 1960s, Black Sunday was considered unusually gruesome, and was banned in the U.K. until 1968 because of its violence. In the U.S., some of the gore was censored, in-house, by the distributor, American International Pictures
, before its theatrical release
to the country's cinemas. Despite the censorship, Black Sunday was a worldwide critical
and box office
success — and launched the careers of director Mario Bava and movie star Barbara Steele. In 2004, one of its sequences was voted number 40 among the “100 Scariest Movie Moments
”, by the Bravo Channel.
, in the year 1630, beautiful witch Asa Vajda (Steele) and her paramour Javuto (Arturo Dominici
) are sentenced to death for sorcery by Asa's brother. Before being burned at the stake, Asa vows revenge and puts a curse on her brother's descendants. A metal mask with sharp spikes on the inside is placed over the witch's face and hammered repeatedly into her flesh.
Two centuries later, Dr. Thomas Kruvajan (Andrea Checchi
) and his assistant Dr. Andre Gorobec (Richardson), are traveling through Moldavia en route to a medical conference when one of the wheels of their carriage is broken, requiring immediate repair. While waiting for their coachman to fix it, the two wander into a nearby ancient crypt and discover Asa's tomb. Observing her death mask through a glass panel, Kruvajan breaks the panel (and the cross above it) by accident while striking a bat.
He then removes Asa's death mask revealing a partially preserved corpse that is visible underneath, her face staring out malevolently. He cuts his hand on the broken glass. Some of his blood drips onto Asa's dead face.
Returning outside, Kruvajan and Gorobec meet Katia (also played by Steele). She advises them that she lives with her father, Prince Vajda (Garrani), and brother Constantine (Enrico Oliveiri), in a nearby castle that the villagers all believe is haunted. Gorobec is instantly smitten by the beautiful young woman. The two men then leave her and drive to an inn.
The witch Asa is brought back to life by Kruvajan's blood.
She contacts Javuto telepathically and orders him to rise from his grave. He does so and goes to Prince Vajda's castle, where Vajda holds up a crucifix to ward the reanimated corpse away. However, Vajda is so terrified by the visit that he becomes paralyzed with fear. Katia and Constantin send a servant to fetch Dr. Kruvajan, but the servant is killed before he can reach the inn. It is the evil Javuto who arrives to bring Kruvajan to the castle. Javuto leads Kruvajan to Asa's crypt, and he watches in horror as her coffin explodes. From its ruins, the vampire-witch offers him eternal life (and a night of pleasure) and drinks his blood. By Asa's command, the now vampiric Kruvajan enters Vajda's room and murders him.
Asa's plan is to drain Katia of her blood, believing that this act will grant her immortality. A little girl who had seen Javuto meet Kruvajan at the inn describes the dead man to Gorobec. A priest recognizes the description as being that of Javuto. The priest and Gorobec go to Javuto's grave and find Kruvajan's body inside the coffin. Realizing that he is a vampire, they kill the fiend immediately by marking him with the sign of the cross and ramming a small piece of wood through one of his eye sockets.
Javuto finds Katia and takes her to Asa. Asa attempts to drink her blood but is thwarted by the crucifix around her neck. Gorobec enters the crypt to save Katia but finds Asa instead. Asa pretends to be Katia and tells Gorobec that the now weakened and unconscious Katia is really the vampire. She tells him to kill Katia immediately by staking her.
He agrees but at the last possible moment he notices the crucifix she is wearing. He turns to Asa and opens her robe, revealing a fleshless skeletal frame. The priest then arrives with numerous torch-carrying villagers, and they burn Asa to death. Katia awakens from her stupor, her life and beauty restored.
from Jacques Tourneur
, who left the production before most of the major sequences had been filmed. Bava, who had been that film's cinematographer
, completed the film quickly and efficiently. This was not the first time Bava had been able to save a troubled movie for Marathons production company, Galatea Film. During that same year, Bava had performed a similar salvage job on Caltiki, The Immortal Monster
(1959), replacing Riccardo Freda
as director after he had abandoned the picture in the middle of production. Even earlier, he had assumed the directorial role for I Vampiri
(1957) after the temperamental Freda had also walked off the set of that film after only a few days. Bava did not receive director screen credit for any of his work on the three troubled Galatea films. After Bava completed Marathon, Nello Santi, the head of Galatea Film, subsequently offered him his choice of any property for his first directorial effort.
As a lover of Russian fantasy and horror, Bava decided to adapt Nikolai Gogol's 1865 horror story “Viy” into a feature film. However, the resultant screenplay (by Bava, Ennio De Concini, and Mario Serandrei) in fact owed very little to Gogol at all, and seemed to be more a tribute to the atmospheric black and white gothic horror films of the 1930s, especially those produced by Universal Studios
.
The script takes only the most rudimentary elements from the story—the Russian setting and the idea of a witch coming back to life—and has a completely different narrative.
For the role of the evil Asa and her innocent descendant Katia, Bava noted: "A strange type was needed, and we chose Steele from pictures." Bava reportedly found Steele difficult to work with. According to Bava, the actress "was somewhat irrational, afraid of Italians. One day she refused to come to the set, because somebody told her I was using a special film-stock that made people appear naked." Steele recalled: "Lord alone knows I was difficult enough. I didn't like my fangs - I had them changed three times. I loathed my wig- I changed that four times. I couldn't understand Italian...I certainly didn't want to allow them to tear open my dress and expose my breasts, so they got a double that I didn't like at all, so I ended up doing it myself - drunk, barely over eighteen, embarrassed, and not very easy to be around."
