During the 60s and 70s, British film makers Amicus productions made a
series of films containing several short horror stories, linked by a
framing story.
Starring many big names (for the time), these low/medium budget films
told several stories mainly concerning ghosts and the supernatural in a
typically British way, and usually featured some sort of twist ending.
From Beyond the Grave was the penultimate film in this series, which was release din late 1974.
Framing Story
"Temptations Ltd" is a poky little backstreet curiosity shop in which the owner, Peter Cushing ,claims to make customers "Offers they cannot resist".....
Story #1 "The Gatecrasher"
Eddie Charlton (David Warner ) enters the shop and spies an antique mirror that tickles his fancy. The owner says the price for it is £250, but Eddie lies and says that he is an antiques dealer and can recognise a modern reproduction when he sees one, and offers £25, which the owner reluctantly accepts.
Eddie hangs the new mirror in pride of place in his home, and loudly boasts to his friends about swindling the old man. One of his friends suggests that the mirror looks like it belongs in a mediums parlour, and the should hold a seance, which Eddie says ia a marvellous idea.
During the seance, a couple of weird things happen, like the candle on the table begins shooting out a long blue flame, but nothing really horrible happens, except to Eddie, who experiences a vision of a bearded man wearing very old style clothing attacking him with a knife in a wood, Eddie comes round screaming as the lights are switched on.
That night, while Eddie is alone, a ghostly voice calls him to the mirror, and when he looks into it, a face appears and demands that he feed it, entranced, Eddie goes out and hires a prostitute, who he brings back to his flat. As she is having a drink, the mirror commands him to kill her, which he does.
Eddie wakes up with a start, thinking it was all just a dream, but then he finds that his clothes and the sofa are covered in blood.
The following night, the mirror demands to be fed again, Eddie tries to refuse, but the mirror uses its power to try and compel him to kill one of his friends, he refuses to do this and silently agrees to kill someone else. He asks it how many more it wants dead, and it simply answers that it will keep asking until it is "fulfilled".
Eddie picks up a woman in a bar and kills her in front of the mirror, he demands to know why the mirror wants him to kill, and it tells him that long ago he gave his sacrifices, and now it is his turn to give his. Eddie wakes up again and finds himself covered in blood, but this time he is looking very ill. as the mirror is telling him it will soon be time for him to stop the killing, he smashes it. His telephone rings and his frind asks him if he is ok, he says he is, but then when he looks up, he sees that the mirror has repaired itself, and it demands that he kill his friend again, this time, Eddie is in no shape to resist, so he invites her over.
When she comes, Eddie refuses to answer the door, but the mirror commands him to, he tries to refuse, as he likes this girl, so the mirror tells him to find someone else for him. Eddie tells her to go home.
Downstairs, Eddies neighbour, Mr. Jefferies, is reading a bedtime story to his cat when blood starts dripping from the ceiling. He goes upstairs and complains about the noise and the mess Eddie has been making over the past few days, but Eddie slams the door in his face and checks the bodies he has hidden under the floorboards. Mr. Jefferies hammers on the door so Eddie lets him in, then kills him.
The ghost in the mirror manifests itself in physical form, and explain that now it has been fed enough, but one more sacrifice must be made so he can be truly free to join the other immortals. He takes Eddies knife, and asks him to throw himself on it, which Eddie does without hesitation, killing himself in the process.
Years pass and the mirror sits on the wall while the flat has many different tenants, until one day, a young couple are having a party, and one young woman suggests that the mirror looks like it belongs in a mediums parlour and that they should hold a seance, the male host says that is a marvellous idea, and a seance is held, during which, Eddies ghostly face appears in the mirror.....
The owner of the shop shakes his head as he watches Eddie walk away with his new mirror, while outside, a shifty looking man hangs around in the street as though he is waiting for something.
Christopher Lowe (Ian Bannen ) walks up and starts looking at some medals the owner has on display, which causes the shifty man to walk off....
Story #2 "An act of Kindness"
Christopher Lowe is a boring man with a boring life. He is stuck in a middle management admin job that he hates, and his wife (Diana Dors ) is constantly nagging at him and belittling him in front of their young son, who also gives him no respect. One day while on his way home from work, he buys a pair of shoelaces from a peddler (Donald Pleasence ) after seeing him displaying a sign saying he is an ex-serviceman who fought in World War 2. Over dinner, his wife gives him a taste of her sharp tongue, saying that when she first met him he was a Sergeant in the army pay corps with a soft job and a civilian future, but now he is a boring little man with a crap job who doesnt earn much money. This causes Lowe to storm out childishly.
The next day, he strikes up a conversation with the peddler, and lies and tells him he was an officer in an infantry regiment, he even goes back to Temptations ltd and steals a distinguished service cross in order to impress the peddler, when the owner notices the medal missing, he simply tuts and says "naughty naughty!" The peddler, being suitably impressed, invites him to his home for a meal and a chat, which he happily accepts just so he can get away from his wife for a while.
At the peddlers home, he introduces himself as "Jim" and his daughter as "Emily" (played by Pleasences real life daughter Angela), and they sit down to have a nice, but somewhat awkward chat, where Emily recites passages from books she has memorised, albeit some rather strange and out of context passages of no relevance to the conversation.
Weeks pass, and Lowe spends more and more time round at Jims house, lying and saying he is working overtime whenever she asks where he has got to. He gives Emily a gift of a fake gold watch, which pleases her immensely, and admits that he is unhappy with his wife, as she spends most of her time playing bingo and gossiping with her friends instead of doing her wifely duties.
some time later, Emily appears in Lowe and his wifes bedroom as they are sleeping, and, while wearing a black veil, she produces a knife and makes as though she is going to stab the wife, but she wakes up screaming and says she has had abad dream, Emily is nowhere to be seen.
