Mask of Satan (1989)

Sorry for the ”bad” things I wrote about Lamberto Bava yesterday, after watching Mask of Satan – his homage/remake/reimagination of his fathers Black Sunday, I’ve seen that Lamberto is very capable to make a visual roller coaster with a TV-movie budget. I don’t remember so much of the original movie, except the witch and the mask so I won’t bother to make any comparisons. But I would like to know who they came up with the concept for this version…

A bunch of young hot people with trendy (at that time) skiing-clothes falls down thru a crevice in the snow and ends up finding an old church with and even older village. The only one left there is a weird blind priest with his faithful dogs. But like in all horror movies they fuck things up the first thing they do. Down in the rift they find the frozen and ancient body of a woman, and she has a cool mask on, who they remove and therefore unleashes the power of Anibas the Witch and Satan again! Slowly the group is getting more and more weird and twisted, and the only one who seems to not be affected by the curse is Davide (Giovanni Guidelli), who received a blessing by the priest and is stronger than the others… But Anibas want to regain her power do everything to do so…

First of all, the look of this movie is marvellous. The sets are big and spooky, built with a lot of imagination and talent. The outside village is perfect and is thick with atmosphere. Everything is cold and snowy too, which is even better. It’s easier to escape and hide when it’s a warm, sunny day – but not here. The script is a little bit of a mess, for example the characters never seem to mind that one of them dies in a horrible accident, and they never seem to analyze so much that a broken leg is healed – but it could be explained later in the movie too. Not much is happening in the ways of twists, but the script is still so entertaining that it’s easy to ignore the bad stuff.

Most of the actors are doing fine, but the characters are a bit anonymous and easy to confuse with each other. Eva Grimaldi is the ancient witch Anibas, and Debora Kinski (she was married to Klaus at that time) is the woman she possesses. Old time favourite Michele Soavi is one of the unlucky skiers and Stanko Molnar is great as the creepy priest.

Lamberto has never been a gorehound, and so even in this movie – but it has still a lot of cool and slimy special effects to enjoy! Ok, character gets eaten alive – but it’s a more abstract scene – but that’s it when it comes to gore. The best scene is when one of the characters is transforming back and forth from human to demon during a sex-scene! Some very smart solutions there and just very well made.

Mask of Satan (or Demons 5 as it was called in come territories) is an entertaining and good-looking piece of Italian TV-horror. Recommended!