Severin Movies’ Blu-ray of Lamberto Bava’s  The Masks of Devil (1990) is a revelation for followers of Italian Gothic horror, not least as a result of nearly no person’s ever seen it. The opening scene of The Masks of Devil presents a helicopter dropping off a bunch of expendable younger ninnies to go snowboarding within the Alps. To Simon Boswell’s pulsing rock rating, they swerve and slalom right into a cavern or crevasse that all of a sudden opens beneath them.

The 2 most essential ninnies are tall, good-looking Davide (Giovanni Guidelli), who at all times seems to be like he’s simply been struck within the face with a mackerel, and exquisite Sabina, who breaks her proper leg within the fall earlier than it’s magically cured. She’s performed by Deborah Caprioglio, who’s utilizing the identify Deborah Kinski as a box-office ploy as a result of she’d not too long ago co-starred with Klaus Kinski in a well-liked movie. Davide and Sabina inform one another they’re virgins, a truth important for this extremely Catholic story’s concern of intercourse.

Davide and Sabina uncover a grotesque masks protruding of a bit of ice. It seems to be a demise masks protecting a mummified lady awaiting rebirth from this frozen womb cave. The masks is eliminated, after all, and Sabina promptly turns into possessed by the spirit of an executed Seventeenth-century witch named Anibas, which Davide will lastly notice is “Sabina” spelled backward.

As an extra mindless coincidence, the primary names of the opposite nitwits acrostically spell the identical factor. This mix of circumstances should be what Anibas wants to begin turning everybody into gibbering maniacs, not that almost all of them ever appeared removed from it.

Then issues actually get bizarre. This ice chamber is an annex to an unlimited underground church with what looks like Russian Orthodox trappings, as presided over by a blind priest (Stanko Molnar) and his white canine. Quickly, we get a flashback wherein Anibas (Eva Grimaldi) is tied to a stake below the supervision of this similar ghostly white priest. Whereas she spits out guarantees of revenge, she will get the masks spiked to her face with a Thor-like hammer.

Full with the witch’s POV shot of the approaching masks, this flashback will strike a well-known chord for anybody who is aware of their Italian Gothic horror. In 1960, Lamberto’s father, Mario Bava, put himself on the map with La Maschera del Demonio, a black and white, richly creepy horror movie that quickly assumed basic standing. Recognized in English as Black Sunday, the movie launched scream queen Barbara Steele in a twin position because the witch and as her reincarnated descendant, who’s threatened with religious possession when, after all, some numbskull removes the masks from its corpse.

In an additional on the disc, Lamberto Bava declares that he hates remakes and refers to his undertaking as “homage” to his father. The Masks of Devil recycles a number of components, such because the masks and the concept of witchy possession, however in any other case, it’s fairly totally different from Black Sunday. Two actresses are used as an alternative of a twin position, and Lamberto permits himself quite a lot of free-associational freedom and dream logic because the characters preserve waking up. For instance, at one level, he presents Anibas as a blue-faced, snake-haired Medusa for no cause apart from depraved grooviness. If you happen to had been a witch who may manifest as a blue Medusa, wouldn’t you?

He additionally likes to showcase easy results and goes wild with Steadicam photographs. As he explains, the delirious Steadicam photographs are mixed with a crane in order that sure photographs spin dizzily throughout house, like in a Sam Raimi film. The so-called story of The Masks of Devil turns into a free framework for concepts to showcase that digital camera and the freaky make-up results of Sergio Stivaletti. At one level, Anibas is pictured with large rooster or frog legs, maybe concerning the chicken-legged home of Baba Yaga, the Russian folklore witch. It is unnecessary no matter, but it surely’s startling.

Lamberto Bava tells the undertaking’s origin however could not have all of the information. He states that his homage was made as an Italian tv film to be proven as certainly one of six movies in a world anthology of witchy tales. In Bava’s telling, the opposite movies had been by no means made, his film received shelved, and The Masks of Devil was hardly seen. It was definitely not in good condition till the damaging was not too long ago rediscovered.

