The Giant of Marathon
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Black Sunday (Template:Lang-it) is a 1960 Italian gothic horror film directed by Mario Bava in his official directorial debut, and starring Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrea Checchi, Ivo Garrani, Arturo Dominici and Enrico Oliveri. Loosely based on Nikolai Gogol's short story "Viy", the film takes place in Moldavia and tells the story of a witch who is put to death by her brother, only to return two centuries later to seek revenge upon his descendants.
Having provided cinematography on Hercules (1958) and Hercules Unchained (1959) for the production company Galatea and helping finish two of their other films, Caltiki – The Immortal Monster (1959) and The Giant of Marathon (1959), Bava was permitted by the company's president, Lionello Santi, to make a film for foreign markets; he chose to make a horror film to capitalize on the recent success of Terence Fisher's version of Dracula (1958) for Hammer Film Productions. After he developed a four-page outline faithfully based on Gogol's story, several other screenwriters, both credited and uncredited, worked on the script. Former Rank Organisation contract players Steele and Richardson were cast as Bava felt that British leads would allow the film to compare favorably to Dracula. Filming took place in the studios of Scalera Film in Rome and on location at Castle Massimo in Arsoli; shooting was complicated by Bava's frequent reworking of the script and Steele's conflicts with the crew.
Black Sunday had limited financial success upon its initial Italian release. It was acquired for distribution in the United States by Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson of American International Pictures (AIP), who oversaw numerous alterations to the film prior to its American release, including the removal of some scenes of violence and sexuality, redubbing the dialogue, and replacing Roberto Nicolosi's musical score with one by Les Baxter. The film found greater success upon its American release in 1961 when it became the highest-grossing film to be released by AIP in its first five years of existence. The film was banned for several years in the United Kingdom and did not receive a wide release there until July 1968, when it was released by Border Films as Revenge of the Vampire.
The film received generally negative reviews in Italy but garnered far more positive reviews abroad in France and the United States, where it received favorable notices in Cahiers du Cinéma, New York Daily News, Time, and Variety. Retrospective reception of Black Sunday remains positive: it was placed at number 84 on a Time Out poll of the best horror films, while critic James Marriott praised the film as the "crowning achievement of Italian gothic horror". The film is now considered to be a pioneering work that set the standards for Italian horror films due to its juxtaposition of beautiful and horrific elements, with strong depictions of eroticism and graphic violence. These elements would be found in later Italian genres, such as the Spaghetti Western and the giallo. The film turned Steele into a movie star in Italy, and led to her appearing in several horror film productions throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
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Plot
In 1630s Moldavia, Asa Vajda, a vampiric witch, and her paramour, Javutich,Template:Efn 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 villagers from burning them at the stake.
Two centuries later, Dr. Choma Kruvajan and his assistant, Dr. Andrej Gorobec, are traveling through Moldavia en route to a medical conference when one wheel on their carriage breaks. While waiting for their coachman to fix it, the two wander into a nearby ancient crypt and discover Asa's tomb. Observing her death mask through a glass panel, Kruvajan breaks the panel (and the cross above it) by accident while striking a bat. He removes Asa's death mask, revealing a partially preserved corpse. He cuts his hand on the broken glass and some of his blood drips onto Asa.
Returning outside, Kruvajan and Gorobec meet Katia Vajda. She tells them she lives with her father and brother Constantine in a nearby castle that the villagers believe is haunted. Struck by her haunting beauty and sadness, Gorobec becomes smitten with Katia. The two men leave her and drive to an inn. Meanwhile, Kruvajan's blood brings Asa back to life. She contacts Javutich telepathically. He rises from his grave and goes to Prince Vajda's castle, where Vajda holds up a crucifix to ward off the reanimated corpse. However, Vajda is so terrified by the visit he becomes paralyzed with fear. Constantine sends a servant to fetch Dr. Kruvajan, but the servant is killed before he can reach the inn. Javutich brings Kruvajan to the castle under the pretext that his services are needed. Javutich leads Kruvajan to Asa's crypt. The witch hypnotizes Kruvajan and says she needs the rest of his blood. Asa then kisses him, turning him into her servant. By Asa's command, Kruvajan follows up on the request to tend to Vajda. He orders the crucifix removed from the room, ostensibly so it will not upset Vajda; this allows Javutich to return later and murder him.
