By Melissa Antoinette Garza
I had heard about this anthology on some message boards that had declared it the scariest film of all time. Even on IMDB, some comments indicated it was an extremely frightening movie.
I watched with high expectations. I love anthologies. The 60s were a great time for horror. That decade brought us Night of the Living Dead (1968), Psycho (1960) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Homicidal (1961).
Another aspect that sold me on the film was that Boris Karloff was the one who introduced each tale. Karloff portrayed one of my favorite sympathetic villains of all time. As Frankenstein’s monster he made audiences both fear and feel compassion for him. Karloff is certainly a horror icon so when I found out his contribution to Black Sabbath, I was confident that it would be great.
The first tale reaffirmed my belief. Helen Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux) is greeted by the neighbor (Harriet Medin) and maid (Milly Monti) who tell her that the medium has died. The body is still in the other room. Helen goes into the room and stares at the corpse. She gently closes the dead woman’s eyes.
An expensive ring sits on the cold hand of the corpse and Helen can’t resist temptation. She steals it. When she does, she notices the psychic’s eyes reopen. She panics and decides to leave the room. Soon, the dead woman is chasing her.
In one of the most frightening scenes, the corpse floats towards her. She then ends up in a rocking chair just staring at Helen.
It’s a wonderful sequence and really gave the impression that the movie was going to be great.
Sadly, this was the only good story. Alone this would have gotten an 8/10.
The second tale is one that has been done a thousand times a thousand different ways. Mary (Lidia Alfonsi) keeps receiving phone calls from her dead ex-boyfriend. The ex is upset because she turned him into the police.
This tale is slow moving and boring. It’s not scary and the conclusion makes little sense.
This would get a 3/10
The last tale is just horrible. Sadly Karloff gives an awful overdone performance as a vampire. He looks like a homeless man. The delivery at certain points is completely over-the-top and in other areas Karloff seems to be sleeping through his lines.
This one is a generic vampire tale that takes forever to end.
Without question, this was painful to get through and would deserve nothing more than 1/10.
Sadly, I anticipated so much more from this film. I thought it was going to be something like Tales From the Crypt (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973), but I was very disappointed.
Unfortunately, with the exception of the first tale, the movie was dreadful. The first is definitely worth watching but I would most certainly skip the others.
Overall Rating: 4/10