Lowe is having dinner with Jim and emily one night when Jim apologises and says he must leave early as he is meeting up with some old friends for a drink, and that Emily should be more than able to entertain him. Lowe is happy at this news as he has secretly fallen for Emilys rather strange beauty and creepy charms. As he eats the meal she has prepared for him, Emily walks around the flat, singing a very strange and discordant song, when he enquires about the song, she begins telling him he is a lonely man, and that his wife is not a wife to him, and that she wishes to serve him, and will do anything he commands her to.
Lowe wakes up in bed after having sex with Emily, he quickly dresses and follows her through to the lounge, where she lights a candle and produces a wax effigy of his wife, made using hair clippings and blood she had secretly gathered from his wife. She holds a knife to the effigies throat and asks Lowe if he wants her to finish it, when he refuses, she explains that every day they are still married his life will become more miserable, as she will not improve with age. Thinking its all just a bit of a game, he orders her to do whatever she wants, so she stabs the figure, causing blood to drip from the figures mouth.
Lowe is horrified and rushes home, to find that his wife is indeed dead, stabbed in the throat by a woman dressed in black. The doorbell rings, and Jim and Emily enter uninvited dressed in wedding garments, Jim salutes Lowe, and a wedding march begins playing.
Emily and Lowe marry, and on their wedding day, they celebrate with champagne, Lowe tells Emily to cut the wedding cake, and she asks if that is an order, to which he jokingly says, yes, she then asks Jim and Lowes son if they order it too, and they both say yes, so she takes a knife, but instead of cutting the cake, she chops down on the groom effigies head. Lowe collapses on to the table, blood gushing from a severe and fatal head wound.
Jim then says to Lowes son that they always answer childrens prayers, in one way or another....
The shop owner stands looking out of his shop window, and notices the shifty man still hanging around outside. The shifty man makes to enter the shop, but turns away as Reggie Warren comes walking down the street and enters the shop.
Story #3 "The Elemental"
Reggie Warren is a somewhat pompous businessman, when he enters the shop and finds it seemingly deserted, he opens one of the cabinets and looks at an antique silver snuff box, quickly replacing it when he sees the price tag of £40. He looks at another that has a price tag of £5, and quickly swaps the two tags over. the shop owner appears and asks if he can help him, to which Warren replies that he is looking for a snuff box, and he has his eye on one in particular (the £40 one). The owner gets the box out of the cabinet and checks the price, which now says £5, so warren agrees to buy it, even managing to get the owner to drop the price to £4. Pleased with his purchase, Warren bids the shop owner good day, and the shop owner says he hopes Warren enjoys snuffing it.
On the train home, Warren is set about by a dotty old woman who tells him he has a nasty looking elemental sat on his shoulder, this particular one is unusual because although it is sexually frustrated and greedy like most elementals, this one is willing to kill to get what it wants. Warren doesnt believe such rubbish, but the woman, who introduces herself as Madam Orloff, "Clarvoyant Extrraordinaire!", insists that he takes her card, as he will more than likely have need of her services soon.
At home, Warren notices that all of a sudden his dog becomes hostile towards him, and, while talking with his wife, she suddenly shouts at him for hitting her, even though he was nowhere near her.
that night in bed, his wife complains that he is holding her hand too tight, and that he needs to cut his nails, even though he isnt touching her, she then begins to choke, as though something is strangling her, which she assumes was him.
Realising they have a serious problem, Warren calls Madam Orloff, and she comes straight away.
Seeing that the elemental has grown, and intends to take over Warrens body, Madam Orloff says they will need to exorsize the beast immediately, so, to wit, she gets Warren to sit in a chair and begins chanting various ridiculous verses, which she says may seem unusual but they help her to focus her psychic powers.
As the exorsism goes on, the house erupts into chaos, with winds randomly blowing through the doors and windows and things moving and exploding all around them. Mid way through the exorsism, Madam Orloff requests a glass of whisky, and while his wife fetches it, she gives him a warning that his wife is the sort of person who will attract evil spirits like a magnet. The exorsism is eventually successful and the elemental leaves Warrens body, so madam Orloff leaves after being in the house for less than 10 minutes and demanding an enormous fee for it, but nontheless Warren says he feels much better.
After tidying the house up, and the dog returning to them, Warren and his wife settle down for a celebratory drink, but are disturbed by an ominous banging sound from upstairs, which puts the willies up both of them.
As he goes to investigate the sounds, a strange wind knocks Reggie down the stairs, causing him to black out.
When he comes to, he finds his wife standing over him glaring, he asks if she is alright, and she says, in a deep and other worldly sounding voice that he "denied her life", before she beats him to death with the fire poker and then leaves the house laughing.
The shop owner lights his pipe, and notices the shifty man still hanging around outside, this time, the man is looking extra fidgety, and fiddles with an iron bar that he has tucked up his sleeve. As he crosses the road to enter the shop, he bumps into Will Seaton (Ian Ogilvy ) as he too makes his way into the shop. The shifty man quickly runs away....
Story #4 "The Door"
Will tells the shop owner he has his eye on an antique door that he has in, and the owner explains that it is a very old antique that he rescued form an old house that was being demolished. He tells him the price for the door is £50, but Will says all he can afford is £40, the shop owner agrees to sell it him and takes his name and address, before putting the money in the till, which he leaves open, displaying that it is full of cash, while he goes through the back to get Bill a receipt. As Will leaves the store, The owner begins to slowly count the money in the till.
The door is delivered to Wills house, where he tells his wife he intends to redecorate his study and replace the door to the stationary cupboard with the antique one he bought, his wife wonders what such a grand old thing would have been the door to, which she eventually speculates that it was a big old fashioned room, which was all painted blue.
