# Talk:Black Sabbath (film)

It currently says the budget was 205 million British pounds. I have my doubts, considering this is 1963. I can't double check the reference since it is a book. What does everyone think? JettaMann (talk) 15:18, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Do you really think, that Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (August 24 1817 – October 10 1875)wrote the screenplay?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.66.189.125 (talk) 11:04, 6 September 2012 (UTC) 

No, the stories are claimed to be based of their works, but they never created such stories apparently. Andrzejbanas (talk) 07:51, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I looked for this article because the film is airing right now, and I was curious about it. I think the plot summaries are just right; I appreciated the amount of detail without thinking it was long-winded, and I wouldn't insist on cutting them. 71.79.244.206 (talk) 07:13, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

I trimmed it a bit just to have it within our guidelines. There was only a few things that needed re-arranging. Andrzejbanas (talk) 07:51, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I just performed a needed trim on the article, and in the process removed a statement that is demonstrably false.  The statement seemed to claim that Snyder and Tolstoy are fictional characters. Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy is obviously not a fictional character, and the same paragraph two sentences later provided the title of his novella that was used as the source for the segment, "The Wurdulak" (and it appears to my shaky knowledge of Russian to be a fair translation of the title given in the film credits).  I therefore have no idea what the offending sentence was meant to say; Tolstoy is not fictional, the title given as the source for the film segment really exists and has a similar plot and identically-named characters. I can't vouch for F. G. Snyder, however; all references to him point back to this film.  If someone wants to restore the claim that F. G. Snyder is fictional, find a source to back your claim. 12.233.147.42 (talk) 02:51, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

In my copy of the film, (which is a blu ray containing both the American and Italian versions of the film), the AIP production credit only appears in the American prints. In Roberto Curti's book on the Italian gothic horror films, he only states the Italian and French co-production. AFI is generally a good source, but they seem to be only referring to the American version of the film which contains the AIP credit. Andrzejbanas (talk) 19:00, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Sorry for not noticing this till now. I have the same Blu-ray you're talking about, although my copy (from a later print run) lacks the accompanying DVD and booklet. Although Curti does describe it as an Italian-French co-production in the head of its section in his book, his findings corroborate Lucas' by describing the "minimum guarantee" not only from the French production partner Lyre, but also from Alta Vista (which is also credited on Archivo del Cinema Italiano), AIP's production wing (per American International Pictures: A Comprehensive Filmography by Rob Craig, page 6), although I can't account for why Curti and AdCI describe Alta Vista as being London-based. Both Lucas and Curti also note how the film, being an anthology horror movie, was designed from the outset as a successor to AIP's Tales of Terror that would also take advantage of Karloff's newfound alliance with AIP in the wake of The Raven while also suiting trends within the Italian film industry at the time. I understand what you mean regarding how AIP was only credited for the American version, but I think it is important to note that many Italian films that were, from the outset, produced in collaboration with or were the brainchild of American studios, did not credit these American production partners, and many of the personnel from that country, on the Italian prints - this is the case for movies like Planet of the Vampires, Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs and The Last Man on Earth. Again, I don't know the full circumstances for this trend, and it's not something I think needs to be described in detail in the article (per what you said about original research), although Lucas did mention in his Roy Colt & Winchester Jack commentary about how, in the mid-60s, the "Hollywood on the Tiber" period of Italian film production came to an end as a result of new laws defining what films could and couldn't apply for national status (ie. they had to have Italian directors working from Italian source material), so that might provide some context as to why US production partners were usually uncredited. In the case of movies like Black Sunday or Erik the Conqueror, whereby AIP only got involved in terms of the editing, redubbing and distribution for the US (and thus those versions have a copyright credit for Alta Vista), I would agree with you, but in the case of Black Sabbath, as well as Planet and Dr. Goldfoot, whereby production histories agree that AIP was involved in development, casting, principal photography, post-production and distribution as much as Emmpei/Galatea and Lyre were, I think that the fact that they weren't credited on Italian prints is something of an irrelevancy in the context of the other examples given. I also didn't get the impression that AFI were only concerned with the American version, since they describe some of the differences between it and the Euro versions, and do credit it as primarily an Italian film in origin. BFI also describes the film as being Italian-French-American.
On another note regarding the authorship of the source materials, I agree we shouldn't credit them in the infobox given the vagueness of the "freely adapted" onscreen credit and the contrary evidence regarding the stories' authorship. However, having not seen Alan Jones' intro or read the credits of Arrow's booklet, it's misleading to say that the film uses the "Ivan Chekov/F.G. Snyder/Aleksei Tolstoy" when it actually uses the "Cechov/Tolstoi/Maupassant" credit I tried to put in earlier. Curti (on page 80) and Lucas agree that the film itself uses "Cechov/Tolstoi/Maupassant", while "Ivan Chekov/F.G. Snyder/Aleksei Tolstoy" appeared in contemporary press materials. PatTheMoron (talk) 06:46, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
@PatTheMoron:, thanks for responding! I agree its a complicated matter and I understand where you are coming from. While it appears that there is something involved with AIP in this film it is hard to clarify what exactly is going on. I know and agree with you that several later day researches on several films reveal that should/could be productions from different countries (Curti for example, identifies Riccardo Freda's Caltiki as not being an American co-production which it has been listed as for years for example) in his biography on Freda. Curti also has access to Italian ministerial papers where he gathers information from (and even finds errors in on occasion, as he mentions in his book on Italian Gothic Horror, which mistakes the premiere date of Argento's Inferno.) As Curti seems to really relish correcting misinformation that's been present for decades, he has not stated anything about this films info on AIP. I'm not saying he's a be-all-end-all on the topic, but it's definitely a complicated situation that requires some more thorough and specific research as we are kind of looking at a bunch of scattered puzzle pieces. I don't think you are dead wrong or anything, but I think we should wait it out to find some article of information that contains solid proof. Currently, the information in the article doesn't appear to be misleading or flatout wrong, it just perhaps not showing the full picture. I'm not really sure how we should handle this further unless more detailed info pops up (which is hard as these are relatively obscure films with cult followings at best!). Andrzejbanas (talk) 13:13, 18 October 2019 (UTC)i