Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Black Sabbath

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss Mario Bava’s colorful anthology of gothic horror, starring the legendary Boris Karloff. (originally published 10/22/2021)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewinder. This is
Rob Lamb and we have a much older episode to
share with you here today. This one is from ten
twenty to twenty twenty one. I partially picked this one
because we lost Ozzy Osbourne fairly recently. This is going
to be the classic Mario Bava horror anthology film Black Sabbath. Enjoy.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
And I'm Joe McCormick. And today it's that old anthology
feeling once again. Rob. I know you're a horror anthology man.
What is it about you that makes you gravitate towards
the anthology?

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well, I mean you're talking about two different things, of course,
when you're talking about horror anthologies on TV and those
in the film, Because on TVs it's like it's a
different generally, it's a different story every week. And with
anthology films like the one we're gonna be talking about today,
you instead of getting one complete film, you get like

(01:17):
three or four shorter pieces that are stitched together and
been presented to you so I guess maybe part of
it is just out of love for creepy short stories
and the fact that that short stories don't have to
obey the same rules as novels, and therefore and also
short films don't have to obey the same rules as
complete films. I guess it's also nice that they're only

(01:40):
going to be They're only going to feel so long.
You know, they're going to get to the point they
can only be so drawn out. And it's also like
a little sampler box. Like if an anthology film is
coming at you and you know it's going to present
you with, say three to four tales, Well you can
figure there's going to be maybe one dud in the bunch,
but at the very least you'll have one that's pretty good. Right,

(02:03):
there's got to be like one central pillar holding up
the roof of the thing.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Well, another way I would come at it is that
even if they're all bad, it's more fun to have
bad variety than bad monotony.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, yeah, I would say so, like you're into the
badness and then you're out again, and then you're into
some fresh badness.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, I think I would really come back to what
you were saying about the comparison to the lengths of
horror fiction. This came up in a recent episode where
we were talking I think it was in the Thing
from Another World, where we were talking about how it's
hard to survey to be sure about this, but my
feeling is that horror novels tend to gravitate more towards

(02:45):
some semblance of a quote happy ending, maybe not happy,
but some way in which the protagonist is at least
partially victorious or escapes or something, whereas horror short stories
tend more toward bleak and cruel endings or endings that
are that are a really a mean and ironic twist
of fate. And obviously I think there are a lot

(03:06):
of reasons why people who enjoy horror fiction are drawn
to endings of that sort, but they're harder to pull
off at the end of a really long narrative where
you're more invested with the characters, You've spent more time
with them, and it hurts more to see them just
sort of like ruined at the end.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, And I think another thing that you certainly see
in short fiction is that sometimes short fiction exists in
a space where it doesn't have to concern itself with
the ins and outs of a complex plot or some
sort of fantastic character arc. You know, our characters don't
have to evolve and change and learn lessons about themselves.
It can be more about trotting out an interesting idea

(03:43):
or you know, or or or in the in the
case of horror, just a just a fun monster or
some you know, diabolical scenario, that sort of thing, right.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
I think you're correct. I think that the horror genre
especially really does lend itself well to the anthology format.
I mean, there are plenty of movies that are not
horror that you could argue you are, in one way
or another anthology films of a sort. I think one
thing I've read is that is that pulp fiction was
actually the concept for pulp fiction was partially inspired by

(04:16):
the movie that we're going to talk about today. Of course,
pulp fiction is not horror, but today's movie is today's
selection for weird house cinema is the Mario Bava nineteen
sixty three Italian anthology horror series Black Sabbath, or in
Italian it's called e tre volti di la Pora. I
had to look up what that means. It means the
three Faces of Fear.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Which is a more accurate title because if you're checking
out Black Sabbath expecting witchcraft and you know, Satan worshippers
dancing around a fire or some sort of like pagan
ordeal or something going on, you're going to be disappointed
because there is no actual Black Sabbath, real or imagined
in this picture.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
No, I would say the closest we come to that,
it still doesn't really get there. There's sort of that
vibe in the middle segment of this movie, and by
far my favorite the Wordulac, which is I think just
an absolutely tremendous segment and I can't wait to talk
about it. But yeah, at least the other two really
don't have anything to do with that at all.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Now, another interesting thing about the title for this film
is that this is said to be where the band
Black Sabbath got their name.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Oh yeah, And I think I could be wrong about this,
but I remember hearing It's not even from them necessarily
seeing the movie. I think it was like they walked
past a movie theater and this was on the Marquee
and they're like.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Right, yeah, I think there's another version of the tale
and I don't know how much. This sounds almost too perfect,
so it sounds like maybe it was embellished. But I
read a version where they were playing at a theater
and then across the street Black Sabbath was playing and
the line was far longer to get in to see
the movie as opposed to getting in to see them play.

(05:58):
And they're like, well, we need to do has changed
our name. We need to be Black Sabbath, and then
the people will line up for us.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
It's like when Patty and Selma proposed changing the name
of Springfield the Seinfeld. You just look at what's popular
now and try to leach off that.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know which of those
stories is true and to what extent, but certainly it
would be. It's hard to imagine the band Black Sabbath
without the name Black Sabbath because the theme runs so
deep through all of their music.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
And before they were called Black Sabbath they were called Earth.
That was not very convenient because I think there was
another band at the time in that area called Earth.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
It has a different taste on the tongue. Initially, Yeah,
if you're thinking about going to hear Earth, you have
totally different expectations versus Black Sabbath.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
Well as a huge fan of the at least like
the first six Black Sabbath albums. I don't really get
into the d years very much, but like the first
six Sabbath albums, I think are they're a mega You know,
they're like one of those stone monuments from the ancient
world and it's really hard to get under them. But
I can't imagine how I would feel about them if

(07:09):
they weren't by a band called Black Sabbath that's so
wrapped up in the feeling.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, can you imagine Nativity and Black by Earth? It
just doesn't make sense war Pigs by Earth.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
However, I could propose an alternative, which is that if
they wanted to drill in and get to the heart
of what makes Mario Bava's Black Sabbath really great, they
could have changed the name of their band to the
word Youlaxe.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, that's a fun name for a band.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
And it would imply that they've been in the mountains
for five days and come back in a state of
God knows what.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
All right, well, let's go ahead and give everyone a
taste of the trailer on this one. Because this is
a pretty good trailer. I love the narration here.

Speaker 4 (07:57):
Do you believe in ghosts? This is the night twent
Fear and horror walk hand in hand. This is Black Sabbath,
starring the incomparable Boris Karloff, the personable Mark Damon, and

(08:21):
lush and lovely women, even though one is from the
nether world, a vampire of Bourdelac, a Black Sabbath as
ancient as superstition, as modern as the telephone.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
So it's obvious from the trailer, but I don't think
we mentioned that this movie has Boris Karloff in multiple capacities,
so he is not only the star of one of
the three segments in the anthology, but he's also sort
of the pitchman. He is the company spokesperson at the
beginning and end of the film, And.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Of course this is perfect because in later years he
also served as a horror host on televis you show
such as Thriller and Out of This World. As I
think we've often driven home though, like, there's such a
wealth of TV horror anthologies out there, So, for instance,
if you just glance at listings for Boris Karloff's Thriller,

(09:16):
you'll see Oh it only went two seasons, but it
went two seasons in the nineteen sixties, So those two
seasons consist of sixty seven episodes.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
Wow, yeah, it gets crazy, And man, I thought it
was long seasons. When you go back and watch a
show from the nineties or something where there's like twenty
episodes in the season, that seems like a huge amount.
But wow yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Now, to be clear, Thriller aired sixty one I mean sorry,
sixty through sixty one and sixty one through sixty two,
so it actually aired in America at least before Black
Sabbath came out, so that might have been part of
the rationale here. It's like, well, audiences are used to
Boris Karloff presenting material to them. He's already in it.

