Black Sabbath [I Tre Volti della Paura] ***½ (1963, Boris Karloff, Jacqueline Pierreux, Michèle Mercier, Mark Damon) – Classic Movie Review 4552

Co-writer/ director Mario Bava, the Italian chiller maestro, turns in an atmospheric, effective, visually splendid 1963 Italian horror anthology compendium movie of three Gothic tales.

It is introduced by Boris Karloff, who also stars in the third and best episode, Aleksei Tolstoy’s The Wurdalak, about a Russian count in the early 1800s who stumbles upon a family under the spell of a Russian vampire called Gorca (Karloff) who turns everyone into the undead.

Ivan Chekhov (The Drop of Water [La goccia d’acqua]) and F G Snyder (The Telephone [Il telefono]) provide the other stories. Jacqueline Pierreux stars as Helen Chester, a greedy 1900 era nurse preparing the body of elderly medium who died during a seance in The Drop of Water, with Gustavo De Nardo as the Police Inspector. Michèle Mercier and Lydia [Lidia] Alfonsi star as Rosy and Mary in the segment The Telephone about woman terrorised in her apartment by phone calls from an escaped prisoner from her past.

The dubbing is decent in the international version, too.

Also in the cast are Mark Damon as Vladimir D’Urfe (in The Wurdalak), Susy Andersen, Milly Monti and Harriet Medin.

A band from Birmingham was inspired by the film and took its name, becoming one of the best known bands of the last 30 years.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4552

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