Black Sabbath (1963)
[Contains spoilers]
Black Sabbath is an anthology film by Mario Bava (Planet of the Vampires, Baron Blood) consisting of three different stories. I've always admired the people who make anthology films and those that write short stories. It's ten times harder and you don't get any of the respect that practitioners of the longer form books/movies have. Who are our best known authors? Novelists. What are the most popular movies? Not anthologies. And the thing is, that the people doing these multistory projects have to work harder because they can't rely on just a single trite idea and then pad it out for 95 minutes. No, they have to come up with something like 3 trite ideas and hurry up and squeeze them in to 30 minute segments.
Back in 1963 somebody decided that in the wake of television shows such as The Twilight Zone, that what people can get for free every week on TV, they should pay for in theatres and this film was born. Under another director's stewardship, this could have been a fairly forgettable effort, but Bava shows great command of the camera and a sense of what creates tension, making these three tales of terror pretty enjoyable.
The first feature is entitled, "The Telephone" and as you might imagine, most of the time is spent with a woman answering her telephone and then staring at it. It seems that some guy is calling her and harassing her telling her that he can see her and that he's going to kill her. Pretty normal telephonic threats. Here's my beef with being threatened over the telephone: Why do you keep answering it?
I mean, some dude just called and said he was going to wrap his hands around your silky neck and squeeze the life out of you and then the phone rings seconds later and you answer it again? Did you think that maybe this guy forgot to add something, like he hung up, says "oh crap, I forgot the part about ripping her eyes out. I better call real quick while she's still in."
Don't answer the phone or at least get an answering machine. Heck, today you can get caller ID set up to reject calls that don't register the number being called from. This way if the psycho wants to bother you, he'll have to make the effort to do so in person. And isn't that what we all want?
After she gets these calls, she immediately calls her friend, who the film kind of alludes is her lesbian ex-lover. And she agrees to come over. Now, A newspaper clipping is slipped under our heroine's door showing that her former boyfriend(?) has just escaped prison. She figures he's come to kill her because I guess that's what ex-con ex-boyfriends do.
Then we find out that her lesbian friend has been faking his voice over the phone, so we're to assume her woman friend is coming by to kill her. When she arrives, there's some pretty good tension built up because it looks like she's maybe going to kill her a few times, but doesn't. Then the escaped convict shows up, strangles the lesbian with a pair of nylons, then gets stabbed by our heroine. Fin. Hey, in thirty minutes you've got to wrap these babies up fast, no time for explanations, next story!
The second offering is called "The Wurdulak" and this is the one that actually features Boris Karloff. The box would have you believe that Frankenstein's Monster shows up throughout the movie but the 135 year old Karloff only appears in this tale and at the beginning and end of the movie in a host-like capacity. This one takes place in one of those nameless mountain-type locales where the fog always rolls in with a blue-ish color, horses race through the forest and the women run around in these low-cut, I'm-a-lusty-wench outfits that have the local burgermeister drooling into his beer stein.
A young guy is riding around and finds a dead body in the woods, heads up to a house and sees the dagger from the guys back matches one in the house. Some dude in the house goes, who are you and what are you doing in my house and our boy says something to the effect of, "I'm Count Hunky Von Hunkins and do you have any lusty wenches with low cut tops that display their ample bosoms?" And the guy in the house says, "Do I? Sis, git down here!"
The dead guy turns out to be a Turkish criminal and there's some blather about him being a Wurdulak and so they also run a sword through his heart just to be on the safe side. I also think his head was missing. Now, at this point you, me and Hunky Von Hunkins have the same question, "where is that sister you promised?"
Actually, we have two questions then. What is a Wurdulak? Well, it seems that it is an undead creature that sucks your blood and has to be killed with a sword through his heart. Huh, never heard of one of those.
Well, the family is waiting for their dad (Karloff) to come home. He's gone up the mountain, Wurdulak hunting or something, but if he's not back in five days, that means he's one of them. He shows up just after five days with the head of a Turk in his bag and he starts looking at his grandson's neck with more than a passing interest. To make a short story even shorter, the moral is that Count Hunky Von Hunkins should have been watching his own neck instead of the Sis's bazooms. Story three, you're up!
The final piece in this horror jigsaw is the shortest and best. "The Drop of Water" is one of those deals where the main character does something that makes you go, "oh, that's too bad, thanks for playing." It's a dark and stormy night (must have been the same night as the other two stories) and she gets a call from a friend who needs her help. What kind of help? Well, it seems that the old countess (Countess Ugly Von Skank) has finally croaked and nobody will help get her ready to be buried so she goes to the old castle to dress up the dried up old biddy and make her presentable.
I had a bad feeling about all this when they showed us her room and there were Tarot cards strewn about on a table. But nobody else seemed to care, so WTF, right? Countess Ugly Von Skank was a medium and local legend is that she died during a séance and was killed by ghosts angry for being bothered at dinnertime or something.
You can tell this is probably true because her face is contorted into a hideously gross grin and her eyes are wide open. It's actually pretty creepy. Well, our main character spies a pretty blue ring on her hand and before I can open my yap to advise against it, she takes it! Wahh, wahh, waaaaa. She pressed her luck and got a whammy! You can pretty much guess the rest. Flies buzz, water drips and Ugly Von Skank makes a special appearance at the thief's house.
These stories are short enough that they don't wear out their welcome. Mario's visuals are excellent, using shadows, light and color to good effect . He knows when to cue up the music and when to let silence be a character. I was by myself when I watched it and I felt a mounting sense of dread as the flick marched on, culminating with the chilling "Drop of Water" story. These stories had a claustrophobic feel, people trapped by their own fear, lust, and greed. Recommended for dark and stormy nights.