Shadows of the Sabbath: Black Sunday and The Witch Confront Folk Horror’s Religious Abyss

In the flickering candlelight of cursed hamlets and fog-shrouded woods, two masterpieces summon the unholy marriage of superstition and scripture, where faith devours the faithful.

Two films, separated by half a century and an ocean, yet bound by the spectral thread of folk horror: Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960) and Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015). Both plunge viewers into worlds where religious zealotry twists into terror, folk traditions harbour ancient evils, and the boundary between divine providence and diabolical pact blurs into nightmare. This comparison unearths how these works redefine fear through the lens of communal dread and personal damnation.

• Examining the gothic opulence of Bava’s visuals against Eggers’ austere realism, revealing how each amplifies religious paranoia.
• Tracing shared motifs of witchcraft, isolation, and patriarchal collapse in folk horror’s evolution from Euro-gothic to New England puritanism.
• Assessing performances, production ingenuity, and lasting legacies that cement these films as cornerstones of supernatural dread.

The Crimson Mark of Black Sunday: Gothic Splendour in Moldavian Mist

Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, adapted loosely from Nikolai Gogol’s “Vij”, opens in 17th-century Moldavia, where Asa Vajda, a satanic witch and princess, faces fiery execution alongside her lover, the executioner Javutich. A vengeful curse spat in Latin seals her doom: resurrection through the blood of a virgin bearing her likeness. Flash forward to 1861, and Dr. Kruvajan inadvertently revives Asa via a botched bloodletting on Katia Vajda, Asa’s spitting image, unleashing a plague of vampiric horrors upon a crumbling castle. Barbara Steele embodies both women with chilling duality, her porcelain features masking feral hunger. The narrative weaves possession, mistaken identities, and ritualistic murders, culminating in a blaze of retributive justice.

Bava crafts a visual symphony in stark black-and-white, where fog-laden forests and cobwebbed crypts evoke Hammer Horror’s grandeur but with Italianate flair. The infamous opening execution scene, with its burning mask searing Asa’s face, sets a tone of baroque cruelty. Shadows stretch like accusatory fingers, cobblestones glisten under moonlight, and wide-angle lenses distort reality into a funhouse of the damned. This mise-en-scène not only terrifies but philosophises on the inescapability of ancestral sin, where religious iconography—crucifixes, holy water—proves futile against pagan resurgence.

Religious fear pulses at the story’s core: Asa’s Black Mass parodies Catholic rites, her Satan-worship inverting the cross into a symbol of liberation. The villagers’ puritanical zeal mirrors the inquisitors’, birthing a cycle of fanaticism. Bava, influenced by expressionism, uses lighting to symbolise moral decay; Kruvajan’s descent begins in candlelit rationalism, ending in torchlit madness. Such contrasts underscore how folk horror thrives on the collision of enlightened modernity with primordial rites.

Production ingenuity shines in low-budget illusions: gelatinous eyes sprout from sockets via practical effects, a fog machine conjures ethereal mists, and Steele’s dual role relies on subtle prosthetics and performance. Censorship in Italy and abroad tempered gore, yet the film’s atmospheric dread permeates, influencing giallo’s sadism and modern slow-burn horrors.

Puritan Paranoia in The Witch: New England’s Godforsaken Wilderness

Robert Eggers’ The Witch transplants folk dread to 1630s New England, where the pious Shepherdson family faces exile from their plantation for “proud and shameful lies”. Led by stern patriarch William, with devout wife Katherine, eldest Thomasin, brooding twins Mercy and Jonas, and infant Samuel, they eke out existence near a foreboding wood. A goat named Black Phillip heralds calamity: Samuel vanishes, crops fail, accusations fly, and hysteria erupts as witchcraft suspicions fester. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Thomasin evolves from dutiful daughter to suspected sorceress, her arc mirroring Asa’s seductive corruption.

Eggers immerses in historical authenticity, drawing from 17th-century diaries like Sarah Carrier’s trial testimonies. The film’s 1.66:1 aspect ratio and natural light mimic period paintings, desaturated palette evoking Pieter Bruegel’s bleak winters. Isolation amplifies terror: the forest encroaches like a living entity, its rustles and glimpses of a horned figure embodying the wilderness’ pagan heart against Puritan rigidity.

Religious fear manifests as Calvinist predestination turned infernal; the family’s prayers curdle into paranoia, Satan whispering through Black Phillip’s velvety baritone (Willem Dafoe voicing the goat). Patriarchy crumbles as William’s failed hunt symbolises emasculated faith, Katherine’s milk-laced hysteria blending maternal instinct with blasphemy. Eggers probes gender dynamics: women, doubly damned in theocratic eyes, embrace the witch archetype as empowerment amid oppression.

Cinematography by Jarin Blaschke employs long takes and shallow depth-of-field to trap characters in frames of judgment, rain-slicked faces reflecting inner turmoil. Sound design, with howling winds and choral hymns warping into dissonance, rivals Bava’s score by Les Baxter, where harpsichords evoke baroque menace.

Folk Horror’s Ancient Rites: Shared Bloodlines of Dread

Both films anchor in folk horror’s trifecta: isolation, skewed landscapes, and erupting pasts. Black Sunday’s Eastern European village, riddled with superstitions, parallels The Witch’s frontier homestead, where English folklore transplants into American soil. Witch figures—Asa’s aristocratic coven, the Wood Witch’s crone—embody communal fears of female autonomy, their Sabbaths mocking clerical authority.

