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Julian Roffman
- The Mask (re-released as Eyes of Hell and The Spooky Movie Show) is a 1961 Canadian surrealist horror film produced in 3-D by Warner Bros. It was directed by Julian Roffman and stars Paul Stevens, Claudette Nevins, and Bill Walker.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mask_(1961_film)
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The Mask (re-released as Eyes of Hell and The Spooky Movie Show) is a 1961 Canadian surrealist horror film produced in 3-D by Warner Bros. It was directed by Julian Roffman and stars Paul Stevens , Claudette Nevins , and Bill Walker.
He then found international acclaim with the blockbuster The Mask about a bank clerk who discovers an ancient mask that transforms him into a malicious prankster who uses practical jokes to fight crime.
- Plot
- Cast
- Production
- Release
- Reception
- Legacy and Influence
- References
- External Links
In 1630s Moldavia, Asa Vajda, a vampiric witch, and her paramour, Javutich,[a]are sentenced to death for sorcery by Asa's brother Griabi. Asa vows revenge and puts a curse on Griabi's descendants. Bronze masks with sharp spikes on the inside are placed over Asa and Javutich's faces and hammered into their flesh, but a sudden storm prevents the vill...
Credits adapted from Mario Bava - All the Colors of the Dark and Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1957-1969.
Development
From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, the Italy-based production company Galatea was among the most active producers of genre films. They had initiated the sword-and-sandal phenomenon of the time with their productions Hercules (1958) and Hercules Unchained (1959), which were both successful at the American box office. The company made films in other genres, such as the science fiction film Caltiki – The Immortal Monster (1959), which enjoyed less financial success. Following the success of...
Writing and pre-production
Bava chose to base his project on Nikolai Gogol's "Viy", first published in the 1835 collection Mirgorod. The story concerns a group of students' encounter with an old witch capable of transforming into a beautiful woman, whose death summons the Viy, a gnome chieftain with a face made of iron and eyes that are capable of penetrating spiritual barriers, which are covered by heavy eyelids that droop to the ground. Bava frequently read this story to his children before their bedtime. His first o...
Casting
Bava felt that Black Sunday needed a British cast to convince the audience that they would be watching a film as strong as Dracula. Barbara Steele was cast in the dual role of Asa and Katia Vajda. She had appeared in several films for The Rank Organisation, including Bachelor of Hearts (1958), Sapphire and Upstairs and Downstairs (both 1959), before Rank sold her contract to 20th Century Fox. Steele seldom worked in the United States: she was cast opposite Elvis Presley in the Western Flaming...
After being passed uncut by the Board of Censors, Black Sunday was theatrically released in Italy as La maschera del demonio on August 11, 1960, where it was distributed by Unidis. The film grossed 139 million Italian lira from its domestic release. While Curti has described this financial performance as "rather limited", the film quickly turned St...
Initial reception
Curti stated that contemporary Italian film critics "ravaged" Black Sunday, although some noted its cinematography. In France, Fereydoun Hoveida of Cahiers du Cinéma praised the film for the extreme mobility of its camera movements, and the way Bava's visual style created a fantastical and poetic dimension; he declared Bava to be an immediate film auteur with "the soul of a painter". Jean-Paul Torok of Positif also praised the film; Steele was featured on the cover of the magazine's July 1961...
Retrospective
In a retrospective review, Timothy Sullivan wrote in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986) that the film was, "A supremely atmospheric horror film" and was Bava's "first and best directorial job, and the first of the 1960s cycle of Italian Gothic cinema [...] [The film] remains [Bava's] greatest achievement, without a doubt one of the best horror films ever made." Richard Gilliam of AllMoviegave the film a four and a half star rating out of five, opining that with it,...
Bava's son Lamberto recalls that after Black Sunday was released, producers began asking his father for more genre films. In the late 1960s, producer Lawrence Woolner approached Bava to remake Black Sunday in color; the project never materialized. "Viy" would be adapted for screen again in 1967 with Konstantin Yershow and Georgi Kropachoyov's Viy a...
Sources
1. Archer, Eugene (March 9, 1961). "The Screen: Horrors!:' Black Sunday,' From Italy, Has Premiere". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 23, 2019. Retrieved November 27, 2020. 2. Bailey, Matt (2013). Black Sunday (booklet). Arrow Films. FCD756. 3. Blackford, James (April 2013). "Satanic Majesties". Sight & Sound. Vol. 23, no. 4. British Film Institute. 4. Clarens, Carlos (1997) [1st pub. 1967]. An Illustrated History of Horror and Science-Fiction Films. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0...
Black Sunday at IMDbBlack Sunday at Rotten TomatoesA young archaeologist believes he is cursed by a mask that causes him to have weird nightmares and possibly to murder. Before committing suicide, he mails the mask to his psychiatrist, Dr. Barnes, who is soon plunged into the nightmare world of the mask.
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- Julian Roffman
Sep 10, 2024 · Created by Mike Richardson and developed by Doug Mahnke and John Arcudi, it began life as a Dark Horse comic book in 1991 and originally depicted Carrey’s character, Stanley Ipkiss, as the...
The Mask: Directed by Julian Roffman. With Paul Stevens, Claudette Nevins, Bill Walker, Anne Collings. A young archaeologist thinks he is cursed by an Aztec mask that makes him have strange nightmares. Before committing suicide, he sends the mask to his psychiatrist, who soon plunges into the mask's nightmarish world.
The Mask is a 1961 Canadian surrealist horror film produced in 3-D by Warner Bros. It was directed by Julian Roffman, and stars Paul Stevens, Claudette Nevins, and Bill Walker.