The door is put in place, and while admiring it, Will notices that the door appears to have blood stains on it, but it soon comes off when he cleans it.
That night, Will feels the sudden urge to walk up and open the door, which when he does, is surprised to see that instead of being his stationary cupboard beyond it, there is a grand old fashioned blue room.
He enters and explores the room, finding firstly a painting on the wall depicting a man wearing what appears to be a civil war era cavalier costume, and secondly what appears to be a large leather bound journal of some kind. He is about to read from the book, when he is scared off by the sound of approaching footsteps from one of the rooms internal doors. He leaves quickly and slams the door behind him, but then when he reopens it, he finds his stationary cupboard has reappeared.
His wife says he is mad when he tells her about it, but that night while Will is working, the door opens by itself, once again leading to the blue room, this time, he makes straight for the book and begins reading.
The book is entitled "An experiment in darkness" by "Sir Michael Sinclair".
From reading the book, Will finds that the room was created using evil magic by Sir Michael Sinclair in 1683, a time when if anyone of the lower classes was caught using or even speaking about magic, they would be burned at the stake for witchcraft, but he, as a nobleman and friend of the king, was immune to such punishment. The book goes on to explain that the room, and thus Sinclair himself, will exist forever, so long as the spell which keeps the room in existence is maintained by offering a blood sacrifice every so often to the door, which Sinclair prefers to be a woman, as their life essence is more potent.
Will flees when he hears Sinclair approach, but runs into his wife, who has come to see what is going on. Sinclair himself emerges from the doorway and grabs the woman, challenging Will to follow him, as "two souls are better than one". Will grabs an axe and begins smashing the door with it, each stroke causing Sinclair pain and the room to be damaged in some way. When Sinclair appears incapacitated, Will rushes in to rescue his wife, but Sinclair stops him and wrestles him to the ground. Will tells his wife to use the axe to break the door, which she does, eventually causing Sinclair himself to collapse. Will grabs the axe and smashes the door off its hinges, which causes the room beyond to totally collapse, and Sinclair to rot away to dust.
At the shop, the owner finishes counting the money in the till, and is happy that Will didnt steal any after all.
The shifty man finally enters the shop, closing the door queity as he does, and he finds the owner loading a pair of flintlock pistols with live ammunition. The owner asks him to hold one of the pistols while he loads the other, but once it is loaded, the shifty man grabs it and demands the owner hand over all of his money. The owner refuses to co operate and begins advancing on the would be robber meanacingly, so he opens fire, but none of his shots cause the owner any harm. Backing off in terror, the shifty man falls into an iron maiden which closes in on top of him. the shop owner then sits down on top of it and calmly lights his pipe and says 2the love of money is the root of all evil". The shop door opens, and the owner welcomes the new customers, saying that he has something for everyone, but, theres a free novelty surprise with every purchase........
Wednesday 20 March 2013
Tuesday 19 March 2013
Amicus Horror Anthologies - Vault Of Horror (1973)
During the 60s and 70s, British film makers Amicus productions made a
series of films containing several short horror stories, linked by a
framing story.
Starring many big names (for the time), these low/medium budget films told several stories mainly concerning ghosts and the supernatural in a typically British way, and usually featured some sort of twist ending.
The sixth of these films was 1974's "Vault of Horror", which contained a mix of stories from the "Tales from the crypt" and "Vault of Horror" comics.
Framing Story
Five men meet as they descend in a lift ( Daniel Massey , Terry-Thomas , Curd Jurgens , Michael Craig and Tom Baker ), which they are expecting to take them to the ground floor, however something goes wrong and they find themselves deposited in one of the buildings sub basements. Finding the room they end up in to be well furnished with chairs and drink, they assume that it is some sort of gentleman's club and make themselves at home while they wait for assistance to arrive. They begin talking to pass the time, and eventually the conversation comes around to the subject of dreams, horrible ones in particular. One by one, the men recount their tales....
Story #1 "Midnight Mess"
Harold Rodgers (Massey) has hired a shady private detective (Mike Pratt ) to find his sister Donna (played by Daniel Masseys real life sister Anna Massey ) . Upon handing over the information and demanding payment, the detective is killed by Rodgers.
Rodgers travels to meet with his sister, finding her living in an out of the way village, where as soon as he gets there, a local warns him to get inside as it will be dark soon. Rodgers ignores the friendly warning and goes to get something to eat in a local restaurant, which he finds almost deserted when he enters. He asks for the menu, but is told that the place is closing for the night, as "they come out in the dark".
Rodgers leaves in disgust and makes for his sisters address, she isnt pleased to see him but invites him in anyway. He explains that he has been searching for her for a long time, and says he just wants to see her. She says his intentions are nothing of the sort and all he is after is her money. He asks why she would hide away in a place like this where everyone is afraid of the dark, but she explains that thus far, 17 people have been found with all their blood drained from them. Donna asks once again for him to tell her his reasons for wanting to see her, and he explains that their father died four weeks ago and left everything to her in his will, and so long as she is alive, she is a rich woman. He then produces a knife and quickly kills her in a flurry of crazed stabs.
As he stands outside her house, laughing at his good fortune, he notices a group of people entering the restaurant that was closed only a few minutes ago, so, now hungrier than ever, he decides to try his luck there again, this time finding the place bustling with customers.
The waiter recommends the special of the day so he orders it, noticing that everyone around him seems to be enjoying their meals.
