Black Sabbath 1963 ***

Writer/director Mario Bava delivered a classic and surprisingly colourful portmanteau feature with these three tales from 1963; despite a low budget, they’ll all tightly wound and full of tension. The first, The Telephone,  is a clear jumping-off point for the opening of Wes Craven’s Scream, as a woman is terrorised in her apartment by a series of knowing phone calls. Things jump up a north with The Wurdelak, in which an 1880’s rural family are terrorised by vampires, namely Gorca (Boris Karloff), the twist is that the vampires only come after those they love. Both are good value, but the third, A Drop of Water, is arguably one of the most frightening sequences ever filmed, as a woman spending the night in the same room as a corpse, makes the fatal mistake of stealing its ring. Based on a story by Dostoyevsky, A Drop Of Water is as intense and highly charged as anything in Bava’s illustrious career, and the whole package is an ideal selection of brief, to-the-point horror.