BLACK SABBATH

Three episodes under the sign of the thrill: in the first, "The Phone", a woman is tormented by the calls of a stranger in the middle of the night; in the second, "I Wurdalak", a man goes hunting for a vampire and returns home after a long time under the terrified looks of his relatives; in the last, "The Drop of Water", certainly the most terrifying, a nurse steals the ring of a powerful deceased medium and is haunted by the ghost of the same. Another historic film by the beloved Master, released three years after "The Mask of the Demon", and which marks the definitive consecration of Bava as a cult director throughout Europe. The second episode (probably the "least successful") has as its protagonist the great Boris Karloff and is the only one that resumes the gothic and horrific dimension of his debut film. In the first, which is a sort of giallo, Bava manages to create, thanks to a claustrophobic setting inside a small apartment, a climate of great suspense and terror. In the third, finally, the director returns to address the supernatural but abandons gothic horror for a more psychological terror, only suggested by imperceptible noises (the drop of water) and shadows that immediately vanish, but for this reason even more anguishing. Curious and entirely original for the time, the final scene of the film, in which Bava's camera reveals the stage tricks: Karloff's fake horse, the fans, the stage assistants running with branches in their hands to simulate the forest...