Asa's plan is to revive herself by draining Katia of her life since Katia is physically Asa reincarnated. Puzzled to hear that Kruvajan abandoned his patient shortly before he died, Gorobec questions Sonya, a little girl who saw Javutich take Kruvajan to the castle. She identifies Kruvajan's escort with a painting of Javutich. A priest and Gorobec go to Javutich's grave and find Kruvajan's body inside the coffin. Realizing he is now one of the undead, they kill him by driving a nail through his eye.
Javutich throws Constantine into a death pit and takes Katia to Asa. Asa drains Katia of her youth. When the witch goes to take her blood, the crucifix around Katia's neck thwarts her. Gorobec enters the crypt to save Katia, but Javutich attacks him and pushes him to the edge of the death pit. Constantine uses the last of his strength to pull Javutich into the pit and push Gorobec to safety. Gorobec finds Asa and Katia. Asa pretends to be Katia and tells Gorobec that Katia is the witch. Accordingly, he goes to kill Katia but notices the crucifix she is wearing has no effect on her. He turns to Asa and opens her robe, revealing a fleshless skeletal frame. The priest then arrives with many torch-carrying villagers, and they burn Asa to death. Katia awakens from her stupor, her life and beauty restored, and is reunited with Gorobec.
Cast
Credits adapted from Mario Bava - All the Colors of the Dark and Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1957-1969.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Template:Castlist
Production
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.Template:Sfn The company made films in other genres, such as the science fiction film Caltiki – The Immortal Monster (1959), which enjoyed less financial success.Template:Sfn Following the success of the two Hercules films, American distributors were willing to pay in advance for genre films from Italy, even if they were not popular there.Template:Sfn Aside from working on both of the Hercules films, cinematographer Mario Bava had partially directed other films without credit, including Caltiki – The Immortal Monster and The Giant of Marathon (1959).Template:Sfn This led to Galatea's president, Lionello Santi, offering him the opportunity to make a film for foreign markets.Template:Sfn
According to producer Massimo De Rita, an oft-repeated story suggesting that Santi approached Bava to make a film based on a story of his own choosing after being impressed with his work on The Giant of Marathon is apocryphal; De Rita claims that he was responsible for persuading Santi to allow Bava to make a film of his own and that he also begged Santi to increase the film's budget compared to what he felt would allow the film to turn a profit.Template:Sfn Due to the recent success of Terence Fisher's version of Dracula for Hammer Film Productions, Bava decided to make a horror film.Template:Sfn To compete with Dracula, Santi wanted the film to be shot in Technicolor, but Bava insisted on shooting in black and white; he justified this as both a stylistic and practical choice, as the makeup transformation sequences required special red and green lights that would have made them impossible to film with color.Template:Sfn The shooting budget of Black Sunday is unknown. De Rita remembers it being between $50,000 and $60,000, while production manager Armando Govoni recalled the final budget was around $100,000.Template:Sfn
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.Template:Sfn Bava frequently read this story to his children before their bedtime.Template:Sfn His first outline of the film, a four-page treatment titled Il Vij, is dated September 1, 1959 and closely follows Gogol's original story.Template:Sfn Transposing the story to the present day, it tells the story of a young, married couple who come across a derelict church and encounter an old man who tells them the story of a centurion's daughter who would take the form of a witch by night to harass a philosopher, who eventually beat her to death. The undead witch then called upon the Viy to scare the philosopher's soul from his body. Upon the story's end, it is revealed that the couple are reincarnations of the philosopher and the witch, who declares that she will haunt him forever.Template:Sfn
Santi deemed Bava's treatment unsatisfactory and hired Galatea's top screenwriter Ennio de Concini, who had co-written both of the Hercules films and The Giant of Marathon, to help the director turn the concept into a workable screenplay.Template:Sfn Many of the film's themes bare similarity to de Concini's sword-and-sandal films, including the tarnishing of holy places, the collapse of a decadent sovereign entity, and the casting of one actress in dual roles symbolizing good and evil, as was the case for Silvana Mangano in Ulysses (1954).Template:Sfn According to Sergio Leone, de Concini "was far better at improvising stories, live, in front of producers, then writing them down"; this, coupled with his highly prolific resume, has led Bava biographer Tim Lucas to believe that while de Concini contributed many ideas to what would become Black Sunday, he did little of the actual scripting, which Lucas attributes to Marcello Coscia, who co-wrote Bava's early science fiction film The Day the Sky Exploded (1958).Template:Sfn
