Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath is a 1963 film from Italy and France, directed by Mario Bava, running 92 minutes. reelscum files it under euro-gothic.
- Year
- 1963 · 1960s films
- Runtime
- 92 min
- Director
- Mario Bava
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- known (24/100)
- Also known as
- The Three Faces of Fear · The Three Faces of Terror
Defined in the glossary: Euro-gothic
Three stories, one Karloff. The Wurdulak segment is the best thing Bava shot.
Bava's horror anthology, three stories introduced by a gleeful Boris Karloff, and the film that gave a certain heavy metal band its name. The standout is The Wurdulak, in which Karloff plays a patriarch returning to his family as something no longer human, shot in Bava's saturated gothic colour.
It is one of the most beautiful horror films of its era, each segment a small masterclass in atmosphere. The American International recut is inferior; find the Italian version with Karloff's original framing.
Bava at the height of his powers as a stylist.
Trailer
The numbers
Nobody has rated this yet. Be the first to make a claim you'll have to defend.
Your call
Where to watch
Legal options in USA
Links open in a new tab (↗). Availability data via TMDB and changes constantly, so confirm on the service. Legal options only. Checked 8 Nov 2026. All options ↗
Discuss with AI
Open a chatbot with a question about this film already typed out. Useful for a second opinion, plot detail, or where to find a copy.
The cycle in depth
- Fantaterror: the Spanish horror boom, 1968 to 1976
Two cuts of every film, one for the censor in Madrid and one for the drive-in. Democracy killed the trick in two years.
On these lists
- Euro-gothic for the giallo graduate
The graduate course after the giallo: cobwebbed castles and a dead woman who will not stay buried, lit by Bava like nobody since.
Filed alongside
The Vampire Lovers
Hammer clocks that the censors have loosened and sends Ingrid Pitt to make the most of it.
Vampyros Lesbos
Franco's most watchable. The soundtrack outlived the film by decades.
Hercules in the Haunted World
Bava shoots Hades in gel colours. Looks like nothing else in the cycle.
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
The film that invented the Amicus anthology, dealt out as tarot on a train.
Inferno
Argento's sequel to Suspiria. Even less plot, even more colour. A building that is alive.
Black Sunday
Bava's debut as director. Barbara Steele and a mask full of spikes.
The Whip and the Body
Bava and Christopher Lee doing sadomasochism the censors did not catch.
The House That Dripped Blood
Four Robert Bloch stories, Cushing and Lee on hand, and barely a drop of the title's blood.
I Vampiri
Freda walked off Italy's first sound horror; Bava finished it. The whole euro-gothic shelf starts here.
The Curse of Frankenstein
The film that built Hammer, in blood-red colour the censors hated.
The Awful Dr. Orlof
Where the entire Franco machine started. Everything he made for forty years is in here somewhere.
Planet of the Vampires
Bava builds an alien planet out of fog and two rocks, and Alien quietly borrowed the skeleton.