Weirdhouse Cinema: Black Sunday (1960)

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss Mario Bava’s “Black Sunday," a blood-chilling tale of witchcraft, punishment and revenge from beyond the grave, starring Barbara Steele and John Richardson.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
today we're going to be talking about Mario Bava's nineteen
sixty gothic horror classic Black Sunday. And I selected this
movie for this week because it is Halloween season. We're
in October, and I think if you're looking for a

(00:35):
very just core Halloween viewing experience and you've never seen
this one before, it's about as good as you can do.
Please take my recommendation and check out Black Sunday. It is,
I think, simultaneously, about as good and as close to
the bullseye of the gothic horror target as you can get.

(00:56):
It's got pretty much everything you could want in terms
of gothic horror texture, gothic horror themes, but it also
has added dashes of weirdness. It kind of cuts harder
and goes harder than most movies of this type. But
as far as the texture, you've got like searing, raging,
very hate oriented witchcraft. You know, the core witch in

(01:19):
the movie is constantly selling the virtues of hating. It's
got surprise vampires and the second act that I don't
think I really expected. There's sort of like one line
about vampires at the very beginning, but I don't know
when you get to them. I'm like, I didn't realize
this was going to be a vampire movie. It's got
undead paramours, you know, roaming the hills. It's got ruined castles,

(01:42):
roaring fires, secret passageways and trap doors, canopy beds, silver crucifixes,
some menacing Doperman's. I like that that detail in the prologue.
It's got the inquisition, hooded executioners, it has bat attacks,
it has moldy tombs and coffins with windows. It's got

(02:03):
beautiful deep black shadows, great high contrasts lighting and photography.
A lot of scenes with this, you know, kind of
frightening quality of being lit only by fading candlelight. This
unique concept, I would say, of a spiked bronze torture mask.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Rob.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Maybe we can get into if there's any really, really
any precedent for this. I'm sure it's come up before,
but it's imagine just an iron maiden, but only for
your face. And I have some notes on this, yeah,
and then also maybe one of the film's defining visual
features Barber Steel making laser eyes and giving monologues about

(02:44):
the exquisite pleasures of hate.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
That's right. It really does have it all. Funeral shadows,
black hooded figures, the whole nine yards. This is a
film that everyone loves, and we're not going to really
pull any hot takes here. We love it as well.
It is a mass piece. It holds up exceedingly well.
And you know, I'm it's one of those films that
it's kind of surprising that I took so long to

(03:08):
see it myself. I've kind of come to it late
in my viewing of Mario Bava films, because I when
I think of Bava, I think of his you know,
those bright technicolor pictures, the fan hasmogorical color schemes of
like Planet of the Vampires or Blood and Black Lace,

(03:28):
And so whenever I would be in the mood to
put on a Bava film, I often find I watched
them on airplanes, by the way, and I watched this
one on an airplane. I'll often just sort of navigate
to the color ones. I'm like, okay, how about Lisa
and the devil or whatever. We'll try this one out,
and I'll just skip over Black Sunday because I'm like, well,
that's black and white. I don't know if I want
to see a Mario Bava black and white film. But

(03:49):
to no one's you know, to no one's surprised, it
is absolutely gorgeous and black and white. And as we'll discuss,
like this was his intention as well, he intentionally chose
to make this film his first solo directorial credit in
this just splendid, deep black and white gothic format.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
I know exactly what you're talking about, because yes, also
I admire Bava as a filmmaker on mini levels. But
one of the first things I think about when I
think Mario Bava is like colored jell lights. I think
of or just strange, kind of non realistic but very
intuitively powerful uses uses of color in his films. You know,

(04:27):
his supernatural films often have this feeling where there is
magic in the air, and that magic is signaled by
the fact that the light is purple when there's no
realistic reason that it should be or you know, or
is green or some other strange color. So yeah, I
love those colors. And also you know the colors in
his sets, so the black and white energy is a

(04:48):
very different thing than I'm used to with Bava, but
it is so strong, And I like to be clear,
I like Black Sunday on pretty much every level. I
like the story, The script is very good, the the
acting is mostly pretty good. That you know, there's some
kind of creaky acting that you would get in a
lot of especially mid century dubbed horror films. Yeah, but

(05:10):
it's got very good editing, strong propulsive editing that drives
the story and heightens the horror and the tension. But
the best thing about this movie is the way that
it looks. The black and white cinematography is gorgeous. It's
got clever shot framing, beautiful use of shadows and light,
great set design and locations. And also I have to

(05:31):
single out a surprising, even shocking quality of gore for
a black and white film from nineteen sixty. And when
I say that, I don't mean that there's a lot
of gore. This is not a splatterfest. But what little
gore is there is just much more disturbing and visceral
than you would expect.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Absolutely, those moments of gore actually make you a little
thankful that it's not in color. There's more than enough
to disturb you in the black and line.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah. And also in terms of the film's visual appeal,
I would have to call out Barbara Steele's face as
an important part of the visual palette of the film.
I don't mean that just in the sense that like, oh,
she's a beautiful actress, which a lot of people do say,
but I mean that the faces she pulls for the
camera are like a distinct part of what this movie

(06:22):
is trying to do in terms of imagery. And it's
no accident. I think that most of the posters and
the artwork for the film are just like a sort
of almost caricature level drawing of Barbara Steele's face, making
those wide, horrifying eyes. She is a unique looking actress naturally,
but in this movie she makes faces that could peel garlic.

(06:44):
It's absolutely unreal.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah, Because, as we'll discuss it, as a dual role,
she plays a long ago executed witch who has now
in the course of the film, come back to life
in unnatural, undead form, and she also plays that character's
great granddaughter, so she gets to play enormy and then

(07:06):
she also gets to play you know, queen of the
Dead essentially, So it is in that role as this
undead witch that she really gets to just shine with
manic energy.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, and actually you can combine two of those things
I singled out in some of the film's most striking frames,
the gore and the barber steel eyes on. There's sometimes
where she's in witch mode and she's making the witch face,
but also she has holes in her face from this
torture mask and they look like barnacles. It's disgusting.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yes, yeah, we'll have a lot to say about this,
but yeah, it makes perfect sense that this film would
be absolutely stunning and beautiful in black and white. Take
Mario Baba's additional color palette away from him, and he
still is a master cinematographer, you know, and at this
point in his career we'll allude to, you know, he
had served as a cinematographer on numerous films. He was

(07:58):
he was not a newbie, even though this was his
first solo directorial effort. And for listeners to the show,
you have heard us talk about Mario Baba before. This
is actually our fifth Mario Baba selection for Weird House Cinema.
Following episodes on sixty three's Black Sabbath, which was essentially
a kind of a sequel, not really a sequel, but

(08:19):
a spiritual successor to this film in some ways.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
An anthology film in that.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Case, Yeah, Boris Karloff of course, sixty five's Planet of
the Vampires essentially like the granddaddy of sci fi horror,
sixty eight Danger Diabolic, an excellent super crime movie, and
sixty one's Hercules in the Haunted World, that rare horror
peplam film in which Hercules and a tragically dubbed Christopher

(08:46):
Lee go at it in the underworld.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
Oh yeah, I can sometimes forget Christopher Lee is in
that one. That is not one of Christopher Lee's greatest roles,
but the movie's pretty fun.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, And as of this recording, the only other director
whose work we featured five times on the show is
Roger Corman. So yeah, Bob and Corman are right there
at the top as of this recording. Maybe we'll do
a bunch of other films by another director and they'll
equal and surpass them, But we'll see. I will allude
to some other facts about this film's release. There are

(09:20):
some different versions of it, depending on where it was released.
But I was looking in some of my favorite film
volumes for a few tidbits about the movie, and Michael Weldon,
in one of his Psychotronic Film Guides, points out that
when the film premiered in Cleveland at the Allen Theater,
I believe this would have been This would have been
the AIP the American International Pictures release. As a promotionary tactic,

(09:44):
they handed out cards to the patrons that featured a
protective chant. I guess, so when the film gets too scary,
you can just look down at your chant card and
start reciting it in order to protect you from the
evils on the screen.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Oh, it's like the Tingler. It's like you have to
scream in the theater to protect yourself from the Tingler
getting you. But in this case there are words you
got to yeah, or not memorized. You can read off
the cards.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, I mean, if you really are concerned, you can
memorize it. But yeah, I wish, we wish we did
more things like this going to the There are all
these bells and whistles with going to the theater, and
theaters are doing, you know, all sorts of things to
keep theaters going as they should. I think it's an
important part of of the the film viewing experience. But
we need we need more gimmicks like this. We need

(10:29):
protective amulets, we need you know, death clauses. I don't know,
all the bells.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
And whistles, smellovision, Yeah, bring back smell vision. Okay. Were
you able to find any good trailer audio for this one?

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, there's a little bit here. This is a this
is a US trailer. I guess this is the A
I P trailer. Uh so, let's hear a little bit
from this. It does have some nice old fashioned narration.
Maybe we won't listen to the whole thing, we'll just
listen to a little bit.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
Anguish and terror are powerful words, but more than words,
the chill language of living images shows that The Mask
of Satan is a picture of unparalleled emotion, but it
hards a tale of a strange, dark fascination set in
a spine chilling atmosphere of fear.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Fear.

Speaker 4 (11:30):
It's death.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
I've just seen death, suspense in the unexpected, combined to
create an impression beyond any imagination, of an indescribable fantasy,
coupled with an unmeasurable reality.

Speaker 4 (11:52):
Ah, but it's impossible. Father, he moved, even spoke to me,

(12:18):
then he ran away.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Sometimes Satan, with his capacity for doing evil, even plays
tricks with the dead.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
All right, So if you would like to jump out
and watch Black Sunday for the first time, or just
to refresh yourself before continuing on with this episode, or
you want to look up look it up after listening
to the whole episode, that's also okay. Well, I think
the most important Well, there are two things that are
important to realize about it. First of all, it is
the nineteen sixty Black Sunday film you want to defind,

(12:57):
not the Black Sunday film about the blimp. That's a
different picture entirely and has nothing to do with vampire's
or satanic worship.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
I've never seen that with like a crime thriller?

