Bava - Flinching with Delight

Horror Holiday 2022– Slovakia, Austria, Italy, Czechia

Posted on September 14, 2022 by Glen — 1 Comment ↓

No matter what you do, however important it is, however much you may love it, if you don’t take a break occasionally, things get heavy – you can get worn down, burned out. This is a perspective I only acquired after moving to Europe, where holiday time is really valued, and over the years, I finally learned to value it as well.

This is all to say, that for the last two weeks, I haven’t watched a horror movie and I haven’t written a post (hooray for working ahead and automating postings) – I also haven’t taught any classes or proofread any texts (which is how I earn my pay) or had any rehearsals or shows (which is what I do for pleasure). I’ve been on a much needed and long looked forward to vacation. But I haven’t totally abandoned my responsibilities – as I’ve been gallivanting about, relaxing and playing tourist, I’ve managed to visit a few locations significant to the genre (thanks to my patient and generous wife who isn’t a horror fan, but was game to shape some of our vacation around it) and I have returned with a few photos worth sharing. I know, I know – looking at someone else’s vacation photos can be pretty dull, but I think you might like these. So, without further ado, here is my “horror holiday.”

Orava Castle (Slovakia)

I’ve been living in Kraków in southern Poland since 2008, and I just recently learned that the castle used for Murnau’s Nosferatu is only about a 2.5 hour drive away, so we started our trip there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch a shot of the film’s most iconic view of the castle as it was only visible from the winding road and there was no safe place to pull over and take a picture, but it was really exciting to come around the bend and get to see it – lots of pointing and going “ooh, ooh, ooh!”

And the castle itself is really worth checking out if you’re ever in the neighborhood. It’s up on some craggy rocks and consists of many levels, climbing the cliff face. Ascending the many steep staircases, I really felt sorry for Murnau’s crew, lugging heavy 20s film equipment up all those steps. There are cavernous tunnels when you first enter, which do feel appropriate for the film, and the castle itself is really quite pretty and impressive: interestingly stratified, surrounded by forests, and topped with wooden shingles.

Plus, I got this fun fridge magnet.

Graz (Austria)

Ok, this is rather a stretch, to be fair. Really I just went to Graz because I’ve driven though it on the highway many times on the way to other places and heard it was pretty (plus, I’m tickled by its highway signs, such as “Graz to meet you!” and “Graz you later” (imagine them voiced by a bad Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator) – what’s not to love?). BUT Styria (the state that Graz is in) is where Le Fanu’s Carmilla is set (which came up again and again in my recent posts on Lesbian Vampire movies), and General Spielsdorf at one point relates how a more experienced doctor was sent for from Graz to treat his ward for her affliction (this doctor was sadly unsuccessful at treating being-bitten-by-a-vampire). So the city isn’t really connected to the book or its many adaptations, but it is lovely and it can give some flavor to inform the imagination when reading Le Fanu. I found this hilltop garden beneath the city’s clock tower to have a kind of Carmilla vibe.

The Tomb of Dante Alighieri (Ravenna, Italy)

Most of the vacation, we were driving around Italy, and while we went to Ravenna to see the 5^th and 6^th century Byzantine mosaics, when I realized it also featured Dante’s tomb, I thought that could be worth a visit. It’s a tomb. I guess Dante’s in there. Ok, it’s not that much to look at really, but I figure that though he was not a “horror author,” per se, the amount of time he spent detailing the horrors of the underworld with great creativity and vividness qualifies him for inclusion. Plus, it’s kind of striking that Inferno is really the only thing people ever talk about – when’s the last time you heard Dante’s Purgatorio or Paradiso referenced? I remember reading and enjoying Inferno in high school and I think for pretty much everyone, wading through the endless, poetically apt tortures of the unjust is just more fun than whatever he gets up to in Paradise. Maybe he shot himself in the literary foot by starting his trilogy with what was ironically the most enjoyable part.

Villa Adriana (Tivoli, Italy)

Now, this was special on a number of levels. We chose it as it’s where the exteriors for Vadim’s Blood and Roses (which I wrote about here) were filmed, and it was certainly cool to find locations from the film, but it’s also just a really impressive site from antiquity (from the 2^nd century AD) which is worth seeing in its own right. Furthermore, while it is only a half hour’s drive from Rome, it is rather off the beaten path and it’s rare to find a site like this that isn’t swarming with other tourists.

It’s a pleasure to so peacefully explore its vast grounds, with extensive ruins of a massive villa built as a pleasant retreat for the emperor.

