BARBARA STEELE: BLACK SUNDAY : LA MASCHERA EL DAIMO REVIEW AND PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY

CAST:

Barbara Steele (Katya/Princess Asa), John Richardson (Dr Andrej Gorobec), Andrea Checchi (Professor Choma Kruvajan), Arturo Dominici (Prince Ivo Javutich), Enrico Olivieri (Prince Constantine), Antonio Pierfederici (The Priest), Ivo Garrani (Prince Vajda), Tino Bianchi (Ivan)

PRODUCTION:

Director/Photography (b&w) – Mario Bava, Screenplay – Ennio De Concini & Mario Serandrei, English Language Dialogue – George Higgins III, Based on the Short Story The Vij by Nikolai Gogol, Producer – Massimo De Rita, Music – (Italian Version) Robert Nicolosi & (English Language Version) Les Baxter, Art Direction – Giorgio Giovannini. Production Company – Lina Productions/Galatea/Jolly Films.  Italy. 1960. 

SYNOPSIS:

In 17th Century Russia, Princess Asa is tried and convicted for vampirism and witchcraft. A mask with spikes on its inside is hammered over her face and she is burned at the stake. Two centuries later, the coach of Professor Choma Kruvajan and his companion Dr Andrej Gorobec crashes in the forest. They come upon the chapel that holds Asa’s coffin where she is kept imprisoned by the shadow of the cross coming through a window. Kruvajan accidentally revives Asa. They must then try to stop Asa as she attempts to possess her modern-day descendant Princess Katya

COMMENTARY:

Black Sunday is a genre classic. It was a success that produced a deluge of continental (primarily Italian) horror. Hammer had already fired up a massive Gothic revival with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958) in the previous three years and in the USA Roger Corman had had similar success with a series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. With Black Sunday, director Mario Bava defined a set the tropes that would become the continental Gothic formula. As opposed to Hammer’s product, the Italian horror film placed an emphasis on sadism, particularly facial mutilation; and as, opposed to the Anglo-horror film, which is very much rooted in the battle between reason and suppression, the continental Gothic became a genre that was based in the past (most Italo-horror films are set in the early 19th Century or earlier) and firmly on the side of superstition – science and reason never enter into these films, there is rarely ever a Man of Reason like Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing. There were many imitators through the 1960s – directors such as Riccardo Freda and Antonio Margheriti – making similar films set in large gloomy castles and featuring necrophiliac minglings of death and love. 

Most importantly, Black Sunday made Mario Bava a cult name with audiences. Bava had worked as a cinematographer and had purportedly (uncreditedly) directed several forgettable spaghetti Gothics – I Vampiri/The Devil’s Commandment (1957) and Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959) – before debuting with Black Sunday. Bava would then go onto a number of other Gothic horrors – Black Sabbath (1963), Night is the Phantom/What! (1963), Kill, Baby ... Kill!/Curse of the Living Dead (1966), Baron Blood (1972) – as well as giallo psycho-thrillers like Blood and Black Lace (1964), Blood Brides/Hatchet for a Honeymoon (1969) and Twitch of the Death Nerve/Bloodbath (1971). While many of these are excellent, Black Sunday would be a film that Bava never managed to subsequently surpass. 

It is almost impossible to gain an appreciation of Black Sunday’s atmosphere when seeing it on video – it needs a cinematic airing to give true voice to the extraordinary beauty of Mario Bava’s atmosphere and camerawork. For a period like 1960 when camera set-ups where still largely static, Bava’s camerawork is incredibly sinuous and fluid, always on the move. The shock opening with Barbara Steele being tied up, her back bared and the letter ‘S’ branded into her flesh, then the spiked Mask of Satan placed onto her face and hammered on with a crunch and a spurt of blood still holds some effect thirty years later. (It was this scene that had Black Sunday banned in the UK until 1968). What is most striking is Mario Bava’s instinctive feel for Gothic mood – the scene where the prince appears out of the shadows and approaches the bed of Ivo Garrani is almost pure Castle of Otranto (1764). The most extraordinary sequence in the film is the luring of the professor to the castle, which is filled with images like the black coach appearing out of the mist and racing through the forest in slow-motion with Arturo Dominici on top maniacally whipping the horses along; and the luring of the professor into the castle where Dominici and his lantern move further and further ahead, while giant embossed doors boom shut unaided by human hand, slowly trapping the professor deeper and deeper into a claustrophobic maze of underground passages. 

