Though there had been earlier efforts, like Ealing Studios’s Dead of Night from 1945, the horror anthology film came into its own in the 1960s with titles like Kobayashi Masaki’s Kwaidan and the Poe-centric Spirits of the Dead from directors Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini. Hammer Films’s rival Amicus churned out no fewer than seven of them in a 10-year period starting with Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors. But the one that really got the omnibus rolling was Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath from 1963, an Italian-American co-production that resulted in two different versions of the film.
After the success of 1960’s Black Sunday, American International Pictures took a more active hand in producing several of Bava’s later films, altering them in the process to suit American audiences that tended to skew younger. The AIP cut of Black Sabbath rearranges its three segments, tones down some of the more graphic violence in “The Wurdulak,” eliminates suggestions of prostitution and lesbianism from “The Telephone,” and grafts on a sometimes too emphatic score from studio stalwart Les Baxter, replacing the more elegant and atmospheric work of Roberto Nicolosi.
On the other hand, the AIP cut has one ace up its sleeve: the inimitable voice of horror icon Boris Karloff, who serves as jovial host between segments and also stars in the final (and arguably finest) episode, “The Wurdulak.” In either language, the film as a whole benefits considerably from its consummate craftsmanship: colorful gel lighting from Ubaldo Terzano (and an uncredited Bava), Tina Grani’s stylish period-specific costumes, and wonderfully detailed production and art design from Riccardo Domenici and Giorgio Giovannini.
Black Sabbath delivers three varieties of horror from three different eras. The initial idea was to proceed in reverse chronological order, but neither version of the finished film follows this arrangement. As it stands, the opening episode, “The Drop of Water,” set in the 1910s, is a study in obsession and madness that follows blowsy nurse Helen Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux) as she prepares the body of an elderly medium for burial. Helen’s fatal mistake lies in stealing a ring from the dead woman’s finger—an act that’s associated with the titular drop of water, so that the sound increasingly haunts her once she’s returned to her own apartment. In one of the segment’s most effective masterstrokes, the deceased medium isn’t played by an actor, but by a prop dummy with a terrifying grimace on its face that was carved by Bava’s father, Eugenio.
Though it takes place in the modern day, “The Telephone” shares some features with “The Drop of Water.” The dramatic action of both episodes is initiated by a phone call. And both of them derive most of their frisson from the exploratory prowling of Bava’s camera through an expressionistic milieu of light and shadow. Ominous calls on the eponymous appliance increasingly torment French call girl Rosy (Michèle Mercier). Worse still, they seem to be coming from her deceased lover, Frank (Milo Quesada). Even the tender mercies of her best friend, Mary (Lidia Alfonsi), cannot prevent a gruesome finale.
Unfortunately, AIP’s tinkering at least partially undercuts the effectiveness of this segment. Most significantly (and least convincingly), they turn a taut crime story into a ludicrous ghost story. At any rate, the moment when a black-gloved hand reaches into a drawer and pulls out a butcher’s knife remains unaltered, providing the archetypal image of the giallo film that Bava would further perfect in his subsequent masterwork, Blood and Black Lace.
Based on the 1839 novella The Family of the Vourdalak by Alexei Tolstoy, “The Wurdulak” unfolds like a particularly grim Russian fairy tale. The segment is all the more chilling because it situates the source of its horror squarely in the supposedly safe bosom of the family. As it turns out, the vampiric creature of the title only preys upon those it loves most. So when patriarch Gorca (Karloff) belatedly returns home from his mission to dispatch a despised bandit who was also a wurdulak, it’s unclear at first whether he’s become one himself. Bava ratches up the tension admirably in the following scenes, making us even queasier by the ambiguous way the old man dandles his grandson. Is it an expression of affection…or the onset of predation?
The story cleverly juxtaposes the bloody decline of Gorca’s family with the budding romance between his daughter, Sdenka (Susy Andersen), and the visiting Count Vladimir D’Urfe (Mark Damon). In the end, we expect the count to free Sdenka from the family curse, which might have been the case if this were Black Sunday or Kill, Baby…Kill! But this segment finds Bava in a darker and more downbeat mood. Instead of the two lovers riding off into the proverbial sunset, the final shot shows a riderless horse racing off into fog and falling darkness. This strain of unabashed pessimism paves the way for genre game-changers like Rosemary’s Baby and The Night of the Living Dead. For its part, Black Sabbath supplies a cornucopia of haunting images and chilling moods, even in the somewhat attenuated version released by AIP.
Image/Sound
The 1080p transfer of the AIP cut of Black Sabbath is about on par with Kino Lorber’s earlier release of the European cut, which is to say it’s riddled with minor damage: white speckles, vertical scratches, the odd hair in the gate. The image tends to look a bit soft as well, but this is likely owing to the source materials and not a fault of the transfer. Luckily for a film of such painterly delights, the colors are often vibrant and deeply saturated, even if they don’t exactly pop off the screen as they would in a newer 4K restoration. The MA 2.0 mix is quite sturdy, conveying the looped English dialogue and Lex Baxter’s lush score.
Extras
Apart from a slew of trailers, the sole yet significant supplement here is a superlative, impeccably researched commentary track from Tim Lucas, author of Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark, an essential work for Bava fanatics. He delves deep into the film’s production history, discusses rationales for various arrangements of the three segments, digs up likely source material (often not that mentioned by Boris Karloff in his intros), provides fascinating biographical sketches of the cast and crew, and outlines the numerous major and minor differences between the European cut and the AIP version offered here.
Overall
Mario Bava’s ominous omnibus Black Sabbath is equal parts stunning and chilling.
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