More significantly for the purposes of this blog, it’s just so rewarding to find the gorgeous locations used in Vadim’s rich, sensual film and be able to take in their charm and atmosphere without the hubbub of a thousand other people around you.

It’s easy to visualize Carmilla/Mircalla floating through the olive groves or chasing after a peasant girl. The reflecting pool is still intact, if a bit murky, and the wall to the estate is easily identifiable, but I couldn’t figure out which ruins exactly had served as the tomb. Anyway, it is a beautiful place which can still evoke the atmosphere of the film. If you ever visit Rome by car, it’s really worth the detour.

Villa Sciarra (Rome, Italy)

Tucked away in a small city park in a residential neighborhood of Rome is the building and garden used for exteriors of the fashion house in Bava’s Blood and Black Lace. It can be a little bit of a hike to get to (especially if you make the same series of wrong turns that we did and go the long way round, on a really hot, sunny day, up lots of stairs, lacking water), but when you arrive, it is a peaceful, pleasant little park and if you’re a fan of the film, the fountain is just iconic.

Interestingly, the park is also filled with statues of chases (satyrs and such trying to catch one comely lass or another) which feels appropriate for Bava’s early, gory, and ever so stylish body count film. I recommend it, but if you ever think you might go, message me and I’ll walk you through the route not to take.

Capuchin Crypt (Rome, Italy)

There is no connection to any film here, but ye gods, what a creepy, creepy place. So this is a “skull chapel,” a site sometimes found in monasteries, where bones and skulls have been artfully arranged to create contemplative sites in which to meditate on mortality, to be confronted with death and thus be compelled to better consider life’s choices.

Photo by Dnalor_01, Wikimedia commons (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Now, I’ve seen a couple of these before and while it is morbid how they are filled with bones, they tend to be pretty solemn, serious places. This was different. A combination of something from Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal and the scene in Alan Parker’s The Wall where Pink has gone mad in his hotel room, obsessively arranging trash, matchbooks and drugs into mandalas on the floor before shaving off his eyebrows and his nipples, this felt like the compulsive, whimsical, insane, driven work of a crazy person, toiling away in these rooms with a big bag of baby rib cages, making his art.

Sadly, you’re not allowed to take photos, so I’m sharing some images collected online, but take my word for it: it’s a crazy, artful, creepy place (and it may not be for everyone – even if you appreciate pretty dark stuff, it can be disturbing seeing such peculiar work done with actual remnants of (a lot of) dead bodies).

Profondo Rosso (Rome, Italy)

This was one location that I couldn’t possibly skip. In fact, when we first arrived, it was closed due to holidays and we had to reschedule the second half of our trip to return to Rome for it later. Co-owned by Dario Argento (and named after one of his best flicks) and Luigi Cozzi (of Contagion and Paganini Horror), who is usually behind the counter, this tiny neighborhood book shop is a real Mecca of horror not to be missed by any fan. Ok, most of the books (and so many look really interesting) are in Italian, so if you can’t read Italian, you’ll be stuck just looking at the pictures, but there was a small selection in English too (I picked up one retrospective of Giallo films and another on Lucio Fulci) and a nice collection of t-shirts, magnets, tote bags and records (all of which I also dropped some euros on).

Past that, the store is filled to the rafters with old film posters and also a bunch of rubber masks, greasepaint, and monster costumes such as you might find at a Spirit Halloween store. I don’t know how much they move the rubber masks, but their inclusion somehow adds to the store’s charm.

Furthermore, in the basement, for a well-spent 5 euros, you can check out a small, bizarre, kind of informative, kind of hokey, thoroughly lovable museum, featuring some props from films that Argento directed and/or produced (e.g., Demoni). It’s got a kind of house of wax / spookhouse vibe, and features narration taking you through some description of the different tableaus on offer. There are some specific props that are fun to see, but mainly, it’s just a really lovely, sweet, somewhat grotty experience. These little leftovers are so obviously treasured by the proprietors and the guests, and that lends it all a kind of magic.

Generally each display centered on one particular film, such as Phenomena (1985),

The Haunting of Night Vale (Prague, Czechia)

This was something a little different, and a delightful way to cap off the trip. On the way back to Poland, we made a detour towards Prague to catch The Haunting of Night Vale, a live performance of the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, currently touring Europe. I went to college with Cecil (the voice of Night Vale and also the co-host of Random Number Generator Horror Podcast No 9, which I recently had the pleasure of guesting on) and was so happy to get to visit with him briefly and see the show.