The waiter brings him an aperitif, which he believes is tomato juice, but he sends it back after not enjoying the taste, so he is presented with his soup course, which again he remarks to the waiter that its flavour is unusual. The waiter asks him how he would like his "roast clots", rare, medium or well done, he asks what the waiter means, and is told that he means roast blood clots. Rodgers suddenly realises that his "soup" is actually blood and tries to get up, but the waiter forces him to sit back down and pulls back a curtain which is hiding a large mirror. None of the restaurants customers or staff, except him, cast a reflection in it, because all the assembled people apart from himself are vampires.
Two of the vampires rush off to close the curtains and lock the doors, while the rest of them eye him up with evil grins on their faces, then Donna appears, holding the knife that only a few minutes earlier he had stabbed her to death with.
Rodgers cries out in fear off camera, and, after Donna has descended the stairs, two female vampires, now sporting fangs, talk about how "the fresh stuff" is much better than the "frozen stuff" as they sip blood from glasses. Donna asks for a glass too, and laughs as her brother is shown hanging upside down from a hook in the ceiling with a tap attached to his jugular vein from which the waiter fills the assembled grinning vampires glasses with fresh blood, literally "straight from the tap".
Rodgers says his dream is silly, but for some reason he has it all the time. When asked by Critchit if he really does have a sister, he looks at the floor and says a simple "no", before asking Critchit what his dreams are like....
Story #2 "The Neat Job"
Arthur Critchit (Thomas) is an obsessive neat freak. Over dinner with one of his friends, he announces that after amassing a large fortune with a good home filled with lots of stuff, he plans to marry, as he needs someone to keep house for him. The woman he marries is Eleanor, a much younger woman who, in spite of Critchits expectations, is very messy and inept.
His continual nagging and belittleing of her over the most inconsequencial matters of neatness causes some upset, and, she reveals to her friend, she only married him for his money.
The last straw for her occurs when Arthur comes home from work to find she has messed up his woodworking bench by emptying out all of his screws while looking for a nail to rehang a picture on the wall. He screams and nags at her, so, in response, she caves his skull in with a hammer.
Later, Eleanor explains to Arthur that she has done just as he asked, and "everything is in its place, and theres a place for everything" before bursting out laughing. The camera pulls back to show that she has dismembered his corpse and placed the various pieces into a series of neatly stacked and ordered jars.
Critchit explains to Moore (Baker) that he is no more neater than anyone else, but yet, his dream seems so real, Sebastian (Jurgens) says he knows the feeling...
Story #3 "This Trick'll Kill you!"
Sebastian and his wife are on holiday in India, while there they search for new tricks to use in Sebatstians day job as a magician. None of the tricks he sees performed by any of the street fakirs impresses him until he sees a woman using a flute to charm a piece of rope out of a basket so it stands solid and erect in the air, with no discernable way of holding it up there, he is even more astonished when she shimmys up it and hangs in mid air. He offers the woman a large sum of money if she will tell him how the trick works, but she refuses and says that there is no trickery involved, the rope itself is magic. He offers to buy the rope, but she refuses and says that the rope has been passed down from mother to daughter for centuries.
Angry that the woman will not tell him her secrets, he hatches a plan to get them. He approaches the woman and says that he will pay her if she comes to their hotel room and shows his wife the magic, however when the woman comes, she performs the trick, and Sebastian stabs her.
Try as they might, neither Sebastian or his wife can figure out how the rope works, but when Sebastian plays a few notes on the flute, the rope begins to rise. His wife climbs the rope and finds that it is solid enough to take her weight, but then she screams and vanishes into thin air, and blood begins to drip from the ceiling just above where the rope hangs. Sebastian tries to run away, but the rope prevents his every effort to leave by whipping around the room, eventually, it coils around his neck and strangles him.
In the market, the fakir that Sebastian humiliated earlier performs his "magic basket" trick, while his assistant, the woman Sebastian killed earlier, plays her flute....
The other men sit in silence as Sebastian finishes his tale by saying that he doesnt believe in ghosts, as they are just illusions created by magicians.
Maitland (Craig) says that he too has a similar experience to share...
Story #4 "Bargain in Death"
Maitland and his friend Alex have hatched a plot where Maitland will fake his own death in order to claim the payout on his life insurance. The plan goes that he will take a drug which will make him appear dead, and then after he is buried, Alex will dig him up and they will both be rich. The plan goes swimmingly, until Alex decides to double cross Maitland and leave him buried in a coffin. Meanwhile, two medical students pay a grave robber to steal a fresh corpse for them to dissect. The grave robber digs up Maitlands grave, and as he cracks open the coffin, Maitland bursts out gasping for air, which causes the medical students to run out of the graveyard into the road, where they cause Alexs car to crash as he passes to bid a sarcastic farewell to his "friend". The grave robber, eager to get paid for his work, approaches the two students and demands payment, apologising for the damage to the bodies head, then Maitland is shown still lying in his coffin, albeit now with a massive and fatal head wound.
Critchit denounces the tale as preposterous, and when Moore questions it, he is told to tell his tale...
Story #5 "Drawn and Quartered"
Moore (Baker) is a struggling artist living on the island of Haiti. Even though he produces a lot of work, he is told by his agent that his work is considered rubbish by one of Londons leading art critics. One day, one of Moores old friends turns up and during idle conversation reveals that Moores paintings, far from being worthless, are actually selling for large amounts of money back home.
Moor visits a witch doctor and asks if he can use Voodoo to get revenge on those who have wronged him, the witch doctor tells him to put the hand he paints with into his cooking pot. Moore sarcastically asks if he needs a little doll to stick pins into, but the witch doctor tells him he is an artist, so he doesnt need one, Moore pays the man but leaves thinking he has been ripped off.
