Horrorfest 2010: Black Sabbath

Hey! It's another Mario Bava film.

BLACK SABBATH is a horror anthology -- three unconnected short stories bridged by tongue in cheek introductions starring none other than Boris Karloff. Phew. That was a close one. I was afraid I'd go all October with no Boris Karloff, but here he is, being all Boris Karloffy.

The biggest weakness this film has when you watch it (almost) back to back with BLACK SUNDAY (or MASK OF SATAN) is the color photography. It's not a badly shot film -- not at all. Much like Bava's other flick from Horrorfest, BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, BLACK SABBATH makes great use of bold colors. Still, when it comes to horror, I feel like color somewhat detracts from the proceedings. As BLACK SABBATH unfolded, I kept wondering what it would look like in black and white and couldn't help but think it might be scarier.

Part of this is probably just because of the context I'm watching it in -- maybe if I saw the film at the time it came out, the color would seem like an audacious and original choice, instead of kind of a tacky excess.

Here's how it goes:

The first story, THE DROP OF WATER, is a story about a woman who steals an expensive piece of jewelry from a corpse and is then haunted by the corpse, or guilt, or both, all night. The second, THE TELEPHONE, is probably the first stalker-by-phone movie, where a glamorous woman has to deal with perverted and threatening phone calls from an ex-lover. The final story, THE WURDALAK is probably the most traditional horror store, basically a retelling of vampire lore taking place in 19th century Russia. This one also stars Boris Karloff as the title monster.

Of these stories, the third one is the most naturally shot. This is probably because it has the most exterior shots and relies more on sunlight than electricity. The rest of the film is rooted firmly in studios. Still, the first 2/3 of the film are probably the most effective, I guess because they're more offbeat stories. The last 1/3 is the kind of story you'd expect from this type of movie, so it's rendered a little less effective, despite the presence of Karloff.

Reading up on this film, it seems I watched the American version -- apparently the original Italian version shows the stories in a different order, has different Karloff intros, and includes more controversial details, like a lesbian sub plot in THE TELEPHONE.

Going into Horrorfest, I was kind of dreading all the Italian films, I guess because I'd already seen ZOMBIE by Lucio Fulci and didn't care for it too much. As Horrorfest has unfolded, it has become clear that I was unfairly prejudiced against an entire country's worth of horror films, since most of the Italian films I've seen have been quite good. Let's rank Italian directors:

DEEP RED is the best Italian flick I've see this month, so Dario Argento wins top spot.

BLACK SUNDAY or THE MASK OF SATAN was the second best, so Mario Bava comes in second even though I have mixed feelings about BLOOD AND BLACK LACE and BLACK SABBATH.

Finally, Lucio Fulci comes in last with the terrible THE BEYOND.

It's almost not fair to rank Fulci 3rd after the likes of Argento and Bava. There should be roughly 100 spots between the directors, with Argento and Bava close to the top and Fulci all the way at the bottom.