Black Sunday
by Mario Bava
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DVD details
Actor: Barbara Steele, John RichardsonDirector: Mario Bava
Brand: Fox
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 86 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-23
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
DVD Reviews of Black Sunday
DVD Review: Reviews Often Say More about the Reviewer than the Movie Being Reviewed
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm always interested in whether people like or dislike a movie, but only if they really have something to say. Many of the reviewers here do have interesting things to say, but unfortunately there are also quite a few who do not.
It's clear that some reviewers have no appreciation or understanding of the history of film. You can't watch Mario Bava's 1960 Black Sunday as if it were a recent Hollywood horror release. If you do, you're probably not going to like it - duh! Please save the Facebook and Twitter chatter for those forums or for reviews of the latest Hollywood offal.
Some films in history were monumental in determining the scope and development of the films that came after it. That is a fact that escapes one reviewer here who pans Black Sunday because Dario Argento's Suspiria is just so much more colorfully cinemagraphic. First of all, Bava made this film in 1960. Dario Argento didn't start making movies until a decade or so later, and he had Mario Bava to follow - and copy - in important ways. Not the use of color from the black and white Black Sunday, but from Bava's Blood and Black Lace (1963) - a symphony of beauty, color and horror. Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of Argento - but his use of color in Suspiria and Inferno is so clearly something he lifted from the much earlier Blood and Black Lace. Faulting Bava because he wasn't Argento is like slamming Newton because he wasn't Albert Einstein. Ridiculous!
Mario Bava made Black Sunday for about $60,000, a sum that was incredibly cheap for a movie even in 1960. He filmed it entirely on a sound stage that was so small the horse-drawn carriage couldn't take more than five or six steps without having to turn around. His budget didn't permit him to rent a dolly or a crane. No one before had created such lushly gothic horror sets - just check out the first scene of the underground crypt. Bava also introduced graphic depiction into horror movies - such as the now-famous hammering of the spiked mask onto Barbara Steele's face. Even the current Anchor Bay release is from an edited print that cuts out the last frames of that scene. We take graphic horror for granted now, but it started with Mario Bava in 1960. Remember: Argento's stylish murders and mutilations came more than a decade later - with much bigger budgets - and only after both Black Sunday and Blood and Black Lace blazed the trail.
Black Sunday oozes gothic horror atmosphere and does it very effectively. I've seen lots of big budget horror movies that simply ooze throwaway GGI graphics. I don't think anyone has ever bested Mario Bava's ability to create a multi-dimensional, sensual atmosphere of horror.
Bava's success with Black Sunday didn't only have an impact on Dario Argento. Horror films in the early 1960s were cheap trash drive-in fodder, with one sentence plot lines. The idea that you could make inexpensive but entertaining horror movies and make real money certainly wasn't lost on Roger Corman. Don't think for a moment that John Carpenter, George Romero, Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven, Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch and others too numerous to name didn't know who Mario Bava was.
This movie and its impact could fill a volume. Period.
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