Episode 5 of Season 2! Host, Gratton Conwill and special guest, Matt Fields discuss Black Sabbath (1963).
Day 5
Black Sabbath 1h 33m
Released on August 17th 1963, Black Sabbath is a low budget Italian horror anthology film directed by Mario Bava. Screenplay credits were given to Mario bava as well as Marcelo Fondato. An English language version of the film was made at the same time as the Italian version as American international pictures (known as AIP) was involved in the production. The two versions are very different with the English version being heavily edited and censored.
It’s important to mention the version we’re about to review is the unedited Italian version originally titled The three faces of fear. Though we’re reviewing this movie as Black Sabbath, that was really only the title of the AIP version. The Black Sabbath title was an effort to connect this film to Mario Bava’s previous film Black Sunday.
While the English version was a moderate success, in Italy The three faces of fear was a financial failure.
The legacy of this film is its influence on the heavy metal band Black Sabbath. The band is said to have changed their name from “Earth” to Black Sabbath after seeing that this movie was playing in a movie theater and selling more tickets than the band was.
Quentin Tarantino has also cited Black Sabbath as a source of inspiration for pulp fiction.
Some trivia:
This is the only movie in which Boris Karloff plays a vampire.
The telephone section was the first Italian thriller to be shot in color.
It’s important to mention the version we’re about to review is the edited AIP version originally titled The three faces of fear.
Today the movie has somewhat of a cult following for a number of previously mentioned reasons. Mario Bava is considered an extremely influential Italian horror director.
Black Sabbath has:
3.7/5 on Letterboxd
7.1/10 on IMDb
88% on Rotten tomatoes
92% on Google
82 on metacritic
4.4/5 on shudder
8.25 average CTS score
From the creators of Giant Monster BS: Gratton Conwill and Matt Fields bring you Only In Amityville season 2: Escape from Amityville!
Escape from Amityville is a limited series podcast event happening exclusively during October of 2021! Starting October 1st, we will review one movie every other day. Each movie will be a lesser known or appreciated, but culturally significant, horror movie made within the past 100 years. None of these movies have anything to do with the original tale of America's most haunted house, but in the spirit of the Amityville story, we promise to review chilling and horrifying movies featuring demons, monsters, and various ghouls! 15 episodes in total! The series finale takes place on Halloween night with a special mystery review. Fans of Giant Monster BS and/or Horror films will be right at home with this podcast. Vulgar, brutally honest, scary as hell, oh yeah... it's Escape from Amityville time Baby!
Only In Amityville is an ad-free, self funded podcast hosted by Gratton Conwill and Matthew Fields.
If you would like to support the show, you can donate to us at: https://anchor.fm/giant-monster-bs or buy our merch at: https://www.teepublic.com/user/cheesemouse2/albums/39997-giant-monster-bs-merch
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