Black Sunday

Part of Dundead Film Festival 2025 - see the full programme and book a Festival Pass. 

Mario Bava’s 1960 film Black Sunday (also known as The Mask of Satan) is perhaps the greatest example of the kind of films which formed the roots of the Italian horror movement. While future films from the likes of Dario Argento would be noted for their swinging sense of modernity, they were growing out of a horror tradition not unlike that of Britain’s – a black and white world of the gothic.

Bava (who spent many years as a cinematographer) is rightly remembered for his latter-day mastery of colour – but with Black Sunday (his first film as solo director) he proves just as masterful with black and white, delivering iconic image after iconic image. Based on Nikolai Gogol’s fairytale Viy, the film stars the English actress Barbara Steele (referred to as “Britain's first lady of horror”) as a Satanic princess who curses future generations when she is sentenced to death. Steele also plays the princess’ descendent Katia 200 years later, when two doctors unwittingly awaken the dead princess from beyond the grave.

This is Steele’s most iconic performance, with Bava employing sensationally expressive light and shadow in framing her striking face, and the practical effects feel years ahead of 1960. The film is a fascinating insight into a cultural crossroads in cinema history, with one foot in the ghostly, supernatural past, and one in the gory, hyper-violent future.