Both are Mario Bava films. the first Black Sabbath is really called I Tre Volti Della Paura or The Three Faces of Fear. It is a collection of three sort of short story horror movies. Black Sabbath is the chopped American version and is still pretty spooky but the original even with subtitles is much scarier. Might be the best crafted and cut to the bone scary I have ever seen.

The three stories are as follows.

The Telephone: Some great scenes that may have inspired When A Stranger Calls and Black Christmas. Sussinct and scary.

The Wurdalak: You got Karloff as a Vampire-like guy who preys upon his former family.

The Drop of Water: A undertaker steals from the dead. Like you don’t know what’s going to happen next.

They are all beautiful and severe. Its not that the film needs its lesbian overtones or gruesomness to be scary, but the Italian version is more pure. LIke everything they do, no compromises.

Black Sunday or La Maschera del Demonio or Mask of the Demon is pretty scary too. Though a little less so becuase we have seen this witch curse movie before and the outcome is forseeable. I think for this type of movie I prefer Vincent Price in The Haunted Palace (1963).

Don’t let the names fool you. The movies have very little to do with each other other than Bava dircted them both. Black Sunday in 1960 and Black Sabbath in 1963. I think Black Sabbath might have been tacked on to I Trevolti to make it sound scarier and maybe to associate it with Black Sunday since there is no mention of any Black Sabbath or Witches’ Sabbath in the film.

The more I watch Bava the more of a fan I am. He is the man.