Every now and then, a film floats to the surface of cinema’s murky crypt — bloodstained, perfume-scented, and somehow still beautifully preserved — and reminds us that horror is most potent when it seeps under the skin rather than lunges at the throat. Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath is such a film: a trio of gothic nightmares wrapped in velvet shadows, stitched together with the gnarled hands of Boris Karloff himself. It is stylish, chilling, often absurd, and in its own gloriously disjointed way, a masterwork of operatic dread.
That the film is called Black Sabbath and not Technicolor Nightmares Hosted by a Corpse with Great Manners is one of history’s many missed marketing opportunities. Still, what we get is a vintage Italian horror anthology where each tale opens like a crypt and closes like a coffin. If that sounds bleak, good. It is.
Act I: “The Telephone” – Hell Hath No Fury Like a Lesbian Scorned
In this first entry, we meet Rosy (Michèle Mercier), a French call-girl living in a basement apartment that screams “mid-century IKEA meets existential dread.” She begins receiving anonymous phone calls from a man named Frank — a pimp, an ex-lover, or perhaps the ghost of a toxic relationship. Or maybe it’s a prank gone terribly right. Either way, the line is open, and so is the door to psychological unraveling.
Bava’s original Italian cut is deliciously subversive — stripping the supernatural nonsense from the American version to instead deliver a tale of manipulation, fear, and sexual ambiguity. The U.S. version throws in a ghost and airbrushes the sapphic tension cleaner than a nun’s resume. But in the original, we witness something rarer: a horror film that finds the terror not in the monster under the bed, but in the lover who wants you back — and knows how to make you beg for it.
Crisp cinematography, colored lighting worthy of an expressionist discotheque, and an air of claustrophobic anxiety make this a seductive start. Plus, if you’re not terrified by the rotary phone by the end of this segment, you’ve clearly never had to call customer service.
Act II: “The Wurdulak” – Stake Through the Heart, Family Style
Next comes “The Wurdulak,” a slice of Eastern European folklore so gothic it practically bleeds velvet. Boris Karloff, looking like a Transylvanian Civil War general with emphysema, returns home from vampire hunting only to have his family wonder if he brought more than souvenirs.
This segment drips with doom. Every shadow looks like it wants to kill you, and every character acts like they’re one cup of tea away from a nervous breakdown. Karloff is magnificent as Gorca, the grizzled patriarch who might be undead, or might just need a lozenge. The tale is told with funereal pacing and funhouse lighting, but that’s part of its charm. It feels like an Italian operetta staged in a haunted wine cellar.
The central conceit — that the Wurdulak preys on those it once loved — is both tragic and poetic. It’s also a helpful metaphor for most toxic family dinners. The climax is bleak, gorgeous, and ends on a kiss so disturbing it should come with a garlic clove and a therapist’s number.
Act III: “The Drop of Water” – One Ring to Haunt Them All
If the previous tales were gothic melodrama, “The Drop of Water” is pure nightmare. The shortest of the three, it is also the most effective, and for good reason: it taps into the primal fear of doing something wrong — and getting caught. It’s the cinematic equivalent of hearing “Did you take something that doesn’t belong to you?” whispered from a locked cabinet at 3 a.m.
Jacqueline Pierreux plays a nurse with sticky fingers and an even stickier conscience. After stealing a ring from a corpse, she is tormented by dripping water, a persistent fly, and one of the most horrifying dead faces ever committed to celluloid. The corpse’s expression is a cross between rigor mortis and “I told you not to touch my stuff.” She looks like if Edvard Munch’s The Scream had a baby with a Madame Tussauds mannequin during a house fire.
Bava’s direction here is razor-sharp. Every creak, every shadow, every droplet is weaponized for tension. The climax — which involves self-strangulation, a police report, and the ring making one last reappearance — is perfectly cynical. No act of theft goes unpunished, and no grave ever stays quiet.
Presentation: Coffin Couture and Horror in High Style
What makes Black Sabbath rise above most horror anthologies — and rise it does, like a vampire late for a party — is Bava’s sheer visual command. Colors don’t merely light scenes; they interrogate them. Reds, greens, and blues bleed into each other like a nightmare painted in gel filters. The sets may be modest, but the artistry is anything but.
Even the Americanized version, neutered of its queerness and soaked in Les Baxter’s lounge-lite score, retains enough visual splendor to haunt a wine cellar. But the Italian cut? It’s the kind of horror that belongs in a gallery — lurid, lyrical, and deeply alive.
Let’s also not forget Boris Karloff’s presence — warm, witty, and morbidly amused — as he bookends each story with playful menace. His outro gag, riding a fake horse through the studio with visible crew members pushing trees in the background, is equal parts meta and magnificent. It’s like a horror movie took off its mask and winked — then still bit your throat out.
Final Thoughts: A Grim Delight in Three Movements
Black Sabbath is not just a horror movie — it’s a cinematic séance. A fever dream where style overtakes logic, emotion outpaces plot, and beauty coexists with rot. It’s campy, yes, but it’s also honest. Like the best ghost stories, it doesn’t try to explain too much. It just opens the door, lets the fog roll in, and dares you to follow.
For those tired of the jump-scare-industrial-complex, this is the real deal: creeping dread served with flair and fatalism. And if you don’t scream at least once during that final segment, check your pulse — or your jewelry.
