I love this movie so much

Don't listen to the negative reviews

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This film has the distinction of being the first Italian horror film I ever watched, way back in the early nineties. My love of Euro-horror didn't take off until almost a decade later (with Lucio Fulci's The Beyond), but the opening scene of this film sure sticks in your mind.Asa (Steele) is about to be burned at the stake for being a witch, but just to make sure, the gathered monks brand her with a huge 'S' then fix a mask to her face, said mask being filled with nails, and when I say 'fix' I mean they get that thing on there using a huge sledgehammer, resulting in a lot of gore for a film made in nineteen sixty. Asa curses everyone, especially the family of chief prosecutor Prince Vadja, and all his family for generations etc. A storm puts out the flames about to burn Aja, so instead she's chucked in a tomb. Two hundred years later, two doctors force their carriage driver to take a shortcut through a creepy forest and as he's fixing the wheel that mysteriously fell off outside of a ruined tomb, the two doctors have a wander around. Here they find the tomb of Asa, but the older of two says that the cross fixed above her tomb keeps her at bay. The younger doctor is all 'whatever' and wanders off, and just then the older doctor is attacked by that most feared of Euro-horror monsters – the giant fake looking bat!Proving that he might have obtained his doctorate by fraud, our old guy takes out a gun and starts shooting, and not only ends up destroying the cross above the tomb, but also smashes the glass panel, cuts himself, and bleeds all over Asa's corpse. Didn't they have Hellraiser on video back in the nineteenth century? Now everyone's got a reanimated horror witch needing blood and setting her undead sidekick on the Vadja family.One of the Vadja family is Katia (also Steele), and right away the young doctor's eyeing her up. For some reason, the Vadja family keep two giant portraits in their huge, creepy castle, one of Asa, and one of her sidekick. Shouldn't they have thrown them away years ago? Maybe they kept it around so Katia's dad could point at it and scream in terror. Let's not go any further with the plot. Anybody interested at all in Mario Bava might as well start with this one. I wouldn't know enough to announce this the first Italian Gothic horror film, but with the secret passageways, mood and Barbara Steele wandering about, it was sure imitated a lot. Mario Bava's cinematography works very well here too in black and white. Just about every shot is composed meticulously, and he loads the film with a creepy atmosphere from start to finish. Additionally, this is well paced, especially for a Gothic horror, and further indication that Bava was well ahead of the pack in Italian genre films.

Centuries after being killed, a professor and his associates realize that they have inadvertently resurrected the bodies of a witch and her lover who are back to claim their revenge and forces the group to protect his girlfriend who is vital to her plans when they realize her connection to them.This is one of the creepiest films ever. One of it's biggest surprises is how well the film is photographed which is very beautifully filmed and angled for a film from this time. The inviting black & white colors draw on an even similar tone as they use the inherent creepiness it gives on viewers to meld together and create an atmosphere that decides to unnerve you with images that are creepier than anything else. The opening where the punishment ceremony is dolled out to the unfortunate victim complete with the torch-lit crowd and the appearance of the iconic mask being hammered into place over the screaming victim is legendary for its effectiveness, the discovery of the castle where they discover the tomb with the buried body being found is a chilling Gothic masterpiece of a sequence and the big sequence of the helpers' resurrection during a raging thunderstorm is a simply classic example which shows the moving and heaving Earth nearby and then the rocks part and a bony skeletal hand springs forth and hauls the body out of the ground. The black & white photography offers a different viewpoint as we are not sure what we are seeing as the film uses them to harness an atmosphere in such a way that only the early Universal films had managed to recreate. Even the scenes in their underground crypt are utterly effective and chilling even before the sequence of the coffin breaking open and seducing the assistant which is a great highlight. Leading into the stellar plot line about the historical connection is rather enjoyable with the film having her in a dual role which allows us to view the deadly aspects of the witch and the beauty of her human form makes for a stellar lead-in to the discovery of their connection. The painting that so intrigues her is a great inclusion as we have the important filmmaking technique of us knowing that they're related without being explicitly told is so rarely seen that it strikes a big chord during the reveal at the very end that the two of them are related as we are never told but yet have already known for a long time due to the painting. That, combined with the remarkable ending in which they're confronted by both forms and are about to kill the good one at the urging of the evil one, and just to make sure puts a cross to her head and it doesn't burn her head, is a chilling moment as we finally learn that the witch has been reborn is a great moment. True, the concept of a witch returning from the dead to claim vengeance is a pretty cliché story nowadays, and the special effects look incredibly dated with some rather sloppy work done to show the decay of human skin over the years but these are middling issues that don't really affect this one that much.Today's Rating-Unrated/PG-13: Violence.

Inadvertently brought back to life two centuries after she was crucified, a seventeenth century witch tries to avenge her death and possess the body of a near identical descendant in this Gothic horror film starring Barbara Steele. The film is directed by Mario Bava and making his solo feature film debut, Bava does well directing the material. His camera almost never sits still, the sets are appropriate eerie and the lighting choices are excellent, with many effective stark black and white images throughout. This is especially true of the unsettling opening scene with point-of-view camera-work as a mask with spikes on the inside is nailed into Steele's face. On the minus side, the opening is easily the most horrific and memorable sequence in the film, with the rest of the film gradually losing momentum. The film also features too many dialogue-heavy scenes for its own good and the plot is overly complex with vampires as well as witches thrown into the mix. Flawed though 'Black Sunday' may be as a narrative, it is never less than an absolute triumph of atmosphere and style, and the film is worth watching for the imagery (and spooky sound effects) alone. Bava even manages to make the smallest of moments atmospheric through subtle techniques like using a tracking shot from the back of a carriage. Some regard this as Bava's finest film achievement. That might not be true, but the reputation is understandable.

While this was not the first of Barbara Steele's films, it is the one that made her, thanks to the work of Mario Bava.This was Bava's first feature film. He has done some shorts and documentaries, and has finished some films others started, but this was his from start to finish.His career as a cinematographer served him well as he also did the cinematography on this film. It was that that really makes the film.The music and sound effects also add immensely to the atmosphere. A brilliant film. Steele was fantastic.