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Mario Bava’s BLACK SABBATH Will Terrify You Midnights This Weekend at The Hi-Pointe – We Are Movie Geeks

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Mario Bava’s BLACK SABBATH Will Terrify You Midnights This Weekend at The Hi-Pointe

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“You have no reason to be afraid.”

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BLACK SABBATH screens midnights this Friday and Saturday (October 10th and 11th) at The Hi-Pointe Theater (1005 McCausland Ave., St. Louis, MO 63117)

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A big round of applause to the gang at Destroy the Brain for reaching back in the vaults of time and choosing a midnight movie that terrified me as a child as this weekend’s monthly Late Night Grindhouse.

Although tripped out in LSD lights, Italian director Mario Bava’s BLACK SABBATH is a gem of a film, probably the scariest anthology ever made. Host Boris Karloff and company had in Mario Bava a director who knew how to address the real anxieties beneath the horror story, fear of death and the unknown. Even the clumsy re-arrangement of the American International version (the version that will be screened at the Hi-Pointe this weekend) could not rid this film of its impact.

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The first, and still the best, story “The Drop of Water” is one of Bava’s most remarkable achievements. This little chop is twenty five minutes of the tightest terror to be had on film, and even the sterner horror groupies at the Hi-Pointe this weekend I think will have a tough time with it.

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Stroy two, “The Telephone” has a plot that may be familiar in the sense that it follows the “I’m watching you” paranoia that we all face from time to time. I think it classically set the bar for the “baby-sitter-in-peril” type of movies giving it its true status of horror by scaring you with invisible fear.

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The final, and longest, story “The Wurdulak” stars Karloff and could have been a completely silent film, given the deep atmosphere of the work and the quality of the players. It’s a creepy variation of the vampire legend, and also the only time Karloff ever played a vampire. I think of the three stories, “The Wurdulak” has aged the best and there are several terrifying moments: the vampire child pleading to his mother from outside the house; the family, now vampires all, peering ominously through the windows at Mark Damon and Susy Andersen who are sheltered inside. BLACK SABBATH was a film I grew up on and I used to find “The Wurdulak” rather dull, but have grown a better appreciation for it in recent years.

BLACK SABBATH screens midnights this Friday and Saturday (October 10th and 11th) at The Hi-Pointe Theater (1005 McCausland Ave., St. Louis, MO 63117) as part of Destroy the Brain’s Late Night Grindhouse Midnight series, so don’t miss it!

Admission is $7 and the pre-show begins at 11:30

The Facebook event page can be found HERE

https://www.facebook.com/events/295703040628562/

The Destroy The Brain.com site can be found HERE

http://www.destroythebrain.com/

The Hi-Pointe Theater’s site can be found HERE