“Director-cinematographer Mario Bava was truly one of the great stylists of the European cinema.... Black Sunday is the first and possibly most impressive movie in Bava's relatively short (from 1960 until his death in 1980) string of horror-suspense films, including Black Sabbath, La Frusta e il Corpo and Baron Blood.... Black Sunday investigates with a restless, moving camera the ‘hour of the wolf,' that time of morning when dream and reality are interwoven inextricably. His landscapes are like Dante's ‘dark woods'--shadowy, deserted, mist-filled. His interiors are exaggerated, Baroque-decaying castles, cobwebbed mausoleums, somnolent villages. The story itself is a rather thin one--a sorceress returns to possess the body of a young girl (both parts played without possible match by the regal, cadaverous Barbara Steele) who is ultimately saved by the efforts of the young hero braving the perils of evil and illusion. Upon these bare crickety bones Bava weaves his tapestry of nightmares. Ambiguity reigns supreme in the film....” James Ursini
No longer in distribution, this cult film must be shown in a print made for television. Note: Not recommended for children.