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (13:08):
John Frankenheimer.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
I know it's what is based on Thomas Harris book,
but it's not one of the Thomas Harris books that
I ever read. Maybe Thomas Harris was a co author
on that one. I'm a little foggy on it, but
it does not contain witches. So that's your first step.
Make sure you're watching the right Black Sunday. And then
on top of that, there have been a few different releases.
There's that American International Pictures cut of the film that

(13:32):
was originally released in the US, and I believe that
one cut down eighty seven minutes of screen time to
eighty three, cutting out a little bit of gore, a
little bit of sexuality, also adding in different dubbing and
a different score. More details on that in a minute.
It was released as The Mask of Satan, which I
think is actually the translation of the original Italian title,

(13:56):
and there have been at least two other versions released
as well, including a UK Revenge of the Vampire release.
Not a good title, I'm gonna go ahead and say,
but yeah, a lot of American viewers grew up with
that AIP version and it has an important place in
their heart. But I think the more widely available version
right now, especially via streaming, is an eighty seven minute

(14:19):
cut restored from the original camera negative, and I believe
this is the version with the original Italian score and
the original English audio that was recorded in Rome, as
opposed to the AIP audio. But going back and forth
on some of these details, I was a little bit
confused about which version I saw and heard, because I

(14:42):
don't know. It's like they as we'll discuss, there are
these two distinct scores, but it's not like a legend
situation where one is Tangerine Dream and one isn't, and
therefore you can hear a startling difference between the two.
It's perhaps more of a subtle difference between the two score,
but one you know, certainly more you can see where

(15:03):
less Baxter's score was maybe a little more palpable for
the American audience. But the eighty seven minute version that
I watched, I believe this is also the version is
sometimes called the international version, the one that's currently widely
available from Shout Screen Factory via their Black Sunday Collector's edition,
also their Mario Bava Collection box set, and outside the US.

(15:26):
I think Aro has also put out a nice blu
ray of this as well. But just look for the
eighty seven minutes. I think if you get the eighty
seven minute version, you're going to get all the good stuff.
You're going to get the right amount of gore, and
you're going to get as far as the sexuality, it's
like there's a single kiss in the film that I
believe was cut out that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
It's not the sexiest film in.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
History, no, but it was maybe a little too sexy
for nineteen sixties America.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Regarding the score, I actually meant to check out the
Less Baxter score to make sure that wasn't the one
that I heard. I don't think it was, but I'm
intra in that from what I've read, the Less Baxter
score is actually considered more bombastic and kind of like
high energy, and the Italian score is thought to be
more subtle.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, that's my understanding as well. And interestingly enough, it's
the exact same individuals involved with the score of sixty
three's Black Sabbath. So the original score is by Italian
jazz band leader Roberto Nicolosi, who lived nineteen fourteen through
nineteen eighty nine, and then it's Less Baxter, who lived
on the American version twenty two through ninety six, the

(16:33):
King of Exotica and also later a dabbler in minimal
electronic synth scoring. We have discussed him multiple times in
the show before I've listened. I tried to compare a
little bit, and yeah, I did get a sense that
Baxter's score is a little bit more brassy, you know,
and a little bit more in your face. But also,
you know, I don't know, I'm I think I wouldn't

(16:57):
really have paid that much attention. I feel like either
score is probably pretty good.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
All right, we talked about the connections.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, yeah, I guess we did skip ahead and went
ahead and talked about the music. So we'll come back
to the top and talk just a little bit about
Mario Bava, the director, the cinematographer on this one. He
lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen eighty. We've discussed him before,
legendary Italian director with an unmistakable just obsessive, fadantasmagorical emphasis

(17:33):
on visual composition. Even already you were talking about this
is a film in which the casket has a window
in it. Yes, And I think that's such a great
Mario Bava touch, because I feel like any film that
I see of his, there is a fascination with, or
even an obsession with portals and windows and doors, seeing

(17:55):
things through other things, through other frames. Yes, yeah, yeah,
so yeah, you see a lot of that in his work.
This is a guy who took it all very seriously.
So he'd worked as a cinematographer, special effects artist and
co director for decades at this point, but again, this
was his first solo directorial credit in nineteen sixty He
previously worked on several films by Italian production company Galatea,

(18:20):
and this was his chance to make a film aimed
at the foreign market, a gothic horror film patterned on
the recent success of Terrence Fisher's Dracula in nineteen fifty eight.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Oh interesting, So this is kind of a response to
early Hammer exactly.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, early, yeah. Those early Hammer films were making a
lot of money, and so the studios like, let's do it,
let's get in on this action.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Baba, turn it up, turn up, yeah, turn it up
to eleven.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah. Yeah. So Baba got to pick the story, and
he made his choice, reportedly based on a scary bedtime
story that he had read to his own children, This
being v by Nikolai Gogel, which had already been adapted
for film as early as nineteen oh nine in What
Was I'm to Understand, the first Russian horror film, a

(19:07):
short silent picture, and would also later be adapted more
notably in nineteen sixty seven in a film of the
same name, Black Sunday, however, is ultimately only loosely based
on that Gogle story. Bava, apparently, as I alluded to,
already had the chance to film this one in technicolor,
but pushed for black and white. He said, you know,

(19:28):
this is going to be the better fit. This is
going to fit the mood. This is Gothic horr. It
needs to be black and white.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
I think it's a good choice.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah. He also has apparently he did some uncredited work
on the screenplay. He also did paintings and matte paintings
and special effects for the picture, just as is often
the case, hyper involved in the visuals. And I should
also point out that Mario Bava was the son of
cinematographer and special effects artist Eugeniobava, who lived eighteen eighty

(19:55):
six through nineteen sixty six, who is credited on this
film as sculptor of masks and faces.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Oh, I wonder if that includes the titular in some versions,
mask of Satan.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
That is I assume that has to be the case. Yeah,
all right. There are some additional screenplay play credits, and
I'm going to focus on the ones that are definitely credited. Here.
We have screenplay credit to Eneo di Concini, who lived
nineteen twenty three through two thousand and eight Italian writer,

(20:27):
director and producer, whose other scripts include nineteen sixty three's
Divorce Italian Style, which earned him and his co writers
the nineteen sixty three Oscar for Best Writing Story and
Screenplay written directly for the screen. Other scripts include fifty
six is War in Peace, sixty three's The Girl who
Knew Too Much, sixty nine is The Red Tense, seventy
six is Salon Kitty, and seventy eight's Just a Jigglow

(20:48):
that's the David Bowie film, among many others.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
I was about to say that I thought The Girl
who Knew Too Much was another Mario Bava film that
I'd seen more of, a Jallo style film, also in
black and white. But then I was like, wait a minute,
or am I confusing that with another movie called The
Evil Eye. I guess I was, and I wasn't, because
they're different cuts of the same movie known by different titles.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Oh man, yeah, I haven't seen this one. This one
is John Saxon in it.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah. John Saxon plays an Italian hunk, so the main
character in it is an American tourist played by Letitia
Ramon who she's in Rome and she witnesses a murderer
I think, and then believes that somebody's coming after her,
so she's running around Rome trying to do murder investigation.

(21:35):
I don't know, It's been a little while since I've
seen it, so I forgot some of the details. But
John Saxon is the local honk who she ends up
having a romance with.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
I need to see that one. I mean, I have
to put that one on the list. Let's see another
screenplay credit goes to Mario Serre, who have nineteen oh
seven through nineteen sixty six, a film editor who worked
with Bava on several films I believe, including this one
and the excellent nineteen sixty four Blood and Black Lace.
But he was also an occasional writer. And then on

(22:05):
top of that, we have George Higgins nineteen seventeen through
two thousand and five credited with English dialogue. I'm a
little now, I have to stress, I'm a little uncertain
of we're dealing with the original English dub recorded in
Rome or the AIP dub at any rate. He was
an American writer, actor, and voice dubber so yeah. Of note,

(22:26):
it's my understanding that everyone is dubbed here, even the
English language actors in the English language dub.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Feels that way, all the dialogue feels dubbed. Yeah, and
you know this as was the custom at the end,
as was the custom, yeah, regarding films that were presented
with a you know, international cast for international release. But
also even as we've.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Discussed before, like you'll have Spanish films for a Spanish
audience and everybody's dubbed anyway, because that's just how you
did it. Yeah, all right, let's get into the cast here.
I was starting with Barber Steele. We've already been talking
about her. Born nineteen thirty seven, and as of this
recording still with us, has the dual role here, playing
Princess Oza Vida and Katia Vida again dual role. Barbara

(23:10):
Steele is an English actress who, yeah, can't help but
be best remembered for this film. It was only her
ninth screen credit, occurring during just the first few years
of her film career, but it helped to cement her
status as one of the original screen queens and ultimately
a familiar face in Gothic horror for decades. Subsequent films

(23:30):
include some big ones here sixty ones, The Pit and
the Pendulum. This is a Corman price po film. We
haven't talked about this one yet, but we may well
get to it here on Weird House Cinema in the future.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
I believe she plays a deceased character in this who's
like a phantom, a spectral kind of character who appears
in visions.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, yeah, I mean she you know, she created a
type for herself here. Yeah, let's see. There's also sixty
two's The Horrible Doctor Hitchcock. Oh, and then there's sixty
threes eight and a half. That's the Fellini film, sixty
threes The Ghost, sixty four's Castle of Blood.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
I just watched that one for the first time a
few weeks ago. Yeah, that one also has a lot
going for it. It's a very very strong black and
white Gothic cinematography, you know, all the same kind of stuff,
ruined castles, candelabras, that sort of thing. That one, I
will offer a bit of criticism in that it truly
is quite slow moving. There are some parts where it's like,

(24:31):
you know, even I, who really I enjoy bathing in
this kind of texture, but like you are walking too
slow as you approach the coffin. You could be moving faster.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
Let's see a few other titles include sixty four is
The Long Hair of Death, sixty fives Terror Creatures from
the Grave, sixty six's She Beast, sixty eight's The Crimson Cult,
and then later on in your career, we have Voked
nineteen seventy five Shivers, the David Cronenberg film, seventy eight's Piranha,
that's the Jodante film about killer Fish. And then very

(25:04):
late in her career here she did a voice acting
role in the twenty twenty Castlevania series. Oh. I only
watched a little of that, but it has a great
voice cast. For sure.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
I did not even know that existed. But I'm glad
if somebody was making a Castlevania adaptation and their voice casting,
it's like, let's call it Barbara Steel.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, It's like that gets the six budget, let's do it. Yeah. Yeah.
Her last IMDb credit was twenty twenty three. TV credits
from throughout her career include Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Original
Night Gallery, and the nineteen nineties Dark Shadows series.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
So, like you said, Rob she's got a dual role here.
She's playing both a good character and a bad character,
the main villain of the film and the young princess
who's sort of the target or the victim who is
being being attacked attacked for her life force by this ancestor.
And she's good in both roles. But she I think

(26:01):
especially excels when playing the witch. It's like it's I
said this earlier, but it is unreal the kind of evil,
malevolent faces that she manages to make for the camera here.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah, she just does a terrific job here, great, haunting, intense,
dual performance. So she's undeniably the star. But if we
have a protagonist, really, I guess it is doctor Andre
gorbec Our. This is our handsome doctor character who is
going to be venturing into the world of the supernatural

(26:36):
and hopefully surviving it.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
He's the love interest. Yeah, yeah, he's the handsome guy
who shows up in town to you know, like she
needs a hunk in her life, and here he is.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yes, played by John Richardson, who lived nineteen thirty four
through twenty twenty one English leading man actor, best known
for such films as sixty five. She nineteen fifty six
is one million Years BC. That's a caveman movie, and
you you may recognize him more from this in the
posters and publicity shots for this where he has the

(27:06):
big shaggy hair and the big full beard. Let's see
nineteen seventies On a clear day, you can see Forever
and nineteen seventy seven's War of the Planets. He also
had a late career appearance as the architect in the
nineteen eighty nine Italian horror film The Church.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Oh is that the one by Suave?

Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah? Yeah, Oh, that's one that I have a lot
of fondness for, but I haven't seen in a while.
But it very much at the time felt like a
sort of horror, a very well done horrshlock cinema response
to the Name of the Rose features some of the
same actors.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Oh, I'd almost say that I hadn't thought of it
till now, But that's a candidate for next week.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Oh okay. So Richardson worked quite a bit in Italian
genre cinema. Two other films of note includes seventy three's
Torso and seventy five's Eyeball. I guess all the rest
of the body parts He didn't get around, but he
got Torso and eyeball out there.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, and he lean the motion picture.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
It's clean. He was reportedly up for the Bond role
that ultimately went to George Lazenby for On Her Majesty's
Secret Service in nineteen sixty nine. So he's that sort
of actor, you know, handsome British leading man sort and
so in this film. Yeah, predictably, you know, he is
a solid leading man in this film. He's not he
doesn't do anything amazingly out of the ordinary, but he

(28:28):
does a really good job at what he does.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah. I mentioned earlier that I think the acting in
this movie is mostly good. I would say if there
is a weak link, I think it's in some of
the dialogue delivery by this guy, though I actually I
don't know if that's actually John Richardson. I think that
would be whoever's dubbing him sometimes has some kind of
dull line deliveries that. Yeah, I don't know what Richardson

(28:53):
himself actually actually sounded like, but his visual presence on
screen is good.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
I'll also note that I have it was a little
surreal watching this guy. I'm not gonna be so vain
as to say that I look really all that much
like classically handsome British actor John Richardson, but at certain angles,
like watching this on the airplane, I was thrown off
a little bit because he would he would look enough
like me, at least in some profile shots that I

(29:18):
kind of got that uncanny looking at myself in photos
feeling oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, so you told me this, and I wouldn't have
caught that myself just watching the film, but after you
said it, I could see it. I was like, oh, yeah,
there's rob.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah yeah, but in like in a weird way, like
that's not actually me and I'm not supposed to be
in the horror movie. So it probably added like an
extra like personal creep factor to the viewing of the film.
But it only applies to people who look more or
less like like me.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
So there you go.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Let's let's move on to the rest of the cast.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Though.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
We also have the character of Krubyon. Professor Krubion. This
one I know how to pronounce because they say this
name so many times in the picture. Everyone's looking for
Crubian and they are calling for him through ruins, through castles,
out in the field, you name it.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
He gets name checked a lot, yes.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
And he is played by the Italian actor Andrea Kecki
who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen seventy four. Italian Award
winning actor who was pretty prolific, yet this is one
of only two horror films he ever did, the other
being the bizarre sounding nineteen sixty four War of the
Zombies that seems to have Roman centurions battling the undead,

(30:39):
a rare additional example of horror peplam, but one that's
not as celebrated as Baba's Hercules in The Haunted World.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Sounds more like a movie that would have been made
in the past decade. Yeah, from nineteen sixty four.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of crazy to think that this
here we have an early example of a zombie film
that feels like a more recent like you know, zombie
over exposure pictures.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
So fascinating, Maybe not the past ticket actually, yeah, it
sounds like a movie that came directed to DVD in
twenty fourteen.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly where it would be. All right,
let's look at other cast members here. Let's see. Oh
we have we have Prince Vida, played by Ivo Gharani
who lived nineteen twenty four through twenty fifteen Italian actor
whose other credits include fifty eighth, The Day This Guy Exploded,
nineteen sixties, adam Age Vampire seventy seven, Holocaust two thousand

(31:33):
and the Year two thousand, zor the Vampire, as well
as numerous Italian historical dramas that I'm sure are much
better than the schlock that caught my eye.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, this guy's good and that he's you know, he's
an actor with I would say, physically robust presence, Like
he looks like somebody who's like strong and healthy, but
he manages through his performance to convey that he is
shriveled and weakened by the way that he has been
haunted by the knowledge of this curse in his family.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, definitely a haunted figure, but not as haunted in
another way as the next character, and that is Igor Javuch.
This is our Satanic warlock and ultimately I guess kind
of like vampire underling of our central vampire princess.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Yes, the lover and the servant of the witch Asavaida.
So he is interesting in rob I wonder if you
know what I mean. In some shots he goes in
within the same shot from looking a little bit funny
to looking scary. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he like his

(32:46):
look is not naturally menacing. He almost has a kind
of like he could be a comic actor with the
mustache and the haircut and stuff. But he, like the
stare goes on a little bit too long, and then
it hardens, and then he moves towards you and it
has this extra chilling effect for that.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
Yeah, it's ultimately a great presence and you're like, yeah,
of course this guy fell into worshiping the devil. But
played here by Ortruro Dominici, who lived nineteen sixteen through
nineteen ninety two, Italian actor who worked in numerous Peplam films,
as well as sixty fourth Castle of Blood. I don't
know if you remember him from Castle of Blood or not.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
I don't remember who he was in that.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah, he's also in fifty nine's Caltiki The Immortal Monster.
This is the black and white Italian Mayan blob movie
that Mario Bava served as cinematographer on and also co directed.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
I haven't seen that one.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
It's been on my list because it's supposed to be
interest I mean, how can you not be interested? In
a black and white blob movie with like Mayan elements
involved in it, that is co directed by Mario Pava.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, has my attention?

Speaker 2 (33:55):
All right, we have another character of note, and that's
Constantine Vaida, and he has Enrico Oliveri. He lived nineteen
thirty nine through twenty twenty two, Italian actor who did
it a little more than a dozen pictures, and this
was seemingly his only horror film and also one of
his last. I'm to understand he retired from acting and
became an accountant. Oh okay, Yeah, sometimes that's as boring

(34:18):
and as every day as the story needs to be.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Okay, are you ready to talk about the plot?

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Let's jump into Let's jump into the fire.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
That's right. We open on a fire, in fact, a
big roasting fire in a brazier in the center of
a dark field with dead trees all around, and the
air is full of smoke. That there is a menacing
figure in a black executioner's hood, a shirtless and muscle
bound with leather bracers on his wrists, and he's turning

(34:55):
an iron brand in the fire pit. And then we
get voiceover. Narration says in the seventeenth century, Satan was
abroad on the earth, and great was the wrath against
those monstrous beings thirsty for human blood, to whom tradition
has given the name of vampires. No appeal for pity

(35:17):
or mercy availed.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
All right, there you go, vampires from the good go.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, And I think that's talking about the punishers of
vampires that know no pity or mercy availed. If you
made it like have mercy on the vampires, it's like,
no nothing doing, because it goes without saying that. You know,
there's no mercy from the vampires themselves.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Right right. It would be a little more complicated if that.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Were the fact. So here the camera pans over and
we see more hooded muscle boys looking on, and then
more figures lined up behind the branches of these dead trees.
These guys are wearing black robes from head to toe.
Their faces are shrouded in black with little slits over
their eyes to look out, and they were holding toes,

(36:01):
and the narration continues. Brothers did not hesitate to accuse brothers,
and fathers accused sons in the frantic attempt to purify
the earth of that horrible race of blood devouring assassins,
and now we see the whole scene in frame. The
hooded inquisitors, they stand in a great mass in the

(36:22):
field between the bare trees. They're holding up torches in
the light, and before them are two prisoners, one man
and one woman, bound to large wooden pillars, and the
narrator says, before putting them to death, human justice anticipated
divine judgment by burning into the flesh of those damned

(36:43):
ones the brand of Satan. And then here we see
the executioner approach the woman with the iron that he
had been turning in the fire. He holds it up
away from his body and then he plunges it against
the flesh of the woman's back, and we get a
close up of the scar. And I was thinking, what's
it going to be? Is it gonna be a pentagram

(37:03):
and inverted cross? It is a big letter s I
think for Satan, like property of Satan.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Well, you know, maybe that was just a brand they
already had ready to go. They didn't really have time
in their persecution of devil worshippers to really create a
brand new brand, and then they had to stick to it.
You know, you want it to be consistent across your brandings.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Nasty effect too.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Oh yeah, this looks super gross. This is definitely the
scene where I was thankful for the black and white.
Did not need to see this in a thousand colors.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah. So, after the branding, the woman who's tied to
the pillar, she turns to look at her captors and
it's Barbara Steel. She is pale, with long dark hair
and these wide, intense eyes. And one of the inquisitors says, Asa,
daughter of the House of Vida, this High Court of
the Inquisition of Moldavia has declared you guilty. I, the

(37:57):
second born son of Prince Vida, as grand and Quisitor,
do condemn you, and as your brother, I repudiate you.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Too.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Many evil deeds have you done to satisfy your monstrous
love for that surf of the devil igor Yavooditch. So,
you know, I'm almost getting a little feeling of horror
rizes from the tomb about this a you know, a
cursed witch and warlock power couple who are being sentenced

(38:26):
to death by the Inquisition hundreds of years ago because
not only did they do things for Satan, they did
things for Satan for each other. You know, it's like
love that made them drink blood.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
You know. I would imagine that this film was one
of the key influences on Paul Nashi for horror rises
from the Tomb. There's another example we'll get to here
in a minute where you can see a clear connection
between Black Sunday and the Gothic imagination of Paul Nashi.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Totally. Yeah. I don't know if it's the same one
you have in mind. I do, but I was thinking
of one as well. But anyway, so here we see
the other prisoner, Yavudich, the one they just talked about.
This is the man condemned with her. He's tied to
a pillory and some kind of hideous bronze mask with
a large nose, a grotesque mouth with a forked tongue,

(39:17):
and a big fin running down from the forehead down
the middle of the fight face to the nose. I
assume this is one of the masks made by Mario
Baba's dad.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, yeah, And it looks incredible, you know, definitely in
its design nearors a lot of the European devil masks,
and also some of the devil masks that you would
see in parts of Central and South America that were
influenced by European traditions.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, so the brother says, may God have pity on
your soul in this your final hour, cover her face
with the mask of Satan. And what's this, Well, she's
about to get her own metal mask, just like her accomplice.
And so we see another mask like the first. It's
lying in the dead grass, and the inquisitor says, nail

