of horror product, had an “inside track” of sorts. In addition to cast- ing Barbara Steele in his Pit and the Pendulum, the influence of Black Sunday is apparent in The Haunted Palace (1963, an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward” deliberately misattributed to Edgar Allan Poe), which reprised many of its high- lights: it opens with a warlock (Vincent Price) cursing the descen- dants of the townsfolk who are about to burn him alive; it then jumps 200 years ahead, when the warlock’s twin descendant comes to inhabit the family castle and becomes darkly ob- sessed with his resemblance to his evil ancestor’s portrait; elsewhere, there is a fight ending with a man falling into a blazing fireplace, a doc- tor hero, and a circular construction that ends with a second burning. It is possible that Bava drew some in- spiration for La maschera del demonio from Lovecraft’s story, as he later cited Lovecraft as his favorite writer. Similar inquisition scenes occur in Chano Urueta’s El Baron del Ter- ror/The Brainiac (1961), Camillo Mastrocinque’s La cripta e l’incubo/ Terror in the Crypt (1964), Massimo Pupillo’s Il boia scarlatto/Bloody Pit of Horror (1965), Michael Reeves’ Re- venge of the Blood Beast/The She- Beast (1966, also starring Barbara Steele), Harald Reinl’s Die Schlan- gengrube und das Pendel/Blood De- mon/The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sa- dism (1967), and Jim Wynorski’s The Haunting of Morella (1990), which also made use of the film’s good/ evil twin theme. Imagery from La maschera del demonio made a star- tling reappearance in Tim Burton’s virtually monochromatic color film Sleepy Hollow (1999), as Lisa Marie (a Steele lookalike) emerges from an Iron Maiden with her face punctured à la Princess Asa. One of Bava’s most outspoken fans among the current generation of Hollywood filmmak- ers, Burton singled the film out as a major influence in the Channel 4 documentary Mario Bava Maestro of the Macabre:
PRINCESS ASA, unmasked and consigned once again to flame, signals another of Bava’s red-and-green lighting transformation effects.