Filming of La maschera del demonio began on March 28, 1960 at the studios of Scalera Film. The exteriors, as well as a few interiors, were shot at a rented castle in Arsoli
. The final day of production was May 7, 1960.
Steele never saw a complete screenplay for the film. Instead, she was simply handed the scenes she would play, and her dialogue, every morning of the production. According to Steele, "We were given the pages day to day. We had hardly any idea what was going down on that film. We had no idea of the end, or the beginning, either, not at all."
Both Steele and Dominici were originally fitted to wear sharp vampire fangs, but after only a few days of shooting, the fangs were discarded. The film's Production Manager, Armando Govoni, recalled, "[W]hen we saw the rushes
, especially in the close-up
s, they looked too fake so film editor Mario Serandrei
cut
around them."
and James H. Nicholson
, of American International Pictures
, screened the Italian language version of the film when they were visiting Rome in search of viable, inexpensive European made films to act as second features for their double-bills
. They immediately recognized the film as a potential hit, and bought the U.S. rights for $100,000, reportedly more than the movie's budget.
In order to make the film more accessible to American audiences, AIP trimmed over three minutes' worth of violence and "objectionable" content. Sequences excised or shortened included the burning "S" branded into Asa's flesh and the blood spewing from the mask after it was hammered into her face, the moist eyeball impalement of Kruvajan, and the flesh peeling off Vajda's face as he burned to death in the fireplace. In the original version of the film, Asa and Javuto were brother and sister; in the AIP version, Javuto became Asa's servant. In addition, some dialogue was "softened", including Asa's line, "You too can find the joy and happiness of Hades!"; AIP modified it to "You too can find the joy and happiness of hating!"
Roberto Nicolosi's musical score was replaced by an effective but more generic “horror” sounding one by Les Baxter
, and the dialogue was completely redubbed into English. As the entire cast, with the exception of Checchi and Dominici, had spoken their lines in English, this was a relatively easy task. Galatea had provided AIP with their own English-language version, which had been completed by the Language Dubbers Association in Rome. However, Arkoff and Nicholson felt this version was stilted and "technically unacceptable", so a newly recorded English version was commissioned and produced by Titra Sound Corporation
in New York
. (Barbara Steele's own voice was not heard in any version).
AIP tested several titles for the film, including Witchcraft, The House of Fright, The Curse, Vengeance, and Demoniaque, before finally entitling their shortened version Black Sunday.
Even in its truncated state, Black Sunday was considered to contain strong material for its time. In the U.S., the AIP publicity campaign indicated that the film was suitable only for audiences over 12 (although its doubtful that this was enforced). In England, with the title The Mask of Satan, the film was officially banned by government censors until 1968., when a distributor submitted the full version under a new title, Revenge of the Vampire. The British censor made cuts to most of the scenes of violence, and the film was not released uncut in Britain until 1992.
Despite being censored, the film still had moments of very graphic (for its time) scenes of horror and violence. With bloody scenes featuring a wooden stake being rammed into a vampire's eyeball (Bava's variation on the more traditional stake through the heart), a metal mask hammered into a beautiful woman's face, and other mayhem, the film was "far more graphic in its depiction of murder and death than audiences had previously seen."
during August 1960. The film was a modest success, grossing 140 million lire
(approximately US$87,000), earning back nearly all of the production cost. It performed much better outside of Italy, and was particularly successful in France and the U.S.
Upon its theatrical release in the United States, critics generally responded with enthusiasm to Bava's film, many of whom recognized the director as a potential master of the horror genre
. Variety
noted, "There is sufficient cinematography ingenuity and production flair ... to keep an audience pleasantly unnerved." Time
said the film was "...a piece of fine Italian handiwork that atones for its ludicrous lapses with brilliant intuitions of the spectral." The Motion Picture Herald stated that "A classic quality permeates this gruesome, shocking, horrifying story of a vengeful, blood-thirsty vampire." Castle of Frankenstein
described the film as "One of the best horror thrillers of recent years." David Pirie
, in The Time Out Film Guide, called the movie, "A classic horror film ... The exquisitely realized expressionist images of cruelty and sexual suggestion shocked audiences in the early 60's, and occasioned a long-standing ban by the British censor. The visual style still impresses..." Carlos Clarens felt that "...the quality of the visual narrative was superb—the best black-and-white photography to enhance a horror movie in the past two decades. Bava also showed himself as a director of a certain promise..." But Eugene Archer in The New York Times
hated the film, noting that "Barbara Steele, a blank-eyed manikin with an earthbound figure and a voice from outer space, is appropriately cast as a vampire—not the Theda Bara
kind, but the genuine blood-drinking variety. Mario Bava, ostensibly the director of this nonsense, allows this female Bela Lugosi
to quench her thirst four times before she burns, screaming, at the stake ... As a setting for unadulterated horror, it will leave its audiences yearning for that quiet, sunny little motel in Psycho
." Ivan Butler opined that the film "appears to offer horror, beauty, and the ludicrous in about equal proportions."