(40:07):
it down. May the cleansing flames reduce her foul body
to ashes, so that the wind will obliterate all trace
of her existence. Then we see an executioner lift the
mask up from the grass and we see inside the mask,
the inside face of it, and it is an Iron
Maiden mask. So the inside of the mask is all

(40:30):
pointy nails turned toward the face.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yeah, yeah, ghastly yes, And I was looking into this
a little bit. This mask was seemingly very much an
invention of Mario Baba's or the Bava's father and son
in general, though clearly based on first of all, the
you know Iron Maiden fictions I think we've discussed in
the show before. The Iron Maiden is one of those

(40:53):
artifacts that did not originally actually seem to exist as
a physical torture or execution device, though that may have
changed much later in its history as people were inspired
by its design. You do have various face shackles from
throughout the history of human torture and punishment. You know there,

(41:15):
you know, sometimes you know, some sort of thing that
was locked on the head to to mock the individual. Yeah, scolds,
bridles and the like. And then there's also a bit
of the man in the iron mask to this side. Imagine.
I mean, that's a pretty big literary footprint to ignore.
But what a creation. Yes, this mask is just incredible,
and the way it's presented, I mean, this whole opening

(41:37):
sequence is just incredible. Like there's you know, a lot
of these older films that we watch, you can you
can easily imagine people walking out during the opening sequence
because sometimes they can take it takes a little while
to get going. But this one is just off to
the races right away, and it's just brutal in its execution,
I mean literal excuse.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, So the executioner comes up to the witch, to
Barber Steele, and he's holding the mask outstretched to ASA's
face and we see from her perspective as like the
mask is sort of lowered down over the camera and ooh,
it's it's shocking.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, absolutely terrifying sequence here is that mask is is
lowered into place, and we the viewer are in the
are experiencing it. We have the POV shot of the
of the spiked mask of Satan closing over us. And
I can only assume that this sequence helped inform a
key moment in Revenge of the Sith. There's the sequence

(42:34):
towards the end of that where the mask of Darth
Vader is closed over Anakin's face for the first time,
and and it's it's a terrifying visual in Revenge of
the Sith. I think it's often overlooked in the evaluation
of the film's final moment. So there's a lot of
a lot of fun is made of the no moment.
You know, once he is fully Darth Vader, but that

(42:55):
moment where the Vader mask is being lowered onto his
face and we see through Anakin's eyes and we see
his world change as it comes to encase him. I
think it's a really haunting moment, and I think it
had to have been inspired by this moment in Black
Sunday that.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Seems quite likely to me strange connection. You mentioned the
no from Revenge of the Sith. The very next thing,
barbar Steele says when they lower the mask over her
face as she screams no.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
I mean, that's the thing about the whole no thing
is like people scream no a lot in films, certainly
the films I end up saying. And sometimes it works,
sometimes it doesn't, And sometimes it's hard to decide exactly
why it works and why it doesn't work, you know.
I guess it comes down to the nuances of performance
and how everything's shot. But also sometimes it just seems

(43:44):
to be like a case of yeah, it worked there,
I buy it. In other cases and I'm like, oh,
it feels a little hokey.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
So in this case, after shouting no, Barbara Steele says
to her brother Griabi, that's his name. It is I
who repudiate you, and in the name of Satan, I
place a curse upon you. Go ahead, tie me down
to the steak, but you will never escape my hunger,
nor that of Satan. And then lightning strikes and we

(44:13):
hear her say, the unchained elements of the powers of
Darkness are lying in ambush. Beware Griabi. My revenge will
strike down you and your accursed house, and in the
blood of your sons and the sons of their sons,
I will continue to live immortal. They shall restore to
me the life that you rob from me. I shall

(44:33):
return to torment and destroy throughout the night of time.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
It's quite a curse.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
Yeah. So, as she's saying this last part, the executioners fix.
They fixed the spiked mask against her face and then,
oh my god, the big guy executioner he approaches with
a huge wooden mallet and he draws back and on
the command of the inquisitor, he hammers the mask.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Oh my god, this is just absolutely brutal. And this
is another moment where the gore is not over the
top but just highly effective.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Yeah. So we hear the princess scream and then dark
blood trickles out from every hole in the face of
the mask, and the music swells and we see the
title the Mask of Satan, though now, of course the
movie is more often known as Black Sunday.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Again, an incredible sequence here, and it would go on
to influence various other weird execution masks in horror cinema.
To go back to Paul Nashy, there's the mask of
Shame that his Voldemar Doninski wears in nineteen eighties Night
of the Werewolf as part of his execution.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Yeah, and another one, ooh, this is I think another
clear connection. We have the powerful warlock Nix in Clive
Barker's nineteen ninety five film Lord of Illusions, a great
performance by Daniel von Bargin as the Warlock. That mask
can be the Knicks mask seems especially based on the

(46:02):
Mask of Satan, because the warlock in that film, once
he's freed of it, he bears the scars, like intense
scarification from where the mask had been locked in place.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
I've actually never seen Lord of Illusions.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Oh, it's been a long time since I've seen it,
but I remember it having some great elements to it.
It's a tremendous undead warlock character, for sure. I was
also reading It's been a long time since I've seen
this film either. But Tim Burton's sweepy Hollow from nineteen
ninety nine begins with a sequence that features not a

(46:39):
mask of Satan but an actual Iron Maiden, and I
believe in interviews Tim Burton has pointed directly to Black
Sunday as an inspiration on that.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Sequence, That wouldn't surprise me.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, so again, amazing opening already. I mean, it would
be difficult to screw this up, and as we all know,
Mario Obava is not going to screw up Sunday. It
is a classic. It is often considered the grandfather of
Italian horror cinema.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah, I still remember actually the first time I saw
this movie, how strong of an effect the opening had
on me. It's it's great. So, of course, after this
we get the credits, and then after the credits play,
we sort of pick up where we left off. Asa
and Yavoudich are dead, but just when the inquisitors are
setting about to burn their bodies with the purifying flame

(47:26):
that they talked about, a rainstorm breaks out, as if
by command of the devil, and it quenches all of
their fires. So instead, the body of Yavoodich is buried
in the graveyard, but covered in unconsecrated earth, in the
place reserved for murderers. So I like that this graveyard
has an exclusive murderers when you got to bury him somewhere. Yeah,

(47:49):
and then Asa is buried in her family tomb and
like the family's chapel along with her ancestors.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Because again her burning it was rained out, and they're like, well,
what are we going to do? I thought we were
gonna have her burn and her ashes are you know,
distributed by the winds, and they're like, well, it's raining,
let's just bury.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
This is like this in this, like that story of
Saint Switin, Like they were going to move the body,
but then it just kept raining and the like must
be magic. Yeah, yeah, the rain has spoken, so uh,
text tells us it is now two centuries later. I
think we're going from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
Yeah, though, as is often the case in Gothic Gara films,
it's not like you're going to really see that much
of the difference, except there's no longer like an active
inquisition press. Yeah, that's about the main difference.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
So the action reopens with a horse drawn carriage clattering
through a crossroads. This is in the countryside of Moldavia,
which would be I believe, in modern day Romaine. The
passengers are two medical doctors. The elder is doctor Choma
Krubaion and his younger assistant, doctor Andre gora Beck. They

(48:59):
are travel in cross country to make their way to
a medical conference in Moscow. Goro Bec says that if
they stop at the nearest town, a place called Mr. Garad, quote,
we'll never be able to reach Moscow by evening. I
was like, what, I don't know if they have some
hidden rockets on that carriage. But I did a little math.
This has got to be a roughly two thousand kilometer

(49:22):
journey or more. They're not going to make Moscow by evening.
But either way, the older doctor Krubayon is not concerned
with reaching Moscow. He wants to stay the night at
the inn in Mr. Garod, where they have good smoked salmon,
and he says they have excellent vodka.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
Yeah, they're very excited for this vodka. And later on,
later on, we will see that the vodka here is
served in like pictures at the table, like capwater is
served at restaurants today.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
That look like water pitchers. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Yeah, like there's just that much vodka. It's just there's
like a stream of it here.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
I guess. So the difference between them, the young doctor Gorbek,
he's handsome, energetic and earnest. He's keen to learn things
at the conference that they're going to go to. He's
gonna make himself a good physician. And then the older
doctor crew Bion is a bit more seasoned. He's kindly
but with a cynical sense of humor. He's like, you know,

(50:20):
don't put too much salt in you know what you
hear at medical conferences. I don't know, why are they
going to a like a half scam medical conference. Crewbyon
at one point calls out to their coachman to ask
him to take a short cut through the woods. I
guess he wants to get to that vodka faster, and
the coachman tries to argue that he can't do that

(50:41):
because the road through the forest has fallen into disrepair.
It's too dangerous, and the doctor is like, nah, you're
just afraid of the witch. Here's a gold coin to
motivate you. And it turns out, yes, the coachman is afraid,
but you know the gold coin. He wants that, so
reluctantly he takes the dark road through the woods. At
one point, he talks about how he fought against Napoleon

(51:04):
when he invaded He says, I'd rather come face to
face with a cursed frenchman than meet a ghost. So
the woods are full of darkness and mist and yowling
cackling wolves, bassoon music, and trees that reach out and
try to choke your coachman, or so he claims, as
he's like tucking the vodka bottle back into his vest.

(51:25):
And eventually, as they're going through these haunted woods, there
is a carriage wreck. The wheel comes off, the driver
gets out to repair it, and as he does so,
the two doctors go for a walk and end up
investigating a nearby ruined building that is emitting strange whistling noises.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
And they are men of science, so what are they
going to do?

