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Though there had been earlier efforts, like Ealing Studios’s Dead of Night from 1945, the horror anthology film came into its own in the 1960s with titles like Kobayashi Masaki’s Kwaidan and the Poe-centric Spirits of the Dead from directors Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini. Hammer Films’s rival Amicus churned out no fewer than seven of them in a 10-year period starting with Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors. But the one that really got the omnibus rolling was Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath from 1963, an Italian-American co-production that resulted in two different versions of the film.

After the success of 1960’s Black Sunday, American International Pictures took a more active hand in producing several of Bava’s later films, altering them in the process to suit American audiences that tended to skew younger. The Aip cut of Black Sabbath rearranges its three segments, tones down some...

Happy New Year, friends! I come bearing a belated gift featuring not one, but two horror icons in the form of the 1963, Mario Bava-directed, Boris Karloff-starring anthology film Black Sabbath. And in case you’re wondering, yes this title inspired a band that would go on to make some of the most well-known metal songs of all time (that’s good!) and whose lead singer kicked off the celebrity reality TV craze (that’s bad!). Oddly enough, I found the film in Shudder’s “Unhappy Holidays” section, even though after watching it I’m having trouble finding any connection to the holiday season. But I’m not here to start another “is it a Christmas movie?” debate. I just want to bone up on my Bava, as I’ve seen very little of his work and I also like the idea of getting more Karloff, who pulls double...