☆ ☆ ☆
Dr.
Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) – F. Francis
The first of the many omnibus horror films
from Amicus Pictures, following the great tradition of Ealing Studio’s Dead of
Night (1945 and highly recommended).
Amicus was clearly drawing from the EC Comics playbook (another of their
films is called Tales from the Crypt) and the five tales told here are
alternately silly and (trying to be) scary.
For example, one tale features a plant that has evolved to be smart
enough to defend itself from humans who might want to prune it. Another sees a disembodied hand determinedly pursuing
and killing Christopher Lee, a rude art critic.
On the less silly side, we are treated to somewhat routine werewolf and
vampire tales (well actually the vampire one is pretty silly too but it is
notable for featuring a young Donald Sutherland). Oh and in the fifth tale, a jazz musician
tries to steal a tune from a voodoo ceremony and, of course, the voodoo gods
catch up with him. The framing device for the stories is that the five men are
in the same train compartment with Dr. Schreck (a.k.a. Dr. Terror, played by
Peter Cushing) who then reads their fortunes using the tarot cards. The cards reveal what will be happening to
each of the men unless a fifth tarot card helps them to avoid that end – but for
each of them the fifth card is Death (and then the train crashes). Director Freddie Francis was cinematographer
for some great films (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 1960; The Innocents, 1961;
and later David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, 1980, and The Straight Story, 1999)
but there is nothing really distinguished about the photography here.
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