15 Great Italian Horror Films You Must See Before You Die

4. Black Sabbath (Mario Bava, 1963)

“You are about to see three tales of terror and the supernatural. I do hope you haven’t come alone…”

Boris Karloff hosts a trilogy of gorgeously shot horror stories, in what is one of the all-time greatest horror anthologies. The first story, The Telephone, plays out like an early giallo prototype and, while admittedly predictable, is a worthy enough opening if only for its beautiful cinematography. It is with the next two stories, however, that Bava really demonstrates why he is the master of Italian horror. The Wurdalak, a Gothic vampire tale featuring Karloff himself as a bloodsucking patriarch, is arguably the strongest of the three stories. This would be one of Karloff’s final big horror projects, and he is deliciously evil in this segment.

However, it is the final story, The Drop of Water, that everyone rightly remembers: the story of a dead old woman tormenting her thieving nurse from beyond the grave. This story features a truly memorable and terrifying climax, in which the decrepit old corpse slowly descends upon the cowering nurse, with a hideously bone-chilling expression on her face.

Black Sabbath is not only Bava’s best film, but is also his most important and influential film. Even Quentin Tarantino has identified it as a key inspiration.