Decades after its original release, Black Sunday has continued to maintain a positive critical reputation. In The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural
(1986), Timothy Sullivan wrote, "A supremely atmospheric horror film, Black Sunday was Mario Bava's first and best directorial job, and the first of the 1960s cycle of Italian Gothic cinema ... [The film] remains [Bava's] greatest achievement, without a doubt one of the best horror films ever made." Phil Hardy
's The Aurum Film Encyclopedia
: Horror observed, "Bava's first (and best) film as a solo director ... The movie derives its lyrical force and indeed its sense of horror from the knowledge that a woman's sexuality cannot be eliminated and will return, bearing the scars of the violence with which it was repressed, to challenge the order of things." Danny Peary
in his Cult Movies
book wrote, "Black Sunday is as impressive as it is because it reveals Bava's background - almost everything is conveyed visually...It is with his camera that Bava ... creates an atmosphere where the living and dead coexist (but not harmoniously) ... Black Sunday convinced many of us that Mario Bava would be a force to be reckoned with in the horror field for many years to come. Unfortunately, he never made another picture half as good." Allmovie has noted, "Generally considered to be the foremost example of Italian Gothic horror, this darkly atmospheric black-and-white chiller put director Mario Bava on the international map ... The atmosphere is so heavy and the imagery so dense that the film becomes nearly too rich in texture, but the sheer, ghastly beauty of it all is entrancing." Glenn Erickson
, in reviewing the Anchor Bay
DVD
release of the film, wrote, "Mario Bava's first credited feature is still the number one film of the Italian Horror renaissance, startlingly original and genuinely creepy ... The budget may have been low, but Black Sunday is more atmospheric and cinematically active than any of Hollywood's classic horror films." The film has a 80% favorable rating on the "Critical Tomatometer" at the Rotten Tomatoes
website, out of fifteen reviewers surveyed.
When released in the U.S. during 1961, the film was a commercial success for AIP, becoming the distributor's greatest financial success to that time. It also brought Barbara Steele to the attention of genre fans, and was the first of a series of horror movies she starred in over the next several years. Although she would next star in Roger Corman
's The Pit and the Pendulum
(1961), she returned to Italy the next year and made all of her subsequent horror titles there. While all of her genre titles have their fans, none of the films have had the same effect as Black Sunday.
, Black Sunday has had an "almost incalculable influence" on artists and filmmakers. The film's opening inquisition
sequence was a strong inspiration for many similar scenes appearing in such movies as The Brainiac
(1961), La cripta el l'incubo (U.S. Title: Terror in the Crypt) (1963), Bloody Pit of Horror
(1965), and Michael Reeves
's The She Beast
(1966). Francis Ford Coppola
's 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula recreates several scenes from Black Sunday nearly exactly as they were filmed, in homage to Bava's film. Roman Coppola
has cited Black Sunday as an influence on his father's film.
Tim Burton
's Sleepy Hollow
(1999) "borrowed" some of the film's imagery, particularly in a scene in which Lisa Marie
's face is punctured by an Iron Maiden
. Burton has explicitly cited Bava's film as an inspiration, noting "One of the movies that remain with me probably stronger than anything is Black Sunday...there's a lot of old films - [Bava's] in particular - where the vibe and the feeling is what it's about...[t]he feeling's a mixture of eroticism, of sex, of horror and starkness of image - and to me that is more real than what most people would consider realism in films..."
In 1989, Bava's son, Lamberto Bava
, made a quasi-remake of the film, Black Sunday (1989). While the new film has a very similar mask torture sequence to the original, it features a completely different storyline. It was released in the US as Demons 5: The Devil's Veil, although there is no connection between this and the rest of the Demons
series.
A number of the film's characters have appeared in Kim Newman
's vampire-crossover Anno Dracula series
, especially the third novel, Dracula Cha Cha Cha, the main plot of which is an arranged marriage between Asa Vajda and Count Dracula
.
in 2005, together with another Nicolosi score for La ragazza che sapeva troppo. A suite from Les Baxter's score was originally released on a promotional LP by the composer, whose contents made an authorized CD debut on a 1992 release by Bay Cities. Citadel Records reissued the same material in 1997 and just like the previous release, this CD also contained a suite of music from Baron Blood, a 1972 Italian film which also received a new score by Baxter for its American version. Baxter's complete score to Black Sunday was released in 2011 by Kritzerland, whose CD contains the music in chronological order.
1960 in film
The year 1960 in film involved some significant events, with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho the top-grossing release in the U.S.-Events:* April 20 - for the first time since coming home from military service in Germany, Elvis Presley returns to Hollywood, California to film G.I...
Italian
Cinema of Italy
The history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had patented their Cinematographe, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.-Early years:...
horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
directed by Mario Bava
Mario Bava
Mario Bava was an Italian director, screenwriter, and cinematographer remembered as one of the greatest names from the "golden age" of Italian horror films.-Biography:Mario Bava was born in San Remo, Liguria, Italy...
, from a screenplay by Ennio de Concini
Ennio de Concini
Ennio De Concini was an Italian screenwriter and film director, winning the Academy Award in 1962 for the "Best Original Screenplay" for Divorce, Italian Style.-Life and career:...
and Mario Serandrei
Mario Serandrei
Mario Serandrei was an Italian film editor and screenwriter.Born in Naples, he started in the film industry in 1931 as an assistant director. He edited over two hundred films during his career, and worked steadily until his death in 1966...
. The film stars Barbara Steele
Barbara Steele
Barbara Steele is an English film actress. She is best known for starring in Italian gothic horror films of the 1960s. Her breakthrough role came in Italian director Mario Bava's Black Sunday , now hailed as a classic.Steele starred in a string of horror films, including The Horrible Dr...
, John Richardson
John Richardson (actor)
John Richardson is an English actor, who appeared in movies from the 1950s until the 1990s.He appeared in many Italian films, including Mario Bava's Black Sunday...
, Arturo Dominici
Arturo Dominici
Arturo Dominici was an Italian actor and dubbing artist.Born in Palermo, Dominici became best known for his many villainous roles in horror and fantasy films. He is best remembered for his performance as the monstrous Igor Javuto in Mario Bava's Black Sunday...