The film's credits list only de Concini and the film's editor, Mario Serandrei, as the screenwriters; official papers archived at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC) library in Rome credit Bava, Serandrei, de Concini and Coscia, as well as Dino De Palma.Template:Sfn Other papers also credit Fede Arnaud, Domenico Bernabei, Walter Bedogni, Lucia Torelli and Maria Nota.Template:Sfn Bava later noted that, "Such was the genius of the screenwriters, myself included, that absolutely nothing remained of Gogol's tale."Template:Sfn The references to "Viy" in the resulting film are mostly superficial: the film's characters Andrej Gorobec, Choma Kruvajan, and Javutich are named after the story's characters Gorobets, Khoma Brut, and Yavtukh, while the village of Mirgorod shares its name with the collection Gogol's tale appeared in. A ruined chapel is prominently featured in both works, as is the transformation of a witch into a beautiful young woman; the bronze "Mask of Satan" hammered onto Asa and Javutich's faces is a possible reference to the Viy's iron face and eyelids.Template:Sfn
During the scripting phase, the film's title was changed from Il Viy to La maschera del demonio to capitalize on the success of two other horror films — House of Wax (1953) (released in Italy as La maschera di cera) and The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) (La maschera di Frankenstein).Template:Sfn The Ministerial Commission of Revision, through which all Italian film scripts were required to be submitted for review, remarked that Black SundayTemplate:'s script "is so stuffed with witches, vampires, skeletons, ghosts, with its complement of murders and dead bodies, that [Fisher's Dracula] looks like a children's show when compared to it."Template:Sfn
Bava drew extensive storyboards from the film, during which he developed the film's visual style based on his earlier works as cinematographer and co-director.Template:Sfn Lucas notes that the film features a recurring motif related to eyes and sight, as well as the impairment of both, such as the subjective shot of Asa looking at the spikes of the "Mask of Satan" as it is brought towards her, Andrej falling for Katia at first sight, as well as Kruvajan being staked through the eye; it also features a circularity in its choice of first and last images, as both are of flames that are to be used to put Asa to death.Template:Sfn Drawing on both of the films that he had co-directed with Riccardo Freda, I Vampiri (1957) and Caltiki, Bava used Black Sunday to develop his frequent use of backstories to expand the scope of his films beyond their narrative and budgetary constraints; in this case, the death of another of Asa's lookalike descendants, Masha, is used to highlight the power Asa continues to hold over the family even prior to her resurrection.Template:Sfn As storyboarded, the hammering of the "Mask of Satan" was originally supposed to include a shot of the nails of the mask piercing through the wood of the stake Asa is tied to, amplifying the violence of the scene.Template:Sfn
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.Template:Sfn Barbara Steele was cast in the dual role of Asa and Katia Vajda.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Steele seldom worked in the United States: she was cast opposite Elvis Presley in the Western Flaming Star, but a falling-out with director Don Siegel led to her being replaced during the first week of shooting by Barbara Eden. After a Screen Actors Guild strike in March 1960 left her free to pursue her own interests, she traveled to Italy, leading to her casting in Black Sunday.Template:Sfn There are two accounts describing how Steele came to be cast in the film: one suggests that Bava, while perusing through head shots of British actors under contract at Fox, selected Steele from these photos.Template:Sfn Steele, however, recalled that Bava tracked her down after being captivated by photos of her in a Life magazine photoshoot.Template:Sfn Bava later commented that Steele "had the perfect face for my films".Template:Sfn
John Richardson was cast as Katia's love interest Andrej. A colleague of Steele's who had also appeared in Sapphire and Bachelor of Hearts, Richardson's Rank contract was similarly sold to Fox and he had come to Italy searching for film work; by this time, both he and Steele were represented by the same agent from William Morris Endeavor.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Among the Italian cast members was Andrea Checchi, who had previously worked in various Italian productions including Michelangelo Antonioni's The Lady Without Camelias (1953).Template:Sfn Checci later appeared in two other films in 1960: Vittorio De Sica's Two Women and Fritz Lang's The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse.Template:Sfn Arturo Dominici, who had previously appeared as Eurysteus in Hercules and as Nieto in Caltiki, played the role of Javutich; his daughter Germana also portrayed Sonya, the innkeeper's daughter.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Ivo Garrani, who portrayed Prince Vajda, was a veteran of earlier films photographed by Bava; the actor reflected that his friend's on-set behavior changed little in his transition to directing full-time, "because Mario was already a director. He had proven this in the movies we had made together before, since he always found himself directing and saving other people's movies. So it was just a natural thing to see him in the director's chair at last. But Mario was also very shy; he always tended to undervalue himself. You could never pay him a compliment. He would always say, 'C'mon Ivo, what the hell are you saying? Be serious. But he was unique, and we all knew it".Template:Sfn
