Black Sabbath

Mario Bava's horror film, made of three separate stories. In the first a woman comes home at night and the telephone starts ringing; the caller says he is watching her. The second is about a family: the father comes home, transformed into a creature he was thought to have died as. In the third a nurse steals a ring from a dead woman, and in the night something comes looking for it. The film's power is in the light. Bava paints the scenes with coloured light; red, green and blue used together in the same room, with realism deliberately abandoned. The method directly shaped both the giallo and later horror cinema. Boris Karloff appears between the sections as a host and also acts in the second story. The American and Italian versions differ. The American distributor changed the order, shortened sections and replaced the music. The title found an answer years later in another field: a rock band took its name from it. One of the foundational works of its kind for anyone curious about classic horror and the use of colour. For a viewer expecting modern horror, the film moves slowly and the dread rests largely on atmosphere.