(09:58):
Let's also get him up on the screen introducing this
stuff for us.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
Well, you can hear it right in the narration of
the trailer. There's the part where it says like starring
the incomparable Boris Karloff. I guess he is incomparable. But
then the other cast members they introduce are the personable
Mark Damon, which I thought was hilarious, And then they
say and lush and lovely women gone unnamed.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
Come on, dudes, and we will list to some of
their names here in a bit. There are some nice
performances in here.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Oh wait, wait, I left off, though I think the
trailer qualifies it says, so the women in this movie, Hey,
we got beautiful women, even though one of them is
from the nether world. I was trying to think back
after having seen it, which woman is it talking about.
I'm not even sure.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, there's not really one that's definitely from the nether world.
I mean a lot of bad, supernatural things happen to
people and to some women in this motion picture, but
I don't think any of them are from the nether world.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
All right, Well, I guess before we talk anymore about
the actual contents of the movie, we should discuss some
of the the connections. And obviously the place to start
is with the director, Mario Bava.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Mario Bava who lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen eighty. He
was the director, but also collaborated on the screenplay. He
was the cinematographer, He did matt paintings, he did special effects.
This is the legendary Italian director with an unmistakable obsessive
and phantasmagorical emphasis on visual composition. So you can just

(11:30):
look up stills from his movies and I feel like,
once you've gotten a taste of how Bava directs and
how he composes a shot, a strong still from any
of his films is just instantly identifiable. It just pops
with a certain It's not only the color hue, because
I want to stress it's not just a matter of oh, well,

(11:50):
Mariobava used some cool gels here and there, like, No,
it's the complete it's his use of light and reflections
and just the overall composition of every every shot in
the film.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
You ever see one of those animated movies in which
there is a magical gem or artifact that glows with
magic power, Mario Bava's movies are like that. There's something
about the way they look that the frames from the
movie glow with magic power.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah, even when there's less of a reason for it
to be glowing. So like I was thinking as I
was watching this particular picture that it's it's like an
alien civilization that communicates through like synesthesia is trying to
speak through the picture.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
You know.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
It's like it's that obsessive, like the colors are clearly
of great importance to Bava and all.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Of this, though I will say that I totally agree
with you. Color is a big part of it, and
Bava frequently used sort of expressive colorful lighting, colored lighting
in his movies that is not strictly realistic, meaning it's
not reflecting a color you would actually expect to see
if this scene were taking place in the real world,

(13:08):
but rather colors that sort of reflect feelings coming through
and reflect sort of other worldly, unseen influences. But there
are also visual sensibilities he has where that kind of
glowing comes through even when it's not in color. Like
the example that comes to my mind is his earlier
movie Black Sunday, which is in black and white and

(13:30):
yet it still glows with magic power.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, that one was from nineteen sixty and it is
interesting to imagine this leap from black and white to
color for Mario Bava, where they're like, oh, by the way,
you can shoot in color now, and you can imagine
his excitement at being able to do so.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
So.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Bava's background is interesting. He was the son of early
Italian cinematographer Eugenio Bava, and Mario trained as a painter,
venturing into the world of cinematography as well in the
late thirties in the early forties, but then he eventually
started directing as well. It began with some documentary shorts

(14:10):
and some uncredited directing work on some various genre films.
But then in nineteen sixty that's when Black Sunday came out.
He directed that, and that was a very well regarded
and financially successful film, and so Black Sabbath is very
much the color follow up to that. Thus the similar
release title again kind of coming back to the studio

(14:33):
thought here, it's like, well, Black Sunday did pretty good.
Welcome we call the next one. Let's call it a
Black Sabbath.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
There we go, Well, this may be if that is
indeed where the title comes from. I got to say,
this is the rare case where I would go with
the marketing over the original because once again the three
faces of fear, that may be more literally descriptive of
what you're getting with the movie, but it doesn't really
have the same punch to it.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah, So Mario Baba directed into thenineteen seventies. Initially he retired,
then he came back at the behest of a new
generation of Italian horror filmmakers, including his own son, director
of Lomberto Bava. He came back to direct nineteen seventy
five Shock, and this would prove to be his last
feature film, as he then died in nineteen eighty. But

(15:18):
he directed a number of pictures, so we're not going
to touch on them all, but I thought we might
talk about a few of them here. One of them
is Planet of the Vampires from nineteen sixty.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
Five, Rob, Can you see the Planet of the Vampire's
poster right behind me on the wall?

Speaker 1 (15:33):
I do? I see that you have it right there
up on the wall behind you, so you know obviously
you're a fan. I finally got around to watching this
in full this year, and I have to say it
wasn't the most enthralling motion picture when it came to
acting and the plot, but such a gorgeous science fiction

(15:56):
film to watch. Like all of the visuals in it,
he does an amazing job and devotes the vast majority
of the film's energy and limited budget, I have to
add to create highly effective and colorful alien landscapes Haunted
spaceship Hallways also has just some incredible costumes.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
Absolutely so I love Planet of the Vampires, but I
usually watch it without sound. It's a movie that I
love to put on, like in the background while I'm
hanging out with friends and listening to music. That's the
ideal Planet of the Vampires experience for me, because it's
one of those movies. It's a rub the fur movie.
It's a movie that's not really about the plot or

(16:37):
what happens in it. It is about the visual textures
on screen, and that includes everything from like you single
out the costumes. The spacefarers in the movie are wearing
these bizarre black leather space suits with these leather helmets,
and yeah, the lighting and the sets are just absolutely wonderful.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yeah, and it reminds me of a quote that I
ran across from Mario Bava where he said that horror
films are seventy percent lighting. And I think he has
a strong point. I mean, you definitely see that in
his work. But we've talked about various examples on the
show before where we say things like, oh, well, the
monster costume wasn't great, but in this scene, the lighting's amazing,

(17:18):
so it absolutely works well.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
Like in the Thing from Another World, Yeah, there was
like if you look at the costume James Arness's wearing like, actually,
in full lighting, it doesn't look very impressive, but they've
found a way to make it look good within the
narrative by either keeping him in silhouette backlits so you
can't really see him, so he's just a frame, and
or just by giving you quick glimpses of him where

(17:41):
you can't really understand what's going on. Like, they make
do in a very effective manner with some limitations in
terms of costuming and makeup effects.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Of course, Planet of the Vampires was highly influential. It's
sometimes been asked, would we even have Alien and all
the films that came after Alien had it not been
for Planet of the Vampires, And perhaps not, you know,
certainly Bava was a very influential filmmaker. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
I mean one of the big things I think that's
called out with respect to Alien is there's a scene
in Planet of the Vampires, and Planet of the Vampires
came much before it was nineteen sixty five, Is that right?

Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, sixty five.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
There's a scene where the astronauts are on this desolate
planet and they go into a cave and they find
a giant alien skeleton stretched out on this surface in there,
very much like with the discovery of the Derylic spacecraft
with the bizarre sort of alien skeleton fuse to the
chair in Alien.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
So ultimately I think Black Sabbath moves along a lot,
a lot better. It has better pacing than Planet of
the Vampires. But there were still times in this film,
as within as in Planet of the Vampires, where I
felt myself disconnected from whatever was happening or supposed to
be happening in the plot, but I was still completely

(19:03):
drawn in to the visual world presented on the film.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. I mean I
really appreciated the plot, especially in the word you lack,
but through and through it looks pretty great.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Another Bava film that I'm a fond of is Danger
Diabolique from nineteen sixty eight. This is a stunning, stylish
spy crime yarn starring John Philip Law and Adolfo Selly.
People might remember him as the villain from Thunderball. The
James Bond film. Terry Thomas is also in it. This

(19:35):
was featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand back in
the day, and it is indeed quite ridiculous, but stunning
from a visual perspective. Basically, it has that sixties bond vibe,
focused all on comic book crime and then turned up
to about a thousand Bava style.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
I think it was actually the very last episode of
the main run of Mystery Science Theater. That's right, it was,
and kind of a strange choice there, because I don't know,
I would actually argue that movie is not all that bad.
I mean, it's silly in a way that a lot
of these movies would be silly, but it's also I
don't know, it's stylishly executed in a very pleasing way.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
I mean, the best films on Mystery Science Theater three
thousand and often that the best episodes of Mystery Science
three thousand revolve around movies that are on their own
very watchable.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
I know you're thinking about Jack Frost.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
Oh yeah, I think that's a great example. There are
multiple example. I think when I think of my favorite episodes,
there are often films that that I can and sometimes
have watched on on my own, you know, without without
the riffing. Now, Mario Bava was again highly influential, and
one of his most famous students was Dario Argento. If
you've ever seen Argento's nineteen seventy seven classic Suspiria, then

(20:50):
you've certainly bathed your eyeballs in a very Bava inspired
color scheme.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, I think it's it's pretty much unquestionable that Argento
picked up where Bava left off with the expressive, colorful lighting,
especially for his Jallo films.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
And I mentioned Mario's son, Lamberto Bava, he directed such
films that went on to direct such films as nineteen
eighty five's Demons, which is excellent, along with a couple
of sequels to that, nineteen eighty four's Devilfish, which is
not so excellent. It's basically a Jaws cash in, one
of many. But Lamberto Bava is still making movies. He

(21:27):
had a horror movie starring Gerard Depardieu come out this year.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
Really yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
Called Twins, I believe, and I had to check. It
has nothing to do with the Arnold movie.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Okay, I gotta look that up.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
All right, Let's see a few other people involved in
this film. Marcelo Fondato has a screenplay credit lived nineteen
twenty four through two, an eight Italian screenwriter and direct
and director. Though I don't really know any of their films.
Then there's Alberto Bivillakua, who lived nineteen thirty four through
twenty thirteen, has a screenplay collaboration credit. Also was a

(22:15):
screenwriter on Planet of the Vampires, as well as the
satanic Panic documentary Witchcraft seventy, which was narrated by Jack Palance.
Now the film, and certainly this comes out in the trailer.
The film claims that the three stories in it are
based upon fictions by Chekov, Tolstoy, and Snyder, and specifically

(22:37):
it's supposed to break down like this, the Drop of
Water by Ivan Chekhov, though seemingly connected to a story
by Franco Lucentini, and then the Telephone by F. G. Snyder,
And then a story not by Leo Tolstoy as that
might lead you to belief, but won by Alexei Tolstoy.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
And this would be the one allegedly by Alexei Tolstoy,
would be the wordlac, the one that is the one
with Boris Karloff in it.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, well, let's talk about Boris Karloff. Then Boris Karloff
plays Gorka in this and he's also the host. He
lived eighteen eighty seven through nineteen sixty nine, A bona
fide cinema legend, going beyond genre films and horror films
and weird films. I mean, he's just one of these
icons of cinema.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
His horror charisma is unmeasurable in this it's just off
the screen.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah. Absolutely. Karloff was a British actor, born William Henry Pratt,
so you know, this is very much his stage name.
Boris Karloff probably is just going to be forever associated
with Frankenstein because he played the monster in James Wales's
nineteen thirty two adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and then

(23:56):
he went on to play the role in other pictures
as well, including the excellent nighteen thirty five film The
Bride of Frankenstein. Other key horror films from Karloff include
thirty two's The Mummy, thirty four's The Black Cat, nineteen
forties Black Friday, and much more.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
The Black Cat he actually stars opposite Bella Lagosi, and
I think that was the first movie where they had
both done that. And I actually haven't seen that one,
but I've been meaning to see it for a long
time and apparently it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
I've heard great things about it. I've heard that it
holds up really well, so I have checked that out now.
Karloff was also famously the non singing voice of The
Grinch in the nineteen sixty six animated version from Chuck Jones.
So the thing about Karloff is that he worked a lot.
And even though he's best remembered for his horror roles today,

(24:47):
he acted in a wide variety of films. He worked
stage and screen, he did television. We already mentioned his
horror host gigs.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
He did a lot, yes, and I will say that.
So I just saw this movie Black Sabbath for the
first time this week, and I gotta say this is
a new favorite Karloff role for me. We'll discuss the
details of the word Olac in a little bit, but
he plays this wild, hairy, wind blown patriarch of the
Carpathian Mountains who has this demonic energy and it's so

(25:21):
so powerful. I don't know exactly how he's doing it,
but in every line he feels so at home, truly,
like a man just hardened by the wilderness who has
met something unspeakable upon the Mountaintop.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah, he's really able to channel a lot of energy
through this role. And it's especially interesting considering that this,
again is late career Karloff. He was seventy five or
seventy six at the time when they filmed this. But
he's still incredible and apparently it was just always a
pleasure to work with. I noticed that that Bava singled
him out as being just a great guy to work with. Now,

(25:55):
another interesting late Karloff film. I don't know if you've
seen this one. Joe. Peter Bogdanovitch did a film in
nineteen sixty eight called Targets.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Yes, I have seen this one, in which Karloff essentially
plays himself. I mean, he plays a character, but the
character he plays is named like named like Doris Orlock
or something, and he's an aging horror film star and
he has to go up against like a crazed mass murderer.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah, like he ends up confronting an active shooter at
a drive in movie theater. It's it's a serious, serious
film from a young Peter Bogdanovitch would of course go
on to direct The Last Picture Show, but he was
one of Roger Corman's crew at the time, and for
this film, Corman apparently told Bogdanovitch that he could make

(26:44):
any kind of film he wanted to. There were just
two things he needed to make sure off. One he
had to use stock footage from nineteen sixty three's The Terror,
and he had to use Boris Karloff for the two
days of filming that he still owed Corman. But as
it was, it worked out. Karloff loved the script and

(27:05):
shot a total of five days and refused additional pay.
So it's a fun story man. But also I remembered
it as being a good movie. I haven't seen it
in a long time, but I remember being impressed with it.