, and Ivo Garrani
Ivo Garrani
Ivo Garrani is an Italian actor. In films since 1952, Garrani is possibly best known for his role as Prince Vajda in Mario Bava's Black Sunday .-External links:...
. It was Bava's directorial debut, although he had completed several previous feature films without credit. Based very loosely on Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
's short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
"Viy
Viy (story)
"Viy" is a horror short story by the Ukrainian-born Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, first published in the first volume of his collection of tales entitled Mirgorod . The title refers to the name of a demonic entity central to the plot....
", the narrative concerns a vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
-witch who is put to death by her own brother, only to return 200 years later to feed on her descendants.
By the social standards of the 1960s, Black Sunday was considered unusually gruesome, and was banned in the U.K. until 1968 because of its violence. In the U.S., some of the gore was censored, in-house, by the distributor, American International Pictures
American International Pictures
American International Pictures was a film production company formed in April 1956 from American Releasing Corporation by James H. Nicholson, former Sales Manager of Realart Pictures, and Samuel Z. Arkoff, an entertainment lawyer...
, before its theatrical release
Film release
A film release is the stage at which a completed film is legally authorized by its owner for public distribution.The process includes locating a distributor to handle the film...
to the country's cinemas. Despite the censorship, Black Sunday was a worldwide critical
Film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
and box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
success — and launched the careers of director Mario Bava and movie star Barbara Steele. In 2004, one of its sequences was voted number 40 among the “100 Scariest Movie Moments
100 Scariest Movie Moments
The 100 Scariest Movie Moments is a television documentary miniseries that first aired in late October 2004 on Bravo. Aired in five 60-minute segments, the miniseries counts down what producer Anthony Timpone, writer Patrick Moses, and director Kevin Kaufman have determined as the 100 most...
”, by the Bravo Channel.
Plot
In MoldaviaMoldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
, in the year 1630, beautiful witch Asa Vajda (Steele) and her paramour Javuto (Arturo Dominici
Arturo Dominici
Arturo Dominici was an Italian actor and dubbing artist.Born in Palermo, Dominici became best known for his many villainous roles in horror and fantasy films. He is best remembered for his performance as the monstrous Igor Javuto in Mario Bava's Black Sunday...
) are sentenced to death for sorcery by Asa's brother. Before being burned at the stake, Asa vows revenge and puts a curse on her brother's descendants. A metal mask with sharp spikes on the inside is placed over the witch's face and hammered repeatedly into her flesh.
Two centuries later, Dr. Thomas Kruvajan (Andrea Checchi
Andrea Checchi
Andrea Checchi was a prolific Italian film actor.Born in Florence, Checchi appeared in over 150 films in his lengthy career, which spanned from 1934 to his death in 1974...
) and his assistant Dr. Andre Gorobec (Richardson), are traveling through Moldavia en route to a medical conference when one of the wheels of their carriage is broken, requiring immediate repair. While waiting for their coachman to fix it, the two wander into a nearby ancient crypt and discover Asa's tomb. Observing her death mask through a glass panel, Kruvajan breaks the panel (and the cross above it) by accident while striking a bat.
He then removes Asa's death mask revealing a partially preserved corpse that is visible underneath, her face staring out malevolently. He cuts his hand on the broken glass. Some of his blood drips onto Asa's dead face.
Returning outside, Kruvajan and Gorobec meet Katia (also played by Steele). She advises them that she lives with her father, Prince Vajda (Garrani), and brother Constantine (Enrico Oliveiri), in a nearby castle that the villagers all believe is haunted. Gorobec is instantly smitten by the beautiful young woman. The two men then leave her and drive to an inn.
The witch Asa is brought back to life by Kruvajan's blood.
She contacts Javuto telepathically and orders him to rise from his grave. He does so and goes to Prince Vajda's castle, where Vajda holds up a crucifix to ward the reanimated corpse away. However, Vajda is so terrified by the visit that he becomes paralyzed with fear. Katia and Constantin send a servant to fetch Dr. Kruvajan, but the servant is killed before he can reach the inn. It is the evil Javuto who arrives to bring Kruvajan to the castle. Javuto leads Kruvajan to Asa's crypt, and he watches in horror as her coffin explodes. From its ruins, the vampire-witch offers him eternal life (and a night of pleasure) and drinks his blood. By Asa's command, the now vampiric Kruvajan enters Vajda's room and murders him.
Asa's plan is to drain Katia of her blood, believing that this act will grant her immortality. A little girl who had seen Javuto meet Kruvajan at the inn describes the dead man to Gorobec. A priest recognizes the description as being that of Javuto. The priest and Gorobec go to Javuto's grave and find Kruvajan's body inside the coffin. Realizing that he is a vampire, they kill the fiend immediately by marking him with the sign of the cross and ramming a small piece of wood through one of his eye sockets.
Javuto finds Katia and takes her to Asa. Asa attempts to drink her blood but is thwarted by the crucifix around her neck. Gorobec enters the crypt to save Katia but finds Asa instead. Asa pretends to be Katia and tells Gorobec that the now weakened and unconscious Katia is really the vampire. She tells him to kill Katia immediately by staking her.
He agrees but at the last possible moment he notices the crucifix she is wearing. He turns to Asa and opens her robe, revealing a fleshless skeletal frame. The priest then arrives with numerous torch-carrying villagers, and they burn Asa to death. Katia awakens from her stupor, her life and beauty restored.
