这是一部以营造气氛见长的经典恐怖片，讲述1630年一个女巫和她情人被她自己的兄弟杀死。两百年后，两人复活，向她兄弟的后代（其中有一个酷似女巫）复仇。
跟多数意大利恐怖片一样，本片的故事并不特别，但哥特式的场景阴森难忘。故事灵感来自果戈里小说。女主角一人分饰两角，暗示善恶之间只有一线之隔，演绎起来的样子就像是神情恍惚的肯尼迪夫人。
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众多恐怖电影迷们都以为他们的钟爱己在Universal、Hammer、Roger Corman和其他一些著名的恐怖电影制片室和生产商摄制的各类影片中得到了实现。其实只有当你到阳光灿烂的意大利对满布阴霾的意国电影走走看看时，你才算真正经历了经典的恐怖电影。
Black Sunday (1960) 又名 The Mask of Satan：意大利电影制作者再次着手恐怖电影的拍摄已经是四年以后了，在Renato Polselli同样受欢迎的《The Vampire and the Ballerina》(1960)之后，摄影师Mario Bava首次作为导演浮出水面，创作了一部代表性的恐怖电影，这宣告恐怖电影作为一种电影类型从此诞生。
The Mask of Satan是真正意义上的恐怖电影代表作，故事大致源于果戈里的《the Viy》，它讲述一个处死二百年后的巫婆复活人世开始报复当初处死她的人们的后代，然而这个故事相对于Bava那几乎要跳出屏幕般的特殊视觉效果而言稍显次要，他的构图如此复杂，以至于影片的每一帧都可以被放大并挂在墙上，光与影的强烈对比营造出有什于Universal公司早期作品的恐怖效果，Bava创造出一出惊心动魄的神怪故事，充斥了巫婆、幽灵、秘密通道、凄叫的野狗、恶毒的公车司机甚至包括对着路人张牙舞爪的树枝。每一位看完此片的恐怖电影迷都着实大开眼界。
这部影片在意大利取得成功并预示着Bava执导生涯的开始，它在美国经过删改后冠以《黑色星期天》（Black Sunday），同样大受欢迎。虽说它经过了修改，但基本上还是保证了原作的汁味，并一着被能在首映时有幸一睹的美国电影迷们津津乐道难以忘怀。影片取得成功的一大功劳归于片中的影星Barbara Steele，这部作品标志着Barbara Steele演艺生涯的发韧，之后她又在九部义大利恐怖电影中担纲主演，每一部都因她的表现而亮色。她那阴暗的造型、冷淡的情欲使她自然而然地适演恐怖片，由她演出的多数电影取得成功都与她的表现密不可分，她的另外几部意大利恐怖电影为：《The Horrible Dr. Hichcock》（ 1962）、《The Ghost》（1963）、《Long Hair of Death》（1964）、《 Castle of Blood》（1964）、《Nightmare Castle》（1965）和《She-Beast》 （1965）、 《Terror Creatures from the Grave》（1966）、《An Angel for Satan》（1966）。

克雷拉（露西娅•波塞 Lucia Bosé 饰）本来是一名商店售货员，她被电影制作人格兰尼发掘后步入影坛，因其美貌而名气逐渐攀升，上映影片票房都获得了成功，不久克雷拉被迫嫁给了提携她的制作人。婚后丈夫不断干预左右克雷拉的演艺事业，并且不断使她偏离自己的电影理念。两人争吵后她终于答应丈夫出演《圣女贞德》，不料影片上映后恶评如潮。这不仅使丈夫经济陷入窘境，克雷拉也陷入痛苦。在人生低谷她遇到了基尼（安德烈•切齐 Andrea Checchi 饰），重新得到了爱情与理解，冲动之下她决意与基尼私奔，却不料对方只是想要与女明星发生一场艳遇而已。克雷拉清醒后重新思考自己的人生......

The day broke the Spanish Civil War, Colonel Jose Moscardo, veteran of Africa, arrived in Madrid to prepare your trip to Berlin with the Spanish delegation that would participate in the Olympic Games. He learned of the military insurrection and quickly returned to Toledo. As commander of the square, Moscardó had no doubts, and at seven in the morning of July 21, 1936 issued the side of war. Aware of the precarious situation, entrenched in the Alcazar 1 800 people in place. Where he resisted constant attacks and bombings until the arrival of the national troops on September 27.

This utterly gorgeous Gothic melodrama would be widely hailed as a masterpiece, had it not been made in Italy during the Mussolini regime. A gross injustice, as Malombra - unlike Piccolo Mondo Antico, Mario Soldati's earlier film of an Antonio Fogazzaro novel - contains not one moment of triumphalist flag-waving or Fascist family values. Oddly akin to Rebecca in its atmosphere of death-haunted romance and voluptuous doom, it reaches a peak of visual refinement of which Hitchcock could only dream.
Its star is Isa Miranda (famous, and not without reason, as Italy's answer to Garbo and Dietrich) playing a headstrong but unstable young noblewoman, confined by her uncle to a gloomy villa on the shores of Lake Como. A yellowed and crumbling letter, found in an old spinet, convinces her that she is the reincarnation of her uncle's first wife - another troubled beauty who died a virtual prisoner after being caught in a forbidden love affair. When a handsome young writer (Andrea Checchi) comes to stay, Miranda decides that HE is the reincarnation of the dead woman's lover. Gradually, she lures him into her web of sex and revenge...
What more to say without spoiling the fun? Miranda gives a performance to rival any of the great divas of Hollywood. Only Davis and Stanwyck, perhaps, could play a bad girl so boldly without losing all sympathy. The evocation of 19th century aristocracy, in its full decadent splendour, is visually and dramatically flawless - a model for such later Italian gems as Visconti's Senso and The Innocent.
It helped, perhaps, that Soldati himself was a leading novelist. Blessed with an absolute respect for the classics he adapted, but in no way inhibited by them. He was also the guiding spirit of the now-forgotten 'calligraphic' movement, which brought the Italian cinema to such wondrous aesthetic heights during World War Two, only to collapse before the horror of Neo-Realism. Can we blame Soldati for giving up film-making in disgust and going back to writing novels?
So if you've ever felt (as I do) that Rossellini's much-touted Rome - Open City is the work of an amateur...well, Malombra is the film you have to see!