La maschera del demonio
Directed by:
Mario BavaCinematography:
Mario BavaCast:
Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Arturo Dominici, Andrea Checchi, Renato Terra, Ivo Garrani, Clara Bindi, Mario Passante, Tino Bianchi, Nando Gazzolo (more)VOD (1)
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A beautiful witch is sentenced to death for her evil deeds by her own brother, condemned to die by having a metal mask hammered onto her face before being burnt at the stake. As she passes, she puts a terrible curse on all her future descendants as the spikes of the death mask pierce her flesh. But when two unwitting travellers discover her final resting place and worse, drip blood on her resting corpse, they unleash her once again in all her stunningly beautiful, terrifying glory. (Arrow Films)
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Reviews (2)
It’s startling how very naïve it is. His decades-older genre brothers are no match for this. But even more startling is that, (not only) thanks to Bava’s visual sensitivity which makes your heart sing and flutter in your rib cage, it doesn’t matter one bit. So in the end the most startling thing is the fact that back then Andrea Checchi looked exactly the same as what Martin Shaw looks like today.
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The crushing atmosphere of Bava’s cult horror film is indisputable. It retains its charm even fifty years after being made – the old palaces, the crumbling graves, the waking witches, the secret entrances – but the naivete of the story and the behaviour of characters, very different from modern standards of film logic, prevent me from being drawn into it. I appreciate the atmosphere and everything else, but I will never be enthusiastic about this type of “gothic” horror, unlike, for instance, the more realistic horror thrillers from the same era.
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