Religious terror evolves from overt Satanism in Bava to insidious doubt in Eggers. Asa’s overt pacts contrast the family’s internal unraveling, yet both depict faith as double-edged: salvation’s promise fuels damnation’s plausibility. Patriarchal structures collapse similarly; Prince Vajda’s impotence foreshadows William’s, women rising as agents of chaos.

Class tensions simmer: Black Sunday’s aristocracy hoards occult power, peasants suffer spillover, echoing The Witch’s yeoman struggles against divine lottery. National histories infuse: Italy’s Inquisition legacy, America’s Salem hysteria. These contexts ground supernatural in socio-political unease.

Influence radiates outward. Bava birthed Eurohorror’s visual poetry, inspiring Argento and Fulci; Eggers revitalised A24’s arthouse horror, paving for Midsommar and Hereditary. Together, they bridge gothic to modern folk revival.

Visual and Sonic Witchcraft: Crafting the Unseen Terror

Bava’s gothic maximalism deploys fog, diopters for split-focus horrors, and negative space where eyes materialise from darkness. Eggers counters with minimalism: practical nudity, animalistic prosthetics for the witch, and Black Phillip’s silhouette evoking Baphomet. Both shun CGI, favouring tangible dread.

Special effects merit scrutiny. Black Sunday’s mask-burning used heated wire on silicone, evoking real agony; The Witch’s rabbit-masked witch relied on stop-motion subtlety. Soundscapes amplify: Bava’s echoing drips and shrieks, Eggers’ period-accurate folksongs twisting profane.

Performances elevate: Steele’s hypnotic gaze seduces and repels, Taylor-Joy’s wide-eyed innocence fractures into defiance. Ralph Ineson’s William thunders with Old Testament fury, Harvey Jackson’s Caleb succumbs to adolescent lust as spectral temptation.

Legacy’s Lingering Curse: From Cult Classics to Canon

Black Sunday faced bans yet endures as Bava’s pinnacle, restored prints revealing 35mm glory. The Witch grossed modestly but cult status exploded via festival acclaim. Remakes elude both, their purity intact amid franchise fatigue.

Cultural echoes abound: Black Sunday in Suspiria’s covens, The Witch in The VVitch parodies. They interrogate faith’s fragility, relevant amid rising fundamentalisms.

Director in the Spotlight: Mario Bava

Mario Bava, born 31 July 1922 in San Remo, Italy, emerged from a cinematic dynasty; his father Eugenio was a sculptor-turned-projectionist. Self-taught cinematographer, Bava honed craft on documentaries and uncredited Hercules (1958) effects. Dubbed “Father of Italian Horror”, his painterly eye revolutionised genre with low budgets.

Debut Black Sunday (1960) blended Gogol with Poe, launching Barbara Steele. Black Sabbath (1963) anthology showcased omnibus mastery; Blood and Black Lace (1964) birthed giallo with lurid murders. Planet of the Vampires (1965) influenced Alien; Kill, Baby…Kill! (1966) perfected ghostly rural dread; Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971) proto-slasher. Bay of Blood (1971) inspired Friday the 13th; Lisa and the Devil (1974) surreal swan song. Bava died 25 April 1980, legacy enduring via son Lamberto’s films and restorations.

Influences spanned German expressionism, Cocteau, and Méliès; style emphasised lighting as character, practical effects over spectacle. Mentored Argento, Fulci, Romero. Despite critical neglect in life, now hailed auteur.

Actor in the Spotlight: Barbara Steele

Barbara Steele, born 29 December 1937 in Birkenhead, England, epitomised scream queen allure. Art school dropout, she modelled before Rome, landing Sol Madrid (1968). Bava cast her in Black Sunday (1960), her dual role catapulting to horror icon.

Peak Eurohorror: <em;The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) with Price; <em;81⁄2 (1963) Fellini cameo; Black Sabbath (1963); <em;The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962). <em;Revenge of the Vampire (1959) predated; <em;The She Beast (1966) directed by her. Hollywood stint: <em;They Came from Within (1975) Cronenberg. Later: <em;Caged Heat (1974), <em;Silent Scream (1979).

Retired 1990s for painting, occasional voicework like <em;The Pit and the Pendulum (1991). No major awards, but genre reverence; book subject <em;Barbara Steele by Browne. Filmography spans 80+ credits, blending victim and villainess with magnetic intensity.

Bibliography

Brown, D. (2019) Barbara Steele: Queen of Horror. Midnight Marquee Press.

Clark, D. (2021) Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange. Oldcastle Books. Available at: https://www.oldcastlebooks.com (Accessed 15 October 2023).

Ebert, R. (2016) <em;The Witch. RogerEbert.com. Available at: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-witch-2016 (Accessed 15 October 2023).

Frayling, C. (1996) Nightmare: The Birth of Horror. BBC Books.

Howarth, T. (2015) The Haunted World of Mario Bava. Fab Press.

Scovell, A. (2017) Folk Horror: Urban Otherness. Handshake Editions.

Sullivan, J. (2000) Gothic Horror: A Reader’s Guide. Macmillan.