A vengeful witch and her fiendish servant return from the grave and begin a bloody campaign to possess the body of the witch’s beautiful look-alike descendant. Only the girl’s brother and a handsome doctor stand in her way. —IMDb
Mario Bava was born in Sanremo, Liguria, Italy. The son of Eugenio Bava, a sculptor who became a pioneer of special effects photography and subsequently one of the great cameramen of Italian silent pictures, Mario Bava’s first ambition was to become a painter. Unable to turn out paintings at a profitable rate, he went into his father’s business, working as an assistant to other Italian cinematographers like Massimo Terzano, while also offering assistance to his father who headed the special effects department at Benito Mussolini’s film factory, the Instituto LUCE.
Bava became a cinematographer in his own right in 1939, shooting two short films with Roberto Rossellini. He made his feature debut in the early 1940s. Bava’s camerawork was an instrumental factor in developing the screen personas of such stars of the period as Gina Lollobrigida, Steve Reeves and Aldo Fabrizi.
Bava co-directed his first genre film in 1958: Le morte viene dallo spazio (The Day the Sky Exploded… read more
This is one stylish flick. It's more Edgar Allan Poe and Universal horror than Dario Argento, and the pacing is shoddy, but the sumptuous visuals and gothic atmosphere more than make up for it. And there are some genuinely heart pounding terrifying moments. Definitely not my last Mario Bava.
The Inquisition of Moldavia? Lol. This film must be a completely nutter. The witch in the grave looks sort of like an albino Michael Jackson papier-mâché, while her devilish and mustachio servant is something of a yeoman and small holder Fu Manchu. Concentrating solely on effects, it's almost an anything goes farrago. Witch Gothic sometime is.