Warner Bros released I Tre Volti Della Paura (literally: The Three Faces of Fear) in Italy on 23 August 1963. Eight months later, they released it in the United States as Black Sabbath.

As far as I know, Mario Bava only directed this one anthology film. Italy was not big into anthology films. Few producers are keen on them. There are many reasons. Most are not compelling. For examples, film “critics” tend to treat them as individual shorts that are judged accordingly. So even with positive reviews, the “critic” will find this or that sequence less good. Thus: no four stars for you!

But I think it is that anthology films are just harder to make. They normally require more locations, sets, actors, and crew. The writing is more difficult both on the individual segments and overall to make them work together.

Bava didn’t have any of these problems on Black Sabbath. He got a budget that was on the high end of his films at that time. And Bava was always a darling of the “critics,” even when they didn’t like the film.

I like Black Sabbath a lot. Bava was at his best when creating gothic atmospheres, as he does here and in Black Sunday. But I’m not a huge Mario Bava fan. He is great technically. But he lacks passion. I fully admit that he’s a better filmmaker than Lucio Fulci, but I’d almost always rather watch Fulci.

In addition to its atmosphere, Black Sabbath shines by making the narrator a bit cheeky. Efforts to translate EC Comics to the screen have largely failed because the hosts don’t work. The puns and broad humor that work on the page just don’t translate to the page. It works here because it isn’t too much.

Let’s celebrate the release of Black Sabbath by watching it:

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Black Sabbath (1963) DVD cover via Amazon under Fair Use.