Later, Moore does a sketch of a vase, which he messes up, as he tosses the paper in the bin, the vase breaks. He then makes a quick pencil sketch of a piece of bread, and when he rubs a corner off his drawing, a rat comes in and eats the corresponding corner of the bread. Finally, he makes a red mark on the face of a self portrait he painted earlier, and is surprised when nothing happens, but later, after a restless sleep, he awakes and finds that his face now bears a wound in exactly the same place as he made the mark.
Borrowing money from his friend, he flies back to London, taking the self portrait along with him.
Setting up an art studio in the home he lived in before he moved to Haiti, he locks the picture of himself inside a safe, so no harm can come to him while he sets about his task.
He then confronts the three men who swindled him, his agent, an art critic and a publisher, none of whom apologise for what they have done, and laugh him out of the office.
He paints portraits of the three men, all looking smug, and then, adressing the pictures in turn, as though they were real people, he outlines his revenge.
For Fenton the art critic, he states that because he saw his pictures and then lied about their value to the public, his punishment will be to never see another picture again, and he gouges out the pictures eyes...
....Fenton argues with his wife over whether he is having an affair or not, and more or less admits that he is, and intends to go on doing so, in response, his wife throws acid in his face, blinding him....
Gaskill, the art dealer, is told that because he used his hands to handle the paintings and sell them for a lot more than he had been told that they were worth, he will never handle anything again, and then he cuts the bottom of the picture, containing Gaskills hands, off...
....Gaskill belittles a young clerk who is having trouble using the guillotine to cut some card, and shows him how to do it. On his second demonstration, the guillotine drops down before Gaskill can get his hands out of the way, chopping them both off at the wrists....
His agent, Mr Diltant, is told that he can wait until tomorrow.
Diltant reads the news of his co-conspirators accidents in the paper, and gets a little worried. Moore turns up unannounced at his office and demands to speak with him, Dilitant tells his secretary to let him in, and then to go home. Moore enters carrying Dilitants portrait and, afte rplacing his watch on dilitants desk, he tells him he has precisely two minutes to live. Dilitant pulls a gun out of his pocket, but Moore tells him he just wants to show him something, and removes a red felt tip pen from his pocket, which he then uses to paint a red dot on the portraits forehead. dilitant looks puzzled at first, but then realises with horror that the hand he is holding the gun in is now aiming the gun at his own head, and Moore, sporting a cheeky grin, watches with delight as Dilitant shoots himself in the head.
Moore then struggles to breathe, and, remembering the safe he locked his self portrait in was airtight, he rushes home and lets air into the safe by opening its heavy door. Once he is alright again, he places his self portrait on an easel under the skylight in his art room, but then as he checks his watch, he remembers he left it behind in Dilitants office, and rushes out to try and get it back, as its very presence there could implicate him in Dilitants murder.
A workman who is painting a sign above the skylight gets a little careless and kicks a can of paint stripper off his platform, which falls and smashes through the skylight and douses the self portrait, destroying it. At the same moment, Moore is crushed under the wheels of a truck as he runs across the road to hail a taxi....
The men discuss how their dreams could be warnings of something that could happen, when all of a sudden, the lift they came down in pings, and the doors open. They enter the lift and instead find themselves standing in a graveyard.
One by one, all the men except Sebastian silently file towards their own graves, where they vanish. Sebastian explains that every night for all eternity, they are forced to tell their stories to each other as punishment for what they did when they were alive. Sebastian then makes his way to his own grave, and vanishes....
Starring many big names (for the time), these low/medium budget films told several stories mainly concerning ghosts and the supernatural in a typically British way, and usually featured some sort of twist ending.
The sixth of these films was 1974's "Vault of Horror", which contained a mix of stories from the "Tales from the crypt" and "Vault of Horror" comics.
Framing Story
Five men meet as they descend in a lift ( Daniel Massey , Terry-Thomas , Curd Jurgens , Michael Craig and Tom Baker ), which they are expecting to take them to the ground floor, however something goes wrong and they find themselves deposited in one of the buildings sub basements. Finding the room they end up in to be well furnished with chairs and drink, they assume that it is some sort of gentleman's club and make themselves at home while they wait for assistance to arrive. They begin talking to pass the time, and eventually the conversation comes around to the subject of dreams, horrible ones in particular. One by one, the men recount their tales....
Story #1 "Midnight Mess"
Harold Rodgers (Massey) has hired a shady private detective (Mike Pratt ) to find his sister Donna (played by Daniel Masseys real life sister Anna Massey ) . Upon handing over the information and demanding payment, the detective is killed by Rodgers.
Rodgers travels to meet with his sister, finding her living in an out of the way village, where as soon as he gets there, a local warns him to get inside as it will be dark soon. Rodgers ignores the friendly warning and goes to get something to eat in a local restaurant, which he finds almost deserted when he enters. He asks for the menu, but is told that the place is closing for the night, as "they come out in the dark".
Rodgers leaves in disgust and makes for his sisters address, she isnt pleased to see him but invites him in anyway. He explains that he has been searching for her for a long time, and says he just wants to see her. She says his intentions are nothing of the sort and all he is after is her money. He asks why she would hide away in a place like this where everyone is afraid of the dark, but she explains that thus far, 17 people have been found with all their blood drained from them. Donna asks once again for him to tell her his reasons for wanting to see her, and he explains that their father died four weeks ago and left everything to her in his will, and so long as she is alive, she is a rich woman. He then produces a knife and quickly kills her in a flurry of crazed stabs.
As he stands outside her house, laughing at his good fortune, he notices a group of people entering the restaurant that was closed only a few minutes ago, so, now hungrier than ever, he decides to try his luck there again, this time finding the place bustling with customers.
The waiter recommends the special of the day so he orders it, noticing that everyone around him seems to be enjoying their meals.
