This is the best movie I've seen by Bava. I didn't like Black Lace. Bay of Blood had some decent scenes, but a mess of a story. Five Dolls, was a mess, except for Fenech.I saw the American version, and have not seen the original Italian, which I've read has different plots and scenes. The best story here is the first, The Drop of Water. The acting and suspense is all there. The dead witch/old lady was great.The Telephone, 2nd piece was decent, but was also slow. Maybe the Italian version was much better.The 3rd, "The Wurdalak" with Karloff as a vampire was creepy and had some decent scenes, but it was mostly slow and it died like the undead.I'll rate this as a B-, or 5 or 6 stars. It's worth checking out for a few scenes. I hated the intro of each segment with Boris Karloff, all this takes you out of the movie and into documentary nonsense. I'm not a fan of trilogies. Better to make one long movie. The Drop of Water should have been the movie. Maybe adding some of the telephone nonsense and the vampire tones. Jacqueline Pierreux was the best actress here. Karloff was decent as the vampire, but take out the stupid intro segments. The other actors were decent.I don't know why Bava is praised so much. What is missing from this film is a director. His job here looks like he delivered a product, very mechanical. But where was the direction of the actors, and their interactions? Not much. The reason The Drop of Water works so well here is because it's mostly one actress. A truly great director would have gotten more performance from the actors, not just put up set pieces, add color, set cameras, and yell action.

f this horror anthology was so successful, where are all the Italian rip-off films of Black Sabbath? That's a bizarre anomaly in Italian cinema right there. You'd think there would be hundreds of them. I can only think of this and Two Evil Eyes as examples of Italian horror anthologies, and that was made in the nineties and is only half-Italian. Weird.This is all high-tier Bava stuff, and his stuff is already up there in terms of quality and goodness. We get three stories here introduced rather jovially by Boris Karloff, and in the English version we start off with A Drop of Water. This one regularly turns up on those '100 scariest horror film' moments that twats like David Quantick sell their soul to appear on. The plot is simple enough – a nurse is called to the home of dead spiritualist in order to prepare her for burial, but decides that the ring the corpse is wearing is too good to be buried. Probably a bad idea.What starts out subtly but creepy enough with the constant dripping of water and the annoyance of a single fly shortly escalate into a ghost story to rival that of The Grudge (there I go again, comparing Bava to Japanese horror), I don't want to go into too much detail about it as you might actually want to see this one. Scary though.Second story involves a pretty lady receiving horrible phone calls from some guy named Frank, who seems to know everything the lady is doing and may be watching her close by. What makes things worse is that Frank is supposed to be dead. This one actually didn't end the way I thought it would, and Bava still manages to bring tension to what in 1963 must have already been a tired plot. I've read that the Italian version of this has no supernatural element to it (Frank is the lady's pimp and alive) and that the lady has a very special lady friend!Third and longest story stars Karloff himself as the patriarch of a family fed up with the local vampire killing his shepherds who heads off to the mountains to kill it, urging his family not to let him back in the house if it takes him more than five days to return. Mark Damon is passing through town and finds the beheaded corpse of the vampire, only to be told by the family that Karloff is almost overdue to return…Just like the first story, this one starts slowly, then builds up. From the point when Karloff finally returns home (filmed amazingly), things kick up a gear – and remember: No child is safe in an Italian film! In fact, when I think about it, by the time the story reaches the point where a vampire child is outside the house crying 'let me in! Let me in!' you'll be shouting "Stephen King totally ripped that off for Salem's Lot!" faster than you can say "And to a lesser extent, for the end of Pet Semetary when that toddler kid comes looking for his mother".Yet another great Mario Bava film, and one of the best horror anthologies I've watched, but then I'm only comparing it to Vault of Horror (not bad), House of the Dead (weak), Asylum (not bad), The Monster Club (okay), Night Train To Terror (Great!), Freaky Fairy tales (Great!), With Friends Like These (weak), Creepshow (good), Creepshow 2 (not bad), Campfire Tales (can't remember), Dark Tales of Japan (not bad), Tales From the Darkside (not bad) , Cutting Moments (gory), V/H/S (okay), V/H/S 2(gory!) and Fellini's Roma (disjointed).