Speaker 4 (27:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
A good friend of mine showed me this movie many
many years ago, back before I really was in the
weird house cinema mode. I think I didn't know who
Roger Corman was at the time or anything, but I
remember being very enthralled and impressed by it. It's a
very stark, scary, realistic kind of movie, different than, very

(27:38):
different than the stylish fantasy horror that Woris Karloff did
for most of his career.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah, well, should we talk about the personal mark Damon? Oh?

Speaker 3 (27:48):
Yeah, as he's introduced in the trailer The Personable Mark Damon.
I'd say he's a seven or eight on the personability scale.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
Yeah he's I guess he's the closest that we have
to like a male hero character in the whole picture
plays the carried what Vladimir drf Durfe.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
He plays a count or some kind of aristocrat who
rides through this village in the word you Lac Again.
I guess we'll discuss more of the plot details of
that in a bit, But yeah, he's the closest thing
the movie has to sort of a dashing leading man.
But even in that story, I don't know if he's
exactly that, because he comes off to me is in
that story is kind of glib, callow and confused, not

(28:29):
really recognizing the weight of the supernatural power he's up against.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Yeah, he's doomed, this guy. But Mark Damon is interesting though,
because of the first all. I was born nineteen thirty three,
still alive as of this recording, and still active. Not
as an actor though at least not since I think
he retired in the late seventies or I'm not sure
about the late say, at some point in the seventies,
he retired from acting, and I think did a few

(28:56):
little bits here and there, the most recent being in
nineteen ninety seven, but he's continued to produce. He's been
a producer or an executive producer on sixty seven pictures
in counting, and those titles that he has a credit
on include Dos Boot, The Never Ending Story, Clam The
Cave Bear, Nine and a half Weeks, Short Circuit, Flight

(29:17):
of the Navigator, The Lost Boys, Beastmaster two, not one,
but two different Universal Soldier sequels, and then just a
bunch else. So seems kind of like a big money
player in Hollywood.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
Maybe he's the producer who came in and demanded that
The Lost Boys feature more footage of that saxophone guy.
It could be like, I want ten minutes a saxophone guy,
at least.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Now. Acting wise, Damon was also in Roger Corman's nineteen
sixty film House of Usher, which starred Vincent Price, and
he has one writing credit. And I found it interesting
because it's The Devil's Wedding Night from nineteen seventy three,
on which Joe Diamato apparently did some uncredited directing, which

(30:03):
is always a great sign. And then Damon plays not one,
but two different roles in it. So I looked it up.
The poster looks fabulous. It looks very nineteen seventies international horror.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
Okay, featuring the personable George Eastman.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
No, there's no George Eastman in this one, though, I
will say that Mario Bava directed at least one film
that had George Eastman. I can confirm at least one
George Eastman project.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
Was he in Bay of Blood?

Speaker 1 (30:34):
No, he was in What Rabid Dogs? He might have
been in Bay of Blood. There's a little Eastman just
sprinkled throughout the cinematic universe. All right, let's talk about
some of the other players in these three different segments. Now,
a lot of these are actors that I'm not really
familiar with, and there aren't a lot of titles that

(30:55):
they were in that really connected with me. So there's
not a lot to really to go through here. But
let's start with her. Susie Anderson, who played what's the
what's his character's name, Stenka.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
Stink, which no offense to people who actually have that name,
but in English, that name does sound funny because it
sounds like stinker.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, but this is a. This is I guess, our
gorgeous love interest for Damon's character. She was born nineteen
forty Croatian actor who worked during the nineteen sixties. And
then there's Rika Deliana who plays Maria born in nineteen
thirty four. Greek actor with extremely expressive eyes, or at

(31:36):
least Mario Blava was able to shoot her in many
scenes where she has really expressive eyes. She's the mother
I believe in these sequences, and we'll discuss her in
a bit, But she had a long career, mostly in
Greek cinema and TV.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
Now these are all actors who are in the word
lax segment, but there are a couple of other segments
of the movie that I guess we've been focusing on lust.
Do we want to mention some of the actors in
these segments before coming back to describe them.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah. So the Telephone, which we'll discuss, has a very
small cast. The main character is Rosy played by Michelle Mercier,
who is a French actor who worked across multiple decades,
born nineteen thirty nine, still alive as of this recording.
And then the other major character in that is Mary
played by Lydia Alphonsi, who was born in nineteen twenty eight,

(32:24):
also still alive as of this recording Italian actor who
was active well into the nineteen nineties. Her last film
was the much acclaimed Life Is Beautiful from nineteen ninety seven,
and she also appeared in a Steve Reeves Hercules movie
in nineteen fifty eight.

Speaker 3 (32:39):
So I don't really love the Telephone. We can explain
more about our feelings about the individual segments in a bit.
The Telephone was definitely my least favorite of the three,
but I do really like Lydia Alphonsi in it because
she does a very good job of acting creepy.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yes, all right. And then finally we have the segment
the Drop of Water. I'm going to highlight three different
actors in this. There's Jacqueline Peru, who lived nineteen twenty
three through two thousand and five, plays Helen Chester, so
she was a French actor active from the early forties
through the nineteen seventies. And she's the mother of French

(33:17):
actor and director Jean Pierre Lude, who starred in The
Four Hundred Blows. There's also a character in this that
is referred to as the Maid, and it's played by
Milli no last name Milli, who lived nineteen oh five
through nineteen eighty was an Italian singer, actress, and cabaret
performer and apparently something of a pop star of the day.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
So she's older when this movie was made. So she
plays a maid who sort of comes and goes while
the main character, played by Jacqueline Peru, is sort of
contemplating doing something very ill advised with respect to the
spirit world. But the maid is this kind of mundane
in floats, flitting in and out of the room while

(34:02):
this deliberation goes on.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
And then finally there is a neighbor character in this
played by Harriet Medine who lived nineteen fourteen through two
thousand and five, an American actor who relocated to Italy
with the USO after World War Two. She has a
pretty great filmography, with such titles as Death Race two thousand,
which is a fun flick we've talked about that before,

(34:25):
The Witches of Eastwick, Schlock and The Terminator, in which
she plays the role of customer customer where I was
trying to figure I was looking around, you know, short
of actually watching Terminator again, I'm not sure. I can't
imagine she's in the gun. She's probably in one of
those sequences where the terminator steals a bunch of stuff,
because a lot of the Terminator is just him robbing

(34:47):
places so he can have robbing people in places so
he can have closed guns.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
They weren't the good guy played by Michael Bean robbing people.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
Yeah, it's a whole sequence. It's just naked dudes committing
various crimes and robberies.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Maybe she's walking out of Dick Miller's gun store when
Arnold Schwarzenegger's walking in that possibility.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
She wrote, she bought the last plasma rifle.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
I was just remembering the part in Terminator. That's actually
really great when Schwarzenegger rips that guy out of the
phone booth and he doesn't really harm him. It's just
a guy on a phone at a phone booth and
the terminator grabs him by the shoulder and sort of
throws him down on the sidewalk so he can use
the telephone book.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, why would would the
terminator a machine use any more force or effort than
was necessary in any given task.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah, and you can hear the guy going, you got
a serious attitude problem.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
Man, that's good, all right. Finally, the music on this
film is interesting because from one thing, you have two
different scores. The original score was by Italian jazz band
leader Roberto Nicolossi, but American International Pictures replaced his score
with one by Less Baxter, who is, of course the

(35:59):
king of exotica, and also later did the minimal electronic
score for Frogs.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
Oh I remember that now?