Production
During 1959, Mario Bava had assumed the directorial assignment of The Giant of MarathonThe Giant of Marathon
The Giant of Marathon is a 1959 Italian sword and sandal film. It was directed by Jacques Tourneur and Mario Bava...
from Jacques Tourneur
Jacques Tourneur
Jacques Tourneur was a French-American film director.-Life:Born in Paris, France, he was the son of film director Maurice Tourneur. At age 10, Jacques moved to the United States with his father. He started a career in cinema while still attending high school as an extra and later as a script clerk...
, who left the production before most of the major sequences had been filmed. Bava, who had been that film's cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
, completed the film quickly and efficiently. This was not the first time Bava had been able to save a troubled movie for Marathons production company, Galatea Film. During that same year, Bava had performed a similar salvage job on Caltiki, The Immortal Monster
Caltiki - il mostro immortale (1959)
Caltiki - The Immortal Monster is a 1959 Italian horror film directed by Riccardo Freda. The plot concerns a team of archaeologists investigating Mayan ruins who come across a blob-like monster. They manage to destroy it with fire while keeping a sample of the monster...
(1959), replacing Riccardo Freda
Riccardo Freda
Riccardo Freda was an Egyptian-born Italian film director. Best known for his horror and thriller movies, Freda had no great love for the horror films he was assigned, but rather favored the epic sword and sandal pictures...
as director after he had abandoned the picture in the middle of production. Even earlier, he had assumed the directorial role for I Vampiri
I Vampiri
I Vampiri is a 1956 Italian horror film loosely based on the story of Elizabeth Báthory. Directed by Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava, the film stars Gianna Maria Canale as Giselle du Grand, Carlo D'Angelo as Inspector Chantal and Dario Michaelis as Pierre Lantin.I Vampiri was the first sound era...
(1957) after the temperamental Freda had also walked off the set of that film after only a few days. Bava did not receive director screen credit for any of his work on the three troubled Galatea films. After Bava completed Marathon, Nello Santi, the head of Galatea Film, subsequently offered him his choice of any property for his first directorial effort.
As a lover of Russian fantasy and horror, Bava decided to adapt Nikolai Gogol's 1865 horror story “Viy” into a feature film. However, the resultant screenplay (by Bava, Ennio De Concini, and Mario Serandrei) in fact owed very little to Gogol at all, and seemed to be more a tribute to the atmospheric black and white gothic horror films of the 1930s, especially those produced by Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
.
The script takes only the most rudimentary elements from the story—the Russian setting and the idea of a witch coming back to life—and has a completely different narrative.
For the role of the evil Asa and her innocent descendant Katia, Bava noted: "A strange type was needed, and we chose Steele from pictures." Bava reportedly found Steele difficult to work with. According to Bava, the actress "was somewhat irrational, afraid of Italians. One day she refused to come to the set, because somebody told her I was using a special film-stock that made people appear naked." Steele recalled: "Lord alone knows I was difficult enough. I didn't like my fangs - I had them changed three times. I loathed my wig- I changed that four times. I couldn't understand Italian...I certainly didn't want to allow them to tear open my dress and expose my breasts, so they got a double that I didn't like at all, so I ended up doing it myself - drunk, barely over eighteen, embarrassed, and not very easy to be around."
Filming of La maschera del demonio began on March 28, 1960 at the studios of Scalera Film. The exteriors, as well as a few interiors, were shot at a rented castle in Arsoli
Arsoli
Arsoli is a town and comune in the province of Rome, central Italy.The fair held on St. Bartholomew's Day at Arsoli is one of the oldest attested fairs of the region.-History:Arsoli was mentioned first in AD 997....
. The final day of production was May 7, 1960.
Steele never saw a complete screenplay for the film. Instead, she was simply handed the scenes she would play, and her dialogue, every morning of the production. According to Steele, "We were given the pages day to day. We had hardly any idea what was going down on that film. We had no idea of the end, or the beginning, either, not at all."
Both Steele and Dominici were originally fitted to wear sharp vampire fangs, but after only a few days of shooting, the fangs were discarded. The film's Production Manager, Armando Govoni, recalled, "[W]hen we saw the rushes
Dailies
Dailies, in filmmaking, are the raw, unedited footage shot during the making of a motion picture. They are so called because usually at the end of each day, that day's footage is developed, synched to sound, and printed on film in a batch for viewing the next day by the director and some members...
, especially in the close-up
Close-up
In filmmaking, television production, still photography and the comic strip medium a close-up tightly frames a person or an object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots . Close-ups display the most detail, but they do not include the broader scene...
s, they looked too fake so film editor Mario Serandrei
Mario Serandrei
Mario Serandrei was an Italian film editor and screenwriter.Born in Naples, he started in the film industry in 1931 as an assistant director. He edited over two hundred films during his career, and worked steadily until his death in 1966...
cut
Cut (filmmaking)
In the post-production process of film editing and video editing, a cut is an abrupt, but usually trivial film transition from one sequence to another. It is synonymous with the term edit, though "edit" can imply any number of transitions or effects. The cut, dissolve and wipe serve as the three...
around them."
