Must See Movie...

Brilliant and touching

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This is an anthology film directed by Mario Bava, and contains three stories framed by direct-to-camera pronouncements from Boris Karloff.The first segment, 'The Telephone' is a very entertaining, if rather contrived, giallo-styled thriller featuring Rosy (Michèle Mercier), a French prostitute, her friend Mary (Lydia Alfonsi) and pimp Frank (Milo Quesada). An excellent mish-mash of broken friendships healed, relentless abusive phone calls and murder. In number two, 'The Wurdalak', a family is plagued by a curse that appears to have afflicted the father Russian nobleman Gorca (Boris Karloff), which he brings home with him. Finally, 'The Drop of Water', set in 1910, features Nurse Helen Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux) who pays the price for stealing a ring from the finger of a corpse in her care.I am not a huge fan of the colourful, darkly gaudy cinematography championed either by Bava, or later Dario Argento for projects like 'Suspiria (1977)'. Such an approach reduces the reality of the horror, which itself is difficult enough to convey with any measure of authenticity anyway. You are never allowed to forget you are watching a professional production, with actors rather than people, so heightened is the ultimate effect. This is just my opinion of course, and who cares about that?Having said that though, I thoroughly enjoyed 'Black Sabbath' a lot more than I expected to. Possibly Bava's approach works for me here so well because the stories, by their nature, are concise and bite-sized: each story is being relayed as opposed to being 'real'. And the wonderful use of primal colours here gives each tale a ghostly fairy-tale look which is very evocative.Much tinkering with the format befell this production for various around-the-world sales. The American version, for example, changes the order of the stories and removes all mention of prostitution from 'The Telephone' (Frank is merely a ghost rather than a pimp). Bava wanted the final scene to have been Nurse Chester's corpse, but this was also changed before production wrapped. So an utterly ingenious idea was had to feature Karloff signing off (just as he had opened the film), but in character as Gorca, before the camera pans away to reveal the horse he is riding to be nothing more than a prop, and the production crew running round waving branches to simulate the animal's motion. Such a jarring 'to camera' reveal has spoiled many horrors in the past (Bela Lugosi's 'Mark of the Vampire' and 'Return of the Vampire', for example), but works really well here because it merely accelerates the heightened reality rather than pull it out of thin air. An excellent, highly recommended anthology.

I was only a year old when this movie came out and about seven years old when I saw it on the Late show.---Yeah! I was one of these sick lil kids that adored monster and horror movies.Black Sabbath is an Italian based movie that has been dubbed into English. I often wondered how the heck Boris Karloff got involved in such a project, but he and the movie don't disappoint with the chills.The movie is composed of three separate stories ala Tales of the Crypt like with the infamous voice of Boris Karloff as part narrator. The first story, A Drop of Water really gave me the coo-hoonies as a kid. It has a Gothic scary atmosphere with the old plot that "crime does not pay" after a nurse steals a dead woman's ring. The second, The Telephone is similar plot but more of revenge from the dead ploy. The third, I Vderlack written by Tolstoy (REALLY, he wrote a vampire story!) staring our own Boris K, is a campy, but creepy vampire tale.So if your up to just some plain chills and thrills or just a Karloof fan---try this, maybe with the lights out and enjoy!

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.

Yes this is the film that the famous rock band took their name from after they saw how people enjoyed being frightened. An Italian horror movie with a low budget but an international cast, so a different flavour to the British horror anthologies. This film was also one of the first horror anthologies I do believe, before the likes of Amicus and Hammer got the idea.The stories are introduced by Boris Karloff who is simply standing in front of a dated psychedelic-esque background and giving a speech about all things creepy basically. The funny thing is he is dressed quite normally in a simple suit and is hammering on about vampires and spectres as if this were a Vincent Price movie. The stories you see aren't really in that classic vein though, these tales are actually much more grounded and genuinely creepy (well two are).The first short story revolves around a young French call-girl who starts getting terrorised by phone calls from her ex-pimp (spoiler alert). This pimp has just broken out of jail and is threatening her life because she was responsible for putting him away. The young girl calls her female friend around to help and comfort her, little does she know the threatening calls are from her friend who is simply trying to reunite with her. The friend figures this is the only way the young call-girl will allow her back into her life...pretty extreme way of making up isn't it! In the end the real pimp shows up and kills them both just as the friend was writing a note to explain what she has been doing.This first tale is quite poor I think, its in no way scary or remotely thrilling, especially when you discover the friend is behind it all. The thing is this revelation gave me a better idea, they should of made the pimp the one behind the calls as originally expected. Then in the end when the call-girl discovers this it would have been cool to also find out the pimp was killed in his prison escape attempt so all along the calls were coming from beyond the grave. The fact that the pimp merely turns up and kills both young women is a complete anticlimax, just a basic murder. Its very glossy though, it actually looks like a high production porn flick at times.Next up is a more kooky traditional tale of ghoulies in the night...well a spin on vampire lore actually. Set in 19th century Russia a young man stumbles across a small family in the wilderness who are battling against a breed of creature known as Wurdalak. These things are undead zombie types that feed on the blood of the living, especially relatives they once knew strangely enough. Karloff plays the father of this family that ventured out to kill a Wurdalak but has returned one himself, naturally the story plays out as a battle of survival for all the living. Definitely the best looking of the three stories, the sets and props are really sumptuous in this and could easily be part of a full length movie. Great atmosphere with the swirling mist and bleak locations but the actual tale is pretty daft really. Karloff is wonderful as the pale grizzled bearded undead nightstalker but end of the day he's merely playing an unkempt Dracula. Everything goes as you might predict admittedly but thinking back I just can't fault the production values on this one.The final act sees a woman stealing a fancy ring off another woman who has recently passed away. This sets off all manner of supernatural occurrences such as a mysterious dripping of water, a mysterious fly that won't leave her alone and eventually the dead woman's corpse actually appearing before her. Now this short vignette is the jewel in the crown for this movie, its actually incredibly spooky and very atmospheric with the dripping water echoing around the woman's house. It really does give you the chills...that is until the finale where the corpse appears and really does freak you the f*ck out! The dead body has this God awful twisted expression on her face which is enough to keep you up at night I kid you not, that on top of the whole 'Ring-esque' sequence where it moves towards the terrified woman. The final twist in the tale here is again predictable but oh so delicious.There is no way an American movie in that era would or could pull off something this scary, at the time this was hard core stuff, the Italians were bold and brave. The mix of half naked ladies, the image of call-girls (hookers), blood and the surprisingly scary final story gave this film a real edge rarely seen in British or American horror anthologies. What's more this entire production clearly has so much class, skill and polish, every segment looks great, sounds great and could work as an individual movie in its own right. The first is standard murder fare, the second is standard ghoulish fare and the third is possibly the inspiration for many modern horror movies ('The Ring'!)...but they are all done very stylishly making other examples look crap in comparison.Its such a shame Bava chose to end the movie by revealing Karloff astride a fake horse and with all the cameras and crew. The main camera pulls back to reveal the studio floor as Karloff finishes his spooky speech. Not too sure why he's in his Wurdalak character get up either. Can't deny its a fun little ending and very interesting to see how they did that effect, but at the same time I can't help but feel they kinda extinguish everything they managed to created and visualise so well prior to that.8/10