The waiter brings him an aperitif, which he believes is tomato juice, but he sends it back after not enjoying the taste, so he is presented with his soup course, which again he remarks to the waiter that its flavour is unusual. The waiter asks him how he would like his "roast clots", rare, medium or well done, he asks what the waiter means, and is told that he means roast blood clots. Rodgers suddenly realises that his "soup" is actually blood and tries to get up, but the waiter forces him to sit back down and pulls back a curtain which is hiding a large mirror. None of the restaurants customers or staff, except him, cast a reflection in it, because all the assembled people apart from himself are vampires.
Two of the vampires rush off to close the curtains and lock the doors, while the rest of them eye him up with evil grins on their faces, then Donna appears, holding the knife that only a few minutes earlier he had stabbed her to death with.
Rodgers cries out in fear off camera, and, after Donna has descended the stairs, two female vampires, now sporting fangs, talk about how "the fresh stuff" is much better than the "frozen stuff" as they sip blood from glasses. Donna asks for a glass too, and laughs as her brother is shown hanging upside down from a hook in the ceiling with a tap attached to his jugular vein from which the waiter fills the assembled grinning vampires glasses with fresh blood, literally "straight from the tap".
Rodgers says his dream is silly, but for some reason he has it all the time. When asked by Critchit if he really does have a sister, he looks at the floor and says a simple "no", before asking Critchit what his dreams are like....
Story #2 "The Neat Job"
Arthur Critchit (Thomas) is an obsessive neat freak. Over dinner with one of his friends, he announces that after amassing a large fortune with a good home filled with lots of stuff, he plans to marry, as he needs someone to keep house for him. The woman he marries is Eleanor, a much younger woman who, in spite of Critchits expectations, is very messy and inept.
His continual nagging and belittleing of her over the most inconsequencial matters of neatness causes some upset, and, she reveals to her friend, she only married him for his money.
The last straw for her occurs when Arthur comes home from work to find she has messed up his woodworking bench by emptying out all of his screws while looking for a nail to rehang a picture on the wall. He screams and nags at her, so, in response, she caves his skull in with a hammer.
Later, Eleanor explains to Arthur that she has done just as he asked, and "everything is in its place, and theres a place for everything" before bursting out laughing. The camera pulls back to show that she has dismembered his corpse and placed the various pieces into a series of neatly stacked and ordered jars.
Critchit explains to Moore (Baker) that he is no more neater than anyone else, but yet, his dream seems so real, Sebastian (Jurgens) says he knows the feeling...
Story #3 "This Trick'll Kill you!"
Sebastian and his wife are on holiday in India, while there they search for new tricks to use in Sebatstians day job as a magician. None of the tricks he sees performed by any of the street fakirs impresses him until he sees a woman using a flute to charm a piece of rope out of a basket so it stands solid and erect in the air, with no discernable way of holding it up there, he is even more astonished when she shimmys up it and hangs in mid air. He offers the woman a large sum of money if she will tell him how the trick works, but she refuses and says that there is no trickery involved, the rope itself is magic. He offers to buy the rope, but she refuses and says that the rope has been passed down from mother to daughter for centuries.
Angry that the woman will not tell him her secrets, he hatches a plan to get them. He approaches the woman and says that he will pay her if she comes to their hotel room and shows his wife the magic, however when the woman comes, she performs the trick, and Sebastian stabs her.
Try as they might, neither Sebastian or his wife can figure out how the rope works, but when Sebastian plays a few notes on the flute, the rope begins to rise. His wife climbs the rope and finds that it is solid enough to take her weight, but then she screams and vanishes into thin air, and blood begins to drip from the ceiling just above where the rope hangs. Sebastian tries to run away, but the rope prevents his every effort to leave by whipping around the room, eventually, it coils around his neck and strangles him.
In the market, the fakir that Sebastian humiliated earlier performs his "magic basket" trick, while his assistant, the woman Sebastian killed earlier, plays her flute....
The other men sit in silence as Sebastian finishes his tale by saying that he doesnt believe in ghosts, as they are just illusions created by magicians.
Maitland (Craig) says that he too has a similar experience to share...
Story #4 "Bargain in Death"
Maitland and his friend Alex have hatched a plot where Maitland will fake his own death in order to claim the payout on his life insurance. The plan goes that he will take a drug which will make him appear dead, and then after he is buried, Alex will dig him up and they will both be rich. The plan goes swimmingly, until Alex decides to double cross Maitland and leave him buried in a coffin. Meanwhile, two medical students pay a grave robber to steal a fresh corpse for them to dissect. The grave robber digs up Maitlands grave, and as he cracks open the coffin, Maitland bursts out gasping for air, which causes the medical students to run out of the graveyard into the road, where they cause Alexs car to crash as he passes to bid a sarcastic farewell to his "friend". The grave robber, eager to get paid for his work, approaches the two students and demands payment, apologising for the damage to the bodies head, then Maitland is shown still lying in his coffin, albeit now with a massive and fatal head wound.
Critchit denounces the tale as preposterous, and when Moore questions it, he is told to tell his tale...
Story #5 "Drawn and Quartered"
Moore (Baker) is a struggling artist living on the island of Haiti. Even though he produces a lot of work, he is told by his agent that his work is considered rubbish by one of Londons leading art critics. One day, one of Moores old friends turns up and during idle conversation reveals that Moores paintings, far from being worthless, are actually selling for large amounts of money back home.
Moor visits a witch doctor and asks if he can use Voodoo to get revenge on those who have wronged him, the witch doctor tells him to put the hand he paints with into his cooking pot. Moore sarcastically asks if he needs a little doll to stick pins into, but the witch doctor tells him he is an artist, so he doesnt need one, Moore pays the man but leaves thinking he has been ripped off.
