Bava and Argento represent two different encounters with Italian horror: awareness of a visual signature and excitement at staged violence.
Black Sabbath and the Discovery of a Director
Quentin Tarantino's relationship with Mario Bava has one especially recognizable title: Black Sabbath, the horror anthology released in 1963. No Film School published a SiriusXM interview on June 1, 2021, in which Tarantino placed it among his formative movie memories. According to that account, it was a film that made him pay attention to the person directing it and want to see other works by him.
That shift in perspective is different from simply enjoying an isolated story. A viewer may remember a monster or an ending without asking who arranged the images. Recognizing a director means noticing that color, the length of a wait, or the way a face is shown all respond to decisions. The film is no longer just something that happens; it also starts to be perceived as something constructed.
The structure of Black Sabbath, also known as The Three Faces of Fear, encourages that perception. Its stories present different threats, but the viewer can compare how unease is created within a single screening. Not every episode has to produce the same effect for there to be a common attention to space, objects, and the transformation of an ordinary situation into something strange.
The anthology format also requires economy of exposition. A short story has less time to establish a world and must choose what information it gives and what it keeps offscreen. A phone call, an object, or an unmoving presence can take on outsized importance. Tension depends on the viewer expecting a shift before knowing exactly what form it will take. Bava turns that waiting into a visual experience.
Deep Red and the Fascination with Artifice
For Dario Argento, the documented memory centers on Deep Red, from 1975, known in Spain as Deep Red. IndieWire published Tarantino's comments on October 26, 2020, about the impression its string of murders made on him when he was young. The excitement referred to the intensity of that cinematic spectacle. It is not the same as a moral judgment on the conduct portrayed, or as a demonstrated preference for every Argento film.
Deep Red makes watching an unsafe activity. Its protagonist witnesses a crime, but seeing something does not mean having understood it. The investigation forces a mental return to images already seen and a question of which detail was misread. That relationship between memory and perception turns the viewer into part of the problem: he too may have received information without knowing how to recognize it.
The staging adds a second layer. Spaces do not function as neutral backgrounds, and objects can draw attention before revealing their narrative purpose. Framing organizes promises and suspicions. At times the threat seems to be in one place because the film has taught us to watch it; at others, the visual appeal of a detail distracts from what will later prove decisive. The investigation is also a rethinking of the way we look.
Sound and music intensify that uncertainty. An aural memory can function as a clue, while the musical energy of a sequence alters the relationship between anticipation and surprise. The murder appears not only as a fact that moves the mystery forward. It becomes a sequence with its own rhythm, one whose development can fascinate and unsettle at the same time. That formal autonomy helps explain the kind of excitement Tarantino described.
Two Entry Points into Italian Horror, Without Confusing Their Genres
Bringing Bava and Argento together does not mean that all of their films belong to the giallo genre. Black Sabbath works as a horror anthology, with stories and release versions that should be distinguished; Deep Red is organized around a criminal investigation. The link between the two filmmakers includes an intense attention to form, but their works should not be turned into interchangeable examples of some single Italian formula.
For anyone wanting to approach these preferences, the two films allow a clear comparison. In Bava, you can observe how a brief episode establishes and transforms a threat. In Argento, how a longer narrative turns the memory of an image into the engine of the mystery. That viewing order is a reading proposal, not a list assembled by Tarantino. His statements document the starting points; analysis of the films then opens its own path.
The relationship with the Italian giallo thriller deserves a specific discussion of forms and influences. What matters here is keeping Tarantino in the position of viewer, attentive to experiences that are not reduced to finding material for his own cinema. His interest in other Italian filmmakers, such as Lucio Fulci, adds another separate path. Recognizing those differences makes it possible to talk about admiration precisely and avoids manufacturing a ranking that gathers, as if they were a single statement, memories voiced at separate moments.
Check out the selection of filmmakers and actors admired by Tarantino.