not horrible nor great

A Brilliant Conflict

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Mario Bava has many staunch fans and rightfully so. His outstanding talent as a cinematographer marked all of his stints as a director, and Black Sabbath shows him at his most impressive best.But for me...and I'm a compulsive fan of vintage horror movies...Bava's great visuals are almost always undone by his shortcomings as a storyteller. In almost all his films, the narrative thread is weak. The suspense just isn't there. The black humor doesn't resonate the way it does in the best pictures from Universal, AIP or Hammer. And the lead characters rarely have the charisma necessary to keep the audience fascinated.I've just finished watching a beautiful widescreen DVD release of the original European version of Black Sabbath, called 'The Three Faces of Fear'. Having given up on Bava many years ago, I thought this was a good opportunity to try again, and to see what many regard as his masterpiece.Yes, it is gorgeous to look at: great framing, great tracking, great panning shots, haunting atmosphere. So by all means, try to find a good full-length HD print to appreciate this one. But for me, each of the three tales in this anthology has the same weaknesses of Bava's other films. No compelling plotlines, and none of the fascinating characterizations needed to keep the audience in a tight grip. Even Boris Karloff, while always a pleasure to watch, is not as engrossing as usual. Still, Black Sabbath is a remarkable accomplishment. So in a nutshell, maybe one should borrow François Truffaut's famous comment to Alfred Hitchcock, regarding Under Capricorn: 'Perhaps not a good film, but a beautiful film.'

f this horror anthology was so successful, where are all the Italian rip-off films of Black Sabbath? That's a bizarre anomaly in Italian cinema right there. You'd think there would be hundreds of them. I can only think of this and Two Evil Eyes as examples of Italian horror anthologies, and that was made in the nineties and is only half-Italian. Weird.This is all high-tier Bava stuff, and his stuff is already up there in terms of quality and goodness. We get three stories here introduced rather jovially by Boris Karloff, and in the English version we start off with A Drop of Water. This one regularly turns up on those '100 scariest horror film' moments that twats like David Quantick sell their soul to appear on. The plot is simple enough – a nurse is called to the home of dead spiritualist in order to prepare her for burial, but decides that the ring the corpse is wearing is too good to be buried. Probably a bad idea.What starts out subtly but creepy enough with the constant dripping of water and the annoyance of a single fly shortly escalate into a ghost story to rival that of The Grudge (there I go again, comparing Bava to Japanese horror), I don't want to go into too much detail about it as you might actually want to see this one. Scary though.Second story involves a pretty lady receiving horrible phone calls from some guy named Frank, who seems to know everything the lady is doing and may be watching her close by. What makes things worse is that Frank is supposed to be dead. This one actually didn't end the way I thought it would, and Bava still manages to bring tension to what in 1963 must have already been a tired plot. I've read that the Italian version of this has no supernatural element to it (Frank is the lady's pimp and alive) and that the lady has a very special lady friend!Third and longest story stars Karloff himself as the patriarch of a family fed up with the local vampire killing his shepherds who heads off to the mountains to kill it, urging his family not to let him back in the house if it takes him more than five days to return. Mark Damon is passing through town and finds the beheaded corpse of the vampire, only to be told by the family that Karloff is almost overdue to return…Just like the first story, this one starts slowly, then builds up. From the point when Karloff finally returns home (filmed amazingly), things kick up a gear – and remember: No child is safe in an Italian film! In fact, when I think about it, by the time the story reaches the point where a vampire child is outside the house crying 'let me in! Let me in!' you'll be shouting "Stephen King totally ripped that off for Salem's Lot!" faster than you can say "And to a lesser extent, for the end of Pet Semetary when that toddler kid comes looking for his mother".Yet another great Mario Bava film, and one of the best horror anthologies I've watched, but then I'm only comparing it to Vault of Horror (not bad), House of the Dead (weak), Asylum (not bad), The Monster Club (okay), Night Train To Terror (Great!), Freaky Fairy tales (Great!), With Friends Like These (weak), Creepshow (good), Creepshow 2 (not bad), Campfire Tales (can't remember), Dark Tales of Japan (not bad), Tales From the Darkside (not bad) , Cutting Moments (gory), V/H/S (okay), V/H/S 2(gory!) and Fellini's Roma (disjointed).

