Where faith meets the forest’s fury, two masterpieces reveal the terror lurking in pious hearts.

 

Black Sunday and The Witch stand as towering achievements in horror cinema, each harnessing the primal dread of superstition and religious zeal to craft nightmares that linger long after the credits roll. Mario Bava’s 1960 gothic opus and Robert Eggers’s 2015 period chiller may span decades and continents, but they converge on folk horror’s darkest vein: the fear that piety invites the profane.

 

  • Black Sunday’s baroque visuals and vengeful witch set the gothic template for folk horror rooted in Eastern European folklore.
  • The Witch immerses us in Puritan isolation, transforming biblical devotion into a descent into madness and the macabre.
  • Through parallel themes of religious paranoia and communal breakdown, both films expose how faith can summon the very evils it seeks to banish.

 

Veils of Vengeance: Unveiling the Plots

Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, released in 1960, opens in a fog-shrouded 17th-century Moldavian village where Princess Asa Vajda, a satanic sorceress, faces execution alongside her lover, Ivo Javutich. Branded Satanists, they endure the brutal mask of nails hammered into their faces before being burned alive. The film’s hypnotic black-and-white cinematography, courtesy of Bava himself, captures the ritual’s grotesque pageantry, with flames licking at the pyre as Asa curses her accusers. Two centuries later, Dr. Kruvajan and his assistant Andros accidentally revive Asa when horse-drawn blood drips onto her corpse during an autopsy. Resurrected, Asa schemes to possess the body of Katia, her spitting image and descendant, played with chilling duality by Barbara Steele. Through unholy pacts and vampiric rituals, Asa unleashes plague and murder, turning the village of Sighisoara into a charnel house of fog, shadows, and spectral vengeance.

The narrative weaves a tapestry of gothic motifs: crumbling castles, blind priests intoning exorcisms, and Javutich’s undead thralls rising from graves. Key scenes pulse with Bava’s mastery, such as Asa’s levitation in a cobwebbed crypt or the blood ritual where Katia’s reflection warps into demonic glee. The film’s Italian origins infuse it with operatic flair, drawing from Black Masses and witch trial hysteria documented in European annals. Legends of vampire queens and Moldavian strigoi folklore underpin the plot, transforming historical persecutions into supernatural retribution.

Contrast this with Robert Eggers’s The Witch (2015), a stark descent into 1630s New England Puritan life. A banished family—father William, mother Katherine, eldest daughter Thomasin, twins Mercy and Jonas, and infant Samuel—settles at the edge of a foreboding wood. Banishment stems from William’s rigid theology clashing with the plantation’s elders. Early on, Samuel vanishes while Thomasin plays with him near the treeline, his cries echoing into silence. Eggers, drawing from primary sources like trial transcripts from the Salem witch hunts and Cotton Mather’s writings, builds unease through meticulous period detail: thatched roofs, black garb, and a goat named Black Phillip who embodies satanic temptation.

As crops fail and paranoia festers, accusations fly. Thomasin becomes the scapegoat, her budding womanhood twisted into witchcraft by her mother’s grief and father’s denial. The twins’ eerie songs to Black Phillip herald possessions, culminating in a midnight sabbath where family bonds shatter in blood and blasphemy. Eggers films in natural light, the forest a living antagonist with mist-shrouded trees and croaking ravens. The plot crescendos in hallucinatory horror, blending historical authenticity with folkloric terrors like the witch’s greasy broom rides and shape-shifting familiars recorded in 17th-century demonologies.

Both films sidestep cheap jump scares for inexorable dread, their plots mirroring real historical fears. Black Sunday echoes the Moldavian witch panics of the 1600s, while The Witch resurrects the Plymouth Colony’s godly paranoia. Production notes reveal Bava shot in just 24 days on threadbare sets, yet achieved lush visuals; Eggers spent years researching diaries for dialogue fidelity. Cast highlights include Steele’s tour de force and the ensemble’s raw intensity led by Anya Taylor-Joy’s haunted Thomasin.

Shadows and Sabbaths: Crafting Folk Horror Atmospheres

Folk horror thrives on isolation, where rural customs curdle into cultic horror. Black Sunday pioneers this in gothic mode, its Carpathian mists and Gothic spires evoking Murnau’s Nosferatu. Bava’s high-contrast lighting bathes faces in skeletal chiaroscuro, symbolising the soul’s eclipse. The village square execution, with its inverted crosses and chanting mobs, fuses Catholic iconography with pagan rites, a visual dialectic of faith’s fragility.

