a review of 黑色安息日

The thing that's most interesting to me about Black Sabbath is how I can see Mario Bava trying on different styles and approaches to filmmaking in each of the three vignettes. The first segment (The Telephone) is a fairly stripped down, contemporary-seeming crime story with surprising lesbian pulp undertones; The ending isn't as shocking as it might be, but it takes a couple of intriguing twists on its way there. The second (The Vurdolak) is a straight up gothic supernatural tale that is the closest to a classic monster movie story in the whole film. The mix of outdoor locations and constructed sets contributes an eerie atmosphere, and Karloff is quite effective (even in dubbed/subbed Italian) in his role as the doomed patriarch of a rural manor. The ending here doesn't come as much of a surprise either, but the story is well told with genuinely unsettling visuals. The third story (The Drop of Water) was my favorite, and felt like a spin on Edgar Allen Poe's "The Telltale Heart". The most psychologically-oriented of the three, the combination of well-designed/photographed sets, sound editing, and some genuinely unsettling prosthetic effects added up to something really interesting even by modern horror standards. Oh, and the ending of the whole movie has to be seen to be believed. It's one of the craziest things that I've ever seen in a narrative horror film, and I'd love to see another director try it sometime.