I Tre Volti Della Paura
The Three Faces of Terror
(released in the U.S. as Black Sabbath
Mario Bava
1963

ITALY

ITALY AND THE JOYS OF POST PRODUCTION

Global cinema as we have mentioned is occurring in a world which is shrinking. Some cultures are clearly more closely related to other and there is a good deal of “cross fertilization” between the films of cultures more closely related. Europe and North America are far more closely related and so there is some movement of ideas and styles between them. On the other hand until fairly recently there hasn’t been much movement between Asian films and the West. We will have more to say about this when we talk about some Asian films and some flow of styles between Japanese, Chinese and Korean films

Italian films have traditionally been involved with all sound (including dialog) be added in post- production. The interest in the American market so many of the films have American actors (see the Spaghetti Westerns) where the actors speak English and then are dubbed by Italian speakers. Italian law requires at least 2 Italian speaking actors to be in a films for it to be called an Italian film”. Most places look to the source of the money. So everything from the “sword and sandal” films with Steve Reeves and Mark Forest would be dubbed (even though the American born Forest spoke fluent Italian) and films like Bava’s Cannibal Holocaust were shot in English.

In 1958, American International Pictures founders James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff hired a European talent agent, Flavio Lucisano, to look for Italian commercial films for them after the large success of the Italian feature Hercules (1958).[5] In February 1963, American International Pictures made a deal with the Italian film production company Galatea that they would contribute to a minimum of nine co-productions in the next eight years.[6] Black Sabbath follows many production trends of Italian films of the era.[7] These co-productions were influenced by the lack of large film stars in Italy.[6] To avoid high costs or larger stars, producers created anthology films involving three or four short narratives whose combined running time was that of a regular feature film, as in Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963).[6] A second trend was to match an up-and-coming actor or a much older actor with a European ingenue actress, as in Spy in Your Eye which paired Pier Angeli and Dana Andrews.[6][7] The third trend was the move towards making Westerns and horror films which were less expensive to produce than the previous sword and sandal films.

I tre volti della paura (Black Sabbath) (1960) directed by Mario Bava

Mario Bava (31 July 1914 – 25 April 1980) is considered a major force in the development of “giallo” films – a sub genre of the “horror films”. They are roughly the equivalent of “slasher films” We have already discussed some of the ideas about the nature of the horror genre and its connection with “terror” films, “slasher” films and “gore” and “thriller” films. It is akin to the French “fantastique” genre which generally is involved with literature and includes an fantastic or supernatural intrusion into a “real world” narrative.

Bava’s father (Eugenio) was a sculptor and a person who worked as a special effects photographer and cameraman. Mario wanted to be an artist but couldn’t make a living that way so he turned to the kind of work his father was doing in films, He was involved with Gina Lollobrigida, Steve Reeves and Aldo Fabrizi.

In 1956 Bava worked with what is generally considered the first Italian horror film - I Vampiri, (1956) which was directed by Ricardo Freda. In 1963 he made his solo directorial debut with I tre volti della paura (Three Faces of Fear)

Bava directed what is now regarded as the earliest of the Italian giallo films, The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) and Blood and Black Lace (1964). His 1965 sci-fi/ horror film Planet of the Vampires was a thematic precursor to Alien (1979).

I tre volti della paura contains three stories: "The Telephone", "The Wurdalak", and "A Drop of Water".

The film was released in the U.S. as Black Sabbath with a number of substantial changes to be discussed

Watch for the characteristics of giallo films discussed with Profundo Rosso

AFTER THE FILM

The film was released in the US. There are many changes which may or may not indicate something about cultural differences. First the order of the stories is altered. The Italian version we just saw has the following order:

The Telephone
The Wurdalak
A Drop of Water

The American version has the following order:

A Drop of Water
The Telephone
The Wuralak

 What can you say about the order?

"The Telephone" has the greatest changes in the story. In the Italian version the called appears to be an escaped convict who was a pimp for the woman he is calling (who appears to have turned him in). The friend appears to have been a lesbian lover. The removal of the “sexual” subplots is clearly a reflection of the American censorship problems and how they altered the film

Of the three, the story makes the least sense. In the Italian version, how does the person on the phone know what the woman is doing moment by moment? Is it reasonable to assume that a woman would recognize the disguised voice of a former lover as not being that of her boyfriend/pimp?

The question here is one of rationality as the film becomes in a sense progressively more real. The telephone makes little sense logically. The Wuralak, if you accept the premise of the supernatural works within its own framework. The final story, A Drop of Water implies the supernatural functions as a psychological mechanism involved with guilt in this case.

It is interesting that people often demand a kind of realism in the graphic arts but not music. For example, people do not ask why the music has no plot (e.g. “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”) nor do they ask “What does it mean”? But paintings and films are often criticized for their detachment from reality. (Not always of course, nor is it the case the music does not attempt a connection with reality. Respighi used a recording of a nightgale in The Pines of Rome for example. Wagner had tuned anvils in Das Rheingold.) But by and large the visual seems to demand a great connection with reality than the auditory.

Can one ask or argue that the Telephone is not that interested in reality but is in fact a study in terror, so the lack of logic is not important?

Almost all films as some points which defy the reality of the world. In The Thing from Another World, which takes place in Dec., the crew of the plane at the north pole looks down and the compound from the plane and says “The taxpayers should see this” – except of course in Dec and the North Pole there is no sunlight. In many mysteries where there is a killing and the body is moved, the police never realize this despite the fact the blood spatter patterns are all wrong and so on. SO there is a question one can ask about What kind of errors are likely to be tolerated as opposed to others.

The American version holds off “The Wudalak” sequence until the end, possibly because the audience, being familiar with Boris Karloff, will be waiting for his appearance.

The Nature of “Giallo” films.

The term giallo means “yellow” and refers to cheaply produced paperbacks which “yellowed” perhaps akin to the “Penny Dreadfuls” of 1800’s in mid Victorian Britain.The books were known as penny dreadfuls and it came to denote the kind of story (gory, semi-erotic, horror) like Sweeney Todd which first appeared as one of them

These films are often gory “slasher films” often with erotic and sometimes supernatural overtones. They are the equivalent of “thrillers” (the French equivalent are called “fantastique”