Welcome back nieces and nephews.  I hope you've been managing to scare yourselves.  If not, your ol' Uncle Pump is just going to have to do it for you this time.  

We'll stay in the 60s this time, but not on the ground with the baboons.  This time we'll move further up in the evolutionary tree.  Swing from a higher branch, if you will.  Mr. Karloff will be joining us again and this time he brought along a studio and director that will also appear more than once in the Dusty Mustie archives.  Let's start our introduction to AIP (American International Pictures) and Mr. Mario Bava with Black Sabbath.

One of the first and best anthology films, Black Sabbath paired Bava with Karloff (because he was under contract to AIP at the time).  This marvelous gem of a horror film is as Mustie as they get and by all rights should not be Dusty at all, but alas it is--especially the true version.  This film was shot in Rome and originally released in Italian.  When AIP brought it to the states, it was changed completely.  The original title, "The Three Faces of Fear", was changed to Black Sabbath , to cash in on the title of Bava's previous classic Black Sunday.  The one benefit to the name change was the fact that this is what the band Black sabbath took their name from. The entire score was replaced, the dialogue was dubbed, the whole lesbian subplot of the first tale was eliminated, and much blood was removed  from the second story. Even the order of the tales was switched around.  A great Mario Bava film was watered down to the point of being fit for American TV audiences of the time.    Please watch the the original Italian version with English subtitles to truly see Bava's vision.  There's no excuse not to, since our good friends at Anchor Bay were kind enough to release the uncut original version on the DVD shown above.

Let's chat about the still, in my opinion,  underappreciated director,  Mr. Bava for a moment.  Some folks don't know him at all and some folks think that Argento was the only great Italian horror master,  No knock against  Argento (who will make his own appearances among the Dusty Musties) at all, but Mario Bava was at the very least his equal, if not better.  His Black Sunday(1960) was, and still is an undisputed classic of the genre and his 1963 The Evil Eye helped kick start the whole giallo subgenre.  His painfully erotic Whip And The Body, with Christopher Lee, came out also in 1963-five years before Belle du Jour and ten years before Last Tango in Paris.  He helped start the Italian and American slasher subgenre with Blood and Black Lace in 1964 and added more fuel to the fire with Hatchet For The Honeymoon and Twitch of The Death Nerve in the early 70s.  His influence can be seen in the work of many modern directors and has been admitted to by as accomplished and diverse a list as Ridley Scott, Quentin Tarantino, Federico Fellini, Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, Guillermo Del Toro, and David Lynch.  Bava moved from the medium of black and white to color filmaking without missing a step.  He was one of the first directors to fully embrace and understand the impact of color in a movie.  His use of color was the work of a true artist, using distinct groupings of primary colors to manipulate our eyes into sending signals of approaching doom to our scared brains.  He used simple, but brilliant color schemes to move us almost unknowingly from real to unreal, from comfort to dread.  Now that boxed sets of his work are being released, maybe he'll get more recognition.  Even his death in 1980 was overshadowed by Hitchcock's just two days later.

Although I slapped their hand earlier (and rightfully so), for butchering this movie for it's American release, let me also sing the praises of AIP for giving us, not only this movie and Black Sunday, but also the great Corman/Price adaptations of Poe's stories and many other fine horror films of the era.  It was only AIP that really gave any kind of American challenge to the horror mastery of Britain's Hammer films.

Now--on to the movie.  Not only does he act in the second of the three tales in this film, but Karloff is also our host.

We find Karloff now heading towards the twilight of his career.  He would only make a handful of movies after this one and his health was already failing.  He would die just six years later.  But an aging Boris Karloff is still KARLOFF!  He was the man.  Having dissapointed his family with his career choice, he moved from England to Canada and worked as a farmhand and manual laborer, while acting in bit parts whenever possible.  He was already 44 when he became a household word by his superb portrayal of Frankenstein's monster.  His given name was William Henry Pratt and in his younger days, folks called him Billy.  It is widely believed that he came up with the name Boris Karloff himself.  He stated in public that the name came from his mother's side of the family, although no record of the name Karloff has ever been found in his family tree.  No less a director than James Whale told Karloff that his face had startling possibilities.