Although the film makes some claim to be based on the Nikolai Gogol short story The Vij (1835), there is virtually nothing of this in the finished script. The Vij was set around a night in a crypt as the hero waits for the witch to arise from her tomb while she marshals occult forces against him, a scene that is puzzlingly missing from the film. The main sequence of The Vij would have been perfect for the film’s extended climax, but is not used – in fact, the climax that Black Sunday has is oddly anti-climactic. In subsequent films, Mario Bava showed himself to be a director less concerned with plot than with visual set-pieces and this is probably the problem. The script here seems oddly unbalanced – it, for instance, makes mistakes like having the vampires engage in ordinary fistfights with the heroes, which rob them of their supernatural menace; it also jumbles vampires in with what should be a straight-forward reincarnated witch story. Nevertheless, Black Sunday is a classic. 

The film was purportedly remade as Black Sunday/The Mask of the Demon/Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil (1989) by Mario Bava’s son Lamberto, although this had almost nothing to do with the original here. The Nikolai Gogol story was more faithfully adapted as the Russian-made The Viy (1967) and the Yugoslav-made A Holy Place (1990). 

Mario Bava’s other genre films are:- the Greek muscleman fantasy Hercules in the Center of the Earth/Hercules vs the Vampires (1961); the giallo The Evil Eye (1962); the Gothic horror anthology Black Sabbath (1963); the Gothic horror Night is the Phantom/The Whip and the Body/What? (1963); the psycho-sexual thriller Blood and Black Lace (1964); the Gothic Kill Baby ... Kill/Curse of the Dead/Curse of the Living Dead/Operation Fear (1965); the sf/horror film Planet of the Vampires (1965); the spy comedy Dr Goldfoot and the Girls Bombs (1966), Bava’s worst film; the masked super-thief film Danger Diabolik (1967); the giallo Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970); the giallo Hatchet for a Honeymoon/Blood Brides (1971); the giallo Twitch of the Death Nerve/Bloodbath/A Bay of Blood/Carnage/Ecology for a Crime (1971); the Gothic Baron Blood (1972); the giallo/haunted house film Lisa and the Devil/House of Exorcism (1972); and the possession film Shock/Beyond the Door II (1977).      

Review: Richard Scheib

Images: Marcus Brooks

OLINKA BEROVA AND JOHN RICHARDSON: VENGEANCE OF SHE: HAMMER FILMS (1968)

Pubilicity photograph: John Richardson and Olinka Berova in 'Vengeance of She' Hammer Films (1968)

HAMMER FILMS PRODUCTIONS: THE VENGEANCE OF SHE: OLINKA BEROVA JOHN RICHARDSON

“Who is She ?” muses the singer of the title number in The Vengeance of She, an incredible Hammer Films misfire from 1967. Well, as all you lovers of  British fantasy will doubtless be aware, ‘She’ is Ayesha, or at least the reincarnation of Ayesha embodied the shapely person of Carol (Olga Schoberova, billed as Olinka Berova, for reasons which I can’t begin to fathom), a young tourist who is irrestistably drawn to the lost city of Kuma, ruled by King Killikrates (Richardson). Carol is picked up by a passing pleasure boat, where she meets the not especially amusingly alcoholic George (Blakely), his cynical wife Sheila (Melford), psychiatrist Philip (Judd) and a variety of anonymous crew members. However, her quest for Kuma is not all it seems and the influence of an evil priest must be conquered before she can return to her own life.

