A portmanteau of scary stories, Black Sabbath stands out for having no real weak links - one segment was the standout on this viewing, but I can see that changing very quickly.
First up we have The Telephone. In contrast to the gothic stylings of the other segments, this story is a contemporary tale of psychosexual obsession and murder.
One can see it as an early version of a giallo - the genre of murder mysteries where murder, the act and its motives, overtook any attempt at mystery.
The short film is also rife with the themes that Bava and other giallo practitioners would build on: psychosexual obsession; the destruction of beauty, which would return in Blood and Black Lace. In a more overt, and probably less intentional choice, when the culprit behind the phone calls makes their appearance, they are wearing black gloves - a signature of the giallo's villains.
While less overtly violent than the genre would become, the implication of violence is coded throughout, and in decidedly intimate terms (our heroine is almost strangled to death in her bed).
Following on from Black Sunday and Hercules in the Haunted World, the film plays with the idea that appearances can be deceiving - it turns out Rosy’s old lover Mary (Lydia Alfonsi) has been behind the threatening phone calls. While her motive is selfish rather than malicious, Mary's actions reveal a disturbing willingness to exploit her beloved's trauma (her previous heterosexual partner is imprisoned for murder).
Ironically as Mary prepares to confess her guilt, she is murdered by her romantic rival, who has escaped from prison and is determined to enact a blood revenge against his former beau.
Claustrophobic and tense, The Telephone is a neat little thriller which was sliced into incoherence by the American distributor, out of fear about the homosexual couple at its centre.
Maybe the best segment of the triptych, at least the most memorable, The Vurdulak is a return to the gothic tableau of Black Sunday, more so than Hercules.
The clearly artificial exteriors make this feel more like a nightmare, turning the entire diegesis into an extension of slowly constricting dread of the home.
Boris Karloff is magnificent as the freshly turned patriarch Gorka, leering at his family like fresh kill. His understated menace is well-played, keeping the viewer and hsi family off-edge as they try to work out if Gorka managed to kill the vampire without himself becoming a victim.
Gorka is terrifyingly ambivalent - he guilts his family into lowering their guard, but he also seems determined to keep his family together
The destruction of the family is a primal fear, and the film exploits it to the hilt. Rather than presenting Gorka as a monster, he is presented as he is. No fangs or red eyes.
The power he has, and that he preys upon, is familial ties. The family may distrust him but they are unable to give up their love for each other. When the youngest child goes missing, his mother - Gorka’s daughter - kills her husband in order to leave the house and find him.
Perversely, the film ends with the family reunited, and the central lovers joined together - as members of the undead.
Taking up the lionshare of the runtime, The Vurdulak is fantastic. Even with the Italian dub, Boris Karloff delivers a subtly disturbing performance as the superficially homely Gorka.
And now to A Drop of Water, the finale.
Once again confined to one intimate living space, A Drop takes away all externals - no supporting players, no villains, for an intimate tale of one woman’s descent into madness.
I found this one to be not nearly as effective as ‘The Telephone’. The Drop of Water would probably work better on the big screen. While the other segments contained more scenes and characters, A Drop of Water is a one-woman show, and it suffers from being viewed on a laptop screen.
In the immersive confines of a theatre, free of distractions, it probably works great. The finale is so spectacular it retroactively made me like it more - but I feel like the viewing experience robbed it of its potency.
With the emphasis on hyperreal sound design, the titular drop becomes an increasingly nasty punchline, as the nurse storms about her home, trying to find the mysterious leak.
The make up of the dead woman is memorable - and just extreme enough to be unnerving, while the theme - an obsession with wealth, and its destructive potential - is one Bava would return to again and again.
After immersing us so thoroughly, Black Sabbath ends on a familiar Bava note - revealing what we have been seeing was something else.
Karloff is shown riding on a horse. As he offers a final spectral warning, the camera pulls back to reveal he is riding a dummy in front of a rolling screen while crew members run past the camera with branches.
Breaking the forth wall with a joke, Bava shows his hand, his mastery of the frame.
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