Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Folk horror

Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s novel The Family of the Vourdalak inspired part of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath and this film follows the same story.

Directed by Giorgio Ferroni (Mill of the Stone Women) and written by Eduardo Manzanos, Romano Migliorini and Gianbattista Mussetto, this starts with Nikola (Gianni Garko) being found frozen and near-death. When the gorgeous Sdenka (Agostina Belli) visits him, he screams until he’s forced into a straight jacket.

We then learn how he came to be in this place. He was driving through the snow and narrowly hit a girl with his car. Then, he watches as Gorca Ciuvelak (William Vanders) and his son Jovan (Roberto Maldera) bury a family member. They invite him to stay the night as his car is damaged as he had driven off the road. There, he meets the dead brother’s widow Elena (Teresa Gimpera), her children (one is Cinzia De Carolis) and the other family members, all of whom fear leaving the house after sunset. Then, Gorca decides to get revenge and kill a witch. The family decides if he doesn’t return by morning or has any change in him, they will kill him.

What follows is a workout for effects master Carlo Rambaldi, because while Bava did his movie with color and camerawork, this goes berserk with torn out hearts, exploding heads and maggots. Oh yeah — also full frontal female nudity, showing how far Italian genre morals had descended — no complaints — in the past decade.

Despite Ferroni needing a hearing aid, he wasn’t some doddering old man. There’s an influence of Night of the Living Dead in this as well as a ferocious energy here. The ending is brutal and goes for it. Maybe there is room for two wildly different takes on this story.