Filming
[[File:Massimo Castle-cropped.jpg|alt=A castle surrounded by forest|thumb|left|Black Sunday was shot partially at Castle Massimo in Arsoli.]] Template:Quote box According to Lucas, principal photography for Black Sunday lasted approximately six weeks — an average schedule for a Galatea production, but longer than the three to four weeks normally allotted to Italian films of the time — beginning on March 28, 1960, and ending on May 7.Template:Sfn Meanwhile, film historian and critic Roberto Curti has stated that shooting began in June, and ran for seven weeks.Template:Sfn Most of the film was shot at the studios of Scalera Film, with exteriors and some interiors shot at Castle Massimo in Arsoli.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Despite the film being shot in black and white, Bava permitted numerous production and publicity stills to be photographed in color; these stills are representative of the lighting choices Bava and his crew made for the film, and were not arranged to accommodate the still photographer.Template:Sfn
Govoni recalled the shoot to be a "very tiring" experience characterized by long work hours. Lucas believes that this was partially the result of the film entering production prematurely, without a thorough revision of the script or consideration for certain filming logistics, prompting Bava to rely on his instincts and improvise; this is evident in Asa and Javutich being variously described or portrayed throughout the film as witches, Satanists and/or vampires.Template:Sfn Steele and Dominici were initially outfitted with prop fangs which do not appear in the final film: Bava recalled that he eventually asked the actors to discard them due to their clichéd appearance, while Govoni stated that the fangs were kept during the shoot, but "Serandrei cut around them" during editing.Template:Sfn Most of the cast delivered their dialogue in English, with the exception of Checchi and the Dominicis;Template:Sfn Govoni recalled that while the translation of the original Italian text the cast was given to work with was crude, they mostly stuck to it.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn
Throughout the shoot, Steele proved to be difficult to work with; Govoni later described her as a "strange, neurotic person" and Bava proclaimed that "Steele was half-crazy, afraid of Italians."Template:Sfn The actress frequently missed her call times or refused to arrive on-set due to misunderstandings: one instance of the former resulted in Arturo Dominici fainting under his costume while the crew waited for her arrival, prompting the actor to angrily tell Bava, "Who does she think she is? Marilyn Monroe?".Template:Efn An example of the latter was due to her belief in a rumor that Bava had invented a special film stock that made its subjects appear nude.Template:Sfn Critic and editor Martyn Conterio considers many of Steele's recollections of the film's production to be unreliable. This includes her claim that the film was shot in winter, and that everyone on set had worn black and white costumes, neither of which are true.Template:Sfn Steele admitted to her misbehavior during the film's shoot later in life and noted that towards the end of the shoot, she and Richardson were prone to nervous fits of laughter due to the stress they had accumulated over the course of filming.Template:Sfn
Although Bava is credited as the film's cinematographer, Govoni stated that camera operator Ubaldo Terzano was the actual director of photography, and insisted he had lit the sets "so perfectly that Bava seldom had to correct him". Lucas concurs on this point, noting that while Bava would provide storyboards and occasionally adjust lights and lenses, Terzano was largely in control of which takes would be printed.Template:Sfn
The final week of the shooting schedule was reserved for special effects work and tracking shots, for which Bava was able to use a dolly in one of the few occasions of his directorial career.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In a scene in which Javutich appears to float towards Prince Vajda, Dominici was shot in close-up as he was pulled along by another, makeshift dolly.Template:Sfn A later scene where Katia and Constantine look over their dead father's face employs a 180° pivot which was accomplished using a specially-customized camera with modifications by Bava's father, Eugenio, which included a rear system of radiating handlebars capable of spinning the camera on its axis. Its movement was so imperceptible that Garrani believed that the pivot was achieved through editing.Template:Sfn
Props and special effects