The first tale, The Telephone is possibly the weakest of the three stories told, but still a delight.  Oh the imagery of  the glint of a steel blade in a black gloved hand.  This chapter is all about style and beauty.  Speaking of beauty, Michele Mercier, who portrays the high class call girl Rosy is a sight to behold.  She is a perfect example of how stunning an Italian woman can be.  Just being allowed to watch her sit on the end of one of the most beautiful beds I've ever seen and smoke cigarettes makes you feel that this consort has earned her fee.

Watching her terror increase as she receives call after call from someone who can clearly see her is delicious.  This tale was clearly the inspiration for many phone call/ stalker films to come.  Set in Paris, this tale has our lovely Rosy involved in a very cool, psychotic, homo/hetero, love, and murder triangle with just enough of a twist to make it all worthwhile.

For the second tale, we travel to the old Russian countryside and the countryside is marvelous.  Creepy woods, old ruins, mountains, mist-enshrouded farmhouses, low-lying fog everywhere, the great heaving bosoms of Maria and Sdenka (by now you know ol' Uncle Pump loves him some heaving bosoms), and the swinging head of Alibeq the Turk.  This story is called the Wurdalak and is actually based on a short story by Tolstoy.  As far as I know, this is the only time Karloff portrayed a bloodsucker, and he waited until late in his career to do it.  His performance is well worth the wait.  As Gorca, Karloff is no sleek, classy, sexy Lugosi or Lee, nor is he quite the raging, brutal fiends of 30 Days of Night.  He makes this role his own and plays it to a tee.  Wurdalaks don't only like the taste of blood, they want that blood to come from the ones they used to love.

Now my little chimplings, I get to point out a source of pride.  Most of you are too young to have been scared by Karloff.  You know his legacy, you like seeing him in the old black and white classics, but he doesn'r really scare you.  I saw this film when I was still in Elementary school, and folks, that image above scared the tar out of me.  I woke up more than one night, imagining that face at my window.  I can say "I was scared by Karloff". 

This segment, though barely 30 minutes long, feels like a movie itself.  The handsome and dashing, young Count Vladimir comes to the farmhouse on the same night that the Wurdalak comes to get reaquainted with his loving family.

I love the line, "My lips are dead without your kisses". Folks--this tale has it all.  Even a dog with a howl that would make any werewolf proud and how many future filmakers were inspired by little Ivan's cries of "Mama, I'm cold" There's some very chilling stuff here.  It'd take an evil clown with power tools to equal the level of creepiness in this segment.  You can be dashing, you can run, you can hide, you can even fall in love, but will any of that protect you from the Wurdalak?

Now a tiny little sidenote before we move on the final story:

The dashing Count Vladimir is portrayed by a fellow by the name of Mark Damon.  Before this, he mostly played in old fifties love and romance films.  He played in some other horror films afterwards and even some spaghetti westerns, but his major claims to fame were: 1.-as a producer, he helmed such films as The Choirboys, Das Boot, The Neverending story, 9-1/2 Weeks, Wild Orchid, and Monster with Theron and Ricci.

2.-He turned down a role in a Sergio Leone film and then introduced Clint Eastwood to Leone for A Fist Full of Dollars.

Sidenote over--Let's forge ahead to the third tale, in Victorian London, The Drop of Water is nasty little story of revenge from the grave.

We all know it's wrong to steal from the dead.  But what if the dead just happen to be an old medium who regularly communicates with the dead and lives in a creepy old house with creepy old dolls and a gazillion cats.  Sure sounds like a place I don't want to steal from.

That's all I can really say about the third and final chapter wthout some serious spoilers.  I will say Ghost tales don't get much spookier. 

Bava considered Black Sabbath his favorite out of all the movies he made.  That's good enough for me.  It should be good enough for you too.  If you have not already experienced this masterpiece, then you have some true blood-curdling moments ahead.  Until next time, Go try to scare yourself.