Speaker 1 (51:45):
They're going to investigate, right, this is the Colossi have
memnon or something. So they creep through the overgrown ruins
until they finally come across the answer. It is an
old church organ with the wind blowing through the pipes.
Krubaion knocks down the pipes with his cane. The whaling stops.
Oh so, logical explanation for everything.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah, fixed.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
But then the two doctors are startled when a nearby
door slams shut seemingly on its own. It is a
heavy wooden door they go to investigate, and then inside
the door there is a staircase leading down into a dank,
subterranean crypt underneath a chapel filled with cobwebs and deep shadows.
And so the doctors descend, and Crubion says, more than

(52:27):
a thousand years of conflicts, hates and loves, all reduced
to dust. In these tombs. Nothing remains of the ancient
princes of Vida, but the dead shadows of their former glory.
The history of ancient Moldavia is carved in these stones.
And so they approach one entombment in the crypt, and

(52:48):
Krubion realizes that it is the grave of the famous witch.
He knows the story. The sealed coffin has a glass
window on the lid, as we were discussing earlier, so strange,
which allows the two doctors to look inside the coffin
and see below the mask of Satan, the bronze face

(53:09):
nailed in place over the flesh face of the condemned witch.
Now why is there a glass window on the coffin?
While they explain uh the crew, there's a crucifix mounted
on top of the coffin lid, and the belief was
that by keeping the cross in the corpse's view through
the glass, they could prevent the dead body from returning

(53:31):
to life and terrorizing them once more.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
You could ask a lot of questions about this, like
why not just put the cross on the like the
inside lid of the casket. You know, I think you
have to come back to the realization that this is
a Bava thing, like again, fascinated by windows and apertures.
So of course there's a glass panel in the top
of the casket, and I guess if i'm you know,

(53:56):
if I wanted to lean into it, I would say, well,
this would also allow the viewer to check and make
sure that the mask of Satan is still in place.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
Well, actually there's another rational reason. There's no light inside
a coffin, So if the corpse needs to be able
to see the crucifix, it needs a window with you know,
to let the light in so it can see. So
if you're gonna put a window in there anyway to
let the light in, why not just put the cross
on the outside instead of on the inside.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Well, that's true like in D and D terms, like
even if the corpse comes alive again and has dark vision,
it still needs some amount of light, So yeah, it
totally checks out.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
You're right, So cru Ion is fascinated. Gorbec gets called
out to help the coachman place the wheel back on
the axle of the carriage. In the meantime, crub Ion
is left alone in the crypt and there is a
bat attack, classic Gothic horror movie bat attack. A giant
bat flies out of a hole in the wall, and
the good Doctor starts like swinging and bashing at it

(54:53):
with his cane. He eventually draws a gun and shoots
this little derringer pistol. Why has he got a gun?

Speaker 2 (54:59):
Well, for moments like this, That's why he can so
confidently walk into ancient crips to check the things, check
things out for science, because he's packing heat. But I
like the bad attack here. You know, it's a it's
a flappy bat like we see in a lot of
Gothic horror films, but looks pretty darn good, as you
would expect from from Mario Baba.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Yes. Now, in the process of bats smashing, he inadvertently
smashes the glass on the witch's coffin lid and smashes
the cross on top of the grave. Uh. Oh, exactly
what you shouldn't have done. So Gorbec comes back, and

(55:47):
when Krubeon explains what happened to Gorbec is like odd
bats are usually peaceful creatures. It almost says like, you know,
they're more afraid of us than we are of them.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
Peaceful creatures is an interesting stretch, perhaps, but okay.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
But he also he says that they need to get
back outside otherwise quote otherwise the coachman will be convinced
that he's right, Like, we can't let him have that.
I guess, right about what I don't know about the
forest being haunted?

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Maybe, yeah, I guess the implication there is he might leave.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Oh yeah, that's true. Fair enough. Yeah, So we got
to get back because this guy, we can't depend on him.
He's getting into the vodka in the vest. So we
got to go to the carriage. But Krubeon's attention is
drawn to the coffin. He realizes the damage he did
in his bat smashing frenzy, and he's looking at it
and it's like, well, the glass is broken anyway, don't

(56:43):
mind if I do.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
This was hilarious, Like, at this point we'd had a
pretty logical reason for our characters to venture this far
into the crypt and then interfere with the various magical
protections in place here. Yes, but at this point he's like, well,
I've already half violated the grave. I might as well
just keep going.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
Yes, So first he reaches in and removes from the
coffin a little triptic icon with images of a saint
and some inscriptions covered in dust and cobwebs, And this
will become important for the plot later. But then beyond
that lies the body itself, and Curubaeon can't resist his curiosity.

(57:25):
He reaches in and he removes the mask from the face.
There is kind of some good sound design here, kind
of a sucking, squelching sound as he does this, like
trying to pull a boot out of mud. And then
you know, it's not exactly what you would expect it
to look like. After two hundred years, you would expect

(57:45):
nothing to remain of the witch except bones. But under
the mask there is flesh, and there is a pale
face pierced all over with holes from the spikes in
the mask, with empty dark sockets the eyes should be.
And then all over the face, into and out of
the holes crawl scorpions. Yes, live scorpions.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
Little black scorpions. I have to say one of the
one of the flaws in watching films on your iPhone
on a plane is that sometimes you do miss the
little details. So when I rewatched portions of this film
this morning, I did get to notice that they were
scorpions for the first time, and I was very excited.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Crubion says, no comment on the scorpions, by the way,
but he says, those empty eyes seem to be looking
at us, and yeah, it is gross. But Cubion, while
they're messing around here, he accidentally cuts his hand on
the glass of the coffin window, and as the two
doctors are leaving, we see that some of Crubion's blood

(58:49):
drips down into the coffin and stains the face of
the body inside. I think we can all tell where
this is going to go. And you know what, this
is also a plot point in a Paul Nashi film
that would come later. And have you seen this one
Rob the Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman from nineteen seventy one.
I have not.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
It's not in either of the Nashy collection volumes that
I have, so it's still on my list.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Yeah, so I've got the four k of that one.
In that film, there's an ancient vampire queen who is
revived from her cough at her burial place when a
scholar cuts her hand and drips blood into the grave
onto her. Also in that movie, the vampire queen is
played by Patty Shepherd, who kind of looks like Barbara Steel.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
I can see it, especially the design if you look
up the way she's dressed with like the black veil
as the vampire queen in that movie. It's a very
Barbara Steele in this movie. Look, so I think Paul
Nashi had Black Sunday on the brain a good bit.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Yeah, yeah, I mean this film inspired just about everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
So once the doctors get back up to the surface, bam,
they come face to face with an extremely unsettling lady
played by Barbara Steele, who is out walking her two
hell hounds in the ruins. Now you might think, like, whoa,
the witch is already resurrected, like how'd she beat them
up to the top, But no, the witch is not
resurrected yet. Barber Steele is, as we said earlier, playing

(01:00:22):
two roles in the film She is the long dead
witch Asa in the but she is also in the
present that family line's unwitting descendant, Katya so Kachya lives
in her ancestral estate with her father, Prince Vida, and
her brother Constantine, and here Kaya is out walking her
two dogs. The doctors introduce themselves, and Kaya explains that

(01:00:46):
she was out walking her dogs when she heard the
gun shot. So they explain what happened, and they apologize
for entering the chapel without permission, and then she said
she's significantly I'm going to say, more weird and ominous
here than Katya is in some later scenes where sit

(01:01:07):
like when they first meet her. Here, she's an odd lady,
she says, in this dreamy voice. Everything is going to ruin.
My father, Prince Vida refuses to repair even this old chapel.
This place, in his eyes, is a curse. And suddenly
the dogs start barking, and the coachman calls out that

(01:01:27):
the carriage is repaired. So Krubayon begs Kotya's pardon and
says that they have to leave, but Gori Bek is
clearly he doesn't want to go. He is smitten with
Katya's beauty and he's just got Vita fever. He's like,
I live here now.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Plus he's a dog guy, and she clearly has two
dogs if she loves a lot. So you know, he
instantly it's matchmaking in his head.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
Yeah, this is my dog. These are my dogs, Kerber
and us, and so he tells they are like, well,
I have to leave now, but I'm going to be
spending the night at Mirror Garad, and I really hope
I will see you again. He has no reason to
think he would ever see her again.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
Right, yeah, I mean we we the viewer know that, Yeah,
that's probably gonna happen. But why would he think he
would run into her?

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
And then she says in a kind of ominous way,
I didn't know if this actually had any significance. She says,
I trust you will have a good night at Mirror Garad.
Did that ever mean anything? I don't think there's anything
all that spooky about Mirror Garod.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
Now it's like, I guess, just the nearest town.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
I don't know this is.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
I guess this whole sequence with her does feel like
you said, more dream like yeah, than what is to
come with this character? And I don't know maybe Bob
is leaning in a bit. He often has these sequences
in his pictures that feel very dream like, and so
maybe he's indulging all I don't want to criticize, but
maybe he's indulging almost too much in the dreamlike qualities

(01:02:54):
of this sequence.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
It's more feeling than logic, I think. The doctors so
they go on their way and Katya is left alone,
making these sad, glassy eyes at them as they leave.
Her face is like literally sparkling in this shot, by
the way, the I don't know how exactly they achieve
that effect, but it's crazy. And gore Beck looks back
at her out the window of the carriage as they leave.

(01:03:18):
Oh also worth noting that they take the little triptic
icon with them, So Gurubian just like yoing, that's mine.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Now, yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and steal that from
the grave, but not knowing that that's a load bearing artifact.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
Yes, exactly. So Meanwhile, back inside the chapel, we see
the grave of the Witch festering, and some frightening music swells,
and then inside the black socket of the witch's eye,
a dark, creamy liquid begins to froth.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Again. It's almost amazing how disgusting the gore is in
this picture despite being black and white.

Speaker 3 (01:03:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
So that night at the castle we meet the rest
of Kachia's family. Fire is roaring in the hearth. Katya
is sitting at the piano playing music by herself. Her
brother Constantine, who is he's kind of a young, high
spirited guy. He's a hunter. He's busy cleaning an antique rifle.
And her father is seated before the fire in a

(01:04:16):
high backed chair, just staring into the blaze, looking haunted
and depressed.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Your typical Gothic car family really in many respects.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
Yes. So, Katya at one point stops playing the piano
when she hears a distant wailing coming from outside the castle,
and everybody stops to listen. Constantine believes it is a
pack of wolves, which explains why he found no deer
in his treks through the forest lately. But Prince Vida, however,
he looks troubled and he says, those are not wolves.

