A French-Italian co-production released in North America by American International Pictures (better known as AIP), Black Sabbath is Mario Bava's take on the horror anthology film that would later become very popular thanks to the efforts of Amicus Studios in England. Bava's film takes three very different horror stories and used some segments with Boris Karloff to bookend them. The results are, in short, excellent.

The first story is The Drop Of Water. A young nurse named Helen Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux) is sent to prepare the body of an elderly woman who worked as a medium and who passed away during a séance. She arrives and sets about her duties, with the corpse seemingly starring at her the entire time. When Helen notices a gorgeous ring on the body's finger she decides no one will miss it and so she takes it off of the corpse to keep as her own and in process of doing so manages to knock a glass of water off of a side table. As the water drips, a fly swarms around the body but Helen pays it no mind and heads home for the night. When she settles in for the evening she soon learns that she's made a very dire mistake indeed and that the dead do not take kindly to thievery.

The best of the three stories in the film is also, not surprisingly, the scariest. The look on the corpse's face is completely horrifying and the ending, while a little predictable, packs quite a punch even now, more than forty years since the film was made.

The second story is The Telephone and it follows a lovely woman named Rosy (Michele Mercier) who receives some unusual and frightening late night telephone calls. Since Rosy helped the cops nab Frank (Gustavo De Nardo), her ex-pimp who has recently been let out of jail, she figures it's probably him on the other end of the line. She calls her ex-girlfriend, Mary (Lidia Alfonsi), to come over and comfort her completely unaware that Mary could very well be the one behind the phone calls, setting up an elaborate scheme to win back her lover's heart.

Considered in some circles to be the first color giallo, The Telephone is a nice, tense little film with some stylish direction and a few fun twists. Bava would certainly go on to make better thrillers than this but for an early stab at the genre, this is a pretty solid attempt. The lighting and the direction is solid throughout and the performances are all fine.

The Wurdulak is up last, and when it begins we meet Count Vladimir d'Urfe (Mark Damon) who is riding through the woods with a corpse that has recently been decapitated which he stumbled across in the woods. He arrives at the home of Gorka (Boris Karloff) who, after a few days on the road, has returned to his family. When Vladimir arrives, Gorka produces the missing head and tells him that the body actually belonged to a Wurdulak, or, a vampire. Vladimir and Gorka's family take comfort in the old man's actions but soon realize that he didn't necessarily escape the conflict completely unscathed...

Not surprisingly, Karloff is what makes this last story as effective as it is. With some unusually creepy overtones of child molestation and a few jolting moments, this is a very well thought out and well directed short. It builds up nicely and the ending is a bit of a surprise. Karloff is simply majestic here, bringing his intense and instantly recognizable screen presence to the forefront to excellent effect.

Kino previously released the Italian version of the movie on Blu-ray. This second release includes the American version, so that means that Karloff's voice is used for his scenes. Additionally, the stories are told in a different order and the music has been changed (the Italian version featuring a score from Roberto Nicolosi and this US version featuring a score from Les Baxter). Opinions will vary as to which version is superior but with both versions now available domestically (Arrow in the UK previously released both cuts on Blu-ray in the UK) fans can choose one, the other or both!

Video:

The AIP version of Black Sabbath arrives on Blu-ray in 1.85.1 widescreen in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer from Kino that looks a lot like the aforementioned Arrow release, and that's a good thing. The colors on this version differ from the Italian cut a bit, as they always have, but the increase in detail above what standard definition could provide is noticeable throughout the film. If the colors aren't as bold here as in the other version they still look great while black levels are nice and deep. There's some minor print damage here and there but nothing so serious as to really cause any major problems and the image is free of any obvious compression issues and any noise reduction problems.