Later, Moore does a sketch of a vase, which he messes up, as he tosses the paper in the bin, the vase breaks. He then makes a quick pencil sketch of a piece of bread, and when he rubs a corner off his drawing, a rat comes in and eats the corresponding corner of the bread. Finally, he makes a red mark on the face of a self portrait he painted earlier, and is surprised when nothing happens, but later, after a restless sleep, he awakes and finds that his face now bears a wound in exactly the same place as he made the mark.
Borrowing money from his friend, he flies back to London, taking the self portrait along with him.
Setting up an art studio in the home he lived in before he moved to Haiti, he locks the picture of himself inside a safe, so no harm can come to him while he sets about his task.
He then confronts the three men who swindled him, his agent, an art critic and a publisher, none of whom apologise for what they have done, and laugh him out of the office.
He paints portraits of the three men, all looking smug, and then, adressing the pictures in turn, as though they were real people, he outlines his revenge.
For Fenton the art critic, he states that because he saw his pictures and then lied about their value to the public, his punishment will be to never see another picture again, and he gouges out the pictures eyes...
....Fenton argues with his wife over whether he is having an affair or not, and more or less admits that he is, and intends to go on doing so, in response, his wife throws acid in his face, blinding him....
Gaskill, the art dealer, is told that because he used his hands to handle the paintings and sell them for a lot more than he had been told that they were worth, he will never handle anything again, and then he cuts the bottom of the picture, containing Gaskills hands, off...
....Gaskill belittles a young clerk who is having trouble using the guillotine to cut some card, and shows him how to do it. On his second demonstration, the guillotine drops down before Gaskill can get his hands out of the way, chopping them both off at the wrists....
His agent, Mr Diltant, is told that he can wait until tomorrow.
Diltant reads the news of his co-conspirators accidents in the paper, and gets a little worried. Moore turns up unannounced at his office and demands to speak with him, Dilitant tells his secretary to let him in, and then to go home. Moore enters carrying Dilitants portrait and, afte rplacing his watch on dilitants desk, he tells him he has precisely two minutes to live. Dilitant pulls a gun out of his pocket, but Moore tells him he just wants to show him something, and removes a red felt tip pen from his pocket, which he then uses to paint a red dot on the portraits forehead. dilitant looks puzzled at first, but then realises with horror that the hand he is holding the gun in is now aiming the gun at his own head, and Moore, sporting a cheeky grin, watches with delight as Dilitant shoots himself in the head.
Moore then struggles to breathe, and, remembering the safe he locked his self portrait in was airtight, he rushes home and lets air into the safe by opening its heavy door. Once he is alright again, he places his self portrait on an easel under the skylight in his art room, but then as he checks his watch, he remembers he left it behind in Dilitants office, and rushes out to try and get it back, as its very presence there could implicate him in Dilitants murder.
A workman who is painting a sign above the skylight gets a little careless and kicks a can of paint stripper off his platform, which falls and smashes through the skylight and douses the self portrait, destroying it. At the same moment, Moore is crushed under the wheels of a truck as he runs across the road to hail a taxi....
The men discuss how their dreams could be warnings of something that could happen, when all of a sudden, the lift they came down in pings, and the doors open. They enter the lift and instead find themselves standing in a graveyard.
One by one, all the men except Sebastian silently file towards their own graves, where they vanish. Sebastian explains that every night for all eternity, they are forced to tell their stories to each other as punishment for what they did when they were alive. Sebastian then makes his way to his own grave, and vanishes....
Monday 18 March 2013
Amicus Horror Anthologies - Asylum (1972)
During the 60s and 70s, British film makers Amicus productions made a
series of films containing several short horror stories, linked by a
framing story.
Starring many big names (for the time), these low/medium budget films told several stories mainly concerning ghosts and the supernatural in a typically British way, and usually featured some sort of twist ending.
The fifth of these films was 1972's "Asylum", also known as "House of the crazies" for its US release.
Asylum contained dramatisations of stories written and scripted by writer Robert Bloch , who also scripted the film adaptation of Alfred Hitchcocks "Psycho".
This film was the very first Amicus anthology film I ever saw, when it was shown on ITVs Friday night horror movie slot back in the early 1990s, and in a way it kick started my liking for films in the anthology genre as a whole.
Framing Story
Dr. Martin (Robert Powell ) arrives at the secluded "Dunsmoor Asylum For The Incurably Insane", intending to secure a job as a psychiatrist. He is expecting to be interviewed for the position by the manager of the place, a Dr. B Starr, but instead finds the wheelchair bound and incredibly stubborn Dr. Rutherford (Patrick Magee ) waiting for him instead.
Over the course of some verbal sparring between the two men, Rutherford reveals that Dr. Starr suffered a total and complete mental breakdown, and thus was incarcerated in his own asylum, and, should Dr. Martin be able to identify him by interviewing several of the patients there, he will be "considered" for the job.
Rutherford goes on to explain that the patients he is to interview are all completely and incurably insane, and have a penchant for inventing completely false stories,displaying many different alternate personas and being somewhat violent, and as such, the door to the wing he is about to go into can only be opened by pushing a button on his desk, so as to prevent the maniacs from escaping, but Martin reassures Rutherford that he has dealt with severely mentally disturbed people before.
Martin ascends the stairs to the wing he is to interview in and is greeted by Max the orderly, who tells him he has been instructed to give no indications whatsoever which patient is Dr. Starr.
He leads Martin the the first room, where he is to interview "Bonnie"...
