Black Sunday

STARE INTO THESE EYES...Discover deep within them the unspeakable, terrifying secret of BLACK SUNDAY...It will paralyze you with fright!
La maschera del demonio (1960)
Timing: 1:26 (86 min)

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Release date
Country
Production
Genre
Budget
$0
Box office
$0
Website
Director
Actors
Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrea Checchi, Ivo Garrani, Arturo Dominici, Enrico Olivieri, Antonio Pierfederici, Tino Bianchi, Clara Bindi, Mario Passante
All actors and roles (10)
Scenario
Producer
Massimo De Rita, Lionello Santi
Camera operator
Composer
Roberto Nicolosi
Artist
Giorgio Giovannini
Audition
Editing
Mario Serandrei
Whole Team (18)

Short description

A vengeful witch, Asa Vajda, and her fiendish servant, Igor Jauvitch, return from the grave and begin a bloody campaign to possess the body of the witch's beautiful look-alike descendant: Katia. Only a handsome doctor with the help of family members stand in her way.

What's left behind the scenes

  • By the standards of the 60s, the film was considered too violent, and as a result, it was banned in the UK until 1968. In the US, the film was subjected to censorship.
  • Despite his love for Russian classics, Mario Bava didn't bother to check a map to see where the story would take place. As a result, a curious situation arises – everything happens near Mirgorod, but it is said to be territory of Moldova, yet from there one can reach Moscow by carriage in about a day.
  • The film has different titles in different languages – the English version is called «Black Sunday», the German version is «Die Stunde, wenn Dracula kommt» ("The Hour When Dracula Comes"). However, neither Black Sunday nor Dracula are mentioned in the film.
  • Mario Bava was, at that time, the savior of the "Galatea" studio – he quickly and relatively efficiently completed projects that had gone out of control and were handed over to him, meeting deadlines. As a result, "Galatea" was generous to Bava and made him a gift, allocating six weeks for filming "Black Sunday", whereas the standard shooting period at the time was three to four weeks.
  • Barbara Steele was given one page of the script per day.
  • Initially, the characters of Barbara Steele and Arturo Dominici were equipped with vampire fangs, but Bava later abandoned this idea.
  • The credits state that the film is based on a story by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. However, since the main antagonists of the film are vampires, the influence of Bram Stoker’s novel and the classic films made from it is evident.
  • The film has different titles in different languages – the English version is called 'Black Sunday,' the German version is 'Die Stunde, wenn Dracula kommt' ('The Hour When Dracula Comes'). Yet neither Black Sunday nor Dracula are mentioned in the film.
  • Mario Bava was, at the time, a savior for the 'Galatea' studio – he quickly and relatively efficiently completed projects that had gone out of control and been handed over to him. As a result, 'Galatea' was generous with Bava and made him a gift, allocating six weeks for filming 'Black Mask,' while the standard shooting period at the time was three to four weeks.

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