Overall, there’s really one story worth watching and that’s the creepy as hell A Drop of Water which comes first in the American cut and has thankfully been restored to the finale in this version. Hosted by Boris Karloff the film tells three tales of supernatural horror including a woman who steals from a corpse, a call-girl getting strange phone calls and a town under siege from a vampire.Īs with all any anthology film I’ll discuss the individual stories and review them. Maybe I’d do better to watch the original Italian cut and while I was creeped out, it wasn’t as good as other films out there. Black Sabbath has one good story, a great “host” in Boris freaking Karloff, and some strong costuming but little else. The switching of the segments in the new Blu definitely helps ramp up the suspense, although the lack both cuts does hurt.
The saddest thing about Black Sabbath is how apparent it is that there’s an US cut as the stories are grossly out-of-order and one story is entirely changed due to its lesbian content. This was my first Bava film and while I know fans recommend Black Sunday I went with this because of my love for anthology films, a genre that you really see a lot of in horror but not usually done well. Today’s terrifying film is the 1963 Mario Bava anthology film Black Sabbath. I will include new information in italics regarding the placement of segments and bonus content. While the content of the film remains the same, Kino has released a restored Blu-ray edition. Don’t worry, it’s there on the Italian version.This isn’t necessarily a reprint of my original review. Throw in Tim Lucas’s informative commentary and the only other thing you could want is the comedy ending with Boris Karloff on a fake horse.
In fact, the differences are so great that this disc gives you a handy 30-minute split screen feature to point out where they’re different in case you weren’t taking notes. You also really need both versions because the Italian version is better even if there’s only so much dubbed Boris Karloff you can put up with. Oh, what is she doing? What did we just say? This is great fun and far more frightening than it has any right to be.īava’s use of colour was something of a signature and became a hallmark of giallo so in all honesty, Blu-ray is the only way to watch these movies nowadays and the quality is pretty good. As she also looks absolutely terrifying even as a dummy made for the film, the last thing you’d do is nick her ring. A nurse in (an unconvincing) Victorian London attends to the body of an old lady who was a medium before she left this mortal coil. The longest story here and a genuinely chilling tale of vampires that only kill the ones they love. The Wurdalak: Boris is actually in this one (and it’s the only time he played a vampire, we believe). Set in modern times this is really just a giallo short and so the first to bring that important colour to the genre. A woman gets some disturbing phone calls from the mysterious Frank who can see what she’s up to. The Telephone: Slightly odd one as, in its Italian form, it isn’t even supernatural. The Italian and US releases are so different that the stories aren’t even in the same order, but sticking with the Italian running order, we have…
The whole thing is linked together with Boris Karloff in jovial form as our host and the stories are allegedly all from literary sources (if you’re liberal with your references). Blimey, he even invented British Heavy Metal. Everywhere else it was known as Black Sabbath and inspired the Birmingham band Earth to change their name. In 1963 he also had a bash at a horror portmanteau with I tre volti della paura ( The Three Faces of Fear), as it was known in Italy. Not only that, most of his movies were quite good and proved massively influential to boot.
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He co-directed the first Italian horror movie ( I Vampiri in 1957), was cinematographer on the first Italian sci-fi movie ( The Day the Sky Exploded in 1958) and then, when he had five minutes to spare, he invented the giallo genre with The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963).