Hosted by Boris Karloff, three tales of supernatural horror and terror are presented.The good Stories: The Drop of Water-Called to a remote house, a caregiver asked to prep a body for an upcoming ceremony incurs the supernatural wrath of the owner's spirit when she steals the dead woman's prized ring for herself. This here is one of the most chilling and utterly suspenseful entries in the film and perhaps of the genre as a whole. The atmosphere of this one is incredible as the ornate, elaborate house is Gothic splendor that looks even better with all the gorgeous lighting and photography utilized to showcase it all, leaving the setting here effective enough on it's own right before taking into account all the other supernatural action to get into play here. The exploits of the fly buzzing around the woman's finger before becoming a vital part of the torment against her later on, the continuous and nearly incessant dripping water from the faucets and drips of her house where there's the brilliantly atmospheric section of her attempting to turn of everything in the house before it gets to her and there's the masterful sequences in her house of the banging noises and thudding footsteps wandering around after her while being confronted with the lightning storm and that absolutely spectacular first appearance of the ghost woman. Though it does end on a whimper here, this one is still an utterly enjoyable and effective effort.The Telephone-Inundated with strange telephone calls, a woman comes to believe that her jealous boyfriend has come back to haunt her and tries to survive a frightening nightmare with her friend watching her while being assaulted by the madman. This here was quite the enjoyable and satisfying entry here mainly in the way this one really works over the then-burgeoning giallo motifs into a solid and workable variant here by focusing on so many of the lurid tropes of the style so early into the genre's creation. The elaborate set-up of the degenerate killer stalking the beautiful young woman and tormenting her in sexually-explicit actions before going for the kill at the finale, marking quite an impressive and stylized tone here that works rather well with the utterly spectacular amount of atmosphere present. The apartment setting here is quite striking with the clean white space and sensual actions featured, all quite prominent aspects of the style and more than worthwhile enough to make this interesting enough. There's a slightly hokey manner in which the final resolution plays out which isn't all that impressive or enjoyable as it comes off rather familiar in how it plays off, but it's not enough to really hurt this one.The Wurdulak-On the hunt for a deranged killer, a huntsman traveling in the remote woodlands finds the family residing in his chosen shelter are plagued by the very wurdurlak he is chasing and bands together with them to stop him. This here was quite a fun and enjoyable effort that works really well here in the context of the other stories. Not only is this the longest one in here which makes it absolutely more chilling by being able to really sell the change and how it/s affected him overall, from the irrational behavior about his beloved pets to the eerie manner his lifeless eyes continually stare out at everyone and the confusing manner of which he seems to heel from his injuries, this one superbly builds up the feel that something isn't right so well that it scores some great shocks once it starts in on the slaughter of the family. The old- school Gothic-styled pacing and set-up don't hurt either, with this one really making such a strong atmosphere about it through those scenes, the hunting abduction of the grandchild or the effectively eerie and chilling approach in the woods over the bridge that it manages to cultivate a really dynamic and incredible sense of fun even in the finale as it moves into the grand, glorious Gothic- fueled encounter deep in the bowels of the castle dungeon. It does overstay somewhat with it's length coming into play and the characters here show some rather lame actions in order to move this along, but overall it's still quite a bit of fun.Today's Rating-PG-13: Violence and children-in-danger.

As an anthology of supernatural horror tales, each directed by Mario Bava and introduced by Boris Karloff, 'Black Sabbath' is a film with a lot of promise. Depending on whether one watches the Italian or English version, the tales play in a different order, but the first tale in the Italian version involves a woman terrorised by a voice on the phone. With little in the way of overt horror, this is the creepiest segment in the anthology; the tale also includes some lesbian undertones that are nicely left hanging (it is left up to us to decipher why the caller on the phone wants revenge). The second tale has Boris Karloff as a patriarch who may or may not have turned into some sort of vampire after staying in the mountains for too long. Karloff has a lot of fun with the role and the cries of the child near the end are spine-tingling, but the segment is sluggishly paced and often drags, taking up nearly half of the movie's duration. The final tale involves a woman who steals a ring from the barely cold corpse of relative, only to be (predictably) terrorised by her ghost. It is not the strongest note to end on. Karloff has a great final address to the audience though with a memorable pull-back shot that innovatively breaks the fourth wall. Overall, this is a tricky film to recommend. The two bookend tales have a lot in common (terror inside one's own home) but the middle episode is vexingly dissimilar and the story quality varies throughout. Bava does keep things very visually alive though with active camera-work and great sets, and as mentioned, Karloff has a ball whenever on screen.