Black Sabbath (1963) – Review

Few horror anthologies achieve the hypnotic mix of atmosphere, terror, and pulp like Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath. A triptych of tales ranging from modern urban paranoia to folkloric dread to ghostly terror, this film is a gothic playground where shadows and colour collide. Anchored by the legendary Boris Karloff, this film remains one of the crown jewels of Italian horror.

Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath delivers three tales of terror: “The Telephone,” a modern thriller of menacing calls, “The Wurdulak,” a gothic vampire tale starring Boris Karloff, and “A Drop of Water,” a chilling ghost story about a corpse that won’t rest. Three stories, three flavours of fear and one master of Italian horror behind the camera.

The Telephone

Rosy (Michèle Mercier), a French call-girl with questionable taste in basement apartments, finds her night ruined by a series of creepy phone calls. The caller claims to be Frank, her ex-pimp who just broke out of prison, which is about as comforting as hearing “this is your pilot speaking, and I’m drunk.” Panicked, Rosy calls her estranged ex-lover, Mary (Lidia Alfonsi), who comes rushing over with emotional support and, oddly enough, a giant kitchen knife. The twist? Mary was the one making the prank calls, because nothing says “let’s get back together” like impersonating a vengeful ex-con. Unfortunately for Mary, the real Frank (Milo Quesada) actually shows up, mistakes her for Rosy, and strangles her. Rosy wakes up just in time to finish Frank off with the knife, leaving her in hysterics—and with one less friend.

The Wurdulak

When Vladimir D’Urfe (Mark Damon), a wandering nobleman with great hair, finds a headless corpse with a dagger in its chest, he does the sensible thing and takes the knife as a souvenir. He stumbles into a farmhouse where a family is anxiously waiting for Dad, Gorca (Boris Karloff), who’s out hunting vampires or “wurdulaks” as the locals call them. At midnight, Gorca returns looking like he just lost a fight with a hedge trimmer and proceeds to give everyone the creeps. Soon enough, kids are clawing at windows, wives are stabbing husbands, and the family reunion turns into the world’s worst Airbnb stay. Vladimir and his daughter Sdenka (Susy Andersen) try to run, but love and fangs don’t mix—she bites him, the whole family shows up to watch, and Gorca ends up with one heck of a family portrait.

The Drop of Water

Nurse Helen Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux) is called in to prepare the corpse of a hideous medium, and rather than, you know, just doing her job, she decides to swipe a flashy sapphire ring. Unfortunately, grave robbing is a terrible side hustle. The theft unleashes buzzing flies, dripping water, and one of the most terrifying corpse faces ever committed to film. Helen freaks out, sees the dead woman gliding toward her, and literally strangles herself in panic because ghosts don’t kill people, bad decisions do. By morning, she’s dead on her bed, the ring gone, and the landlady is looking rather guilty about that ring. 

This is an ending right out of the Edgar Allan Poe playbook.

Stray Observations:

• In The Telephone, Rosy really should’ve moved after the first creepy phone call. “Strange, menacing voice on the line? Guess I’ll just sit here in my basement apartment!”
• Mary’s “romantic plan” is basically: Step 1: Pretend to be a homicidal pimp. Step 2: Scare lover half to death. Step 3: Profit? Unsurprisingly, it backfires.
• The Wurdulak segment is famously adapted from a story by Aleksey Tolstoy—yes, cousin of that Tolstoy. Apparently, gloomy Russian literature runs in the family.
• If your father, who you suspect is now a blood-sucking corpse, orders you to kill his favourite dog, and then decides to use your child as a juice box, well, that’s kind of on you.
• The kid begging to be let in is peak nightmare fuel. Moral of the story: never open the door when children ask nicely, especially if they’re already dead.
• The Drop of Water proves that one fly can be scarier than a hundred zombies. The sound design alone is maddening.
• In the American International Pictures version, the order of the stories was rearranged, and The Telephone was sanitized to remove lesbian undertones and supernatural ambiguity because 1960s censors apparently feared sapphic suggestion more than vampires.

“Yes, we are totally just roommates.”

Mario Bava was a magician with the camera, and Black Sabbath is one of his most dazzling showcases. Each story feels like a different experiment in mood and texture, as though Bava were testing the limits of what horror could look like. The Telephone bathes its apartment set in neon greens and deep purples, practically inventing the colour palette that would later define the giallo genre; it’s stylish, sensual, and just a little poisonous, like a nightmare staged under a nightclub strobe. The Wurdulak, by contrast, plunges us into the past, trading neon for candlelight, fog, and windswept landscapes. The rustic interiors, shadow-drenched monasteries, and earthy tones recall old Gothic paintings where every figure looks like it’s on the verge of stepping out of the frame.

Mario Bava meets Brothers Grimm.

Bava’s mastery of colour is astonishing. He wasn’t just lighting a set; he was painting it like a canvas, splashing it with emerald greens, lurid purples, and fiery reds that shouldn’t work together but somehow feel perfectly unsettling. He transforms even the simplest rooms into dreamlike arenas of dread, where shadows crawl along walls like living things, and every patch of darkness looks like it’s hiding something. His ability to create mood on a shoestring budget is legendary; smoke, gels, and carefully placed highlights conjure atmospheres that Hollywood could only achieve with ten times the resources and a small army of technicians. In Black Sabbath, he turns a basement apartment, a country cottage, and a cramped London flat into spaces that feel timeless, otherworldly, and nightmarish, proving that terror isn’t about scale but about how you use light, colour, and imagination.

No one does this better than Mario Bava.

As for the performances, Michèle Mercier brings a nice vulnerability to Rosy in The Telephone, while Lidia Alfonsi shines as the dangerously obsessive Mary. In The Drop of Water, Jacqueline Pierreux sells every ounce of panic, her descent into hysteria feeling both inevitable and deeply human. Together, the cast gives Bava’s visual spectacle a human pulse. But anchoring it all is Boris Karloff, who not only works as the host for this anthology but whose presence elevates The Wurdulak into something both tragic and terrifying. His Gorca is not just a monster but a father corrupted by his own hunger, a figure as pitiable as he is dreadful.

“I’m the host with the most!”

In conclusion, Black Sabbath is more than just a horror anthology—it’s a carnival of shadows, emotions, and grotesqueries, a film that delights as much as it disturbs. Mario Bava’s genius for colour, atmosphere, and visual storytelling turns three disparate tales into a unified masterwork of Gothic cinema. Whether you’re in it for Karloff’s commanding presence, the unforgettable imagery, or just to see what one stolen ring can do to ruin your night, this entry remains one of the great touchstones of horror.