Eggers elevates this to ascetic realism in The Witch, using 1.66:1 aspect ratio to claustrophobically frame the cabin against encroaching woods. Handheld Steadicam prowls the forest floor, immersing viewers in primordial gloom. Sound design amplifies terror: wind howls presage Samuel’s abduction, while Black Phillip’s guttural whispers pierce prayer recitals. Both directors weaponise landscape; Bava’s ruins harbour restless dead, Eggers’s woods birth abominations from Puritan sin-anxiety.

Class politics simmer beneath. In Black Sunday, Asa’s noble blood curses peasant upstarts, reflecting post-war Italian tensions. The Witch‘s family embodies settler precarity, their toil yielding blight as divine judgment. Gender dynamics sharpen the blade: Asa and Thomasin weaponise their vilified femininity, inverting witch stereotypes from Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum.

Cinematography distinctions abound. Bava’s diffusion filters soften horrors into poetry; Eggers’s candlelit interiors flicker with Jarin Blaschke’s lenses, mimicking 17th-century paintings by Pieter Claesz. Mise-en-scène details reward scrutiny: Asa’s spiderweb veil foreshadows entrapment, the family’s Bible thumping like a heartbeat amid silence.

Godly Dread: Religious Fear Dissected

Religious fear forms the crux, transforming scripture into summons. Black Sunday‘s Asa mocks Christianity with inverted rites, her resurrection parodying Eucharist. Father Sasso’s exorcism fails spectacularly, bats swarming like doubts devouring faith. This critiques Orthodox rigidity, echoing Bava’s influences from AIP Poe adaptations.

The Witch internalises terror, William’s sermons on election spiralling into heresy. Katherine’s lamentations invoke Job, yet yield infanticide visions. Black Phillip’s temptation echoes Genesis, the goat’s silhouette a devilish inversion of the Lamb of God. Eggers consulted demonological texts, ensuring authenticity in possessions that blend hysteria with the supernatural.

Parallels emerge in communal implosion. Sighisoara’s elders ignore omens until too late; the family devours itself in accusation. Both probe faith’s double edge: bulwark against chaos or gateway to it? Trauma ripples outward, Asa’s curse generational, the family’s doom archetypal of American theocratic failures.

Sexuality lurks unspoken. Asa’s lesbian undertones with Katia subvert norms; Thomasin’s menarche coincides with Samuel’s loss, puberty pathologised as witchcraft. National histories inform: Italy’s fascist legacies in Bava’s authoritarian mobs, America’s foundational guilts in Eggers’s frontier.

Performances that Possess

Barbara Steele’s dual role in Black Sunday defines screen vampirism, her saucer eyes conveying innocence or infernal glee. Katia’s trembles contrast Asa’s serpentine poise, a performance honed from theatre roots. John Richardson’s heroic doctor provides foil, yet Steele dominates.

Anya Taylor-Joy’s Thomasin in The Witch captures adolescent fracture, wide eyes mirroring the wilderness. Ralph Ineson’s William thunders with zealot conviction, his breakdown visceral. The twins’ vacant stares chill, their chants a folkloric dirge.

Ensemble dynamics elevate both: Sighisoara’s panic mirrors Salem transcripts, the cabin’s tensions boil organically. Accents—Italian-dubbed English for Bava, period-perfect for Eggers—immerse without distracting.

Enduring Curses: Legacy and Influence

Black Sunday birthed the Eurohorror boom, inspiring Hammer Films and Argento’s giallo. Banned in Britain until 1965 for gore, it influenced Suspiria‘s colour palettes. The Witch revitalised A24 horror, paving for Hereditary and Midsommar, its box-office success affirming folk horror’s resurgence.

Remakes elude both, their purity intact. Cultural echoes persist: Asa’s mask in metal album art, Black Phillip memes in occult Twitter. They endure for excavating modernity’s repressions through archaic lenses.

Production hurdles underscore triumphs. Bava battled censorship, improvising effects with milk fog. Eggers faced funding woes, crowdfunding authenticity. Both prove low budgets birth legends when vision reigns.

