The Three Faces of Fear

TCM unsurprisingly ran a bunch of horror movies during October. They have access to a certain subset of horror, notably all those Hammer Frankenstein and Dracula movies, as well as the movies that Vincent Price made which I think were distributed by American International. A different movie AIP released was the American version of a horror anthology, called Black Sabbath in America. (The movie was originally made in Italy, with a title translating to The Three Faces of Fear.

The movie is an anthology of horror stories, and when Alicia Malone introduced it, she said this was going to be the version released in Italy. However, what they showed is, I'm pretty certain, the American version, as the two versions have a different ordering of the stories. Boris Karloff introduces each of the stories with a bit of Hitchcockian dark humor, and even stars in one of the stories.

First up in the American version is "The Drop of Water", supposedly is based on a story by Anton Chekhov. Jacqueline Pierreux plays Helen, a British nurse, who late one dark and stormy night gets a telephone call. The caller is a maid who works for a medium. Or worked, since the medium just died, hence the call to the nurse. The maid wants Helen to prepare the body for burial. When she arrives, she notices that the dead medium, who already looks like she's decaying bit, is wearing a gaudy sapphire ring. Nobody else has use for it, Helen thinks, so she decides to take the ring for herself. In the process of trying to remove it from the dead woman's hand, she knocks over a glass of water that was on the nightstand. When she gets home, she gets the distinct suspicion that every faucet in the apartment is dripping, and no matter how many times she shuts them off, she keeps hearing dripping, leading her to wonder whether she's being haunted by the medium.

That's followed in the US version by "The Telephone", with a claimed provenance by Guy de Maupassant. This one looks like it's set closer to the time the movie was made (1963). Rosy (Michèle Mercier) hears the phone ringing, and goes to pick it up. No answer. It rings again, and she picks it up; again no answer. Finally, the third time, she hears a man's voice, claiming it's someone she knows, and accurately describing how she's only got a towel on. The phone calls keep coming, and eventually we learn that the man is someone Rosy helped send to prison. So she calls her friend Mary for help, although doing so may not give her as much help as she needs.

Last but not least, is "The Wurdulak", based on a story by Aleksey Tolstoy (cousin of Leo; Karloff mistakenly calls him Ivan Tolstoy). This one is set in 19th century Serbia, and has Mark Damon as a count who comes a murder victim who was stabbed to death. Surprisingly, at the farmhouse he stops at, the people recognize the knife as belonging to one of their members. Meanwhile, the patriarch, Gorca (Boris Karloff) is hunting a "wurdulak", a vampire-like creature. But more people get killed, including a young child, and the parents are stupid enough not to stab the dead child through the heart to prevent it too from becoming a wurdulak. Sure enough, the child's face shows up outside the window of the farmhouse....

Black Sabbath was directed by Mario Bava, the Italian director who would go on to define what's known as "giallo". Here, the stories are all adequate; there's nothing wrong with them although they weren't quite my cup of tea. Much more worth mentioning was Bava's use of light and a garish color palette, starting off with the green light coming in through the window at the beginning of "The Drop of Water" that reminded me of the neon lights in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. It's distinctive, and makes the movie much more memorable than it otherwise might be.

Black Sabbath is probably more worth mentioning in October than January, but it's worth watching any time.