Black Sunday - Lisa's Review

So another 'old' movie this week.  We're transported back to 1960 to a movie set eons earlier for this Italian Gothic Horror Fest that is Black Sunday.  The movies alternative name is 'The Mask of Satan', which as far as I'm concerned is a much better name having watched the movie.  Anyway....

The movie is set in Moldavia and sees a beautiful young witch, Asa be put to death courtesy of a spiked mask which is hammered into her beautiful face by a mahoosive sledgehammer.  Not before she places a curse on her brother (who ordered her murder) and all his (their) descendants.  We find out as the movie progresses that her lover, Javuto was also put to death along with her.

200 years later, we follow 2 doctors as they travel through Moldavia for a medical conference.  Shock, horror they experience a problem with the wheel on their carraige and get stuck in the middle of Moldavia, as it happens right beside the crypt where Asa is buried.  As you can imagine, they don't simply go and have a peek and exit again without any happenings.  The older of the 2 doctors, Kruvajan manages to break the glass on the coffin which enables him to remove the mask from the body (why you would want to do this is anyones guess).  We see that Asa is pretty well preserved apart from her eyeballs, which are full of spiders.  Kruvajan cuts his hand on the glass and the blood drips off a shard of glass after he has gone and onto Asas face.   Of course any horror fan amongst us will know what this means.

Asa is back for vengeance and is bringing her old boyfriend with her.  I won't go into any more detail as quite honestly the movie bored me to tears.  If you want to see it, to be honest what I've told you is probably enough.  Any more would be spoilerific (if that's possible in this movie).

Dull, preditable plot asides, this movie looked great.  It was very reminiscent of Hammer with its style and leading ladies makeup and couture.   I can imagine that in 1960 it was a smash hit, but in these days where we've seen pretty much everything there is to see, it is a bit staid and dull.   Is great use of light and beautiful scenes enough to keep you interested?  Sadly for me it isn't.

I certainly wouldn't stick an avoid on this as it had a quaint charm but it certainly was nowhere near to getting a recommended.