In keeping with IMDB, Bava is probably not conscious that each one six episodes had been made and broadcast on Spanish tv in 1992 below the identify Sabbath. Perhaps that’s a matter of additional excavation. It appears additionally that The Masks of Devil has been launched, maybe unofficially, as Demons 5: The Satan’s Veil. Including to the confusion is that whereas each Mario and Lamberto Bava’s movies use the identical Italian title, La Maschera del Demonio, they take totally different titles in English. Mario’s is Black Sunday, and Lamberto’s is The Masks of Devil.

One other supply of confusion is that each movies declare to be based mostly on Nikolai Gogol’s basic horror story Viy (1835), which is a couple of scholar who retains watch over the corpse of a witch who tries to own him. Little or no of Gogol’s story pertains to both Bava movie. If you happen to’d like an inexpensive movie model of Gogol, you must observe down a spooky 1967 Russian movie referred to as Viy. That is one other basic of Gothic horror cinema, and it’s credited to administrators Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov, with marvelous results by the famend Aleksandr Ptushko.

I subscribe to an unprovable principle on the provenance of Mario Bava’s plot concerning the reincarnated witch burned on the stake. That concept has nothing to do with Gogol, but it surely’s received one thing to do with Thorne Smith, the American author of standard, mildly bawdy comic-fantasy novels that used ghosts, witches, Greek gods, and comparable figures as madcap expressions of the id or libido that break the buttoned-down boundaries of middle-class America. Odd people cross paths with fantastical entities, and shortly all people’s operating round of their underwear. Essentially the most well-known instance is Topper (1926), a novel that spawned two sequels, three movies, and a tv sequence. Topper is a bored and boring everyman who learns to throw off some middle-class shackles when two tipsy ghosts invade his life.

Smith’s last, posthumously revealed novel was The Passionate Witch (1941). French filmmaker René Clair, who specialised in gossamer comedies, turned it into the Hollywood movie I Married a Witch (1942). This movie opens with a scene the place a stunning Salem witch and her father are burned on the stake, and the witch vows revenge on descendants of the Puritan elder accountable. Quick ahead to the current day, and the haplessly prim and correct descendant is bewitched into romance with the irrepressibly reincarnated sorceress. And that, girls and gents, is without doubt one of the direct but unofficial inspirations for the sitcom Bewitched (1964-72).

American movies weren’t distributed in Italy throughout the Conflict however got here out in a postwar flood, and it’s probably Married a Witch gave Mario Bava and his writers a premise for Black Sunday. As a substitute of a witch and her father, he makes use of a witch and her lover, and her vengeance turns into severe as an alternative of comedic. Tim Lucas, writer of a huge guide on Mario Bava, additionally suspects that Orson Welles’ Macbeth (1948) and Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) had an affect on Black Sunday.

Lamberto Bava’s homage to his father is drenched in Italian Catholic custom and Gothic affect. Evil is related to intercourse, and one cause the opposite skiers succumb immediately to evil affect is unquestionably that they’re sexually lively. One of many skiers is performed by Michele Soavi, a director of diabolic religious-themed Gothic horror equivalent to The Sect (La Setta, 1991).

Davide’s virginal standing protects him, together with the priest’s making an indication of the cross at his brow. Her virginity doesn’t defend Sabina, nonetheless, both as a result of the reverse-name enterprise dooms her or as a result of lovely girls are pure vessels of evil based on doubtful theological gallimaufries. It might make extra sense if, as in Black Sunday, she had been a reincarnated descendant or atavistic determine, however that’s not so right here.

In any case, Sabina’s transformation gained’t be full till she seduces Davide, so having intercourse out of wedlock (or warlock) will doom everybody. To avoid wasting himself, he’ll need to carry out a wholly totally different type of penetration that preserves his honor and advantage. And so it goes. Avoid intercourse, children. And skis.

Whereas his father created a good, atmospheric work of Italian Gothic horror, Lamberto supplies extra of a scrambled disco-inferno Nineteen Eighties model of comparable conventional concepts, one which delights in sudden results, handsome manufacturing design, and frantic nonsense. It could possibly’t be taken severely and doesn’t intend to be, however it may be loved for a technical creativeness significantly better than its obscurity implies.

[The Mask of Satan, Severin Films trailer]