The great Mario Bava goes the horror anthology route here and gets Boris Karloff to introduce each story. Needless to say this is an immaculately-shot, beautiful-looking film as pretty much all of Bava's films are. The three stories are all pretty simple as they usually are in this sort of thing. The first one is about a woman being terrorized by phone calls from a psycho and it has a very giallo-esque kind of feeling to it. In fact it's considered by many to be the first actual giallo to be shot in color. The second story features Karloff and is about Wurdalaks which is basically just another name for vampires and it plays out with not too many surprises. The final story is my favorite and concerns a nurse who steals a ring from a dead patient and either goes insane or is stalked by the dead woman or maybe both. The thing that puts this one over so much for me is the general atmosphere of the story and the makeup used on this old dead lady. That is some spooky-looking stuff there. This is the order if you're watching the original Italian version. If you go with the AIP English-dubbed release they switch the stories around and you get the ring story first followed by the phone call one and finally The Wurdalak. Personally I think it works way better the original way. There's also some different wrap-around segments in English where you get to hear Karloff's actual voice not dubbed into Italian which is really the only plus of watching it this way. Original title= THE THREE FACES OF FEAR
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