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Rating: This film is usually mentioned for two things: the English title Black Sabbath, which later became the name of the famous heavy-metal band; and the surprising finale where, as Boris Karloff on horseback bids his farewell, the camera pulls back to reveal the artifice of the scene (the horse is a mannequin, the sky is a backdrop, and the setting is a film studio).
Beyond that, I tre volti della paura is a remarkably fine example of episodic horror such as was in vogue in the sixties, and within Mario Bava's cinema, it stands out for its (relative) production richness thanks to an Italian-French co-production that even managed to involve the legendary Karloff in the project. Formally exquisite, the three episodes written by Marcello Fondato and Alberto Bevilacqua differ in length, style, and setting: from the modern-day thriller ("Il telefono") to the costume gothic ("I Wurdalak") to the ghost story ("La goccia d'acqua").
The explicit intention is to create a fantastic trilogy that, spanning various directors, finds "fear" as its unifying element. The literary references flaunted in the opening titles of the episodes (respectively Maupassant, Aleksei Tolstoy, and Chekhov) are rather pretentious, particularly the Maupassant one, considering the inspiring story is actually by F.G. Snyder.
The introduction and epilogue are performed by Boris Karloff, who also stars in the longest episode, the vampire story. Despite the excellent performance, "I Wurdalak" is perhaps the least interesting moment of the film: the story of the vampire who infects an entire family overnight is predictable, verbose, and dragged out, and also too indebted to the Corman-Poe horror films. In terms of imagery, however, we face one of the pinnacles of Bava's cinema: the gothic setting is an opportunity for the director to showcase all his talent as a photographer and a skillful manipulator of lights and shadows, capable of bringing to life dark and rarefied atmospheres, amidst persistent fogs and unreal flashes of color.
"Il telefono" is a small thriller full of suspense built on the classic device of phone threats, associated with a rather scandalous element for the audience of the time, namely the homosexual relationship between the two female characters (one of whom is played by the alluring Michèle Mercier). Although unable to flaunt the usual scenic and photographic flourishes, Bava proves himself a master in enhancing with the strength of directing technique the very few elements (a room and three characters) upon which the story is constructed.
The peaks are reached, however, in the last episode, certainly the most suggestive and unhealthy of the three. The story of the nurse who steals a ring from a dead woman and is haunted by her ghost is transformed by Bava into a terrifying dance of effects capable of truly shaking the viewer's nerves. Aspiring horror directors should study this "La goccia d'acqua" to the last detail, as it is an excellent and still current example of how to cinematographically construct fear, through the slow and obsessive accumulation of sound impressions (the buzzing of a fly, the hypnotic sound of water drops) and visual impressions (the dead woman's face distorted into a chilling grimace).
The sensation of discomfort and unease felt at the end is the necessary prelude to the ironic-grotesque twist of the celebrated finale with Boris Karloff, where with a stroke of genius and a masterful self-irony, the "tricks of the trade" and the underlying fiction of the film are revealed. Playing with fear is a game, cinema itself is (implicitly) a game. If Bava was merely a "craftsman" - as national critics have long snobbishly claimed - certainly there has never been in cinema history a craftsman so capable of combining talent and lucidity: extraordinarily creative in mastering the medium but also a spirit inclined to deepen the playful aspect of cinema, to play with conventions, to challenge codified rules with the freedom that only genre production could offer, and with the taste for irony and desecration that only the most aware Authors possess.
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