… in the same bill is a recent work of the Italian horror specialist, Mr. Mario Bava, called in its English version Black Sabbath. It is not, as it happens, one of his best works, but the first episode, based on Chekhov’s story ‘A Drop of Water’, is very well managed in a traditional, gasp-getting way and the last, with Mr Boris Karloff as the head of a family of vampires (courtesy of Tolstoy) has its moments of real horror, though unfortunately shorn of its original ending, a weird piece of Brechtian endistancement in which the camera drew back to reveal the vampire’s desperate ride through the night as a confection of studio lights, a wind machine and a wooden horse wildly rocking.
The Times Thursday, Dec 03, 1964; pg. 7; Issue 56185; col D