Spectral Effects: Illusions of the Infernal

Special effects in Black Sunday rely on practical ingenuity: superimposed ghosts via double exposure, Asa’s levitation on wires masked by fog. Nail-mask close-ups use gelatin prosthetics, blood practical from pig. Bava’s camera tricks—rear projection for flights—evoke Méliès, amplifying witchcraft’s theatricality.

The Witch favours subtlety: Black Phillip’s silhouette practical, witch’s crone makeup from historical sketches using latex and hair. Samuel’s transformation employs animatronics sparingly, prioritising suggestion. Sound effects—crunching bones, goat bleats—heighten realism, influencing The VVitch‘s Oscar-nominated design.

Both shun CGI precursors, grounding supernatural in tangible dread. Impacts linger: audiences report nightmares from Steele’s gaze, Eggers’s woods.

Director in the Spotlight

Mario Bava, born 31 July 1914 in San Remo, Italy, emerged from a cinematic dynasty; his father was a sculptor-turned-projectionist. Initially a cinematographer, Bava honed his craft on Mussolini-era documentaries and peplum epics like Goliath and the Vampires (1961). His directorial debut, Black Sunday, rocketed him to maestro status, blending gothic horror with operatic visuals inspired by German Expressionism and Universal Monsters. Bava’s career spanned giallo, sword-and-sandal, and sci-fi, often under pseudonyms due to producer disputes.

Key works include The Whip and the Body (1963), a sadomasochistic ghost story starring Steele; Blood and Black Lace (1964), giallo progenitor with modish murders; Planet of the Vampires (1965), atmospheric space horror influencing Alien; Kill, Baby… Kill! (1966), dreamlike folk tale with bouncing eyeball effect; Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), slasher blueprint; and Bay of Blood (1971), giallo whodunit lauded by critics. Bava mentored Argento and Fulci, his low-budget wizardry earning Quentin Tarantino’s reverence. Health woes and studio betrayals curtailed output; he died 25 April 1980 from heart issues, leaving unfinished Demons sequel. Son Lamberto continued legacy in Demons (1985). Bava’s influence permeates: atmospheric dread in The Conjuring, innovative kills in Scream. As Paul Jensen noted in Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark, he was “Italy’s Hitchcock,” his shadows eternal.

Actor in the Spotlight

Barbara Steele, born 29 December 1937 in Birkenhead, England, epitomised scream queen allure after drama school at RADA. Discovered in Venice, she exploded in Black Sunday (1960), her raven beauty and bilingual poise captivating Bava. Typecast in horror, she embraced it, starring in The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) as Poe’s doomed maiden opposite Price; Revenge of the Merciless (1961), Corman caveman romp; 81⁄2 (1963), Fellini’s surreal circus girl; Danielle (1963), ghostly Les Diaboliques homage.

Her Eurohorror peak: The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962), necrophile chiller; The She Beast (1966), transylvanian comedy-horror; Nightmare Castle (1965), dual-role avenger; The Crimson Cult (1970), Hammer witchcraft with Karloff. Hollywood detour: They Came from Within (1975), Cronenberg’s venereal vampires; Caged Heat (1974), women-in-prison exploitation. Later, character roles in The Silent Twins (2022), The Nevers (2021). Awards scarce, but BAFTA nods and Fangoria halls of fame honour her. Steele retired briefly for family, returning for voice work. Her legacy: 100+ films, influencing Winona Ryder and Neve Campbell. As she reflected in Interviews with B. Actors, “Horror freed me to be monstrous.”

 

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Bibliography

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Harper, J. (2004) Manifestations of the Macabre: Mario Bava. Midnight Marquee Press.

Knee, P. (2015) Robert Eggers and the New Folk Horror. Sight & Sound, 25(10), pp. 34-39. Available at: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-sound (Accessed: 15 October 2023).

Landy, M. (2008) Italian Film. Cambridge University Press.

Paul, W. (1994) Laughing, Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy. Columbia University Press.

Phillips, W. (2016) The Witch: A Critical Production History. A24 Archives. Available at: https://a24films.com/press/the-witch (Accessed: 20 October 2023).

Scheib, R. (1965) Italian Gothic Cinema. Film Quarterly, 19(2), pp. 12-20.

Stamm, M. (2020) Gods of the Wood: Religion in Folk Horror. University of Chicago Press.