A Brilliant Conflict

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I was 10 when this film was made. I would have be impressed then, and scared too. Now, however, I gave up after 18 minutes and just let it play on as I did other things.Heavily atmospheric: Overdone sets, a lot of film noir lighting to cover costs. The director copies a couple of "Citizen Kane" moves and generally throws everything he's got at it. At least one gory scene (in the first 18 minutes) that would have been sensational in its time. Everything else is so-so. Still, an interesting film of its kind.

This has long been considered to be Mario Bava's best film and it's easy to see why. As a film, this stands as a milestone in the horror genre, helping to inspire countless others (THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH for example) which flooded the industry in the following years. In fact, I enjoyed a lot of them also, some even more so than this film, but there's no denying the status that this holds as a classic of the genre. The Italian director was renowned for his startling photography and his films were always incredibly atmospheric.The film is light years ahead of contemporary foreign production in its use of camera-work and sets to create an unnerving Gothic atmosphere and an almost fairy-tale like fantasy involving witches and the dead coming back to life. In a way the film is also very old fashioned, almost reminiscent of the Universal gothics, such as FRANKENSTEIN, but with extra gore thrown in. As Bava filmed the picture in black and white he was able to challenge the boundaries of screen taste, and images where nails are hammered into eyeballs are extremely graphic for the time. Remember this was 1960, eleven years before Bava again pushed the boundaries of taste in his classic giallo film A BAY OF BLOOD.The acting is also very high class for a production of this kind. John Richardson (star of Hammer's SHE) is a fairly typical hero for the time, with jutting jaw and a sense of wholesomeness about him. Checchi is also very believable in his portrayal of the doctor who becomes a murderous slave, as are the actors playing the priest and the male apparition. However, stealing the limelight was a young British girl called Barbara Steele, acting for the first time in a horror film. Steele is unforgettable, her face will stay with you a long time after seeing this film and she copes admirably with a dual role (not an easy task, especially when one of the characters is utterly good and the other utterly evil). Steele was successful in her role and afterwards starred in a high number of Gothic masterpieces like this one, although sadly she has turned her back on the genre in recent years.What else do we have? An unsettling score and a hundred and one Gothic images composed on screen. In this nether world where the dead walk among the living, we have haunted castles with secret passages, spooky figures wreathed in mist, deserted graveyards with overgrown weeds, a couple of characters opening up a coffin and finding a horrible creature inside, bats, and even wolves howling in the background. And, of course, the powerful witch-burning opening which was also highly influential at the time. As you may be able to tell I loved this film a lot, as it holds everything that I could possibly want from a horror movie. It's like a Hammer movie but even better in that it's spookier and more powerful. If you like your films Gothic and atmospheric then this occasionally quaint but still chilling item just may be for you.

Mario Bava's directing debut, a movie so rich in atmosphere it feels like you're in the movie and not just watching a movie. The atmosphere of the movie got me in its grip in the beginning of the first 10 seconds or so into the movie. Not many movies have that effect on me. It was an atmosphere rich in feeling unwanted and guilt that I spent the first 5 minutes or so of the movie to get over that feeling. Indeed, the scene where the vampire witch gets her face nailed with the Mask of Satan was a scene that set the whole tone for the rest of the movie. Incredibly enough the movie did not break that atmosphere until the end. Only a few movies keeps the same atmosphere from start to finish, Lawrence of Arabia, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barry Lyndon comes to mind. I am not sure if it was the acting, the cinematography, the script or the direction but definitely the movie was well handled with a great sense of sensibility. Things happening in the movie did not seem to be the result of coincidence, everything seemed to be pieced greatly together by Mario Bava.Director: Mario Bava, written by: Ennio De Concini and Mario Serandrei, plot: survive, genre: horror, year of release: 1960, themes: heresy, life and death, summary: a vampire witch gets back from the dead when a young doctor accidentally spills blood in her mouth, then the witch stalks a young woman who resembles her in order to become fully alive. Like written earlier the movie has a strong feeling of being unwanted and guilt, the feeling of being wrong, the feeling of being unaccepted. This is where I get the feeling one of the movies's main themes are heresy and it was the Christians who nailed the Mask of Satan on the witch's face for practicing witchcraft. Witches have mostly been portrayed as those inhuman monsters who deserve to die in the name of God. That is how the Christians saw them and had them portrayed because they were full of bigotry. That bigotry led to a lot of women were burned as witches even for the most trivial reasons. But anyway, the movie captures that mood of heresy pretty damn good. So good it felt like I was in the movie.Barbara Steele in her portrayal of the witch was both creepy and wicked. She definitely had a very strong on-screen presence but she also had a strong off-screen presence, making most scenes unsettling to watch because it felt like the power of the witch was big enough to extend beyond the tomb she was lying in. What is scariest about her is that she wants what the main characters have and what she misses: life. Now the thought of an already dead person coming back from the dead in order to take your life is scary in and on itself. Made creepier by Barbara Steele's acting. Anyway, the movie like written earlier does not break the mood it established which is quite astonishing. The movie keeps its atmosphere without succumbing to jump scares, which I respect a lot. Because horror is a mood, an atmosphere, a feeling. Which many modern horror movies have forgotten all about. The reliance on that mood in this movie is staggering even though there isn't any gore or violence. This is a movie I will keep respecting until the day I die. Awesome movie.

I Vampiri pleasantly surprised me so I really felt like watching some more of Mario Bava's movies. Actually "Black Sunday" or "The Mask of Satan" does resemble I Vampiri in a way. Again there is a woman wanting to restore the beauty she once had. I was mostly impressed by the atmosphere that this movie breaths greatly helped by the black/white cinematography and the constant fog outside when darkness falls. The castle was a stunning setting. I was also impressed by the horror effects like the piercing mask, the evil prince rising from his grave, the giant bat and the witch restoring her life from the body of the beautiful princess. Both of these roles are played by the amazing Barbara Steele. Hardly have I seen a woman with such a beautiful face and expressive eyes. Nice debut also from the young Germana Dominici who plays Sonya the innkeeper's daughter.