If you’re a listener of the podcast (which takes the form of a local public radio events calendar for a small town where everything is spooky and weird), it is an absolute treat to see the live performance. Just witnessing the animation and character of it all is a great pleasure, and everyone involved is doing great work. And if you’re not a regular listener, it doesn’t matter – you’ll be able to appreciate the story of “a house being haunted before it’s been built” all the same. As far as horror content goes, this is not a horror piece, so much as it trades in horror elements for comic, literary, and emotional effect. They’re still touring a while longer, so if you’re in one of their upcoming cities, I really recommend checking it out.

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And so, that is that. No movies, but I think following the star of horror led me to some really wonderful little experiences along the way on this trip (also, we didn’t only do horror stuff – there was plenty of time for Etruscan ruins, lovely hilltop towns, and endless wine and good food). I hope wherever you are, you get some chance to take a break and catch your breath. But now, back to work with me…

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Also, this post is going up on this blog’s one year anniversary. One year and 71 posts in, I’m feeling pretty good about what I’ve done so far and some plans I have for the future. I think occasionally I’ve managed to corral my thoughts into shape and it’s an honor that anyone at all would choose to read them. Whoever you are, thank you for lending me your attention for a bit. I hope you find something among these pages to be of value.

Roots of a Genre – and Questioning Genre

Posted on May 15, 2022 by Glen — No Comments ↓

Happy Friday the 13^th! (At least, that’s the date as I sit down to start writing – we’ll see what day I actually post – ok, now it’s Sunday) Whether or not one is a fan of that particular series, this always seems like a little horror holiday, worthy of some manner of observation. Furthermore, these days summer is coming on, everything is in bloom, and there is this atmosphere redolent of the end of school, of vacation, of coming freedom. And so, I think it is appropriate to take a filmic holiday to a beautiful wooded hideaway, next to a serene body of water, where thirteen people happen to get skewered, hanged, speared, decapitated, burned, and just generally knocked off in all manner of gruesome ways. But today we’re not actually going to Crystal Lake (I’ve already covered my favorite of the F13 movies, part II); let’s take a little trip to Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood. Warning – there are many twists that could be spoiled, so enter with care.

I imagine that this will also be a jumping off point for a few other things I’ve been thinking about, so please bear with me.

A Bay of Blood (1971)

Bava’s film was also released as Carnage, Ecology of Crime, Chain Reaction, Blood Bath, The New House on the Left, and the most excellently titled Twitch of the Death Nerve. Quite shocking at its time, I think its violence holds up pretty well today and can still elicit some real gasps from a viewer. Solidly within the giallo tradition, it also went on to deeply influence what would become the American slasher, most notably the first two Friday the 13^th movies (which draw on its location and atmosphere, and even directly recreate a couple of its kills), and subsequently, their imitators. There had certainly been juxtapositions of the beauty of nature with human violence before, and I can’t say for sure that it’s the first “body count film,” but Bava does it so well here as to effectively codify many of what would go on to become the slasher tropes, just as Carpenter would further do seven years later with Halloween.

But it is a bit of an odd duck. At only 84 minutes, it is a tight little thriller that races along at a clip, but it’s also sometimes languid and pastoral. It is quite bare bones, more interested in setting up murder set pieces than fleshing out any of its characters, but it is also surprisingly complex, requiring the viewer to really pay close attention (there are at least six different killers, each working separately and at cross purposes). It relishes in mutilation and gore, but it is also beautifully filmed and artfully composed. The acting is stilted, the writing is strange, the dubbing is terrible (typical for Italian films of the era), but it is also captivating and exciting, and it still somehow comes off as a kind of masterpiece, superior to many of the copycats that would follow in its bloody wake.

The story, while riddled with double crosses, reversals, and shocking revelations, focuses on a simple MacGuffin: the property around a bay which could be developed at a profit, or preserved in its natural beauty (an interesting note on the nature – the filming location had only a couple of trees and they needed a forest, so Bava reportedly just bought some branches at a garden store and had them held in front of and behind the actors – and it’s totally effective – you’d never know it from what’s on screen). The film starts with the old woman, the owner of the land in question, being killed and her suicide faked, and then it’s off to the races with everybody and their surprise step brother killing each other to acquire the inheritance. In fact, as soon as this matriarch is dead, the film delivers its first big twist. You might expect that, having seen the black gloved hands leave the fake note, that killer would slink back into the shadows so we might wonder at his or her identity for the rest of the film. You’d be wrong. We pan up, see his face, and then immediately see him stabbed in the back. All apparent rules are out the window – anything can happen – anyone can die, and almost all of them (13 out of the 15 people that appear on screen) do.

