Bounding Into Halloween Goes Into The Void For Night 27 With ‘Black Sabbath’ & ‘Black Sunday’
Happy Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath, my dear children of the grave! I have exactly what you’ve been looking for today, and it’s not “Iron Man.” Tonight’s writ of terror gives a salute to the father of Giallo cinema, the great Mario Bava. These are two Italian horror classics that will leave you more than a little ‘paranoid’.
Follow me now, and you will not regret leaving the life you led before we met. It’s time to gather the ‘war pigs’ and pack some sweet ‘leaf’. Because we’re about to march beyond the wall of sleep. Oh, Lord, yeah!
Black Sabbath (1963)
We begin with Bava’s amazing horror anthology from 1963. It stars Michèle Mercier, Mark Damon, Susy Andersen, Jacqueline Pierreux, and the immortal horror icon Boris Karloff. It features three tales of the macabre with Karloff serving as both host to each story and star to the middle segment. In Italy, this film is called I Tre Volti Della Paura (aka The Three Faces of Fear), but in the States, it’s known as Black (“F—–g!”) Sabbath.
“The Telephone”: This is the story of a high-class French escort by the name of Rosy (Mercier). One night, she starts receiving threatening phone calls from her ex-pimp, Frank (Milo Quesada). Her testimony put him behind bars, but he claims to have broken out, and now Frank was coming to claim his pound of flesh.
He torments Rosy throughout most of the segment with a barrage of calls, but she never thinks of unplugging the damn phone, and believe me when I say you’re going to get tired of hearing it ring. She calls over her ex-girlfriend, Mary (Lydia Alfonsi) for protection against the brute, and that’s when the plot thickens even more.
“The Wurdulak”: We arrive in 19th century Serbia, and meet the Russian nobleman, Count Vladimir D’Urfe (Damon), as he journeys through the countryside. When he comes across a headless corpse with a knife plunged into its chest, he pulls out the knife and takes it with him to a small cottage where he seeks shelter for the night.
The owner of the home is a man named Giorgio (Glauco Onorato) who lives there with his family. He explains to the count that the murder evidence he stole belongs to his father, Gorca (Karloff), who has been missing for five days.
Gorca had gone out to hunt down a local bandit but hadn’t come back yet. He finally returns to the cottage that night, but looks like he’s been on a week-long drinking binge. It turns out that the bandit was actually a fabled Wurdulak.
This is a vampiric creature that feasts on human blood but starts by going home and converting their entire families to the dark side. It becomes obvious that Gorca has been afflicted with the Wurdulak curse, and he begins the process with his young grandchildren.
“The Drop of Water”: If you thought the phone ringing was obnoxious, prepare thyself! Helen Chester (Pierreux) is a nurse (in a very unconvincing Victorian England) who’s called to the home of a recently deceased psychic medium to prepare the corpse for burial.
She gets sticky fingers while performing her duties, and lifts one of the rings off the dead fingers of the old medium. Weird things immediately start to happen around the house, but this stupid ring thief still takes the plunder home with her.
The lights go out as soon as walks in her door, and then comes the insufferable dripping sounds from every faucet in her East End flat. This goes on for way too long but quickly becomes irrelevant when the medium’s spirit drops by to take back her property.
This might come off as slow to younger viewers, and their short attention spans, but that’s their problem. Every segment is beautifully shot, and none of them have happy endings. It also shows an obsession with colors that will become a residual theme throughout all of the best Giallo films.
Black Sabbath wasn’t a commercial success, but it still went on to become a celebrated masterwork in the horror genre (like most of them do), and it’s currently available over on TUBI.
Here’s the trailer:
Black Sunday (1960)
We go back three years for the next Mario Bava film, and into the timeless black-and-white beauty of classic horror for an Italian Gothic tale that’s completely different from the last film, but it pretty much has the same title. Once again this is the doing of those jive American studio turkeys and their jelly spines.
Originally titled La Maschera del Demonio (The Mask of the Demon), here is Black Sunday.
Asa (Barbara Steele) is a princess from 1630s Russia, but also a vampiric witch who’s in league with Satan. She is discovered, and put to death for her crimes, but not before vowing to return from the grave for revenge. A spiked mask is hammered into her face, but it starts raining before they can burn her.
Despite the fact her family disowned Asa, they still put her body in the family crypt, but near a window that has a cross in place to make sure she doesn’t try getting out.
Two centuries pass and Dr. Choma Kruvajan is traveling with his assistant, Dr. Gorobec, to a medical conference when one wheel on their carriage breaks. While waiting for their coachman to repair the busted wheel, the two wander off into a nearby ancient crypt and find Asa’s tomb.
The genius Kruvajan pulls off her death metal mask, but accidentally breaks the coffin panel (and the cross above it) while fighting off an attacking bat. He gets a cut on his hand, and blood drips onto Asa’s desiccated remains.
They step outside and run into a local villager, Katia Vajda (Barbara Steele in a dual role). Gorobec is hit with the lightning bolt and falls head-over-heels for Katia on the spot. They part ways, but the damage has already been done.
The blood was enough to revive Asa from her long slumber and fulfill the promise she made all those long years ago. She has dark plans for the new century she finds herself in, and it includes her lookalike, Katia.
This is a must-watch for any fan of old-school horror. It came out during a time when most movie monsters would throttle their victims, and the sight of blood on screen was considered controversial, but these are also the same OG snowflakes who deemed Elvis’ hip-shaking as provocative.
Just like the previous Bava classic, this is also on TUBI. Here’s the trailer:
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