Revisiting Black Sunday

I watched Black Sunday last night courtesy of Arrow’s excellent Blu-Ray. This was my first time seeing the film in HD and the effect was spellbinding, it now joins the pantheon of favourite black & white photographed films - Lolita, Night of the Hunter, Marketa Lazarova and so on. I don’t know how long the shooting schedule was but I imagine Mario Bava had a limited amount of time to plan and arrange his lightning from set-up to set-up - yet every frame of the film looks painstakingly designed and composed. I think Bava made better films than Black Sunday but the film is so intoxicating one can see why it remains the director’s most iconic film...

Incidentally, every viewing of a Bava film inches me ever closer to delving into Tim Lucas' monumental Bava biog All the Colors of the Dark which I was lucky enough to pick up a few years ago. The book is now OOP but a digital version of the book (with updates and enhancements) is available for instant purchase here. I may instead find myself reading the book on my ipad because the colossal hardback is not ideal for bedtime reading !