(01:04:47):
Then he looks up at the painting on the wall
and he gasps in terror. He says, the griffin it
has moved up on the wall, we see a painted
portrait of a Vida family ancestor. A young woman who
looks exactly like Katya, dressed in a regal gown, looking
mysteriously toward the painter, and underfoot in the painting is

(01:05:09):
a griffin. Gryffins seem to be a motif.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Here.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
There are monstrous carvings on either side of the fireplace,
and I think these are gryffins too. Yes, Prince Vida
and Katya agreed that the painting has somehow changed. The
griffin is different. It was once depicted as dead, but
now it appears alive. How could it have changed in
the painting. Constantine is skeptical. He notes that the painting

(01:05:32):
has always had a strange effect on Katia. She says,
it's like a flame that can't escape. There's something alive
about it, something different about the eyes, the hands, as
if it were hiding something. Sometimes I'm afraid to go
near it. And then Prince Vida is like, well, we'll
say no more about it. But the Prince is so

(01:05:54):
he's like frightened and exhausted and he just needs to
be alone. I think he complains that instead of warmth,
a chill seems to be coming out of the fireplace
and there's actually a reason for that we will discover later.
But he says his spirit is weary and he must
say good night to his children, so they leave him alone.
And there is a scene here where Prince Vida describes well,

(01:06:16):
he talks to his butler Ivan or Yvonne, and he
describes the curse upon his family. So he says, you
know what today is the Feast of Saint George, And
I had to look that up for when that is
generally celebrated April twenty third, And I kind of hate
that this goes against the otherwise seasonally perfect setting of
this film. It's like so halloweeny. But like a lot

(01:06:39):
of these other stories, you know, what is it with
There's so many old world horror stories set in the spring,
set at the Feast of Saint George, or on Walpurgas knocked,
you know, like late April or the beginning of May.
Really seems to have been a powerful, spooky season.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
That's fascinating that we may have to explore that later
on and stuff to blow your mind, because it seems
counterintuitive when you think of, you know, the change of
the seasons, right like, yeah, spring is upon us, the
cold winter of death is passing away, the sun has
returned to us. Shouldn't it just be all feasts and preparation,

(01:07:16):
Like why are there still threats afoot? Yeah, it would
be interesting to dig into that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
Maybe this year, toward the end of April, we should
do like a half Tober week where we figure out
what it is that's spooky about spring. Yeah, absolutely spooky
spring anyway, Prince Vida explains, Okay, it's Saint George's Day.
And on Saint George's Day two hundred years ago, his
ancestral relative the which Asa and her consort Yavoodisch were

(01:07:45):
put to death for being in league with Hell, And
one hundred years later, on the same day of the
year the Feast of Saint George, an earthquake rocked the
chapel where US's body was laid to rest under the
mask of Satan, and it split her tomb a sun
her as if she were trying to break out of
death itself to accomplish her revenge. And that very night,

(01:08:06):
his ancestor, Princess Macha, who looked exactly like Asa, died mysteriously.
She was only twenty one. Now the Prince's daughter Katya
is twenty one, and she too is the image of Asa,
so he's terrified of what is going to happen to
her and to them all. But if An reminds him,

(01:08:26):
even if what you say is true, the Cross will
protect you. Quote these monsters are terrified by the symbol
of Christ. Always have it near you and you'll be safe.
Drink your toddy, sir, before it gets cold.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
I like the inclusion of the toddy. Do you think
it's a vodka toaddi, because you can. You can make
a toddy with various spirits, or I mean even without
a spirit. I think if you just have some hot
water and some I've heard the lemon juice and some
money that can coal whalifies as a TODDI.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
Is that Okay? I actually didn't know what a TODDI was.
I assumed I just knew it was hot and that
it had alcohol in it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's I don't know. Some people
out there may be a little more specific about toddies,
but it's my loose understanding that they're a wide variety
of hot spirit drinks that can be referred to as toddies, Okay,
without getting you know, full on into like hot buttered
grum and so forth.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
So anyway he goes. He's like, yes, yes, Yvonne, I
will drink my toddy. Goes to drink the toddy, and
in the liquid he sees reflected the mask of Satan.
Oh fabulous, and he says it's death. I see death.
But he resolves that they cannot win against the symbol
of Christ. So once again, here we see elsewhere. We're

(01:09:46):
back inside the tomb in the chapel, and the wind
is whipping outside in the world above, and in ASA's
grave we see a close up of her face. And
last time her eye sockets were they were kind of
pooling with that thick fluid. Now they are surging with
a white, vitreous jelly, forming pale, empty orbs without pupils. Meanwhile,

(01:10:16):
at the end at meer Garad, the two doctors are
enjoying the local vodka. So everybody's having some alcohol tonight. Gorbek,
by the way, he is drunk. And it is a
swinging party. They got a guy playing a tuba. It's
all over the place.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
I mean, it's Gothic horror. And as we've seen in
our discussion of our of the universal horror pictures, you
got to have some sort of a beer hall, right,
Like that's you know, I guess if you're going for
some sort of a like a Germanic or Romanian, Moldovian
whatever setting. Like, Yeah, given the time period, it makes
sense for there to be some sort of a pub
type environment that's at the center of local life.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
Yeah, so Gorbec is enjoying that that pub life. He
is thoroughly growdable here where he is revealing how obsessed
he is with the princess, Like he's telling crew Ion,
I'm not ready to go back to that castle right now,
ask her to marry me. But crube Ion convinces him, no,
you should go to bed instead, and he's like, okay,

(01:11:14):
and he goes to bed. And the older doctor meanwhile,
he's gonna go out for a walk in the night
air before he turns in. And there's a very nice
creepy little segment here where we follow the innkeeper's daughter
as she is sent out alone to milk the cow.
She doesn't want to go because the barn is creepy,
it's right next to the haunted cemetery, and she's afraid,
but she's forced to go milk the cow anyway, and

(01:11:36):
has to. She really has to walk through some kind
of thick woods to get there. I was thinking, wouldn't
there be a path to the barn.

Speaker 2 (01:11:43):
But for some for z owning reasons, the barn was
built next to the abandoned cemetery where all the murders
were buried two centuries ago.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
Maybe she's cutting through the forest like as a short cut,
and that's why it's she's like like this vegetation. Yeah,
And along the way she is startled by bats and
by a toad hopping in a puddle. She gets there
to milk the cow, and the cow is named Irena.
By the way, we learned the cow's name. I don't
think they ever say the innkeeper's daughter's name. But there

(01:12:12):
is a wonderfully creepy little set here where Krubaion goes
out to smoke his pipe by a pond in the moonlight,
and we hear the frogs croaking and the insects buzzing,
And then the surface of the pond in our view
dissolves and we see the face of the witch lying
in her grave, still disfigured, with the holes in her
face and demonically wide eyes now quickened with undead eyeballs,

(01:12:37):
and she opens her lips and begins to speak, and
she's got a voice like a snake, and she says,
rise Yavoodich. And so in the cemetery across from the barn,
a storm breaks out. The innkeeper's daughter, she's in there
milking the cow, and she kind of watches through the
window as lightning strikes in the grounds beyond. Then, in
an awesome sequence, we zooms slowly on the unconsecrated grave

(01:13:02):
of Yavoodich, which is sort of eroded now over all
the years, and the earth in front of the grave
slowly swells from below, with the damp soil pushing up
and kind of unfolding outwards in clods from the void
where the cursed body rests. And then we see a hand.

(01:13:22):
It's slimy and pale, with nails like the claws of
a beast, reaching up through the mud, and the body
climbs out of the earth. And so the body stumbles
through the haunted cemetery with the mask of Satan still
nailed to its face. And then finally Yavootich comes to
a stop beside this eroded table of tree roots, and

(01:13:43):
he pulls the mask off of his face, revealing a
fleshy butt disease looking form with a sunken left eye.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
Yeah. An incredible sequence here, I would argue, on par
with any dead rising zombie sequence from any film of
any decade. Just looks superb.

Speaker 1 (01:14:00):
So Yavoodich has demon work to do, and he does
get right to work. He goes to Castle Vaido, where
the Prince is sleeping fitfully. The Prince we see him
wake from nightmares and sit up in his bed, and
then a cold wind blows through the room, scattering music
from the piano stand, and a secret door behind the

(01:14:20):
fireplace hinges open slowly.

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
Oh, and the griffin on it too, Yes, it looks amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
Yes. And then standing in the doorway is Yavoodich, looking
half alive and half zombie, with a modeled crust covered face,
half hidden in shadow. And Yavoodich creeps towards the bed
as the Prince lies there, frozen in terror. But at
the last moment, the Prince remembers what can save him.
It is the image of Christ, so he raises a

(01:14:46):
silver cross and Yavootich is repelled. He snarls and he
disappears from the room. Now Here the prince's family. They
hear him crying out and they come running, and when
he tells them what what happened, they decide they have
to send for help. Katcha is like, oh, I happen
to know there are two doctors staying at the end

(01:15:06):
in mere Garad, let's send for them. She doesn't mention
that one of them is her Prince Charley. So they
send the groom of the castle to go retrieve the doctors.
But what do you know when the carriage arrives outside
the inn to get doctor krubayon, it is not the
groom from the castle. It is Yavootich who's there driving
the carriage.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
Oh yeah, this dark, elegant carriage here looking like this
is the carriage that would take you away to Hell.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
Yes, yeah, you pass. As as Cinderella is headed toward
the ball, you're going the opposite direction into Hell. And
Yavootich is driving and Krubaion is just standing there beside
the pond smoking his pipe, and Yavootich is like, you've
got to come at once, We got to come. You
got to come check on the prince. So off they go,

(01:15:54):
and this scene is reminiscent of the carriage ride at
Borgo Pass in Dracula, they go a little too fast.
It's like the Hoggy, the Hoggy, the foggy haunted landscape.
Yea at the castle, Yvudich leads Krubaion inside, but quickly
starts to run ahead of him in the dim passageways,
eventually disappearing, and so Krubion's like, what's going on, and

(01:16:17):
he's trying to find his way. He sees the lantern
down the hallway, but then he comes upon it and
it's just hovering in mid air. And then Krubion wanders
around lost until he comes into a room that is
somewhat familiar because it is the eerie chapel where he
was earlier the same day, with the tomb of the
witch Aza gaping open as before, and Krubion is drawn

(01:16:39):
to it. He approaches and looks inside to see eyes
staring back at him. Her eyes are open now and
they have pupils, and they see him. The witch is living.
So he tries to run, but the doors to the
chamber are locked. And then while he's like trying to
get out, he turns back and he sees the witch's
tomb shaking and rattling, and then it explodes. The rock

(01:17:02):
walls go launching to the corners of the room and
the witch is lying there and she gasps for breath.
She turns to look at him, making one of the
most alarmingly evil expressions in film history. This is one
of the screenshots you may have seen from the film.

Speaker 2 (01:17:19):
Yes, absolutely, just this maniacal grin on her face, bright eyes,
and of course, you know, tremendous makeup and lighting also
adding to this effect.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
She says, crubion, crubion, I've been waiting for you, and
she bids him to look into her eyes and to
come closer. She says, just a few drops of your
blood brought me to life again. All of your blood
will give me the strength to accomplish my vision. Come
kiss me. My lips will transform you so powerless. He

(01:17:53):
walks toward her, and she says, you will be dead
to man, but you will be alive and death. And
slowly he leans over her and he brings his lips
to hers, and they kiss as she sort of reaches
up and touches his hair. It's weirdly cold and passionate
looking at the same time. It's weird.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
Yeah, And I think this scene was one of those scenes.
It was too hot for AIP at the time, and
then they cut it a little bit. It's not very sexy,
no no, but it's just too probably just too a
mix of weirdness, darkness, and sexuality. There was just a
little bit too much for the sensors.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
Yeah. So in Prince Vida's room, doctor Krubion arrives now,
but he has much a changed demeanor. He is gruff
and curt The doctor checks out the prince and he
calms him, apparently with some kind of hypnosis. He kind
of wipes his hand over his face and calms the prince.
At one point, Constantine tries to explain what his father

(01:18:54):
said had happened, and he holds out a cross to illustrate,
and Crubion recoils. He says, take that away. He mustn't
see it or it could provoke another attack. And then
elsewhere we see Yavoodich in the chapel with ASA's body,
and Yavoudich is speaking to her. He promises that he
will help her live again and that what they he explains,

(01:19:15):
what they need is Katya Asa will steal her youth
and her beauty, kill her soul and live in her body.
So that's the plan. We basically know what the bad
guys are going to do now. The plan is to
make vampire thralls, to get revenge on the entire Vida family,
and to steal Kaya's life force so the witch can
live again through her.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
There you go. Yeah, a three step plan. They seem
perfectly capable of pulling it off. We noted that the
narration made reference to vampires. I do feel like that
narration hit the nail on the head a bit too hard,
because what we have in this is like a form
of vamporism, Like it's vamporism is more like the method

(01:19:59):
or part of the resurrection scheme and not it doesn't
seem to be like a clear monster identity so much
in this picture once you get into the actual plot
and the pacing of the thing, I agree.

