Black Sunday (The Mask of Satan) – Review

In the 17^th century, Satan was abroad in the world and vampires roamed the earth. This led to paranoia while attempting to purify the world of blood devouring assassins. Before groups of villagers burned the evildoers, they would be branded with the mark of Satan. Such is life in the 1630s.

The grand inquisition of Moldovia sentence to death vampire witch Princess Asa Vajda (Steele), as well as her lover Igor Javutich (Dominici), as too many evil deeds were done by the pair. The townsfolk and inquisitors plan to nail the mask of Satan onto her face. She is to be burnt and the wind will scatter her ashes, but first she speaks out a curse on her brother Griabi, who leads this inquisition himself. He will never escape her hunger! Beware!!

The mask sinks into her face with a large bashing of a mallet to her head. Her lover Javutich also gets a walloping. The village readies her pyre, buuuuut… incoming rains stop her sacrifice, as if by the demon’s command. The purifying flames are extinguished and the village people flee in terror. The bodies of Asa and her lover are buried in their respective places; Javutich in a cemetery for murderers and Asa deep in a tomb under a graveyard chapel.

Two centuries later and two doctors, Choma Kruvajan (Checchi) and Andrej Gorobec (Richardson) ride along in a coach, heading through Moldovia to a medical gathering in Migorod. As their journey is interrupted by a broken wagon wheel, the doctors wind up in a tomb of the “dead” witch Asa, after following a weird howling sound.

Clearly nothing will go wrong, and the vampire who has cursed humanity won’t be unhappy at all. Hopefully the men don’t accidentally cut themselves and wake up the long-dead vampire’s bloodlust. Let the bats attack, the fangs pop and the witch’s curse cause chaos!

While it is a film of the 60s, the sets are pretty fantastic to look at, and bring in full gothic horror backgrounds to match the dark and haunting story. It may be a tad hokey but today’s standards at times, but it is a creepy feature full of solid ideas, crazy visuals, excellent special effects and good directorial execution. It plays pretty well today, so come get a souvenir from the witch.

The international version is titled The Mask of Satan, while the U.S. release is Bloody Sunday and was a bit edited. The film is based on a short story.