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's I guess it's
a memorable score, but it's it's not very It's not
an exotica score for frogs. And this also is not
particularly exotica music either. It's certainly not electronic. But I
liked it well enough because I could pick up on
some Baxter sensibilities in it. But it made I was
curious after that, because I'm thinking, well, what did it replace?

(36:29):
Because we can all think of examples where a score
has been replaced by something superior and also cases where
a score has been replaced by something maybe less effective,
you know, for a different audience. So I was listening
to the Nickelosi score a bit and it sounded good
as well. I don't know, I liked I liked them both.
Maybe Baxter score is a little bit more dramatic and

(36:52):
a little bit more you know, American.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
I don't know, you know, to be honest, I just
did not really notice the music much at all, So
I don't have much of a comment on it.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, I don't know if I would have really looked
at it that closely had had it not been for
the Less Baxter connection. Uh, because I have I do
listen to a fair amount of like Less Baxter and
some like Bostonova music. Uh, generally like very late afternoon.
There's a point in the late afternoon where where you know,
I have to put aside the synth music and the

(37:21):
and the rock music, and only Exotica or Bostonova will do.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
The tiki drink hour.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Yeah, I guess, even though generally I'm not I'm not
actually having a tea drink. I'm generally like cooking supper
or something. But it feels right, it feels appropriate. All right,
Now that we've got all that out of the way,
let's get back into the plot of these three horror

(37:50):
stories that look fabulous, have great people in them, but
ultimately have some interesting ideas as well.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
Yeah. Yeah, so I would say, and you have you
and I may have had some different reactions to these,
but I would say that this is an interesting movie
to recommend because while there are three segments, and in
my opinion, one of them is astonishingly good, another is
quite good, and the third for me, I found kind
of boring and unpleasant. But there's still I think some

(38:20):
interesting things to talk about with it. And while I
think that there were different releases of this movie that
put them in different orders, the version I saw starts
with the one of the three that was for me
by far the weakest. So this would be The Telephone.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
Ah, yes, the Telephone.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
So the Telephone, unlike the other two, is a more
realistic story and the basic premise is pretty simple. It
is a psychological thriller about a young woman who is
terrorized by a threatening, voyeuristic creep who won't stop calling
her on the phone. And so I gotta say this
is the one I didn't really super enjoy. I like
it picked way up with the second one for me

(39:00):
when you get to the word to lact This one
kind of has a lot of things I don't really
love about Italian horror movies of this period, and not
as much of the stuff that I do love.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
It's weird because, especially from the trailer, you get the
impression that they moved the telephone to the opening because
they thought it would connect with audiences more like maybe
they thought audiences didn't want this gothic horror tale. Instead
they would want something that's tied into technology and you know,
feels more cutting edge and dangerous. And yet at the
same time I was reading it, sounds like American International

(39:33):
Pictures they asked them to cut down on some of
the what they would have probably thought of it as
dangerous aspects of that opening segment. Supposedly AIP asks for
lesbian romance aspects of the segment to be reduced and
that a supernatural element be sort of implied. But I

(39:54):
have to say, at least in the version I watched,
I mean, I still got this that there was some
sort of past romantic connection between the two female characters,
and I don't remember anything supernatural in this segment. It
seemed very based in the real world, though of course
through that fabulous Bava lens.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
Yeah. Well, to be honest, now that I think about it,
I'm not sure which version of the movie it was
that I saw. One thing I've seen comparing them is
that the I think it was the original Italian version
had the more beautiful colors, and that the American release
might have had some more muted colors. The version I
saw had very beautiful colors, so I'm thinking. And the
version I saw, of course was in Italian with subtitles.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
It wasn't the same here.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
Yeah, I don't know if there is a dubbed version
of the movie.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
I think there is, but I didn't I wasn't able
to find when I rented it. I rented it through Well,
I went into to Apple, and then I did a
like a seven day trial of AMC Plus and that's
how I got to watch it. And then when I
pulled it up, I was expecting it to be dubbed,
but then I saw that as oh it's in Italian
with no option for other audio channels and it just

(40:59):
sub titles. But I greatly enjoyed it. But I see
examples of people saying that they grew up watching a
version in which they hear Boris Karloff's actual voice, So
that makes me think there is a dubbed version of it,
but this was not it. So with the telephone, I'd
say that I guess I kind of like the simplicity
of it. It does proceeded a very slow pace, but

(41:21):
then it has some very nice twists in it. It
does not have that gothic feel that the second segment has,
you know, it doesn't have that supernatural sense of other worldliness.
The interiors in the segment are, at first glance a
lot more muted. We spend a lot of time with
beautiful women with perfect skin and kind of porcelain colored

(41:43):
garments moving through wedding cake colored apartments. But even this
is very finely crafted and wonderfully punctuated by various colorful
items in the background. I don't know if you noticed
this or not, Joe, but it'll be like, you know,
everything's this kind of wedding cake porcelain world, and then
there'll be like one jade statuette on a shelf in

(42:03):
the background, and somehow, like through that Mario Bava magic,
it makes the whole thing pop. And I don't even
notice that I'm that the pp plot is moving along
so slowly because I'm just admiring.

Speaker 3 (42:14):
The shot or the red telephone.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Red telephone, And then you know, it moves at a
slow pace, and then alarming things will happen. There's a
great creepy eyes peering in through the window of the
apartment that that scene really shook me when I saw it.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
Oh, this movie is all about windows.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
Yeah, windows, mirrors as well, but certainly windows. And I
think I think you see that in other Bava films
as well, lots of mirrors, people looking through class and
it makes sense given his his focus on the visual medium.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
So I think you sort of raised the idea that
this segment is kind of a proto Jallo film, and
I wanted to explore that idea a little more so
for people who are familiar. Jallo films are a particular
subgenre of Italian murder mystery thrillers that were popular in
the sixties through the eighties. And some of the big

(43:10):
name directors of jallo you might recognize our Dario Argento.
Usually his supernatural movies like Suspiria are not usually considered
Jallo films that they share a lot in common with them. Stylistically,
usually Jello films are thought to be to have basically
realistic causation. They're not like about witchcraft and magic and stuff.

(43:32):
They're about like a murderer who wields a Razor Blade
or something.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
Like what the woman with a crystal Wait, is it
the Bird with a crystal plumage?

