Movie Night on the Dork Forty: Black Sunday

As we do from time to time, tonight we've decided to show a movie out on the Dork Forty. The bedsheets are hangin' over the barn door, we got the etherweb pro-jector all hooked up, and the popcorn is fresh and hot. So come on over! Pull up a lawn chair! Grab a refreshin' beverage! Help yourself to one of our Evil Satan Robes-- I mean, uh... Snuggies! And settle on in to enjoy that delightful 1961 family classic, Black Sunday!

Click to embiggen

What's that? You ain't never heard of Black Sunday?! Well! It's one a' them Eye-talian movies, the di-rectorial debut of Mr. Mario Bava, and the first starrin' role for the beatimous B-Movie horror queen, Barbara Steele! The film was (very loosely) based on the story "Viy" by that famous Rooskie author Nikolai Gogol (read a book!), but was really Bava's tribute to the Universal Studios horror classics of the 1930s and 40s. It's atmospheric, and just too damn cool. The story's about a witch (Barbara Steele) who's executed in one of the most inventively vicious ways ever seen on film, but not before she lays a curse on her oppressors and vows to return as a vampire to seek her revenge. Which (spoiler alert!) she does.

Now, this movie was considered pretty shockin' by 1960 movie audiences. The American edit had three minutes of violence and gore edited out, and they still didn't let anybody under the age of 12 in to see it! And it was banned in England til 1968, when it was released as The Mask of Satan! And that English print seems to be the one we got our hands on via the etherweb tonight.

So, without further ado... here's Black Sunday, aka The Mask of Satan... after the jump!