Speaker 1 (01:20:11):
And that's what I was sort of talking about earlier,
with the fact that the vampires, when they show back
up again more than halfway through the movie, it feels
like a surprise. Yeah, yeah, something doesn't even though they
did say vampire earlier was at the very beginning, But yeah,
it almost just feels like one of the tricks in
the witch bag.

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):
Yeah, like the full array of nightmare and horror are
their toolbox, and this just happens to be one of
the things they can draw on.

Speaker 3 (01:20:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:39):
So during the sequence, Katchia is very concerned for her
pro for her father, Prince Vida, and she prays for him,
but doctor Krubayon puts her mind at ease and asks
to be left alone with Prince Vida. So she leaves
and the doctor then turns to his patient, his victim,
and the next morning the family is away to discover

(01:21:01):
to their horror that Prince Vida is dead in his
bed with horrible scars on his face, and doctor kru
Bayon is nowhere to be found. And at this point
I wonder if I might now transition to recounting the
movie in a little bit less detail, and we can
discuss in a kind of summary way. But the next
big thing that happens is we get Gore back back

(01:21:22):
in action, because now some heroism needs to happen.

Speaker 2 (01:21:25):
Right right, and Crouvion has to be found. So there's
a lot of calling for him, calling his name, looking
around for him, and also like just a discussing his
bedside manner, because like they're discussing the fact that like
he seemed to just up and leave and now the
prince is dead because of it, and he's like, that
doesn't sound like him at all. He would not do that,

(01:21:46):
e would not just run off into the night. Something
serious must have happened exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
So, Yeah, Gorbeka, who we must assume is quite hung over,
he goes to the castle to find cru Bayon, and yeah,
he has this kind of conflict with Constant and when
he arrives. Also, we should note at the same time
as he's traveling to the castle, there's a very creepy
scene where children are playing by the rushing river in
the valley beside the castle and they come across a

(01:22:11):
dead body. And there's a cool trick in this shot
where we don't realize there's a dead body in frame
until after it's already inframe, because we are following a
shirt as it flows down the river and the children
are chasing it, and we're watching the shirt move through
the water, and so the camera follows it and then
there's this dead body in frame, and then somebody screams

(01:22:34):
and points to it, and then you realize, like, oh,
there's yeah, there's a face right there.

Speaker 2 (01:22:38):
Yeah, creepy sequence, and of course.

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):
It was the body of Boris, the groom at the castle,
who was supposed to be driving the carriage. But yeah,
like you mentioned Gorbak, he arrives at the castle, it's
an icy reception because of his association with Krubaion. They're like, yeah,
he just left and our father is dead now, so
that's not very cool. But he sort of talks his

(01:23:02):
way into coming up to see the body of Prince Vida,
and while looking at it, Kachia faints and then here
Gorbek begins tending to her, and he's obviously just head
over heels. I guess he already was, but in this
scene he's like he's trying to help her recover her senses,
and he's just overwhelmed by her beauty. The scene also
makes a point to show Katya wearing her father's silver

(01:23:23):
crucifix around her neck dangling on her chest, and Gorbec
looks at that. Why his eyes are drawn there, and
you know, they don't specify one way or another, is
it the symbol of Christ or is it just Katya?
But then later that will be we will be reminded
of that because like he's gonna come across a body
wearing the same crucifix, and it's like, wait, is this

(01:23:45):
who is this? I'm looking at right? But news of
the discovery of Boris's body is brought to the castle
by a crowd of locals, and this leads to an
interrogation of the innkeeper's daughter. She explains that when he
saw the carriage arrive the night before, it was not
Boris who came to pick up doctor Krubayan, it was

(01:24:05):
a man she'd never seen before. And it turns out
as they're walking by a painting of Ya Vootage hanging
up on the wall in the castle, She's like, that's him,
That's the guy from the carriage, And I was thinking,
why is there a painting of Ya Vootage hanging up
in the castle?

Speaker 2 (01:24:20):
Yeah, he was like a like a dank outcast warlock
that one of their ancestors had a like a doomed
romance with that ended in them both being executed and
he was buried in a like in a murderer's grave. So, yeah,
why is there a commissioned painting of him here? I'm
not sure.

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
Yeah, someone's confusing, but anyway, so Constantine and Katya ended
up asking Gorbek to stay with them at the castle.
Especially Katchya likes this guy, so, you know, stay at
the castle and help us out. So here Gorbec goes
into investigation mode. He investigates the body of Boris in
the company of a local priest. This will become a

(01:25:01):
kind of sidekick for Gorbek for much of the rest
of the film.

Speaker 2 (01:25:05):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:25:05):
And you know, he's like looking at the punctures on
the neck of the corpse. He's hearing the stories about
crubaion strange behavior, and Gorbec is very in a familiar scene.
He's like, I'm a man of science, but none of
this makes logical sense.

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):
Right, So we get kind of like our buddy cops. Here,
one is logic, one is religion, Yes, one is science,
one is the dark lore. And they're going to figure
it out there on the case.

Speaker 1 (01:25:30):
Yes. And here we sort of launch into the third act.
So we see Krubaion in vampire mode and Yavudich sneaking
around the castle menacing people. They're creeping on Katchya because ultimately,
you remember, they're going to bring her to the witch
so the witch can steal her life force. At one point,
there's a scene where one of these figures. We don't

(01:25:50):
know which one is lurking until she takes her crucifix
off for the night and the figure starts to reach
a hand out from around a curtain and Gorbek Constantine
come to check things out when she screams for help
and she's saying I saw the hand I saw it,
I saw it, and Gorebec's like, I'll get her a sedative, okay, dude.

(01:26:11):
But then after this scene there is an encounter between
Creubion and gor Beec. This is interesting. Crubion comes into
his room and Gorbek's like, oh, I thought you had left.
I didn't understand the stories people are telling me, Like
why did you leave? And Creubion's just like, you need
to get out of here and this is none of
your business. Leave the castle, and Gorbec shows him the

(01:26:34):
triptic icon that they found in the grave and says,
you know, I've been trying to decipher this. But when
he shows the icon to Crubion, the older doctor is
just like ah and runs away. Can't look at this thing.

Speaker 2 (01:26:45):
Yeah, but it's an interesting sequence. So we see shades
of this in various tales of the supernatural where somebody
has turned but there's like some bit of their humanity
left enough that they want to in this case, you know,
warn their friend to go away. Yeah, that may or
may not have you know, may or may not align
with the master evil scheme and play here.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
I didn't take his warning here as particularly benevolent. I
feel like you could read this as just like he's
trying to get rid of him, just like get out.
You know, you've got nothing to do with this, get
out of our way.

Speaker 2 (01:27:17):
Yeah. Yeah, he's too quick with a crucifix to kill right.

Speaker 3 (01:27:21):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
Also in the scene we get the Hounds of Hell
we met earlier, there's not on screen dog Gore, but
there is, you know, it's kind of obscured in the
black and white, but the dogs are found with their
throats slashed here, presumably by Krubaion.

Speaker 2 (01:27:37):
Oh sad day for the dogs.

Speaker 1 (01:27:38):
Yes, And so later Gorbek and his priest's sidekick they
translate the icon. And also at the same time, Gorbec
is busy courting Katya, and they go walking through the
gardens and the ruins together and there's a long exchange
for them where they sort of they sympathize with each other,
where Gorbeck offers or comfort because she's really despairing. She says,

(01:28:02):
what is my life sadness and grief, something that destroys
itself day by day and no one can rebuild it.
Here is the image of my life. And she's pointing
at the ruined gardens. She says, look at it. It's
being consumed hour by hour like this garden, abandoned to
a purposeless existence. And he tries to give her encouragement

(01:28:22):
that she you know, that he'd like to help her.
He encourages her to leave this place if it makes
her unhappy, and while so like, he gives a speech
about trying to dispel her worries about how sunlight touches
even the darkest corners of this garden and the ruins,
and she begs for his help and they embrace. Clearly
he loves her and she loves him too, but she's
she's like too busy being cursed to date anyone right now?

Speaker 2 (01:28:45):
Yeah, this is this. This came up in the House
of Usher last year. Oh yeah, a similar plot where
your your dark, depressed gothic girlfriend clearly needs to leave
her doomed house. But it takes a bit of convincing.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
Yeah, in this case, it is a very like, it's
not you, it's me, Like, I really do like you,
but I'm cursed anyway. Meanwhile, the human inhabitants of the
castle are starting to put some things together. Yvonne accidentally

(01:29:25):
uncovers some machinery and the secret passageways in the castle
while trying to put out a curtain that catches fire,
and so the good characters started investigating the secret passageways.
Constantine and Gorbeck find paintings of the witch, like the
paintings of the like the naked witch as she looks
just like Katchya, except she's like standing there naked and evil,

(01:29:46):
you know, eyes blazing at the painter, and they start
to kind of put the pieces together. They find the
body of the witch in the chapel once again, and
they're like, wow, remarkable, how fresh she looks. Oh, she's breathing,
and she is breathing, and they say, we're in the
presence of an unnatural mystery. So Gorbek runs out of

(01:30:07):
the castle to go get the priest to figure out
how to fight this evil, while Constantine goes to protect Katcha.
In the meantime, Gorbek and the priest they finally figure
out a method. They go to the haunted cemetery to
hunt for the grave of Yavootich to quench his demonic spirit.
And they find the grave and inside the coffin they

(01:30:28):
find not Yavootich but Krubaion. But how and the priest
proves it. He says, this is no longer your friend,
but a servant of the devil. And he demonstrates this
by touching the doctor's face with a cross and its
sizzles and burns. So the priest has determined from the
inscription in that icon, the triptych, how to stop these

(01:30:49):
evil spirits. You have to pierce the left eye of
the vampire. So they like get a needle like thing
or a stylus kind of and they pierce the eye
and it kind of words everywhere, and then the being
is defeated. That was a new one to me. I mean, yeah,
I'm familiar with stake through the heart.