Speaker 3 (43:40):
Yeah, Bird with the crystal plumage. I mean, Argento made
these naturalistic Jello films as well, Bird with a Crystal Plumage,
Deep Red, Cat of Nine Tales, Tenebrae. These are all
Jallo films he did. But other big names in Jello
or Sergio Martino, Luccio Fulci, and the director of the
movie we're talking about today, Mario Bava. Bava was the

(44:02):
director of Blood and Black Lace from nineteen sixty four,
just one year after Black Sabbath, and I think Blood
and Black Lace, I think is often considered sort of
the archetype of the early Jallo movie that a lot
of Jallo descends from. Blood and Black Lace.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
I'd love to watch that one someday because I'd noticed
just today that it has Cameron Mitchell in it.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
Oh, that's right, it does. It's been a little while
since I've seen it, so I don't remember much in
particular about what he does in it. But yeah, anyway,
one of the things I noticed is that Blood and
Black Lace I think has a lot of stylistic similarity
with the telephone segment in this movie, except the stylization
is turned way up, so I'll get back to that

(44:42):
in just a minute. But to discuss some of the
main characteristics of jallo movies, They very often feature a
murderer who strikes again and again, whose identity is unknown,
often masked or with their face hidden in shadow, and
they will very often wear a similar outfit like a
long trench and black gloves and maybe a hat. In

(45:03):
jallo movies, the murders are usually sort of creative or grizzly,
or of a creepy and squeamish nature, so they're usually
not just going to be like the killer shoots somebody
with a gun. They might kill somebody with a barber's
razor or a needle or something. Jeala movies also tend
to be kind of voyeuristic and sexually charged, off in
mixing sexuality and violence in an unsettling way, and to

(45:27):
varying extents, they tend to be highly stylized. Not all
of the directors or like this, but a lot of
them are. They'll use these lurid colors and creative cinematography.
This is typically the opposite by the way of what
I would say, are the dominant trends in murder mystery films,
say in the United States, which I think are overwhelmingly

(45:50):
They tend toward a gritty, realistic or muted look with
kind of matter of fact camera work. It's like they're
trying to make it look like real life, whereas Italian
jello films tend to love these you know, weird red
and purple gel lights and tilted camera angles and shots
reflected in a mirror and all kinds of stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah, to say nothing of the music, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
Oh yeah. Famously, like the Argento Jallo movies have had
wonderful scores, usually that you know, involve Goblin or Argento
himself in some way. There's another strange recurring detail that
I notice in a lot of Italian jella movies, especially
the movies of Dario Argento. But a really common recurring
thing is that the protagonist will witness an image or

(46:35):
a scene early on in the movie that contains some
clue that would serve as the master key to solving
the mystery. And this, this scene or this memory keeps
replaying in their mind, but they're unable to recall or
figure out what that key detail is until the final resolution.

(46:56):
So I think about the museum murder scene and the
bird with the crystal plumage, the face in the hallway
in deep red, and so forth.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
So looking back through this lens, is the telephone sort
of a short form proto Jallo in a way. I
think it kind of is. It has some of that
same naturalistic terror mystery sensibility. It has a clue detail
in the room except the protagonist. I don't know if
she sees it. I don't think she does. But I'm
thinking about the zoom in on the eyes in the

(47:26):
window looking through the blinds, which is very creepy. It
does have that creepy, voyeuristic and sexually charged sensibility, which
I do not always enjoy in these movies, to be honest,
though it is not as stylized as a lot of
later Jallo, which I would have enjoyed more. I mean,
I kind of wish Baba had played up his visual
sense more in this segment. But with blood and black

(47:48):
lace that comes later, I almost wonder if Bava sort
of cross fertilized different parts of his own creative process
after Black Sabbath, like if he started thinking Okay, what
if I did a store that was more like this
set in the modern world. It's sort of a naturalistic
mystery terror like the telephone, but I filmed it with
that otherworldly visual sensibility that I used in the Wordillac,

(48:13):
where everything glows with magic power.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
Yeah. Interesting, Well let's talk about the word of lock
or the Vertilac here?

Speaker 3 (48:20):
Oh yeah, are we gonna? Are we gonna war? Are
we gonna va?

Speaker 1 (48:23):
What did? What should they use in the film? I
thought I was hearing a v but but we could
go either way. I don't think the monster's mind.

Speaker 3 (48:30):
I'm gonna go VA. Let's let's let's assume that's authentic
and then try it. We could be wrong, but yeah,
how about the Vertillac. So the Vertilac I think, picking
up after the first segment, which I which I didn't
especially love, the Vertillac I think is extraordinary. It's this
Carpathian Gothic tale where these auroras of weird color just

(48:53):
dripped from the crags. Like I said earlier, it's a
new you know. It goes on my list of favorite
Boris karlaf for roles. He plays this shaggy, wild purple
Kurt Vonnegut type you notice he looks like. And this
whole segment is just full of awesome Slavic twang and

(49:16):
this Menace of the Hills absolutely wonderful.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
The visual world that Bava creates in here that maybe
isn't noticeable right at first, but then just really leeches in.
He creates this dark domain that is occupied entirely by
fog and ruins and desolate farmhouses, multiple just absolutely creepy

(49:40):
scenes and sequences. Yeah, I absolutely loved it. In fact,
if you have never watched this film and you're going
to pick it up, I give you I think you
should watch it in its entirety. But if you need to,
you can go ahead and skip the telephone and go
straight to this, straight to the Verdelac.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
So to do a very quick plot description on it,
I don't want to spoil it everything about it, but
it begins with the personable Mark Damon, who is he
plays an aristocrat, he's a counter something. I don't recall
exactly what he is, but he's riding through the mountains
and he's clearly in a rural, rustic area and he

(50:17):
comes across a corpse just lying there by a riverside.
And so this is a corpse that's had its head
removed and it has been stabbed through the heart with
a very distinctive dagger, and so he's like, oh, I
guess I gotta do something about this. So he picks
up the corpse and he carries it with him to
a nearby village. Or I don't know if it's even

(50:38):
a village. It might just sort of be the compound
of one family, you know, under the heading of this
one patriarch in his house.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 3 (50:47):
So, Yeah, he comes to this house out in the
mountains and he goes in to meet the people who
live there, and he says, hey, I found this corpse,
and immediately they know what's going on. They're like, oh, yes,
that is our father's dagger you found through the heart
of this corpse, and that's because our father has gone
out to kill the Wordillac. Or well, let's see, do

(51:08):
I remember did they establish that the being he was
trying to kill they knew was a Wordillac or did
they just think it was a local highwayman and murderer
that their father was going out to kill. There was
sort of blurring of the lines.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
There, Yeah, there was both, because there clearly this region
is dealing with a serious vertilac problem. But then the
verdilac has also been identified as a particular individual who
is also a notorious highwayman.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Right, so from this they conclude, Oh, okay, our father
succeeded in his quest. You know, he went out into
the mountains to find this criminal, this highwayman and kill him.
And here's his body. But where's Pop. You know, you
would think you would have come back by now. And
so the family members here they include the I believe,
the two sons and the daughter of Boris Karloff's character,

