- Director
- Mario Bava
- Year
- 1963
- Runtime
- 92 min
Also released as
- I tre volti della paura
- The Three Faces of Fear
- The Three Faces of Terror
- Las tres caras del miedo
- Die 3 Gesichter der Furcht
- Der Ring der Verdammten
- Les trois visages de la peur
- Drie Aangezichten van de Verschrikking
- ブラック・サバス 恐怖! 三つの顔
- Black Sabbath: As Três Máscaras do Terror
Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath is a 1963 Italian and French gothic horror film directed by Mario Bava.
Three Bava stories introduced by Boris Karloff, and the middle one is the most frightening thing Bava shot.
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The Telephone is a proto-giallo in one room: a woman alone receiving calls, and it is essentially the template Black Christmas used a decade later.
The Wurdalak has Karloff as a patriarch returning to his family after hunting a vampire, possibly infected, and it contains a small child at a door asking to be let in that is deeply upsetting.
The Drop of Water is the reason the film has a reputation. A nurse steals a ring from a dead medium's finger. The corpse's face, a wax mould with a fixed grin, is one of the most disturbing images in any horror film, and it appears in a well-lit bedroom.
The American International version reorders the stories, rescores them and rewrites the framing into comedy. Find the Italian cut.
Tarantino named his band after it, which is why the group exists.
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Trailer
The sleeves
The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.
Where to watch
Australia
Germany
Finland
UK
USA
Legal sources only. Availability data from JustWatch via TMDB.
Checked 9 Aug 2026
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Adjacent
Lisa and the Devil
Bava given complete freedom, and the film is a dream nobody can escape, including the producer.
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
Bava's proto-giallo, the film that invented the template, shot in gorgeous black and white in Rome.
The Masque of the Red Death
The best of Corman's Poe cycle, shot by Nicolas Roeg on sets left over from Becket.
Kwaidan
Four ghost stories on hand-painted sound stages, three hours long, and among the most beautiful films ever made.
Suspiria
Barely a plot and possibly the most beautiful horror film ever shot.
The Others
A twist that survives a second viewing, which is rarer than it sounds.
- Next in Giallo: Blood and Black Lace (1964) →
- Next in Gothic: Kwaidan (1964) →