Blame it on Barbara Steele’s eyes, I recently fangirled about Black Sunday (1960) on the My Horror Confessional podcast with Miguel Meyers (Miguel Villa). It has it all: a witch, vampires, zombies, maybe a ghost. Whatever Princess Asa Vajda is, she is everything.

The film has heaps of Gothic goodness: spooky woods, mouldering ruins, a generational curse, relentless thralls creeping around and making the shrinking damsel, Katja Vajda faint. But Asa Vajda shines darker than all the rest. She shows no remorse in her pursuit of dark power. Newly risen, she coos to a victim that she’ll take all their blood and her vengeance. Finally revealed, she cackles and screams about the “beautiful life of hate and evil!”

Do not prolong the sin of not watching Black Sunday, as I did. Turn out all the lights, and fall in love with Princess Vajda along with me.

And check out the My Horror Confessional podcast, where Miguel interviews horror writers and introduces them to horror classics they’ve never watched before.