Cast
- Barbara SteeleBarbara SteeleBarbara Steele is an English film actress. She is best known for starring in Italian gothic horror films of the 1960s. Her breakthrough role came in Italian director Mario Bava's Black Sunday , now hailed as a classic.Steele starred in a string of horror films, including The Horrible Dr...
as Katia Vajda/Princess Asa Vajda - John RichardsonJohn Richardson (actor)John Richardson is an English actor, who appeared in movies from the 1950s until the 1990s.He appeared in many Italian films, including Mario Bava's Black Sunday...
as Dr. Andre Gorobec - Andrea ChecchiAndrea ChecchiAndrea Checchi was a prolific Italian film actor.Born in Florence, Checchi appeared in over 150 films in his lengthy career, which spanned from 1934 to his death in 1974...
as Dr. Thomas Kruvajan - Ivo GarraniIvo GarraniIvo Garrani is an Italian actor. In films since 1952, Garrani is possibly best known for his role as Prince Vajda in Mario Bava's Black Sunday .-External links:...
as Prince Vajda - Arturo DominiciArturo DominiciArturo Dominici was an Italian actor and dubbing artist.Born in Palermo, Dominici became best known for his many villainous roles in horror and fantasy films. He is best remembered for his performance as the monstrous Igor Javuto in Mario Bava's Black Sunday...
as Igor Javuto - Enrico Olivieri as Prince Constantine Vajda
- Antonio Pierfederici as Priest
- Tino Bianchi as Ivan
- Clara Bindi as Inn Keeper
- Mario Passante as Coachman
- Renato Terra as Boris
- Germana Dominici as Sonya (Inn Keeper's Daughter)
American International Pictures edited version
Samuel Z. ArkoffSamuel Z. Arkoff
Samuel Zachary Arkoff was an American producer of B movies.-Life and career:Born in Fort Dodge, Iowa to a Russian Jewish family, Arkoff first studied to be a lawyer. Along with business partner James H. Nicholson and producer-director Roger Corman, he produced eighteen films...
and James H. Nicholson
James H. Nicholson
James Harvey Nicholson was an American film producer. He is best known as the co-founder, with Samuel Z. Arkoff, of American International Pictures.-Biography:...
, of American International Pictures
American International Pictures
American International Pictures was a film production company formed in April 1956 from American Releasing Corporation by James H. Nicholson, former Sales Manager of Realart Pictures, and Samuel Z. Arkoff, an entertainment lawyer...
, screened the Italian language version of the film when they were visiting Rome in search of viable, inexpensive European made films to act as second features for their double-bills
Double feature
The double feature, also known as a double bill, was a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatre managers would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.The double feature, also known as...
. They immediately recognized the film as a potential hit, and bought the U.S. rights for $100,000, reportedly more than the movie's budget.
In order to make the film more accessible to American audiences, AIP trimmed over three minutes' worth of violence and "objectionable" content. Sequences excised or shortened included the burning "S" branded into Asa's flesh and the blood spewing from the mask after it was hammered into her face, the moist eyeball impalement of Kruvajan, and the flesh peeling off Vajda's face as he burned to death in the fireplace. In the original version of the film, Asa and Javuto were brother and sister; in the AIP version, Javuto became Asa's servant. In addition, some dialogue was "softened", including Asa's line, "You too can find the joy and happiness of Hades!"; AIP modified it to "You too can find the joy and happiness of hating!"
Roberto Nicolosi's musical score was replaced by an effective but more generic “horror” sounding one by Les Baxter
Les Baxter
Les Baxter was an American musician and composer.Baxter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory before moving to Los Angeles for further studies at Pepperdine College. Abandoning a concert career as a pianist, he turned to popular music as a singer...
, and the dialogue was completely redubbed into English. As the entire cast, with the exception of Checchi and Dominici, had spoken their lines in English, this was a relatively easy task. Galatea had provided AIP with their own English-language version, which had been completed by the Language Dubbers Association in Rome. However, Arkoff and Nicholson felt this version was stilted and "technically unacceptable", so a newly recorded English version was commissioned and produced by Titra Sound Corporation
Titra Studios
Titra Studios is an American dubbing studio. The studio was responsible for dubbing numerous foreign films, including Mothra vs. Godzilla 1964 as well as the Speed Racer cartoon series and the original Ultraman tv series....
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. (Barbara Steele's own voice was not heard in any version).
AIP tested several titles for the film, including Witchcraft, The House of Fright, The Curse, Vengeance, and Demoniaque, before finally entitling their shortened version Black Sunday.
Even in its truncated state, Black Sunday was considered to contain strong material for its time. In the U.S., the AIP publicity campaign indicated that the film was suitable only for audiences over 12 (although its doubtful that this was enforced). In England, with the title The Mask of Satan, the film was officially banned by government censors until 1968., when a distributor submitted the full version under a new title, Revenge of the Vampire. The British censor made cuts to most of the scenes of violence, and the film was not released uncut in Britain until 1992.
Despite being censored, the film still had moments of very graphic (for its time) scenes of horror and violence. With bloody scenes featuring a wooden stake being rammed into a vampire's eyeball (Bava's variation on the more traditional stake through the heart), a metal mask hammered into a beautiful woman's face, and other mayhem, the film was "far more graphic in its depiction of murder and death than audiences had previously seen."
Response
La maschera del demonio premiered in RomeRome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
during August 1960. The film was a modest success, grossing 140 million lire
Italian lira
The lira was the currency of Italy between 1861 and 2002. Between 1999 and 2002, the Italian lira was officially a “national subunit” of the euro...
(approximately US$87,000), earning back nearly all of the production cost. It performed much better outside of Italy, and was particularly successful in France and the U.S.
