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Released by: Severin Films
Released on: February 25th, 2025.
Director: Lamberto Bava
Cast: Mary Sellers, Debora Caprioglio, Michele Soavi
Year: 1989
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Mask Of Satan – Movie Review:
Also known as Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil, Lamberto Bava’s Mask Of Satan (not to be confused with Mario Bava’s Mask Of Satan, also known as Black Sunday, made in 1960) opens with a group of young adults - Alexandra (Mary Sellers), Nora (Alessandra Bonarotta), Irma (Laura Devoti), Bebo (Michele Soavi), Andrea (Stefano Molinari) and Sergio (Ron Williams), Sabina (Deborah Capriogli, who was at one point married to Klaus Kinski, the poor woman, in fact she’s credited as Deborah Kinski in the film!) and David (Giovanni Guidelli) - up in the mountains enjoying a ski trip. This is late eighties Italy, so everyone is dressed in garish colors and most of the women have big hair.
At any rate, one of the women on the trip, Sabina, hurts her leg. Around the same time, one of the guys from the group finds a corpse frozen in the snow and, if that weren’t odd enough, said corpse has a metal mask covering its face. They decide to try and remove the mask but as they do, there’s a bit of an earthquake and a giant icicle falls down and impales one of the guys.
Somehow, Sabina’s leg gets better so everyone splits and they hide out in an old church they run across, which at first appears to be abandoned. They cruise through the church and, on the other side, find a small town whose only inhabitants are a weird old priest (Stanko Molnar) who keeps a wolf as a pet. The priest explains that when they removed the mask from the corpse in the mountains, they inadvertently resurrected a witch named Anibas (Eva Grimaldi). Cue the requisite flashbacks showing us what happened to Anibas and then cut back to the present day where everyone aside from Sabina and nice guy Sabina and David, the only virgins in the group, becomes possessed by evil and tries to kill the two leads who spend the rest of the movie trying not to get killed by the possessed creatures that were once their friends.
This one starts off strong and ends fairly well, but in the middle stretch, the movie could have used some trimming. Light on gore but high on garish colors, Mask Of Satan is a bit on the predictable side but it’ll entertain less demanding fans of the later era of the Italian horror movie boom. The use of color in the movie is impressive, with plenty of bold primary hues integrated into the visuals, especially in the last half of the movie, but those expecting the over the top gore of the first two Demons movies that Bava directed may be disappointed that things don’t go nearly as far in this entry.
Still, there’s entertainment value to be had here, even if this isn’t a classic per se. Deborah Capriogli looks great here and we get a little bit of sexiness worked into the story which helps things. The makeup effects aren’t half bad at all and Simon Boswell contributes a score that, if not his best work, suits the tone of the movie well. The sets look really big and this was clearly pretty ambitious from the production standpoint, while the snowy exteriors add some welcome atmosphere to the proceedings. There isn’t much in the way of character development here and there are some pretty big logic gaps (how did Sabina’s leg just all of a sudden get better?) but the movie’s visuals are strong.
Mask Of Satan – Blu-ray Review:
Mask Of Satan hits Blu-ray in a 1080p high-definition transfer, framed at 1.66.1, in a transfer taken from a 2k scan of the original negative. Detail is solid across the board with plenty of depth and texture to appreciate. There’s lots of natural film grain here but never to the point of distraction and as far as actual damage goes, you’ll be hard pressed to find more than the occasional speck here and there. The garish eighties color scheme is reproduced really nicely here and skin tones and black levels both look really good as well.
Audio chores on the stream are handled by your choice of 24-bit DTS-HD Italian or Spanish language 2.0 Mono tracks with optional subtitles in English available for both audio options. The quality of the audio is quite good, with the track offering up clear and concise dialogue and properly balanced levels.
Extras for this release start off with The Curse Of The Mask, an interview with Director Lamberto Bava that runs thirty-seven-minutes. Here, Bava speaks quite candidly about his memories of the shoot and his dislike of sequels and remakes. He notes that his version of the Mask Of Satan story that his father made famous decades prior was originally meant to be part of a Spanish TV series about witches and then goes on to talk about dealing with the producers, what happened with the project, sets that had to be built for the movie, the effects work, thoughts on the cast, location work, trying (and failing) to get Barbara Steele for the movie and why the film was so hard to see for so long.
Una Americana A Roma talks with Actress Mary Sellers for twelve minutes about how she wound up in Rome and got into acting after meeting an Italian guy in a bar (Fabrizio Laurenti), some of the early work she did in her career, getting her start in smaller productions and working her way up, some of the people she worked with along the way, how she wounds up in The Mask Of Satan and how much fun it was to work on, getting along with her co-stars, memories from the shoot and how she got along well with Lamberto Bava.
Last up, Sabina The Teenage Witch is an interview with Actress Debora Caprioglio (formerly Kinski) that clocks in at twelve minutes. Here, she speaks about getting her start in acting at eighteen after meeting Klaus Kinski and what he was like to work with and what her relationship with him was like, how she wound up in The Mask Of Satan, the amount of effects work needed for the movie, how the shoot was exhausting and challenging due to the amount of makeup she needed, what Bava was like as a director and her work with Tinto Brass.
Mask Of Satan – The Final Word:
Lamberto Bava’s Mask Of Satan is an entertaining slice of late eighties Italian horror that, if not a top tier genre effort, holds our attention pretty easily throughout its running time. It’s a good-looking movie with some impressive design work, a few fun performances and a wacky demon sex scene – you could do a lot worse! The Blu-ray release from Severin Films presents the film in very nice shape and with some interesting extra features covering its history. Recommended!