Mario Bava is one of the great Italian cinematographers and his prolific directing career gave us a number of gems and also quite a number of confusing misfires. "Black Sabbath" in my opinion is somewhere in the middle. It's nowhere near as scary or as beautiful as his black and white effort "Black Sunday", but particularly in its innovative middle section (the film is made up of 3 separate vignettes) it seems to be pointing the way towards the future of horror, the Giallo genre and the American slasher genre.
Boris Karloff is the master of ceremonies for the whole affair and he shows up to perform as a vampire in the final vignette. Karloff's introductions are wonderful, combining gallows humor with warm personality. I haven't seen any episodes of his TV show from the late 50s, but I assume his style was very similar in those as well. One note for the DVD consumer: make sure you do not purchase Image's DVD which only has the Italian dubbed version, and does not include Karloff's own voice. There's no substantial reason not to see the film in English, as I was able to do thankfully via netflix online.
Best to look at this movie's vignettes separately. The first is a traditional Gothic type of affair that looks very similar to Roger Corman's "Poe" movies from around the same time which were also distributed by AIP. "The Drop of Water" concerns a witch who's died and a caretaker who is cursed after stealing her ring. It is similar in style to Bava's protégé Dario Argento's more notable film "Suspiria" from a decade later. In my opinion this is the weakest of the 3 because it doesn't give us any motivation to care about the characters and it lacks the great style of the second part.
"The Telephone" certainly strikes me as the most interesting part of this film, even though it seems the shortest. It's a very stylish little piece about a woman haunted by her dead lover via telephone. Many of the shots and the use of interior style here anticipate Bava's later "giallo" films and also those again by his protégé Argento. I think this part packs some genuine scares because it feels very fresh as opposed to the Gothic trappings of the other two. There are some very interesting shots here and I think this is a very original treatment.
"The Wurdulak" concludes the film, with Karloff preying on his family members on a cold winter night in some far flung eastern European locale. It has some interesting moments but it seems to lack a really good set-piece scene that would really make this type of thing work.
All in all, I think "Black Sabbath" did not rip off its contemporary drive-in audiences because it delivers a very stylish package of frights and a lot of intense atmosphere. It doesn't really hold up the way some of Bava's better films like "Black Sunday" or "Kill, Baby, Kill" do, but it's also far removed from the rather tacky Gothic revels like "The Whip and the Body" which he did later in the 60s. Hopefully a nice DVD with the original American version that I was able to see will be released or has been released. It's a beautiful movie to look at and a very good example of Bava's ability to make a film that puts style above substance without cheating the audience one bit.
Boris Karloff is the master of ceremonies for the whole affair and he shows up to perform as a vampire in the final vignette. Karloff's introductions are wonderful, combining gallows humor with warm personality. I haven't seen any episodes of his TV show from the late 50s, but I assume his style was very similar in those as well. One note for the DVD consumer: make sure you do not purchase Image's DVD which only has the Italian dubbed version, and does not include Karloff's own voice. There's no substantial reason not to see the film in English, as I was able to do thankfully via netflix online.
Best to look at this movie's vignettes separately. The first is a traditional Gothic type of affair that looks very similar to Roger Corman's "Poe" movies from around the same time which were also distributed by AIP. "The Drop of Water" concerns a witch who's died and a caretaker who is cursed after stealing her ring. It is similar in style to Bava's protégé Dario Argento's more notable film "Suspiria" from a decade later. In my opinion this is the weakest of the 3 because it doesn't give us any motivation to care about the characters and it lacks the great style of the second part.
"The Telephone" certainly strikes me as the most interesting part of this film, even though it seems the shortest. It's a very stylish little piece about a woman haunted by her dead lover via telephone. Many of the shots and the use of interior style here anticipate Bava's later "giallo" films and also those again by his protégé Argento. I think this part packs some genuine scares because it feels very fresh as opposed to the Gothic trappings of the other two. There are some very interesting shots here and I think this is a very original treatment.
"The Wurdulak" concludes the film, with Karloff preying on his family members on a cold winter night in some far flung eastern European locale. It has some interesting moments but it seems to lack a really good set-piece scene that would really make this type of thing work.
All in all, I think "Black Sabbath" did not rip off its contemporary drive-in audiences because it delivers a very stylish package of frights and a lot of intense atmosphere. It doesn't really hold up the way some of Bava's better films like "Black Sunday" or "Kill, Baby, Kill" do, but it's also far removed from the rather tacky Gothic revels like "The Whip and the Body" which he did later in the 60s. Hopefully a nice DVD with the original American version that I was able to see will be released or has been released. It's a beautiful movie to look at and a very good example of Bava's ability to make a film that puts style above substance without cheating the audience one bit.