Upon its theatrical release in the United States, critics generally responded with enthusiasm to Bava's film, many of whom recognized the director as a potential master of the horror genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
. Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
noted, "There is sufficient cinematography ingenuity and production flair ... to keep an audience pleasantly unnerved." Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
said the film was "...a piece of fine Italian handiwork that atones for its ludicrous lapses with brilliant intuitions of the spectral." The Motion Picture Herald stated that "A classic quality permeates this gruesome, shocking, horrifying story of a vengeful, blood-thirsty vampire." Castle of Frankenstein
Castle of Frankenstein
Castle of Frankenstein was an American horror, science fiction and fantasy film magazine, distributed by Kable News and published in New Jersey from 1962 to 1975 by Calvin Thomas Beck's Gothic Castle Publishing Company. The first three issues were edited by Larry Ivie and Ken Beale. From 1963 and...
described the film as "One of the best horror thrillers of recent years." David Pirie
David Pirie
David Pirie is a screenwriter, film producer, film critic, and novelist.As a screenwriter, Pirie has written numerous mysteries and horror-themed works, mostly for television, including recently the hit ITV series Murderland starring Robbie Coltrane . He was nominated for a BAFTA for his...
, in The Time Out Film Guide, called the movie, "A classic horror film ... The exquisitely realized expressionist images of cruelty and sexual suggestion shocked audiences in the early 60's, and occasioned a long-standing ban by the British censor. The visual style still impresses..." Carlos Clarens felt that "...the quality of the visual narrative was superb—the best black-and-white photography to enhance a horror movie in the past two decades. Bava also showed himself as a director of a certain promise..." But Eugene Archer in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
hated the film, noting that "Barbara Steele, a blank-eyed manikin with an earthbound figure and a voice from outer space, is appropriately cast as a vampire—not the Theda Bara
Theda Bara
Theda Bara , born Theodosia Burr Goodman, was an American silent film actress – one of the most popular of her era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" . The term "vamp" soon became a popular slang term for a sexually predatory woman...
kind, but the genuine blood-drinking variety. Mario Bava, ostensibly the director of this nonsense, allows this female Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
to quench her thirst four times before she burns, screaming, at the stake ... As a setting for unadulterated horror, it will leave its audiences yearning for that quiet, sunny little motel in Psycho
Psycho (1960 film)
Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/psychological horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch...
." Ivan Butler opined that the film "appears to offer horror, beauty, and the ludicrous in about equal proportions."
Decades after its original release, Black Sunday has continued to maintain a positive critical reputation. In The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural
The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural
The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural is a reference work on horror fiction in the arts, edited by Jack Sullivan. The book was published in 1986 by Viking Press....
(1986), Timothy Sullivan wrote, "A supremely atmospheric horror film, Black Sunday was Mario Bava's first and best directorial job, and the first of the 1960s cycle of Italian Gothic cinema ... [The film] remains [Bava's] greatest achievement, without a doubt one of the best horror films ever made." Phil Hardy
Phil Hardy (journalist)
Phil Hardy is an English film and music industry journalist. He was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire in 1945 and studied at the University of Sussex, 1964-1969, during which time he was a visiting student at the Berkeley campus of the University of California . At Sussex he started The Brighton Film...
's The Aurum Film Encyclopedia
The Aurum Film Encyclopedia
The Aurum Film Encyclopedia is a multi-volume reference work on cinema, published in the UK by Aurum Press and edited by Phil Hardy. The first volume, devoted to western films, appeared in 1983, with eight subsequent volumes announced at that time as "forthcoming". However, as of 2007, only...
: Horror observed, "Bava's first (and best) film as a solo director ... The movie derives its lyrical force and indeed its sense of horror from the knowledge that a woman's sexuality cannot be eliminated and will return, bearing the scars of the violence with which it was repressed, to challenge the order of things." Danny Peary
Danny Peary
Danny Peary is an American film critic and sports writer. He has written many books on cinema and sports-related topics.-Biography:...
in his Cult Movies
Cult Movies (book)
Cult Movies is a 1981 book by Danny Peary, consisting of a series of essays regarding what Peary described as the 100 most representative examples of the cult film phenomenon...
book wrote, "Black Sunday is as impressive as it is because it reveals Bava's background - almost everything is conveyed visually...It is with his camera that Bava ... creates an atmosphere where the living and dead coexist (but not harmoniously) ... Black Sunday convinced many of us that Mario Bava would be a force to be reckoned with in the horror field for many years to come. Unfortunately, he never made another picture half as good." Allmovie has noted, "Generally considered to be the foremost example of Italian Gothic horror, this darkly atmospheric black-and-white chiller put director Mario Bava on the international map ... The atmosphere is so heavy and the imagery so dense that the film becomes nearly too rich in texture, but the sheer, ghastly beauty of it all is entrancing." Glenn Erickson
Glenn Erickson
Glenn Erickson is an American film editor and film critic. He started in the film industry in 1975 as an editor of low budget films and later worked in minor technical crew capacities in such major films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1941...
, in reviewing the Anchor Bay
Anchor Bay Entertainment
Anchor Bay Entertainment is a U.S. based home entertainment and production company and is a division of Starz Media, which is a unit of Starz, LLC. It was previously owned by IDT Entertainment until 2006 when IDT was purchased by Starz Media. Anchor Bay markets and sells feature films, series,...
DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
release of the film, wrote, "Mario Bava's first credited feature is still the number one film of the Italian Horror renaissance, startlingly original and genuinely creepy ... The budget may have been low, but Black Sunday is more atmospheric and cinematically active than any of Hollywood's classic horror films." The film has a 80% favorable rating on the "Critical Tomatometer" at the Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
website, out of fifteen reviewers surveyed.
When released in the U.S. during 1961, the film was a commercial success for AIP, becoming the distributor's greatest financial success to that time. It also brought Barbara Steele to the attention of genre fans, and was the first of a series of horror movies she starred in over the next several years. Although she would next star in Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
's The Pit and the Pendulum
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961 film)
The Pit and the Pendulum is a 1961 horror film directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr, and Luana Anders. The screenplay by Richard Matheson was based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story of the same name. Set in 16th century Spain, the story is about a young...
