One day in each century, it is said that Satan walks among us, to the God-fearing, this day is known as Black Sunday.

That's what the ominous voice tells us at the beginning of the 1960 Mario Baba film Black Sunday.

He says this as a face glares menacingly at the viewer from the screen.

It's a beautiful face of a woman that seems to radiate hatred and evil

and one that is cruelly marked by a pattern of wounds that had been impressed on

her flesh by the spiked mask she's worn for centuries. That face belongs to actress Barbara

Steele, who became an icon of 1960s horror, and her presence in Black Sunday was an omen of

things to come in the decade ahead.

A time when the witch, as the willing envoy of the devil,

became not only a staple in the films of the era,

but also a figure that unexpectedly spilled off the screen

as a symbol of the thousands of women who became swept up

in the growing occult revival of the time.

Inspired by a story from 1835, Black Sunday is best described as a series of beautiful Gothic images.

In 1630, the Princess Asia, played by Steele, was convicted of satanic activities and was brought to a desolate

place to be executed with her warlock lover. A grim procession of Inquisitors presides over a ceremony

where a mask of Satan, which is a spiked demonic face, is hammered into her skull.

Before her death, she curses the Inquisitors, which leads to a series of horrors that occur 200 years later,

when the mask is removed and Asia is revived by blood to wreak havoc and revenge.

The heroine of the film is Princess Cotia, played by Barbara Steele in a double role,

and she's the great-granddaughter of the witch.

She plays both parts convincingly, saying a lot about her acting skills,

...