Directors: Mario Bava, Salvatore Billitteri
Starring: Boris Karloff
Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057603/
This is actually a little anthology of stories, narrated by none other
than Boris Karloff, the horror legend himself. That is cool as hell. There are
three tales here, and I will review each one of them in a relatively compact
fashion…
The first story is about a woman who steals a ring off of a dead body,
only to have the ghost come back and haunt her. It’s a fairly typical tale of
revenge from beyond the grave for an injustice, and follows all the usual
parameters as such – she acts incredibly vain and selfish before, and then after
she steals it, things start to seem all the more creepy and haunting with every
passing moment, and she becomes paranoid. It’s not a very complex story, and as
such, it’s the shortest tale here. This one isn’t bad, but it doesn’t really
have a lot going on…well, except for the ghost’s creepy as hell face at the
end:
That pretty much makes the whole thing worth it. There are a few other
good scares, and a definite atmosphere, but overall it’s just a
straightforward, workmanlike horror story.
The second one is a Hitchcockian thriller about a woman who starts to
receive threatening phone calls from her dead ex-boyfriend. This was a really
gripping and claustrophobic little tale that reminded me a lot of Dial M for
Murder. But rather than just rip off that classic, it uses the Hitchcock
influence to a good end and creates a very tense thriller. The lead girl is
sexy as hell even when she’s in distress, and the movie gets more and more
deranged and paranoid as it goes on. The ending doesn’t make much sense, but
the movie as a whole is a grim, chilling slice of 60s style horror pie.
Glorious.
The last story is the longest one, about a creature known as the
Wurdalack, which is a sort of vampire that kills only people it loves. Well,
they always did say that you hurt the
ones you love, so I guess I’ll buy this. The main character is some foppish
Spanish prissy-boy who rides around on a horse and follows a bloody trail to
find a headless body, which leads him to an old mansion where a family lives.
The family is keeping secrets, though, and once their father (also played
masterfully by Karloff) returns, things get bloody fast.
This was apparently the most famous story here, and I can see why.
Sometimes it’s a little off, and I really hate the main character’s attitude
towards the female lead – “you should forget all about your family’s deaths
because I say so!” – but the atmosphere is excellently macabre, the lighting is
theatrical and showy in that great old-school horror style and Karloff and the
vampires around him are all really well done. It’s a really cool flick, and
well worth your time.
So that’s Black Sabbath, and wasn’t it wonderful? It’s nice to go back
to a time when horror movies were geared to be fun, like campfire tales. Too
many modern movies in the genre forgo that aspect for extremity and overly
serious tones that just end up falling flat and coming off as immature. So this
was a treat, and if you love old horror you will dig the hell out of this.
Plus, it inspired a great band!
Images and music copyright of their original owners.
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