"Black Sabbath" made many viewing experiences reemerge from memory: "Gremlins", "The Shining", "Night of the Living Dead", "Scream"… but certainly not "Pulp Fiction". Yet, from what I gathered, this is what inspired Tarantino for the three-part structure of his classic anthology. Well, if only for "Pulp Fiction", we can be glad for "Black Sabbath"' existence. And you know what, I also have the strangest connection with "Black Sabbath". First of all, I'm not really hot about calling it by its American name as for more than almost fifteen years, I referred to it as "The Three Faces of Fear", and I think I should stick to it, if only because it says exactly what the film is about, an episodic journey into horror, while "Black Sabbath" sounds just too distant and 'marketed' to appeal to me and I just love how promising the original title sounds.Now to the personal story; I said fifteen years, but actually, it's only yesterday that I saw the film for the first tim. The thing is that I missed it when it aired on TV but looking at the title and the year of release, 1963, I asked my father if he knew about it. "Are you kidding? This movie gave me nightmares as a kid!" He told me the story about the ring, the one that stuck in his mind, but not how it ended, he couldn't remember. And then something strange happened, which I'm not proud of, I used to tell friends about the film, saying how great it is, and using the 'ring' story as a teaser.I can't count how many times I told the ring story, and when asked about the ending, I said I couldn't spoil it because it was too terrific. Oh no, I'm not proud… and I'm glad that's the only case I can think of, of talking of something I didn't see. That and (what a conscience-relieving review) rating "The Dark Knight" without watching it, but I retracted my vote and to my defense, I was just upset that the film was responsible for "The Godfather" losing its top spot on IMDb Top 250. All right, my first lie has at least one consolation: I made people aware of this film's existence and yesterday, I could finally see if it deserved the publicity I gave to it, or at least the 'ring' story.First of all, are these three-part films captivating, especially when they are from the same director? I grew up with the "Amazing Stories" TV series and I love how the thirty-minute format allows each film to get the essential without wasting time on exposition stuff or pointless sequences, they're straight-to-the-point and imaginative in the same time. And God forbid you didn't like one segment; you know if it ends with the best one, it will be all worth it. And when I saw that the 'ring' was the last one, I wasn't the least surprised, and I just want to start by saying I was almost disappointed it didn't last longer, it was the best segment, which is saying a lot actually.The three plots are rather simple, you can get the idea with a simple sentence: a woman stalked by a mysterious phone caller, a patriarch back from a successful hunt against a zombie-like creature called Wurdulak but who might have become one, and a nurse stealing a ring from a dead woman with psychic abilities (the dead woman, not the nurse). There are plots that were not new in 1963, but what the film lacks in originality is compensated by Mario Bava's operatic and baroque recreation of traditional horror elements, to give you an idea, it's as if Fellini tried to imitate Hitchcock. And I thought the film would be in black and white, there are actually many use of bold and contrasting colors, tones of green, dark and red mishmash in over-decorated, and over- furnished houses, creating an awkward mix between the weird and the mundane. This is a film of explicitly vivid imagery, even in the casting: Michele Mercier, Suzy Andersen and Jacqueline Pierrieux are the female leads and they simply illuminate the screen with their terrified faces, whether to express anxiety, apprehension, resignation or sheer terror when death is coming at you. Bava's kaleidoscope of fear is so bizarrely appealing it instantly earns its place among the classic horror movies with the acting Legend to endorse it. Indeed, you can't praise the film without ignoring the contribution of Boris Karloff and his performance as the ill-fated Wurdalak Grandpa. I know the second part is seen as the weak link, but there's a scene when Karloff is home and we're not quite sure whether he's a monster or not. He keeps a shadow of sympathy floating above his apparently rude manners, so when he wants to fondle with his grandson, the awkwardness is so thick we can choke on it, and this is why the film is efficient, nothing is never obvious until it's too late. But there's more to praise in Karloff's work, and I think it says a great deal about the appeal of the film, from the way Boris the Terrible introduces the three stories, from his delightfully scary close-ups and the over-the-top ominousness of his voice, you can tell the actor has fun playing in this film. And that's exactly what the penultimate shot, what the dead woman's look, what many weird psychedelic visual effects suggest, Mario Bava had fun making this film, and the film is fun, and I'll never believe that there's not a fun side behind the appeal of horror movies."The Three Faces of Fear" is not perfect but it's got style, atmosphere and a sense of self- derision that I'm sure inspired Tarantino, more than the three-part structure. And now, I'm glad I'll finally be able to talk about the film and be genuinely enthusiastic about it.

Excellent horror anthology film from Mario Bava with three stories as well as linking segments with Boris Karloff. The first story is "The Drop of Water," about a nurse who steals a ring off the finger of a medium's corpse. If you guessed that won't end well for her, you're right. This is a suspenseful story with fine atmosphere. That corpse is one of the creepiest-looking things I've ever seen on film. The next story, "The Telephone," is about a woman receiving mysterious taunting phone calls. A nice-looking segment, and Michele Mercier is definitely attractive, but this is the weakest of all the stories. That isn't to say it's bad, though. It's interesting enough just not as good as the other two. The final, and best, story is "The Wurdulak," about a family awaiting the return of their father (Boris Karloff) who went out to kill a vampire. When the father returns, he's very different. Karloff is lots of fun in this story as well as the linking segments.This review is mainly for the dubbed American version. The original Italian version differs from the American with the order of the stories changed as well as some violent and suggestive content that was cut for American release. I give both versions the same score because, to me, the differences aren't enough to make one better than the other. "The Telephone" has the most significant changes but remains the weakest story in both versions. The Italian version has a score by Roberto Nicolosi and the American score is by Les Baxter. I preferred the Baxter score personally but I can see where others would prefer Nicolosi's more subtle score. I recommend you try both versions if you have the time. It's a colorful and beautiful-looking film that ranks high on the list of horror anthology movies I've seen. Karloff and Bava fans will love it.