While story is decentered, the rest of the filmmaking is creative, propulsive, and endlessly stylish, circling a visual theme of pristine nature balanced against avaricious humanity, corrupt and murderous. People don’t come off well here at all. If they aren’t egoistic killers, they are generally ineffectual, shrill, greedy specimens who will go wholly unmourned, the only exception being some young people who have the misfortune of happening upon the property and getting killed on the off chance that they might stumble onto some kind of evidence (but even there, just the two girls seem kinda decent – the guys, not so much). This pessimistic view of humanity is nicely encapsulated in a dialogue between Paolo, who collects and studies insects and Simon, who criticizes his hobby:

Simon: I don’t kill as a hobby like you do.
Paolo: Good lord, Simon. You make me feel like a murderer.
Simon: I’m not saying that, Mr. Fossati, but if you kill for killing’s sake, you become a monster.
Paolo: But, man isn’t an insect, my dear Simon. We have centuries of civilization behind us, you know.
Simon: No, I don’t know. I wasn’t there.

In all fairness though, I’m pretty sure that Paolo kills no human beings in the film and Simon is responsible for at least 5 deaths (maybe 6), so his moral superiority comes with a grain of salt. Regardless, neither of them are particularly nice guys. It is to Bava’s credit that the film can hold attention so well in spite of being peopled almost exclusively with unpleasant characters.

Perhaps this is the origin of horror films filling their dramatis personae with irritating, disposable youngsters who only exist to satisfyingly die (a trait I’m rarely a fan of – I rather appreciate when they avoid this very thing, but it works here). An effect of this is that the murders don’t horrify so much as thrill – they startle, they impress with their ingenuity, they attain a visceral quality, but it’s all in good fun and there is a streak of black humor running through the whole affair up to, and particularly including, the very last moment before the credits roll.

This is but one of the many links between this influential giallo and what would later become the slasher. We also have the degree to which it structures itself specifically around the kills, then showcasing the gore to the best of the effects artist’s abilities (sometimes with more success than others). Bava even has a group of young people with absolutely no connection to the plot show up just so that someone will go skinny dipping and the body count will be that much higher (and it’s their deaths that get directly borrowed in the first two Friday movies, notably the couple speared together while in flagrante). We even have the scene in the final act when a girl walks into a room only to find all of the people who had been murdered earlier horrifically arranged. This is all extremely familiar but is housed within the work of a giallo director working in high cinematic style.

For a fan of the genre, it’s really worth giving it a view. So much is clearly in its debt.

A Crisis of Genre

This preoccupation with genre (horror – thriller – giallo – slasher) brings me to a topic that’s been on my mind of late. I haven’t personally had a chance yet to see the new Dr. Strange movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but I would like to. I enjoyed the first one and hey, Sam Raimi is directing (of Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Darkman, The Gift, and the first three Spider-Man movies, among many others). In the lead up to its release, it was promoted in some circles as being Marvel’s first foray into horror. Tellingly, in other circles, it was not. And now that it’s out, it is being met with a) mixed reviews (too bad, but not what I’m interested in here), and b) a small crisis of genre classification.

I’ve seen a fair amount of headlines questioning whether it is horror or not and whether it’s too scary. Not having actually seen it, I don’t exactly have an opinion of my own, but I think the debate is interesting in terms of who makes which case and what their stake is in the matter. I think Disney is trying to both have and eat cake here. Before release, this was going to be a horror movie – the novelty was a selling point; after release, and being criticized, of course this isn’t a horror movie – you can bring your kids, fun for the whole family! There are plenty in the horror sphere making the distinction of ‘containing horror elements, but not being classifiable as a horror movie.’ Possibly when I finally see it, I may fall in this camp, but in such things, I always hesitate for fear of falling into a kind of snooty gatekeeping. Personally, Silence of the Lambs, a movie I really like and respect, doesn’t really feel like horror to me (as I wrote about here), but who am I to tell someone who considers it their favorite horror movie that they’re doing it wrong?