(51:56):
and then the oldest son's wife and child as well,
And so they tell the story while our father went
out into the mountains to hunt down this this brigand
and possible supernatural menace, the vertiloc and and kill him.
And then he but they but he warned us, if
I come back after five days, don't let me in

(52:17):
because then I'm going to be a word of lo
act probably by that time. And there's a great plot
device of ambiguity, because when does Boris Karloff show up
right at the toll of midnight on the fifth day,
So he's like coming in right on the line and
you don't know one way or another.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Yeah, though, I mean, I think one of the one
of the messages of this, this whole sequence here is
that if Grandpa says he he might be a VERTI
loac just go ahead and assume he's a vertiloc, because
it's going to be the safe assumption. Some of you

(52:58):
might be wondering, is is a vertilock really a thing? Well?
I did look it up, and according to folkloris Carol Rose,
who I often refer to with my monster career, is here,
it's actually more werewolf than vampire. But in the Slavic
tradition the two concepts are kind of interlocked. One version
at least was that when a were wolf is killed,
it transforms into a vampire that could then reassume the

(53:22):
form of a wolf, and vdiloch apparently means wolf's hair.
But in this movie what we see is essentially a
take on the vampire legend with a fun twist. Well,
I don't know if it's fun depending on which end
of it. If you're just enjoying the horror of it,
it's I guess it's fun. If you're a character in
the story, not so fun. And that is that the

(53:43):
monster when it comes back, when it takes on the
form of those that is killed, it's going to be
drawn most to those that it loved in life. Those
are going to be the ones that it focuses all
of its monstrous intensity on.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
Yeah, this is a vampire as betrayer of trust. Not
just a vampire that needs blood anybody's blood, just got
to have a meal of blood. This is a vampire
that specifically comes for its loved ones.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
Yeah, Which I was thinking about this a little bit
because again, the pacing of the film I think invites
contemplation and also an enjoyment of the visuals. But like,
what is wonder what the sequence and what this this
legend is, Like what does it say about like love
and bereavement, you know, the twisted way that our strongest

(54:32):
positive emotions can become negative emotions. And then ultimately, is
this story advising us not to love anybody because because
that alone would protect us from monsters?

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Well, that's a good question. And then I want to
take that a step further. A lot of horror movies
have very weakly earned love stories, where you know, the
characters fall in love with each other, you don't really
see a lot of reason for them to. You know,
you don't see a lot of like scenes of chemistry
of them, you know, finding things they like about one another.

(55:06):
It just kind of happens because the script says so
this story, the Vertiloc has a couple of characters who
seem to fall in love with each other very quickly
and in this sort of weakly justified way. But I
wonder if that's not intentional in this case, saying something
about like falling you know, loving too easily, and there

(55:27):
being a kind of danger in that.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
Yeah. Yeah, the character that Damon plays, you do kind
of feel that, right. It's like, like, what do you do.
You're so in you're in love. You just met her,
and you're so in love with her that you are
going to risk incurring the wrath of her you know,
undead transformed family. Uh it seems it seems foolish, and
it seems like, uh, as a fool in a short

(55:51):
horror work, you are going to be punished for this foolishness.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
Well, yeah, and it also says something about family. I think,
because again this will be a minor spoiler, I don't
think it'll ruin your enjoyment of the segment, which you
can enjoy even if you read the whole plot ahead
of time, but warning to spoil the ending. So I
think it is basically the fact that Mark Damon's character,
he comes in, he very quickly and maybe unjustifiedly falls
in love with Stenka, and then Sedenka apparently sort of reciprocates,

(56:19):
you know, she likes him too, and you get the
impression that it's interesting that at first Mark Damon's character
is not really threatened by the Verdilac because he's not
a member of the family and it only wants its
own family. But it's once she reciprocates his feelings and
they fall in love with each other that then he
is also subject to the threat of having his blood drank,

(56:41):
drink and drunk, you know, of being attacked by this
supernatural creature. It's once there is a bond of love
between him and her that now he is fair game
for this monster.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's there's probably something telling in
there about attachments, but at the same time, it's like
he's he clearly is loving strongly and loving deeply, albeit
very briefly. So maybe it's all worth it. It's worth
all the anguish and death because the love was that strong.

(57:13):
It seems to have there is a sort of a
bittersweet romantic element to the to the way this this
wraps up.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
Yeah yeah, but I mean, overall every everything else we've
said about the Verdiloc, the atmosphere is just amazing, and
there are such wonderful scenes of looking out the window
and maybe seeing Boris Karloff in his in his purple
Kurt Vonnegut with the with the shaggy furry hood. Oh god,
it's just so so good.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Oh. The sequence with the child crying for the mother,
well that's super creepy. That one gave me the shivers. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
Another great thing about this sequence is it has a
great decapitated head. So at this point in my life
and my film film Going Life, and I imagine you're
much the same, Joe, I've seen a vast spec of
decapitated head effects, ranging from just the laughable to the
you know, at times shockingly realistic. Though it's interesting to

(58:09):
think of like realistic and non realistic decapitated head effects
because I think most all of us don't have anything
to judge it against, you know, And I think that's
ultimately a good thing. We can't really we don't look
at a decapitated head and go like, wait a minute,
that's not what a decapitated head looks like. I saw
a decapitated head this morning.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
To get out my faces of death videos.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Yeah, but at any rate, I love even a hokey
beheading effect. But this film has has not one, but
two beautifully disturbing corpse head sculpts. And these were actually
created by Mario Baba's father, Eugenio Bava, which I thought
was interesting. They're both absolutely beautiful and of course terrifying.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
Well, speaking of beautiful and terrifying corpses, we got to
also mention the third segment in this movie, A Drop
of Water, which for me, the Vertiloc is the standout.
But a Drop of Water I thought was also very,
very good, and it has, I got to say, one
of the creepiest movie corpses I have ever seen, along
with a wonderful twist and some really great set and

(59:16):
lighting choices.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Yeah, this one again. The telephone things are a little
maybe more subdued, but still pretty brilliant. But subdued for Bava,
Vertiloc colorful and wonderful and out there. This one too,
is just just absolutely touching your eyeballs with its color scheme.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
Specifically, the thing that stuck with me most about the
Drop of Water. There were two things. One is that
it has this marvelous, creepy corpse design, but the other
was that the main character in this plays a nurse
who lives in an apartment that has this oval shaped window,
and outside the window is a constantly gently seeing green light.