Eugenio Bava developed several of the practical effects used in the film.Template:Sfn These included an articulated wax head with a mechanized interior, used to represent Prince Vajda's head as it is being burned in a fireplace, and a foam latex mask of Asa's face, which he made based on photos of Steele without having to make a lifecast.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn To create the illusion of Asa's eyes regenerating within the sockets, a section of the character's tomb was built containing a hollow area under the mask, into which tomato soup and rice were used to simulate blood and maggots. These were then substituted with poached eggs, representing the eyes.Template:Sfn Eugenio also designed the "Mask of Satan" used in the film. Two versions of each mask were made — one cast in bronze and another being a rubber substitute to be used when worn by the actors.Template:Sfn Mario Bava recalled that after the film's release he had received several offers for the mask.Template:Sfn
Most of the scenes depicting horse carriage rides were shot at Scalera. Due to the small size of the sound stage being used, forests were suggested by filming with glass matte paintings painted with black streaks and augmented with pieces of dead wood, foregrounded bracken, and smoke was filtered through the studio to disguise a cyclorama.Template:Sfn These were edited with actual exteriors shot near Castle Massimo to lend credibility to them; because the exteriors were shot day for night, Bava camouflaged the sunlight through dead trees placed in the foreground.Template:Sfn When Steele was required to play both Asa and Katia within the same frame, the footage was double-exposed and matted over the jagged edge of the tomb.Template:Sfn Other examples of Bava's matte work in the film include an exterior shot of Castle Vajda as a window is illuminated by the moon, and a subjective shot of the pit of spikes over which Andrej and Javutich fight over.Template:Sfn When Javutich appears to materialize in front of Constantine, Dominici stood off-camera, and his reflection was bounced off a mirror onto a black section of Asa's painting.Template:Sfn
The scene in which Asa touches Katia and drains her youth reprised an effect Bava had previously employed on I Vampiri. Wrinkles were drawn on Steele's face with red grease pencil, while rouge was applied around her eyes and on her cheeks to make them appear sullen. These were made to initially appear invisible under red lighting, but became more prominent as green lights were gradually raised in their place.Template:Sfn The explosion of Asa's tomb was a miniature effect; pieces of the lid were pulled away by fine wires to reveal a doll of Asa inside.Template:Sfn
Post-production
Editing and score
Because Serandrei rarely worked as a writer, Lucas has suggested that his screenplay credit indicates that his responsibilities went beyond cutting scenes together and that he helped Bava correct narrative flaws in post-production.Template:Sfn Serandrei's assembly still contains a notable structural flaw — that Asa appears to be powerful enough to destroy her tomb and return Javutich to life, yet remains confined to the tomb even after draining Kruvajan's blood — as well as scenes that exhibit Bava's frequent re-working of the material. These include Katia's irascible dismissal of Sonya's claim that Javutich might be alive, her flirtatious invitation to Andrej to stay in the castle, and her seeing Javutich's reflection while undressing. Lucas believes that these scenes suggest that Javutich was originally intended to kidnap Katia soon after his resurrection, leaving Asa to impersonate her descendant.Template:Sfn
An English-dubbed version of the film created for international export, titled The Mask of Satan, was translated from the Italian-language script and directed by George Higgins III and recorded in Rome with the English Language Dubbers Association (ELDA).Template:Sfn A scene present in early Italian-language prints was deleted from this version of the film. Depicting a conversation between Katia and Prince Vajda, during which her father notices her melancholy and suggests that the family leave the castle, it was originally intended to take place following her first encounter with Andrej and Kruvajan but was dropped due to the power of the Prince's terrified introduction in a later scene in which Katia plays a piano. The sequence was crudely inserted between Sonya's milking of a cow and Javutich's resurrection without Bava or Serandrei's approval.Template:Sfn
The music for the Italian and ELDA versions of Black Sunday was composed by Roberto Nicolosi and conduced by Pier Luigi Urbini. Lucas notes that both versions used the score sparingly, leaving the creation of much of the soundscape to the sound editor, although key dramatic scenes, such as the climactic fight between Andrej and Javutich, play with no music at all, suggesting the difficulties of creating music for a film in a genre that was in its infancy in Italy. He deems much of the score to be derivative of James Bernard's work on Dracula, but singles out the romantic "Katia's Theme" motif for praise.Template:Sfn
AIP acquisition and re-editing
Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson of American International Pictures (AIP) had been buying the American distribution rights to Italian films since 1959.Template:Sfn In 1960, the two were invited to Italy by their Roman talent agent, Fulvio Lucisano, to view Black Sunday.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Arkoff spoke about this screening in 1997, saying that because they were viewing the Italian version of the film, an interpreter and Lucisano helped to guide them through the plot. Arkoff found the film to be a "picture of a first class horror and suspense director", and was introduced to Bava after the screening, congratulating him. AIP acquired the film for approximately $100,000, recovering its production budget.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
For the film's release in the United States, AIP re-edited scenes, re-dubbed the soundtrack, and changed several of the characters' names.Template:Sfn Arkoff deemed the ELDA version of the film to be "technically unacceptable", and had Lou Rusoff produce a new English version at Titra Studios in New York City, which was directed by Lee Kresel and edited by Salvatore Billitteri.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In contrast to the embellishments of the ELDA version, Titra's dubbing was largely faithful to the cast's onscreen dialogue, although some phrases were softened, such as Asa's line "You too can find the joy and happiness in Hades!" which became "You too can find the joy and happiness in hating!".Template:Sfn AIP removed or shortened the more violent and sexual scenes in the film, including the hammering of the "Mask of Satan" onto Asa's face, the scene in which she kisses Kruvajan to drain his blood, and the priest's staking of Kruvajan's eye.Template:Sfn Arkoff reasoned that, "All of AIP's films were very clean, so anything that was suggestive of playing around - fornicating a corpse, you know what I'm saying? - we wouldn't stand for it."Template:Sfn A dialogue exchange between Katia and Andrej that serves to develop their romantic relationship, as well as a climactic exchange between Andrej and the priest in which the former melodramatically laments Katia's apparent death, were also cut, as AIP believed that the juvenile audiences it was targeting would react negatively to these scenes.Template:Sfn AIP's editing reduced the film's runtime to 83 minutes, compared to the 87 minute runtime of most Italian prints.Template:Sfn
Nicolosi's score was replaced with a new one by Les Baxter. Arkoff and Nicholas felt Nicolosi's score was "too Italian" and that American audiences would not like it.Template:Sfn Baxter flew to New York City on January 9, 1961, to record the new soundtrack for the film at Titra.Template:Sfn Lucas considers the re-score to be a major factor in the success of the American version, noting, "Baxter's score is everything Nicolosi's score is not: boisterous, unsubtle, boldly orchestrated, incessantly busy — musically underlining every footfall, every droplet of dripping blood [...] every smoking undulation of dry ice".Template:Sfn Baxter's score incorporates Nicolosi's "Katia's Theme" at several points, although a piano version of the theme representing a piece played by Katia that suggests her mutual feelings for Andrej was re-scored with a dirge that more closely follows Steele's hand movements on the instrument.Template:Sfn He also adapted "Katia's Theme" for the title song of his 1961 exotica album Jewels of the Sea.Template:Sfn
Release
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.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The film grossed 139 million Italian lira from its domestic release.Template:Sfn While Curti has described this financial performance as "rather limited", the film quickly turned Steele into a movie star within Italy.Template:Sfn Its popularity influenced other Italian films, such as I motorizzati (1962), where Ugo Tognazzi plays an impressionable horror fan who is terrified of Black Sunday.Template:Sfn In France, the film was released that same year as Les masque du démon by Comptoir Français du Film.Template:Sfn
Before its release in the United States, AIP considered renaming the film Witchcraft, The Curse or Vengeance, before settling on Black Sunday.Template:Sfn AIP premiered the film at the Allen Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio, on February 3, 1961.Template:Sfn In its initial release, Black Sunday was a double feature with films from smaller independent companies, such as the British comedy Carry On Nurse (1959) or Roger Corman's The Little Shop of Horrors (1960).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Black Sunday grossed $14,750 in its first week at the Allen Theatre, which topped AIP's previous record holders by 35%.Template:Sfn The film also performed well in San Francisco and Salt Lake City, making it AIP's highest-grossing film in its five-year history, and generated domestic rentals of $706,000.Template:Sfn
Black Sunday was initially banned in the United Kingdom, receiving a single screening at the National Film Theatre in 1961.Template:Sfn It did not receive a wide release until June 1968 as Revenge of the Vampire, a censored version of the ELDA dub, which was released by Border Films.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The film was not released uncut in the United Kingdom until 1992.Template:Sfn