Most tellingly for me, a kid that I teach (English as a foreign language) saw it a few days ago and was fuming to me about it afterwards, during our class. He did not appreciate the horror of it. He had gone to a comic book movie and was angry at having been scared. He didn’t want to watch a horror flick and was offended at the intrusion of a genre he doesn’t like into “a cartoon for kids.” I’m not going to venture into whether it’s too scary or not (again – haven’t seen it) and I remember plenty of pretty horrific stuff from PG movies that I loved when I was little and really not into horror (the face melting in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first ghost in the library in Ghostbusters, all of Gremlins, a movie that I LOVED). But it seems to me that if he and other young viewers receive it as horror, that’s what it is. Dismissing their experience seems inexcusably presumptuous. In a similar vein, a podcast I follow, Horror Queers, just did an episode on Who Framed Roger Rabbit – when I first saw that, I was puzzled, but both hosts remembered being disturbed by it when they were little in a way that felt just like a horror film – both by the rather intense and gruesome content of its climax (when the judge is slowly crushed by a steam roller, screaming till the end) and its simple, inherently uncanny mix of animation and live action.

Horror is a tricky thing to pin down. Is it about a set of featured tropes? Which tropes? How many? The net will inevitably be cast too wide or too narrow. Is it just about being horrified? That doesn’t work – a holocaust drama probably shouldn’t be thus classified. To be a comedy, it’s easy; a movie just has to make you laugh. With horror, we might not be able to do better than Justice Stewart’s definition of obscenity (“I know it when I see it”).

To a large extent, genre is just a marketing tool allowing producers to target sales of a product to the consumers who will most want to buy it. For academics, it can be an important tool for focusing a subject of inquiry, contextualizing it in terms of the history and features of similar works. For the rest of us, why is it at all important how we classify Doctor Strange or Silence of the Lambs or anything else? Are we just hungry for categorization? Is it an aspect of how we form our identity? I am the kind of person who likes these things and doesn’t like those things. I am different than the person who likes those and doesn’t like these. If I don’t know what kind of thing this is, if it can’t be clearly labeled, how can I use it to understand and thus, enact the kind of thing that I am?

This may be overreaching – I doubt that loads of people are thrust into existential crisis because they don’t know if Marvel just released a horror movie or not, but the fact that there is any controversy at all over something so seemingly trivial seems to reveal an investment in the matter that may speak to deeper significance.

But people are somehow still arguing about which two colors that dress was – so who knows?

An Under-Seen Italian Classic

Posted on September 29, 2021 by Glen — No Comments ↓

Sometimes there are those films that you really know you should have seen by now, but it’s somehow hard to finally pull the trigger on. This was one of those for me for the longest time and I’m so glad that a few months ago, I finally remedied the situation:

Black Sunday AKA the Mask of the Devil (1960)

Mario Bava’s first directorial credit really stands the test of time as an (occasionally flawed) masterpiece of gothic horror. It exists in an interesting space between the old Universal classics of the 30s that preceded it and the rougher terrain the genre would come to tread over the course of the next couple decades. If you’re looking for spooky old castles filled with cobwebs and riddled with secret passages, it’s got you covered. If you want to see a hot brand burning flesh, it’s got that too. How about a carriage eerily racing through moonlit fog in slow motion? A giant bat attack in a ruined crypt? A young girl fearfully running through a dark forest, the spindly branches of trees seeming to reach out as if to grab her? This is your movie. But what if you want needles being driven through eye sockets? The face of a loving father melting in a fire? A shambling corpse bursting out of wet earth? A spike filled metal mask being sledgehammered onto a witch’s face? But of course, Black Sunday, all things to all people, is there for you as well.

The story begins with a prelude set in Moldavia in the 17^th century, two hundred years before the main action of the film. Princess Asa Vajda (Barbara Steele) is a witch (or possibly a vampire—the film plays fast and loose with its supernatural terminology) being ceremonially put to death by a robed and hooded inquisitorial mob for her wicked deeds, along with her brother and consort, Javuto (Arturo Dominici). She is branded as a witch and a “Devil’s Mask” is hammered onto her face before she is set on a pyre to burn. A storm prevents the job from being completed, but she is entombed in a coffin with a glass lid so that she can always see the cross above, which should theoretically keep her evil contained.

And so it does until a couple hundred years later when two doctors on their way to a conference happen upon her tomb, accidentally shatter the cross, break the glass atop her coffin (leading to a scratch on the hand that gives her a resuscitating drop of blood), steal a religious artifact that had been placed on her (it may have been helping to hold her down, but will also provide a useful user manual to defeat her later), and remove her Devil’s Mask (with some effort—it had been nailed on quite forcefully). Then, having done everything wrong they possibly could, they have a chance meeting with the local princess (bearing a striking resemblance to the witch) whose family crypt they’ve been defiling and make their way to an inn for the night.

