My Dad has been recommending this movie to us for ages now. It was one of those he saw as a kid and it scared the bejesus out of him. After finally getting around to watching it, and putting it in context, I could see why.

This film is an Italian film that is dubbed over in English, which always makes for a fun cheesy movie. Other than the dubbing though, there wasn't much cheese involved in this movie. Well, other than the Nascar sounding wind through half of the scenes.

It was definitely one that was more designed to scare you back in the day. In today's standards, the movie wasn't very scary, but we have been subjected to so much in the horror genre, very little is actually scary. I could see this being scary watching it in a theater, or in a dark room by yourself.

Overall, it was worth the watch, even on our obviously bootleg copy that was purchased on eBay. I'd recommend a rental if you can find it.

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The last Mario Bava movie I saw was Planet of the Vampires which I couldn't get into at all. Before that, I saw Shock, which I ended up liking pretty well. I also knew from quite a few other Italian productions that Mario was first and foremost a visual person, which explains to me why his color movies seem to be more expressive. So I knew all this going into "Black Sunday," which had been recommended to us as Wolf said.

To be honest, I really could see myself as a little kid sitting in a crowded, blacked out theater or possibly on the floor in front of the TV watching this around Halloween time and getting freaked out. Some of the visuals, like Barbara Steele getting a mask nailed into her face or a flash of her still rotted body as she tries to persuade the hero that she is normal probably would've given me at least pause when I was smaller. So the influence is definitely easy to see.

Whether it aged well is another thing. There isn't exactly a deep story, so the movie itself could have been chopped down considerably. A lot of the time characters stand around and talk about nothing for a good while. It really is more of a spookhouse movie that relies on ambience and visuals to get people in the mood, and I felt it worked for the most of the movie, though it definitely had trouble with pacing.

Again, it's pretty obvious where a lot of the influence from this movie lies: I even wondered if the demons in Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight being killed by destroying the eyes was a reference to this movie. Others have cited films such as The Beyond and even Night of the Living Dead. There's no real way to tell exactly but Bava's influence on the genre as a whole is undeniable. As a film this one remains a pretty spooky example of his early work and is worth at least a once through.

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