A woman on the brink of insanity , Daria Nicolodi , his child : David Colin Jr and her new husband, John Steiner , move back to her old house , after the gruesome death of her previous hubby . Then things go wrong when the couple on the edge of breakdown is terrorized by a cycle of evil that is about to occur again at the old memory-ridden mansion . As an avengeful spectre possesses the young son with fateful consequences . A new look at the face of Evil !.
Nice Mario Bava film including chills , thrills , nail-biting suspense , twisted plot , gory effects, and ghastly happenings about ordinary poltergeister phenomenon with plenty of preternatural evil forces . Terror expert Bava provides his ordinary tricks maintaining interest and intrigue enough. In spite of a few scenarious and its low budget, Bava develops stunning photography, making great use of lighting, set design, and camera positioning to compliment mise-en-scenes bathed in deep primaries . This film was titled Schock, though in some countries pretended to be a sequel titled : ¨Beyond the door II¨ , revolving around the known plot about a haunted house , this time with a revenger ghost who roams here and there, while possessing a little boy, David Colin , who gives a really terrifying acting , despite his short age . Along with the beautiful Daria Nicolodi as the unsettling and at the edge of insanity wife , a plane pilot played by John Steiner as the new husband and brief appearance by Ivan Rassimov as the doctor advising Daria Nicolodi who at the time married Dario Argento , another director especialized in Terror and Giallo.
It displays atmospheric and sinister cinematography from Alberto Spagnoli and Mario Bava himself . As well as eerie synthesizer musical score in Goblin style composed by Libra . Well directed by Mario Bava who is considered to be one of the best Terror filmmakers . His first horror film was ¨Il vampiri¨ (1957) , also known as "The Devil's Commandment" , co-directed by another great filmmaker, Riccardo Freda .While working with Freda in this film , the director left the project after an argument with the producers and the film mostly unfinished . After a similar incident occurred on ¨Freda's Caltiki¨ (1959), and Bava's having been credited with "saving" Tourneur's ¨Battle of Marathon¨ (1959). The following film that emerged, ¨The mask of the demon¨ (1960), is one his most well known as well as one of his best and it inspired a wave of gothic Italian horror films . This widely influential movie also started the horror career of a beautiful but then unknown British actress named Barbara Steele , subsequently become a horror myth . While ¨Black Sunday¨ is a black and white film , it was in the color milieu that the director excelled , as Bava's films took on the look of works of art with the projects which he went on making . Later on , he directed ¨Black Sabbath¨ with the great Boris Karloff and others as ¨Baron Blood¨ with Joseph Cotten , and ¨The whip and the boy¨with Chistopher Lee . Bava along with Riccardo Freda and Dario Argento created Giallo subgenre including films as ¨The girl who knew too much¨ , ¨Five dolls for an August moon¨, ¨A hatchet for honeymoon¨ and ¨Six women for a killer¨ . As Bava created the style and substance of the giallo, a genre which would be perfected in the later films of Dario Argento . But Bava also made other genres as Peplum : ¨Hercules and the haunted world¨ , Western : ¨Roy Colt and Winchester Jack¨ , Viking movie : ¨Knives of the avenger¨, Sci-Fi : ¨Planet of vampires¨, Sex comedy : ¨Four times that night¨, Oriental fantasy : ¨The wonders of Aladdin¨, and the first Slasher movie : ¨Bay of blood¨, among others . Rating : 6.5/10 . Decent terror movie .
