BLACK SABBATH (1963)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Mario Bava. Co-screenwriters: Marcello Fondato and Alberto Bevilacqua).

Storyline

Boris Karloff hosts three terror tales revolving around a stalked call girl, a thieving nurse and a familial vampire.

Review

BLACK, a visually lush trilogy-tale film, is mostly excellent, an effectively spooky, giallo- and tradition-influenced hybrid flick that remains a high mark work in the genre.

The first segment, “A Drop of Water,” is set in London, England in 1910. It is loosely adapted from an Anton Chekhov story (billed here as Checov). In “Drop,” a thieving nurse steals her recently deceased employer’s ring, only to be haunted by the old woman’s yowling black cat, a pestiferous fly, and the eerie sound of dripping water. This segment is creepy and unsettling─excellent.

In “The Telephone,” possibly loosely based on Franco Luncentini’s story “Three and Thirty-three,” a beautiful French call girl (Rosy, played by Michèle Mercier) is stalked by an unseen man who seems to know her every move as she gets ready for bed. Initially a ghost-story giallo segment, it becomes a straight-up thriller in its twisty second half. Like “Drop” before it, the color-rich cinematography (provided by Ubaldo Terzano and an uncredited Bava) is wow-worthy. It doesn’t hurt that Mercier is gorgeous, like many of Bava’s actresses in this period of his career.

Screen credit for “Telephone” is given to F.G. Snyder. According to Wikipedia, Bava claimed he was “Telephone”’s original writer─two film critics later (supposedly) tracked down Luncentini as its source author.

When AIP (American International Pictures) and Titra Sound Corporation bought the US rights for the film and edited BLACK for its stateside audience, they trimmed scenes in “Telephone” that showed graphic violence and non-explicit lesbianism and prostitution. A supernatural element was also inserted in the US version of BLACK. Not only that, AIP also replaced Roberto Nicolosi’s score with Les Baxter’s.

The third and final entry in this atmospheric tryptich is “The Wurdulak,” loosely based on Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s “The Family of the Vourdalak.”  (Tolstoy is billed as Tolstoi.) According to Wikipedia, “other parts of the story were inspired by the Guy de Maupassant story ‘Fear’ and Bram Stoker’s DRACULA.” (Tolstoy is billed as Tolstoi and Maupassant is billed as his last name only.)

“Wurdulak” takes place in nineteenth-century Russian forest. A traveling nobleman (played by Mark Damon) finds a headless bandit’s corpse with a dagger stuck in his breast and takes the dagger with him. Taking shelter in a nearby house where a large family lives, he is informed that the blade belonged to their father (Gorca, played by Boris Karloff). Seems Gorca disappeared five days before─and, before leaving, told his family that if he disappeared and returned not to let him in. The father returns, and they don’t heed his earlier warning. . .

Karloff is ghoulishly delightful in this film, both as the tale-telling host (playing himself) and Gorca. The rest of the film’s cast is excellent as well. Unfortunately, “Wurdulak” runs long with a meh finish─it does not help that the women in “Wurdulak” choose to cower when they should be staking and beheading.

Despite “Wurdulak”’s excessive length and helpless women (like many in films of this era), BLACK is a superb, sumptuous stylistic and hybrid genre work, one that beguiles.

Beyond the film. . . according to Wikipedia, the English heavy metal band Black Sabbath liked the film and its name so much they changed their band name to it. Originally, they were called Earth, and wanted to avoid being confused with another band, also called Earth.

Quentin Tarantino and fellow filmmaker Roger Avary were also influenced by BLACK. Tarantino has been quoted as saying, “What Mario Bava did for the horror film in BLACK SABBATH, I was going to do with the crime film [PULP FICTION, 1994].”