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Bolstered by the success of Black Sunday (La Maschera del
Demonio, 1960), AIP (helmed by Samuel Z. Arkoff and James Nicholson)
brought the work of Italian horror master Mario Bava to American shores once
again with Black Sabbath, a trio of haunting tales co-produced
with Italy's Emmepi Cinematografica and Galatea Films and France's Societe
cinematographique Lyre. AIP began to assert control over the project from the
get-go, securing the talents of the legendary Boris Karloff (enjoying a creative
renaissance at the time as host of the popular television horror anthology,
Thriller) as the film's Master of Ceremonies (and focal point of the
picture's most disturbing segment, The Wurdulak) and ordering a number of
changes to the work to suit American audiences. Their jurisdiction, however, did
not apply to the Italian language version, I Tre Volti della Paura
(The Three Faces of Fear), a stylistic masterpiece retaining the
maestro's original vision, now presented for the first time uncut in America
thanks to Image Entertainment.
Karloff, perched atop a spectral landscape of swirling light and color (a
jarringly surreal sequence trimmed from the American version), introduces the
film's first segment, The Telephone (widely recognized as the first color
giallo), a tale in which carnal creature of the night, Rosy (Michele Mercier),
receives a string of threatening phone calls. Rosy, having played a major role
in the incarceration of her ex-pimp Frank (Gustavo de Nardo), is terrified at
the prospect that the calls may be the work of her abusive employer (recently
released from prison) and phones her former lover, Mary (Lidia Alfonsi) for
assistance. Unknown to Rosy, the calls are part of a carefully orchestrated
scheme by Mary to win back the heart of her lost love. Unfortunately for Mary,
however, her plan does not come to fruition in the manner in which she had
intended. As the bloody outcome of The Telephone fades, the film segues into
The Wurdulak, in which Count Vladimire d'Urfe (Mark Damon), transporting a
headless corpse he found at the side of the road, arrives at the mist-shrouded
home of Gorka (Boris Karloff). Recently reunited with his family after a
five-day expedition, Gorka, revealing the missing part of the corpse as proof of
his deeds, informs Vladimire that the body is that of a wurdulak, a vampire that
feasts on the blood of loved ones. When Gorka begins to lick his lips at the
sight of his grandson, Ivan, Vladimire and the family learn that the old man's
success came at a heavy price. In the final (and arguably best) segment, The
Drop of Water, nurse Helen Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux) is called to ready
the corpse of an elderly medium who passed away during a violent seance. The old
woman's face, a distorted mask of pain and terror (brilliantly sculpted by
Eugenio Bava), seems to glare at Helen as she works, eventually stumbling across
a beautiful ring adorning the woman's finger. Hastily wrenching the jewelry from
the old woman's hand, Helen knocks over a glass of water by the deceased's bed
and the room is filled with the reverberating plip-plip-plip of the liquid as it
descends to the floor. As she conceals her ill-gotten prize in her blouse, Helen
is accosted by a particularly tenacious fly that strangely seems to be
protecting the old woman. Returning home, Helen, like Gorka, learns that her
actions have brought about dire consequences...
Rearranged by AIP for American release (Black Sabbath presented
the segments in the following order: The Drop of Water, The Telephone,
and The Wurdulak), Tre Volti presents the landscape of
Bava's masterpiece in the way he had originally intended, thankfully restoring
the carefully-planned visual symmetry bracketing each chapter. The
Telephone's lesbian overtones, fearfully scrapped by AIP in their
transformation of the tale into a supernatural ghost story, are also reinstated
as are the comic antics of Karloff and crew in the film's original ending, a
scene that strips away the facade of filmmaking as the camera pulls away
revealing -- warts and all -- the reality behind the illusion. Those expecting
to be greeted by the familiar timbre of Karloff's voice may be a bit
disappointed, however, as the venerable actor's lines are dubbed in Italian.
AIP's repositioning of the film's elements rendered the synching of Karloff's
English dialogue with the Italian soundtrack an impossible task.
Image did, however, investigate the
possibility of including the AIP version on the disc, but the addition would
have resulted in a logistical nightmare due to additional licensing fees,
production costs, and a plethora of legal issues. As it stands, the loss isn't a
major one; Tre Volti is every bit as powerful (if not more so)
than Sabbath. Each segment of Tre Volti, superbly
designed and magnificently choreographed, beautifully showcases Bava's complex
visual language, an overwhelming mix of light and color that perfectly
compliments the simple, yet effective narrative. |
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