The Mask of Satan was also released as Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil in the U.S. and Japan. If you want me to explain all that, you can click here.

This is part of the Sabbath TV series which also includes Pedro Olea’s La leyenda del cura de Bargota, Imanol Uribe’s La Luna Negra, António de Macedo’s The Curse of Marialva, Daniel Wronecki’s María la Loba and Gertrud Pinkus’ Anna Goldin, la última bruja.

A group of skiers on the Swiss Alps fall into a chasm opened during an avalanche, which kills one of them named Bebo, played by Michele Soavi, who can’t seem to get away from movies in the Demons series. Soon, they find a metal mask — this happens so often in Demons movies — and discover a body buried between the ice. Digging around causes them to get buried deeper in the snow, so deep that they find an underground city where a witch was executed. And that witch? Well, she decides this group of skiers would make the perfect instruments for her revenge.

Lamberto decided that if he was going to make another movie in the Demons saga, why not remake his father’s Black Sunday while he was at it. That movie was filmed because the elder Bava was a big fan of Nikolay Gogol’s short story Viy, who often read it to his children. When he was allowed to choose the storyline for a movie he wanted to direct, he decided Gogol’s story, which also inspired the 1967 Russian film.

Davide (Giovanni Guidelli) is the de facto leader of this group and his girlfriend Sabina (Debora Caprioglio, using the last name of her fiancé Klaus Kinski here; she’s in the Kinski-directed Paganini and the Tinto Brass movie Iaprika) breaks her leg and it’s instantly healed. Is it any wonder that she’s soon possessed by the dead witch Anibas, who has the same name as her only reversed? What kind of coincidence is that?

There’s also a blind priest that everyone adores making fun of, which makes you wish for the entire cast to be killed. You just may get what you wish for. Speaking of the cast, Mary Sellers from Stagefright is in this, as is Eva Grimaldi from Ratman, as the demonic form of Anibas. What a demonic form it is. After she begins seducing our hero, her young breasts instantly transform into withered old teats and her feet and hands are replaced with chicken claws. At the same time, she spits white fluid all over. She also has the facial scars Barbara Steele wore in Mario’s version. Plus, Stanko Molnar is in the cast as a weird priest. He showed up often in Bava’s early movies like Macabre and A Blade In the Dark. He’s also in the Antonio Margheriti TV mini-series Treasure Island In Space, which has an insane cast: Anthony Quinn, Philippe Leroy, David Warbeck, Ernest Borgnine, Giovanni Lombardo Radice and Bobby Rhodes.

This is a hard movie to review, as you must compare it to one of the greatest movies ever. Even Lamberto, I think, would admit that his father remains the best director. But his son tries, he really does. And this film is pretty entertaining. But Black Sunday is the kind of film that will live forever. Lamberto was able to create some fun visuals and effects here, plenty of gore and some great music from Simon Boswell and gooey effects from Sergio Stivaletti, who directed The Wax Mask and did the effects for Demons, Hands of Steel, Demons 2, The Church, The Sect and Cemetery Man.

It has the same title as Black Sunday in Italy: La Maschera del Demonio. There’s also plenty of nudity and a scene where the witch’s tongue comes so far out of her mouth that she starts choking Davide and he’s like, well, alright, I guess I’ll have sex with her now.

It’s entertaining, as all Italian late in the game horror is to me. And that’s enough to recommend it to you.

Severin has released the North American Blu-ray premiere of this film, which has interviews with Bava, Mary Sellers and Deborah Caprioglio. It looks great and I love that I can get rid of my bootleg, which looked like it was multiple generations of VHS dubbed to DVD. Please, Severin — more Lamberto late 80s releases please.

You can get this from Severin.