Black Sabbath

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Obviously, I'm gonna include some italian horror films and giallos in YVIAHMMAOIHTNQ, that's a given, I love that shit. Which is why it was so surprising on Saturday when I popped on the awesome sounding giallo The House With Laughing Windows and couldn't even finish watching it, it was so fucking boring. It lacked style, violence and nudity, and nothing happened for an hour. I don't know, maybe it gets great during the final third, but I didn't care enough to find out. And shit, that almost never happens to me.

But I feel like I made up for that a little bit by watching Mario Bava's Black Sabbath, which was surprisingly good. I say surprisingly, because within the past few years I saw Bava's 5 Dolls for An August Moon and Twitch of the Death Nerve, and they were both unbelievably awful and boring (I actually finished watching them, though). After that I wrote him off for a while, but I kept reading good things about Bava. I'm thinking now that maybe I just happened to watch two of his worst films first... last year I caught Blood and Black Lace and it wasn't half bad, and Black Sabbath was downright good.

I think you call this an anthology or omnibus; it's 3 short horror stories put together to make one movie, and they are all pretty good, although stories 2 and 3 never top the first one, which is straight up giallo and I would imagine an influence on the work of my favorite, Dario Argento. None of them are truly scary, but some suspense is generated, and a lot of the entertainment comes more from the style.

Okay, so good job Bava, I think I might watch Shock or something this month too.