[MacBlayne]

Originally Posted by J Harker

First horror film of the month.

Black Sabbath, Mario Bava. 1963.

Legendary Italian director Mario Bava's stab at the portmanteau film, bookended by an introduction and a farewell from the wonderful Boris Karloff, Bavas film is like any film of this sort a little uneven. The opening segment (on the Italian version) The Telephone, concerns a woman being harassed by phonecalls from an escaped convict. Frankly i found this segment dull, 30 minutes of not a lot, and not a great idea for an opener, that said its Bava so it still looks gorgeous. This is fortunately followed up with a simply marvellous piece, The Wurdalak. Starring Karloff as the patriarch of a small family living in the mountains, the less said about it the better, except that its brilliant and with a little more padding would have made a great feature. Oh and did i mention? It looks and sounds bloody beautiful, all misty forests and fogbound hills and marshes. The final piece, A Drop of Water isn't quite as good but is still of a very high quality. A nurse is called late at night to attend to patient who has died in the night. This is probably the most surreal piece and the corpse of the old lady looks very effective with its garish over the top look. Water dripping has never sounded so ominous either.
I've had Arrows excellent blu for a few years now but have only just got around to it. Hopefully it won't be long before i return to it, perhaps the AIP version. Perfect Halloween film, even with The Telephone being so dull the other two pieces more than compensate.

Yeah, The Telephone is a bit of a slog but the other two stories are so good (that boy crying at the door is so damn haunting) that it's worth the wait.