(01:00:02):
And I don't know what exactly that was supposed to
be in terms of realism. I think there's a quick
shot from outside at first where it's raining out, and
maybe it's supposed to be some kind of rotating sign
or something. I'm not quite positive, but the effect within
the apartment is these pulses of green that are I
just love it. I love it. I want to live
in that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
Yeah. That window is absolutely amazing. It's like a horizontal
oval shape and it has this kind of like iron
lattice work cross in the middle of it. I have
never seen anything quite like it. And yeah, and then
this pulsating light. So this was very much a sequence
in the film where I think I was a little

(01:00:45):
uncertain about like what was supposed to be happening. And
you know what's supposed to be pulling me along character
wise or plot wise. But I could not look away
from that window, and it was reminding me of something too,
And I realized it was reminding me of a scene
from the ninth, teen ninety seven sci fi film Event Horizon,
which which I know you've seen as well, Joe. There's

(01:01:07):
a sequence where there is a corpse floating aboard the
Event Horizon spaceship, and it's floating in front of this
cross shaped window that has kind of bluish greenish space
lights pulsating behind it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
And you think it was influenced by this short.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
I wonder if it was, because, for starters, Event Horizon
is a film that is not shy about taking inspiration
from other films. I love it, but like you, like,
you see the DNA of these other films in it.
It's all about that, And so yeah, I'm wondering if
the cinematographer on Event Horizon, an individual by the name
of Adrian Biddle, who worked on Aliens and Judge Dread

(01:01:46):
and various other films. I wonder if this particular scene
is kind of a nod to Bava, because it feels
Bava esque you know, it feels it feels like it
might be a slight tip of the hat.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Event Horizon could be an interesting movie to come back
to because I find it to be a very, very strange,
an unusual combination of very inspired and very hack.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, there's a there.
I loved Event Horizon when it came out, and then
when I rewatched it several years ago, there were still
things I absolutely loved about it, but some things were
I kind of sighed and groaned at. But still it
has a place in my heart.

Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
Well, I guess you could say, much like The Telephone.
The plot of A Drop of Water is pretty straightforward.
So a nurse is called out to the apartment of
a woman that she has been taken care of who
has just died. And this woman apparently was involved in
the occult. I think they say that she died during
a seance. Yeah, And so then the nurse must go

(01:02:48):
into the room where her dead body is laying and
help prepare the corpse. But when she goes into the room,
she notices that the kidaver here has a splendid, very
expensive looking piece of jewelry on it, a beautiful ring
that has maybe a sapphire in it or something, and
she looks at it and it's like, well, is this
just you know, is this ring going to go to waste?

(01:03:10):
Is this expensive piece of jewelry just gonna go into
a coffin and then rot in the ground. I could
grab that thing and take it with me. And then
you get the sense that the nurse is sort of
living in poverty like that she could she could use
a big cash in at the pawn shop.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
She needs buy some curtains to put over that creepy window.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
Yeah, exactly to.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
Sleep at night.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
So she grabs the ring, but of course I don't
know if you want to grab the ring off the
corpse of a lady who just died while being involved
with the occult right, And so the rest of this
segment has some wonderful scenes of the haunting of a
guilty conscience, and then there's also an excellent twist at
the ending of this segment.

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
Two.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
Yeah, i've kind of downplayed the like the plotting of
Bava films, I guess in general here, but but but yeah,
I think all three sequences have some fun, some some
fun plot twists, and some fun developments. You know that
you don't really know where everything's going to go, and
things don't follow a clearly defined path, which which is

(01:04:14):
rather pleasurable.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
I agree. So I mean, as we were saying at
the beginning, horror anthologies are often kind of you know,
your different segments are going to be of different quality.
But I would say, after, I guess if we're wrapping
up here at the end, I really enjoyed two out
of three segments. But if you only check out one
of the segments from this movie, definitely I would say
the Vertillac, the Vertillac, the vertill Act.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
Yeah, come for the Vertillac, stay for the drop of water,
and find something to love in the telephone. Oh but
then also we should we have to come back to
our host here because one of the fun things about
the American International Pictures A release of it is that, yeah,
we added us this intro bit from Boris Karloth, and

(01:04:57):
apparently they filmed some segments of Orris Karloff that would
have gone between each of the segments, but they didn't
use those. So we just go from segment one to
segment two to segment three. But then when segment three ends,
we come back to Boris Karloff, and weirdly enough, he's
he's like in his he seems to be in costume

(01:05:18):
from the vertiloc He's riding a horse, but he has
this kind of almost crip keeper esque, you know, javial
atmosphere about him. And I can't even remember what he's
telling us because as he's saying, you know, wrapping up
for everybody, we pan out and we have this kind
of holy Mountain moment where we pan out and we

(01:05:42):
see that it's a set. We see a camera man,
we see people holding up these bushes that are supposed
to be you know, rushing past him as he rides
this horse, and we see that the horse itself is
just a saddle on, like a fake horse rump that's
that's being put into motion. And it's such a weird ending.
I was thinking about it. It's like, why did we

(01:06:02):
punctuate this film Black Sabbath, this trio of horrifying tales,
each with a dark ending. And I was wondering if
it was because they thought, well, you know, nineteen sixty
three audiences don't want to go home feeling depressed. They
need to go home with a smile on their face,
so we need this, we need a fund in ending,
we need Boris Karloff reminding them that it's all just

(01:06:23):
a movie. It's no, none of this is real. It's
it was weird.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
Yeah, I'm not really sure what motivated that ending. Maybe
just yeah, like you're saying, send them home with a
smile on their face. But I loved it. Rachel and
I both really appreciated the pulling back to see especially.
The best part of it for me was the people
running around with the potted plants to move them in
front of the camera to simulate the horse actually traveling
through stuff in the foreground.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
Yeah, it's something I guess thinking to other horror host environments,
like you need to do one of two things. Either
you have the horror host punctuate the terror or this
Cerebriel nature of it, you know, like the voiceover for
the Outer Limits is all about really driving home the
serious message of the piece, you know, or if you're

(01:07:09):
watching Twilight Zone, it's all about reminding you of how
dark and mysterious things really are. But the Cryptkeeper, he
just comes back to make several punny jokes, and so
you know, what Cora Karloff is doing here is very
much in the cryptkeeper mode of lightning the mood. I feel,
all right, well, we're gonna go ahead and close this

(01:07:30):
one out, but we recommend everybody. Yeah, this is the
Halloween season, so if you need a nice gothic atmospheric
film to watch, check out Black Sabbath. This is also
a fine one, you know, just to play visually in
the background. If you just want some really strong visuals,
this one's This one's good to go. Black Sabbath is
widely available for digital rental or purchase. Again, I watched

(01:07:51):
it on Apple TV by doing a free preview of
AMC Plus, but it's also widely available on disc and
clean it, including Keino Classics. They have a blu ray
of it, though. I guess we'll leave the research to
you figuring out what version you're about to purchase or rent,
because yeah, we both watch the Italian language version subtitled,
but I think there is a dubbed version as well.

(01:08:12):
I don't know what the availability on that is. I
can't speak to it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:15):
Personally, I can't comment on that, but I do think
there are different versions that have different levels of sort
of color saturation and all that. Try to find one
with the really intense colors.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
Yeah, that's the most important thing.

Speaker 4 (01:08:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
The colors speak volumes. The colors speak in ways that
the dialogue and the subtitles are going to are going
to pale in comparison to all Right, Well, we'll be
back next week with another I think thoroughly halloweeny selection.
But in the meantime, you can listen to Weird House
Cinema every Friday and the Stuff to Blow your Mind
podcast feed We're primarily a science podcast with core episodes

(01:08:52):
on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Artifact on Wednesday, listener mail on Monday,
but on Fridays we take a little time to just
discuss a weird film like Black Sabbath.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.