Now, the 1965 Hammer version of She isn’t at all bad. It’s not really in the H.Rider Haggard vein, although Peter Cushing makes a marvellous academic, but it’s entertainingly silly and features some good set-pieces. The weakest link was the casting of John Richardson as Killikrates. Richardson is a drag on the film and by the conclusion you’re not desperate to ever see him again. So it’s no surprise that, in this lower budget sequel, Richardson is the only cast member to reappear. The film basically plods through a similar plot to the original; journey to lost city, encounter exotic lost tribe, enjoy a ropey special effects and a destructive conclusion… you know the drill. It lacks a strong leading man to replace the implacable presence of Cushing. 

Edward Judd tries hard but is saddled with some appalling expository dialogue - “I don’t want to force my help on you, none of us do. But if you want help, just ask for it” - and some psychiatric jargon to make him seem like a reasonably likely headshrinker. Colin Blakely, always worth watching, does better with a more interesting part and his sparring with his wife has something resembling the spark of life even if it never quite seems believable. Derek Godfrey and George Sewell inject a certain amount of vitality to their scenes and if you stick with the film, you will be rewarded with a brief appearance from the great Andre Morell - although that fine actor was better served in the previous year’s Plague of the Zombies. 

Most disappointing is the casting of Ms.Berova. A well-scrubbed European blonde in the tradition of Brigitte Bardot, Yutte Stenssgaard, Elke Sommer and tha woman from the Shake 'n' Vac ad, Berova tries hard but simply can’t deliver dialogue in a manner which suggests anything is at stake. This wouldn’t matter if all she had to do was look pretty but her possession by Ayesha is the central plank of the plot and without a convincing actress, it simply doesn’t hold the attention. On the poster, she was described as “The ultimate female who used her beauty to bring kingdoms to their downfall... and men to their knees!" but her presence is so weak that it’s hard to think she wants to do anything to men except wash up for them and possibly do the ironing.

 A similar problem arose, you may recall, when the marvellous Ingrid Pitt was replaced by Yutte Stenssgaard in Lust For A Vampire. Hammer Horror or indeed fantasy, only works when it’s performed by good actors who are giving their all to the material. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are the most fondly remembered of the Hammer stars because they never suggested that the mediocre dialogue and flimsy sets were beneath their dignity. They took the films for what they were and gave committed, intelligent performances. The minute the Hammer films try to either undersell themselves, send themselves up or go for trashy camp value, they fall apart. This is occasionally fun - Dracula A.D.1972 is an unintentional joy – but is more often it’s simply tedious. The Vengeance of She is a case in point. It’s not exactly boring but it is far too long and lacking in anything to keep you engrossed. 

It doesn’t help that the production team is very much from the B-List of Hammer talent. The splendid American poster art suggests something a lot more interesting than we actually get and is an image – Berova wielding a huge wip while wearing something she picked up at an Ann Summers party – which is a damn sight more memorable than anything in the film. The cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky lights everything in much too even a fashion to create the requisite atmosphere in the underground city and he seems much happier with the Mediterranean exteriors towards the beginning of the film. Peter O’Donnell’s screenplay is much too convoluted, stretching a relatively straightforward plot out to an unconscionable length and showing little of the stylish wit of his ‘Modesty Blaise’ novels. Most of the criticism should, however, be placed on the shoulders of Cliff Owen. 

One of the most uninteresting British directors of the 20th Century, Owen never made a film which is anything more than mediocre. Like other directors of his ilk – Bob Kellet, John Robins – his shots have no imagination, he can’t build suspense and he doesn’t seem at all interested in either the visuals or the performances. He just points the camera and hopes that it all goes alright. The only films of his which have anything resembling worth are the ones where the characters or actors work miracles with their dubious material – principally Steptoe And Son and the Arthur Lowe / Beryl Reid scenes in No Sex Please We’re British. After all, this is the man who managed the difficult task, in two films, of making Morecambe and Wise seem unfunny. 

The Vengeance of She is a hard slog for any viewer who doesn’t have a thing about Scandanavian blondes – and even they are likely to lose their patience while the film tries to show off its unusually lavish North African locations. Even by the standards of Hammer fantasy – which, lets face it, are not all that high as a look at the bizarre The Lost Continent will confirm – it’s poor stuff. 

Review Source: Mike Sutton
Images: Marcus Brooks