Said princess is Katja Vajda (also Barbara Steele), Asa the witch’s descendent, who has just turned 21 and is feeling some unnamable dread whose source she cannot identify. Long story short: Asa raises Javuto, has him kill and basically make vampires of one of the doctors, Katja’s father, and a few household servants, all so that Asa can steal Katja’s youth, beauty, and ultimately her life.

Fortunately (I suppose), the younger of the two doctors and the inevitable romantic lead, Dr. Andrej Gorobec (John Richardson), teams up with a local priest to fight the vampires (dispatched by driving a spike through the left eye rather than a stake through the heart), defeat the witch, and save the girl (who has a real fainting problem—it’s a good thing she ends up with a doctor).

Bava based the story on a Nikolaj Gogol story, “Vij,” which I understand was far more faithfully adapted in the Russian film, Vij (another great movie). Here, the main points of connection seem to be the dark spookiness and folkloric quality of Eastern Europe, a witch, and, based on my viewing of the Russian film (not having read the Gogol), some kind of supposedly learned men who are actually quite useless. But the distance between source text and film is inconsequential. This is Bava’s film, not Gogol’s, and as a piece of visual storytelling, it is significant.

On a compositional level, Black Sunday is decidedly effectual. The lighting here is key—stark, casting heavy shadows in all directions, and creating striking looks throughout. In an early scene, the innkeeper’s daughter is sent against her wishes through the woods at night to milk the cow (who, for some reason is kept far from home, in a barn directly next to the cemetery where Javuto was interred beneath unholy ground and is now due to rise).

As she makes her way, terror-stricken to this ill-placed shed, she appears somehow lit from below, such that her face seems to be this one point of light and the darkness seems to close in on all sides. It isn’t realistic if you stop to consider it, but it succeeds in evoking a very active darkness and her fear is contagious. The camera frames spaces claustrophobically; the elegant clutter of a palatial manor or the shattered remains of coffins in an abandoned crypt are both used to create a sense of an invasive space. Elements that surround figures seem to move in on them, as with the darkness and creeping branches hunting the dairy seeking adolescent.

In addition to being Mario’s progenitor, Eugenio Bava was also known as the father of special effects photography in Italian cinema, and his son carries on the family business admirably here. By today’s standards, some of these effects might look a bit obvious, but in 1960 they were apparently truly shocking (the film was heavily edited when released in the States and was banned for years in the UK before the edited American version was allowed to be released) and some of them still offer a visceral kick in the 21^st century. When the Devil’s mask is hammered onto Asa’s face and blood spurts out, or when a spike is driven through the ocular socket of a sleeping vampire with a sickening squelch (followed by the priest delicately wiping his hand with a handkerchief) , even a modern horror viewer, well inured to viscera, might still find themselves cringing a bit with appreciative disgust.

And there are some truly arresting sequences, such as a frightening scene in which Katja is hounded by some unseen menace that appears to chase her through the castle, upturning everything in its path as she shouts for help. Finally, she comes to her father’s room, where he still lies, recently dead, awaiting funereal rites. We know that he has been turned and that the sun is about to set, but she has no inkling of what’s about to happen. She falls on his berth, calling out for his support in the face of the horrors that beset her and as she lowers her head, the light can be seen disappearing from the sky. It’s a delicious moment. If only it didn’t result in her fainting again, but you can’t have anything.

The only thing that really stands out as unsuccessful is a romantic subplot between Katja and Gorobec. They’ve known each other for perhaps 36 hours by the end of the movie and it’s a big leap of faith to go along with their relationship. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is so very over the top. A certain degree of verbal extravagance is welcome in such a film when it pertains to vengeance and undying evil, but an otherwise milquetoast love scene featuring such florid text as, “Even if all Mankind abandons this castle, or even deserts these grounds, there is no reason why you should do likewise with your life and your youth” is just a little hard to buy.

Though, honestly, the language of the film plays better when watching it dubbed in Italian with English subtitles, rather than having to hear these clunky lines spoken in English (as with all Italian horror of this time, it was filmed without sound and all voices were dubbed later for different markets, often utilizing multi-national casts with each actor speaking their own native tongue). But these are small gripes in the face of the total effect of the film.

I don’t know that there is much to read into the story of the film itself. The witch is bad. Her victims are good. In the end, love triumphs and the dead die once again. The sun will shine. But in its simplicity, it well houses an effective and historic horror piece that honors what came before it and prefigures what was soon to come.