N 1962, EUROPE began to invade American theaters with anthology films. It was the year of the De Sica/
Visconti/Fellini omnibus Boccaccio ’70 and also Love at Twenty, which collected short variations on a common theme by François Truffaut, Max Ophuls, Andrzej Vajda, and other international filmmakers. Meanwhile in America, television was becoming a haven for short form entertainment, particularly in the field of horror and suspense, represented weekly by such programs as Alcoa Presents (later renamed One Step Beyond), Alfred Hitchcock Presents/The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Twilight Zone, and Thriller. Given these circumstances, it was inevitable that some- one would pick up the ball dropped by Dead of Night in 1946 and produce a new horror film in the episodic format.
This finally happened when Roger Corman
made Tales of Terror (1962)—an omnibus of three Edgar Allan Poe stories scripted by
Richard Matheson—for American Interna- tional Pictures. That same year, AIP’s Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson signed horror legend Boris Karloff to a multi-picture deal be- ginning with Corman’s horror comedy The Raven (1963). Karloff had just completed a two- year stint hosting (and occasionally starring in episodes of) NBC’s Thriller, as well as a short- lived British anthology series, Out of This World. Having Karloff under contract was an enor- mous incentive for AIP to follow Tales of Terror with a second shock triptych, in which the ven- erable actor could star as well as host. As with La ragazza che sapeva troppo, AIP combined forces with Galatea and Emmepi Film of Rome, as well as Societé Cinématographique Lyre of Paris, to produce this horror omnibus with Mario Bava at the helm. The idea was to take advantage of the European basis of production to assemble a cast that would satisfy not only horror fans, but followers of the European nouvelle vague, as well.