Macabre Monday: Introduction & Black Sunday

When I was browsing Kate Flint's blog, The Minted Beauty, I came across something I just knew I would have to steal from her: Macabre Mondays.

Kate's summary of "Macabre Monday" includes the idea of posts concerning book reviews, movie reviews, scary stories, and "general down right creepiness."

I have a feeling that I will gravitate more towards movies (and possibly some funny reviews of horror movies), but anything is really up for grabs as long as it spooks me but won't scare you guys away ;)

Like Kate says in her post, I will put up a "read more" for Macabre Mondays, simply because I know they are out of the ordinary, a little scary, and not everyone's taste. I will also alert you to spoilers if reviewing a movie or book, and will try to put up trigger warnings when necessary.

So let's begin with a black and white movie from 1960: Black Sunday. 




Also known as The Mask of Satan, this Italian film has been in my Netflix queue for months now. It's not that I dislike black and white films, because I don't, it's that I don't really care for black and white horror films.

While there aren't really any "jump scares" or action quickly following action in this film, there's some creepiness factoring in. The use of shadows, things like massive cobwebs (were the spiders as big as the cobwebs? ewww), outstanding music/sound (and the absence of it), and some pretty cool special effects that I was not expecting, all added up to make the already really interesting story even more intriguing.

By the way, when I say "really interesting story," I mean it. You have a vampire-witch who has returned from the dead, so basically a zombie-vampire-witch, to seek revenge on the family that burned her at the stake centuries ago. Her main goal, apparently, is to suck the life force out of her look-alike nemesis. There's more to it, of course, but that's really all you need to know...

I was surprised to see some romance. It definitely made for some over-the-top melodramatic moments that I caught myself rolling my eyes at. But other than that, the film is nothing but gothic atmosphere and gothic cliches (which probably weren't cliche back then). And I guess, even the romantic sub-plot was a bit gothic...

Also, the opening scene might haunt me a little bit...

Must have sucked to have been a witch. Err...zombie-vampire-witch, I mean.