(1961), she returned to Italy the next year and made all of her subsequent horror titles there. While all of her genre titles have their fans, none of the films have had the same effect as Black Sunday.
Legacy
According to Tim LucasTim Lucas
Tim Lucas is a film critic, biographer, novelist, screenwriter, blogger, and publisher/editor of the video review magazine Video Watchdog.-Biography and early career:...
, Black Sunday has had an "almost incalculable influence" on artists and filmmakers. The film's opening inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
sequence was a strong inspiration for many similar scenes appearing in such movies as The Brainiac
The Brainiac
The Brainiac is a 1962 Mexican horror film directed by Chano Urueta and written by Federico Curiel, Adolfo López Portillo and Antonio Orellana. The film stars Abel Salazar and Germán Robles.-Plot summary:...
(1961), La cripta el l'incubo (U.S. Title: Terror in the Crypt) (1963), Bloody Pit of Horror
Bloody Pit of Horror
Bloody Pit of Horror is a 1965 Italian gothic horror film based on the writings of Marquis de Sade and directed by Massimo Pupillo...
(1965), and Michael Reeves
Michael Reeves
Michael Reeves was an English film director and screenwriter. He is best known for the 1968 American International Pictures/Tigon motion picture Witchfinder General...
's The She Beast
The She Beast
The She Beast is a 1966 British-Italian horror film written and directed by Michael Reeves. The film stars Barbara Steele and Ian Ogilvy...
(1966). Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
's 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula recreates several scenes from Black Sunday nearly exactly as they were filmed, in homage to Bava's film. Roman Coppola
Roman Coppola
Roman Coppola is an American film director and music video director.-Early life:Coppola was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, the son of set decorator/artist Eleanor Coppola and Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola was born in the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine while his father was in Paris...
has cited Black Sunday as an influence on his father's film.
Tim Burton
Tim Burton
Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...
's Sleepy Hollow
Sleepy Hollow (film)
Sleepy Hollow is a 1999 American period horror film directed by Tim Burton. It is a film adaptation loosely inspired by the 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving and stars Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Marc Pickering, Michael Gambon, Jeffrey Jones,...
(1999) "borrowed" some of the film's imagery, particularly in a scene in which Lisa Marie
Lisa Marie
Lisa Marie Smith is an American model and actress, who uses simply Lisa Marie as her professional name.-Early life:...
's face is punctured by an Iron Maiden
Iron maiden (torture device)
An iron maiden is a torture device, consisting of an iron cabinet, with a hinged front, sufficiently tall to enclose a human being. It usually has a small closeable opening so that the torturer can interrogate the victim and torture or kill a person by piercing the body with sharp objects , while...
. Burton has explicitly cited Bava's film as an inspiration, noting "One of the movies that remain with me probably stronger than anything is Black Sunday...there's a lot of old films - [Bava's] in particular - where the vibe and the feeling is what it's about...[t]he feeling's a mixture of eroticism, of sex, of horror and starkness of image - and to me that is more real than what most people would consider realism in films..."
In 1989, Bava's son, Lamberto Bava
Lamberto Bava
Lamberto Bava is an Italian film director, specializing in horror and fantasy films.Bava was born in Rome, Italy, the son of cinematographer/director Mario Bava, and grandson of cameraman Eugenio Bava...
, made a quasi-remake of the film, Black Sunday (1989). While the new film has a very similar mask torture sequence to the original, it features a completely different storyline. It was released in the US as Demons 5: The Devil's Veil, although there is no connection between this and the rest of the Demons
Demoni
Dèmoni is a 1985 Italian horror film directed by Lamberto Bava and produced by Dario Argento. The screenplay was written by Bava, Argento, Franco Ferrini, and Dardano Sacchetti, from a story by Sacchetti...
series.
A number of the film's characters have appeared in Kim Newman
Kim Newman
Kim Newman is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history...
's vampire-crossover Anno Dracula series
Anno Dracula series
The Anno Dracula series by Kim Newman—named after Anno Dracula , the series' first novel—is a work of fantasy depicting an alternate history in which the heroes of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula fail to stop Count Dracula's conquest of Great Britain, resulting in a world where vampires are common and...
, especially the third novel, Dracula Cha Cha Cha, the main plot of which is an arranged marriage between Asa Vajda and Count Dracula
Count Dracula
Count Dracula is a fictional character, the titular antagonist of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula and archetypal vampire. Some aspects of his character have been inspired by the 15th century Romanian general and Wallachian Prince Vlad III the Impaler...
.
Soundtrack
The original Italian score by Roberto Nicolosi was issued by Digitmovies AEDigitmovies AE
Digitmovies Alternative Entertainment is an Italian label that starts in 2002 the rescue of Italian film music.Digitmovies AE has released over 100 soundtracks from many Italian original archives such as, C.A.M., Cinevox, Beat Records, EMI General music......
in 2005, together with another Nicolosi score for La ragazza che sapeva troppo. A suite from Les Baxter's score was originally released on a promotional LP by the composer, whose contents made an authorized CD debut on a 1992 release by Bay Cities. Citadel Records reissued the same material in 1997 and just like the previous release, this CD also contained a suite of music from Baron Blood, a 1972 Italian film which also received a new score by Baxter for its American version. Baxter's complete score to Black Sunday was released in 2011 by Kritzerland, whose CD contains the music in chronological order.