One Paragraph Movie Review: Black Sunday

Three hundred and fifth film: Black Sunday AKA The Mask of Satan AKA Revenge of the Vampire AKA La Maschera Del Demonio, a 1960 back-from-the-dead movie filmed in Italy, dubbed in English, and recut for different audiences depending on their taste for nipples and gore. Starring Barbara Steele, who should play every witch zombie vampire in every movie forever, it tells the tale of a Satan-worshipping evil woman who is brutally executed only to rise from the crypt two hundred years later — when a doctor drips blood on her in a freak grave-vandalising accident — to inhabit the body of her sweet young descendant. Hammy and cheesy, the rest of the pizza ingredients are used for gory special effects, like a fellow vampire’s terrible complexion, the heroine’s hollowed out corpse, and a squelchy early scene where a punishing barbed helmet is hammered onto the victim’s skull with a mallet. Cute. This is genuinely creepy right down to the scorpions crawling out of a dead lady’s eye sockets, and whether brandished in fear or nestled as a pendant between bosoms, crucifixes do some pretty heavy lifting in the evil-banishing storyline. Fun. Short. Looks incredible. Yep. Three and three-quarter secret passageways hidden behind a huge nude portrait out of five.