Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Movie Review: "Black Sunday" (1960)

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Movie: "Black Sunday"
Director: Mario Bava
Year: 1960
Rating: UR
Running Time: 1 hour, 27 minutes

A witch and her servant are executed and buried for dealing with the devil. Two centuries later,  a pair of doctors come across her tomb and accidentally break the cross that was keeping her soul from re-rising from the grave. She resurrects her servant from the grave and entrusts him to find her a host to re-inhabit so she can live again.

This is a kind of cool black and white Italian horror flick. It's pretty tame by today's standards, but for its time, was probably pretty gory or risque. There's a scene at the beginning in which a demon mask (the Italian title of the film) full of spikes is hammered onto the witches face...that scene is pretty awesome and memorable. Other than that, it's a cross between a vampire/witch hunt/Satan worshiper movie where the witch can turn victims into servants of hers through biting them. Barbara Steele does double-duty as the witch and the princess, who the witch wants to possess. It does run slow at some points but has a good sort of classic feel to it. I was pretty bored, but BigJ enjoyed it overall.

My Rating: 5.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 6.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 83%
Do we recommend this movie: I say meh, BigJ says sure, why not?

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