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goreledger
Director
Mario Bava
Year
1963
Country
Italy, France
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

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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.

poster
EN · poster
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FR · poster
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FR · poster
EN · poster

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Bava given complete freedom, and the film is a dream nobody can escape, including the producer.

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1964 · Japan · 183m

Four ghost stories on hand-painted sound stages, three hours long, and among the most beautiful films ever made.

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Suspiria

1977 · Italy · 94m

Barely a plot and possibly the most beautiful horror film ever shot.

Goreledger 9/10
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The Others

2001 · USA/Spain · 101m

A twist that survives a second viewing, which is rarer than it sounds.