Black Sabbath | 1963
A compilation film comprised of three different horror stories.Even though the three stories are entirely separate and could be treated as such, they also work together as variations on a theme. The first and the last one both reminded me of Polanski's Repulsion in a way. Both essentially graph the gradual psychological collapse of a single woman trapped inside her own apartment. In both cases, the breakdown is initiated by a telephone call. But the middle segment feels related as well in that in all three segments, the source of fear/horror is from the familiar and invades one's safe space, one's home.
The first of the three is probably the most prosaic of the lot in that the threat ultimately turns out to be all too human and the twists are fairly predictable. But the visual atmospheric stuff still works pretty well with the constantly ringing red telephone taking on an increasingly ominous presence as the short progresses.
The second one is likely my favorite and probably the weirdest of the three. I love this variation on the traditional vampire idea. Rather than a need for living, they're driven in this case by a deep compulsion to be reunited with their loved ones and as a family. Love as selfishness and ownership manifested in this case by actual consumption of said loved ones. There's also possibly some incest type stuff that could be read into it.
The third segment is pretty much a revisiting of the first one as I mentioned earlier except here the threat does indeed turn out to be supernatural with the dead (possibly) coming back to exact revenge on the living.
Anyway, what really stands out in all of these segments is not so much the stories themselves, which are all fairly predictable but Bava's camerawork, set design and use of color. This is apparent right off the bat in the very first segment where through the use of several long takes, the apartment becomes a palpable source of danger. The variations in angles across all these takes highlight the various nooks and corners that could potentially be a source of threat. There is always something behind us or off to the side that we can't see and that coupled with the voice on the telephone describing her every move proves pretty terrifying. In the second segment, Bava fills the frames with deep blues and purples giving the entire sequence an otherworldly look that works really well in the context. Whereas in the first segment, the camerawork suggests the infinite spaces where terror could hide, the last one is shot in a way that reinforces the sense of entrapment and the limits of the space. The old woman has nowhere to hide.
Pretty good but I need to watch a proper feature by him to really have a proper opinion on him.