Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on The Criterion Channel

Watch this video and more on The Criterion Channel

Start your free trial Learn more

Already subscribed? Sign in

Witches

Black Sunday

1h 26m

Directed by Mario Bava • 1960 • Italy
Starring Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrea Checchi

Italian maestro Mario Bava left his first indelible mark on horror cinema with this gothically stylized tale of witchcraft and revenge, loosely based on Nikolai Gogol’s oft-adapted short story “Viy.” In her signature role, Barbara Steele plays a seventeenth-century Moldavian witch who is tortured and condemned to death for sorcery—but not before vowing to get even with her killers. Two hundred years later, her curse comes to pass as she rises from the grave to take possession of a descendant (also Steele) and exact retribution.

Up Next in Witches

  • Il demonio
    1:39:58
    Il demonio

    Il demonio

    Directed by Brunello Rondi • 1963 • Italy
    Starring Daliah Lavi, Frank Wolff, Dario Dolci

    For his second film as a director, famed screenwriter and Fellini collaborator Brunello Rondi (LA DOLCE VITA, 8½) created this shocking and deeply unsettling folk horror nightmare that would influence a wave...

  • Viy
    1:16:36
    Viy

    Viy

    Directed by Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov • 1967 • Soviet Union
    Starring Leonid Kuravlyov, Natalya Varley, Vadim Zakharchenko

    In nineteenth-century Ukraine, a seminary student (Leonid Kuravlyov) is forced to spend three nights with the corpse of a beautiful young witch (Natalya Varley...

  • Alison’s Birthday
    1:38:27
    Alison’s Birthday

    Alison’s Birthday

    Directed by Ian Coughlan • 1981 • Australia
    Starring Joanne Samuel, Bunney Brooke, Lou Brown

    Something like an Australian answer to ROSEMARY’S BABY, this satanic-panic shocker remains one of the most chilling—and criminally underseen—Ozploitation outings of the 1980s. When a Ouija board séance w...

×