Speaker 2 (01:31:07):
Yeah, now I have I have a question here. So
are we to understand that the Crubillon who we saw
earlier pleading with his friend to leave, that was not
Cruebaillon at all.

Speaker 1 (01:31:19):
No, I think that was Crubion. He's just come back
to I maybe that was in. I don't know it
was that in the night time, and now he's come
back to be under to lie in the coffin during
the day. I'm not fair enough fair that would make sense,
But yeah, I think that was him. But now he's defeated. No,
no more demon cru bion, no more vampire mode. He's
had his eye pierced. And so the priest explains to

(01:31:41):
Gorbec what the witch's plan has to be. She's gonna
possess the body of Kacia to have new life for herself,
and the only way to stop it is to pierce
the left eye of the witch. So, armed with this knowledge,
Gorbec heads back to the castle. I think the priest
is going to assemble an angry mob.

Speaker 2 (01:31:59):
Gotta have yes now.

Speaker 1 (01:32:01):
Meanwhile, back at the castle, it's just a slaughterhouse. You
get a lot of like creeping going on. Constantine gets
frightened into a pit trap by Yavudich in one of
the secret passageways. Yvonne gets hanged by the neck. And
then while Katya is crying over her father's coffin the
body of Prince Vida, her father rises again and he says,

(01:32:23):
I am no longer your father. My blood is no
longer your blood. The spirits of evil have rent that
tie between us forever. And then a cursed poison flows
in your veins, and then Katya faints, but before Prince
Vida the vampire can drink her blood, we get vampire
on vampire conflict. Yavuodich appears and he says, no, she

(01:32:44):
is not for you, you know, she's for our demonic mistress,
and then he sort of strangles the Prince Vida vampire
and throws his body into the fireplace, and we get
to see the vampire's face melting in the fire. Oh yeah,
gross gore. It's like a wax face that they actually
show melting, nasty effect. So anyway, so now Katya, we're

(01:33:06):
getting to the climax. Kaya's body is left unconscious next
to the witch's coffin, and then we see the witch stirring.
She reaches out and she touches Kachia's arm and through
evil magic, she SAPs Kochia's life force. So on Kotya,
we see the sort of vitality draining from her face,
wrinkles and lines forming on her flesh. Meanwhile, the witch

(01:33:29):
grows increasingly young and beautiful, like a drooping plant that
has been watered.

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):
This was an interesting effect. It seemed to me that
much of this was created just via the lighting, or
at least if it was created another way. It was
subtle enough that it didn't feel janky at all.

Speaker 1 (01:33:46):
Yeah, I think it was a combination of lighting and
makeup and editing transitions. But you're right, it's incredibly smooth.
And the witch Asa says to her, She says, you
did not know that you were born for this moment.
You did not know that your life had been consecrated
to me by Satan. But you sensed it, didn't you.

(01:34:07):
You sensed it didn't you. That's why my portrait was
such a temptation to you. You felt like your life
and your body were mine. You felt like me because
you were destined to become me, a useless body without life.
The love that young man had for you might have
saved you. Do you know that you could have been
happy together? But I was stronger, and now you shall

(01:34:29):
enjoy a beautiful life of evil and hate in me. Meanwhile,
a gorbec comes back to the castle to save the day,
and there's a great there's a fight scene between Yavoodich
and Gorbyek. It's a real punch out. There's different kinds
of fighting. There's striking and grappling to use. That is
that the MMA terminology?

Speaker 2 (01:34:49):
Yeah, I think, okay, they're both.

Speaker 1 (01:34:52):
And it ends up near the pit trap that Constantine
fell into earlier, and so Gorbek he like gets pushed
over the edge and he's hanging on the edge there.
You know, it's your classic like the hero's dangling over
a pit or a precipice and the villain is standing
above him. But actually Constantine comes to the rescue. We
thought he fell to his death earlier, but he did not.

(01:35:14):
It seems he was wounded but must have stayed hanging
there somehow. And now he's here. Just he's here, and
he's alive, just long enough to grab you a vootitch
and throw him down into the spikes below. But then
it seems like right after he helps Gorbek, he's like,
I've got to die now.

Speaker 2 (01:35:31):
The spikes would seem to do it though.

Speaker 1 (01:35:33):
Yes, yeah, so I think yavootage is done. I mean,
that's got to at least one of those must get
in on his eye.

Speaker 2 (01:35:39):
Yeah, you stand a really good chance of it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:42):
So finally Gorbec makes it to Katya in the chapel
where the witch's tomb was, and he gets there and
it seems that Katya is there and conscious, and he says,
thank god, I made it in time, and she says, yes,
she wanted to kill me, and he's pointing to the
body lying there on the witch's grave. But uh oh

(01:36:03):
Gorbec doesn't realize that Asa already made the switch, and
so he says, we must destroy her forever, and I
know how it can be done. He says, don't look, Kotya.
It's horrible, but I must do it, and he doesn't
see that Asa is behind him, grinning with insanity, like yes.

Speaker 2 (01:36:21):
She's like, I can't believe it. I'm about to pull
this off.

Speaker 1 (01:36:23):
He's gonna do it. It's great. But then, just before
he stabs the eye, he sees on the corpse of
the woman he believes to be the witch, the crucifix necklace.

Speaker 2 (01:36:34):
Which shouldn't be possible.

Speaker 1 (01:36:35):
Right, And then he picks it up and presses it
to her flesh to make sure, and nothing happens, and
then he understands. And here's where we get a great
moment where he's like, wait, come Katya, but he knows
who she really is now, and he pulls aside her
cloak for the bone, reveal her body underneath, Like below

(01:36:56):
the neck, she looks normal from the neck up, but
below the neck she is some kind of bone monster.
Like she's a skeletal sort of creature.

Speaker 4 (01:37:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:37:06):
Yeah, she's like mostly rotted flesh and bone underneath. So
we get a glimpse of her rib cage and it's
like rib cage first. So we're like, we're like, oh, oh,
this is definitely the Dark Queen.

Speaker 3 (01:37:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:37:19):
So she says, no, I am not your love. She's caught.
She admits that. She says, I am not your love.
There she lies dead forever, forever, and she just again
she's a real just a hater to the bone. She loves,
loves pointing out your suffering. All her family is destroyed
all and then Asa she's like, now I'm going to

(01:37:41):
take care of Gorbek. So she tries to hypnotize Gorbek
like she did with krubae On. She said, look into
my eyes, and she gives this speech where she says,
don't you feel the joy and the beauty of hating?

Speaker 2 (01:37:54):
I love this line. We were chatting a little bit
about this off Mike because the reading about it, like
apparently in some versions of it, perhaps the original version,
she says haites instead of hating. But I actually love
it more as hating because I feel like it gets
down to the emotional core of Satanism in this picture.
You know, Yeah, it is about It is about hating

(01:38:16):
the world and hating those around you, and that's what
they's what that's what makes them thrive.

Speaker 1 (01:38:22):
This witch is hate incarnate. She's just malice. She wants,
she hates, and she wants to hurt.

Speaker 2 (01:38:28):
Yeah, and she wants to share that hate and hurchard
with everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:38:32):
But just when you think she's about to hypnotize, Gore
bec the priest arrives with the mob of angry townsfolk,
and you know that that will just really solve your
witch problem.

Speaker 3 (01:38:42):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:38:42):
It's kind of a weird feeling to think we're gonna
end with a witch burning and that's the happy ending.

Speaker 2 (01:38:47):
Yeah. It is interesting to reflect on this film that
in the early goings, we have the Inquisition at work
and they're seemingly like doing a good job. They don't
finish the job, but they're they're in the right because
the supernatural threat in this film is real, and likewise,
the angry mob is up against an actual supernatural natural

(01:39:10):
fot they their suspicions are correct, so they are also
in the right.

Speaker 1 (01:39:15):
Yeah, it is a kind of I mean, I guess
we're used to more often the modern perspective of like
recognizing that this mob violence is bad or that there
was something, you know, something perverse and wrong going on
in the Witch Trials. But no, in this case, just
within the world of the movie, this witch is really
about as bad as it gets. So's they're doing a

(01:39:35):
good job to good day's work burning this witch. Yeah,
so they take away the witch. They burn her at
the stake, and what they get it done really quick.
They like the fire blazes and she's on this tied
to this pillar and she burns up. And on one hand,
it's like, well, so the evil is defeated, But it
seems like a real downer ending because Gorebeck and the
priest watched the witch burn while Kachia lies dead behind them,

(01:39:59):
and you know, we're almost hearing ringing in our ears
that just bitter malicious speech that the witch gave says
I'm not your love. There she lies dead forever forever,
But there's a happy twist, so Gorbec goes back to
her and she comes to life. It seems almost did
you understand it that when the witch is destroyed, that

(01:40:19):
sort of rebalances the life force in some way and
that allows Katchya to come back to life.

Speaker 2 (01:40:26):
I guess so, yeah, I guess that would be my
interpretation of it, or that she was lying about her
being dead anyway, because she seemed really excited about tricking
him into stabbing his girlfriend through the eyeball. Yeah, you know,
as if that was going to perhaps kill her. I
don't know. Again, we kind of get into the dreamlike
qualities of things here, and you know, maybe we don't

(01:40:49):
have to lean too hard and logical interpretation of it.

Speaker 3 (01:40:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
So it is a very very dark film and a
very dark story, but it does have a happy ending,
sort of happy end. I mean there's a lot of
carnage along the way, and Katya is saved, and Katchya
and Gorebeck they can live on and they can be together.

Speaker 2 (01:41:06):
They can move to the city away from the cursed
castles in great yards.

Speaker 1 (01:41:11):
Yes, I'll take it. And that's Black Sunday.

Speaker 2 (01:41:16):
Yeah, absolutely, just a real treat of a film. As
great as anyone has ever told you who it is.
And we're going to join the chorus by saying yeah,
Black Sundays tremendous. It has more than stood the test
of time. Definitely check it out. It's a great film.
If you want some dedicated, focused Halloween viewing, tremendous. If
you just want something on in the background while you

(01:41:38):
do other Halloween things, this is a fine choice as well.

Speaker 1 (01:41:42):
Agreed.

Speaker 2 (01:41:43):
All right, well, we're going to go ahead and close
out this episode of Weird House Cinema. We will remind
you that se to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
but we do a short form episode on Wednesdays and
on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just
talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. We
have I believe one last Weird House Cinema episode to

(01:42:05):
put out in October this year, so stay tuned to
see what that's going to be. Sometimes you'll get a
peek ahead at what's coming up if you go over
to our letterboxed page our username there is weird House,
and we have a tremendous list of all the pictures
we've covered over the years.

Speaker 1 (01:42:20):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

(01:42:42):
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (01:42:44):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit

Speaker 1 (01:42:46):
The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
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