the zoom lens, yet the film abounds in zoom shots: the zoom as the door of the Prince’s bedroom opens to reveal Javutich; the zoom-out from the cross that repels him; the zoom into the empty doorway as we hear the vampire’s fleeing footfalls; the zoom into the face of the dead serf Boris; the zoom into Kruvajan’s face as it is unearthed at the burial site of Javutich; and the corresponding zoom-out from the shocked faces of Andrej and the priest. In each of these cases, the zoom is used to convey,
FILMING the 180° “reveal” of Prince Vajda’s death with a special camera rig devised by Eugenio Bava.
visually, the effects of fright—the zoom-in reproducing the way the eye seizes upon abhorrent details, the zoom-out visualizing a corresponding flinch of revulsion. There is little doubt that Bava was fully in charge of the film’s many special effects shots, which re- quired his particular eye and sense of precision. It was the Italian way of working to reserve all special effects photography for a final week ap- pended to the shooting schedule, so it is likely that Terzano supervised the camera crew during principal photography of all the films he made with Bava, while Bava took over for the sake of expediency in the final week of production.
La maschera del demonio con- tains some of Bava’s most lauded visual moments, particularly the prologue’s hammering of the Mask of Satan onto Princess Asa’s face; the 360° pan shot as Andrej and Kruvajan descend into the Vajda crypt; the attack of the large bat, a creature evoked almost entirely through shadowplay; the introduction of Princess Katia, flanked by two frightening Great Dane hounds; the unnoticed beads of Kruvajan’s blood on the broken glass window of Asa’s crypt, dripping into her hollow eye sockets; Kruvajan ca- sually tossing a pebble into a small moonlit pond, which dissolves to an overhead shot of Asa beckoning
Javutich to live again; Javutich ris- ing from his grave under a lightning- scarred sky and plucking the mask of spikes from his pitted face; the alarming 180° pivot above the rav- aged, staring face of the murdered Prince Vajda . . . the list goes on and on. It is difficult to think of an ear- lier horror film in the sound era with an equal number of such impressive, purely visual moments.
The last shot mentioned is a clas- sic example of Bava’s dictum that the simplest solution to a problem is al- ways best. While analyzing the film in preparation to record my audio commentary for Image Entertain- ment’s DVD of Black Sunday, I was baffled—knowing how heavy motion