Story #1 - "Frozen Fear"
Bonnie and Walter are lovers, however Walter is married to the posessive heiress Ruth. Ruth is a practitioner of Voodoo, and after an argument over wanting a divorce from her, which she will not grant, Walter executes his plan to escape from her.
Walter surprises Ruth by showing her the large chest freezer (still something of a novelty in early 1970s Britain) he has bought for her and had installed in the cellar, she is overjoyed at the gift he has given her, but Walter says there is another surprise for her, when she asks what it is, he responds by bludgeoning her to death with an axe.
Hours pass, and Walter dismembers the body and wraps the individual pieces of it up in brown paper, before neatly packing them inside the freezer, where he hopes they will lay undiscovered for quite some time.
As he finishes off celaning up the murder scene, he notices Ruths Voodoo bracelet still left lying around, so he casually tosses it in the freezer along with the body parts, telling her to "rest in pieces".
The phone rings, and Walter tells Bonnie he has finished his task, Bonnie tells him she is coming, but they will need to take the body parts along with them when they escape, in order to dispose of them somewhere along the way. Walter isnt too pleased about this but goes along with the idea anyway.
He pours himself a stiff drink and sits down to wait for Bonnies arrival, when suddenly he hears a strange noise coming from the kitchen. He is terrified to see Ruths Dismembered head, still wrapped in brown paper, rolling by itself across the kitchen floor, stopping to glare at him ominously as it reaches the doorway. Walter throws his glass at the head, but the head suddenly vanishes. Walter, putting this down to a hallucination brought on by guilt, decides to go down and check to make sure he wasn't imagining things.
He cautiously makes his way down to the cellar, and is shocked to see the freezer lid open. When he looks in the freezer, Ruths dismembered arm shoots up and grabs him by the throat.
Bonnie arrives later, and calls out Walters name, but finds nothing in the house save for the broken glass and spilt drink on the kitchen floor, then, the cellar door creaks open ominously on its own.
She heads down there to see what is happening, but still doesn't find Walter anywhere. Morbid curiosity compels her to look in the freezer, and she finds herself looking at Walters dead body. She makes to go back upstairs, but finds Ruths severed but still breathing head staring back at her, she flees in terror but is set upon by Ruths other body parts. She tries to escape by going through another door, but finds it locked.
She grabs the axe that Walter used to kill and dismember his wife with and tries unsuccessfully to attack the various body parts as they crawl towards her, but she is unable to stop any of them. Suddenly, one of Ruths arms drops down from the rafters and grabs her face, so Bonnie begins wildly slashing at it with the axe....
Bonnie concludes her story by revealing that the police found her laying unconscious the following morning, and that they told her that she had strangled Walter. She says she tried to tell them about Ruth and her various body parts, but everything was gone. She then turns round and reveals a large ugly scar across her face, inflicted upon herself while she was slashing with the axe.
Outside the room, Dr. Martin diagnoses Bonnie as having an acute case of paranoid psychosis, to which Max shrugs his shoulders and moves him to the next room.
Bruno sits cross legged on the table, sewing imaginary cloth with an imaginary needle and thread. Dr. Martin asks him what he is doing, and Bruno begins his tale...
Story #2 - "The Weird Tailor"
Bruno (Barry Morse ) is a jewish tailor who has fallen on hard times. When the rent man comes calling, Bruno is unable to pay him, and instead offers to make him a suit, his offer is refused, and he is tol he has until Saturday morning to come up with the money or he will have to leave.
Bruno tells his wife the sad news, but then their spirits are uplifted when a man named simply "Smith" (Peter Cushing ) enters the shop and asks if Bruno can make him a suit.
Smith produces a bolt of strange cloth, which glows with an other worldly aura, and gives Bruno a set of very detailed instructions governing how the suit is to be made, and what times he can work on it, all of these times being in the early hours of the morning. Brun offers to take Smiths measurements but Smith explains that the suit is to be a surprise gift for his son, and that he needs it completing as soon as possible, promising to pay him £200 (still a lot of money in 1972) when he completes and delivers it to him on Friday morning.
Bruno spends four nights working slavishly on the garment, but manages to get it completed in time and delivers it himself to Smiths house.
Bruno finds Smiths house in darkness and a state of disrepair, which surprises him as Smith appeared to be a very wealthy man, Smith explains that he cannot pay him the £200 as promised, but will settle up with him afterwards. Bruno refuses to hand over the suit until he receives payment, but Smith assures him that there is nothing in the house worth taking, aside from a very rare one of a kind book of magic that he spent his entire fortune on. Bruno becomes angry and looks in one of the rooms to find a body in a coffin, he accuses Smith of being a murderer, but Smith points out that the body is that of his son, who died of natural causes some time ago, and the suit is made of a magical cloth which when he puts it on the body, his son will return to life.
Bruno refuses once again to hand over the suit without payment, but Smith pulls a revolver from his pocket and the two men fight, ending with the gun going off accidentally and killing Smith.
Bruno grabs the book of magic spells and flees the house.
His wife asks what is wrogn when he returns home, and he tells her that Smith was a fraud and to burn the suit because of its unnatural abilities, he says that he will sell the book and get the money that way. As he inspects the books contents, he notices that his wife hasnt fired up their boiler, meaning she is not burning the suit as he requested, she tells him that she thinks that if someone sees the suit on display in the window, that they will come in and buy it, so, to that end, she has dressed their mannequin, who she has named "Otto" in the suit. Bruno cries out in horror, but by then it is too late, Otto has come to life and begins rampaging through the shop, stopping to throttle Bruno.....
Bruno pleads with Dr. Martin to find and stop Otto, but Max coldly locks him back in his room and leads Martin to the next room.
Barbera ( Charlotte Rampling ) sits staring at herself in the mirror, and asks if Dr. Martin is the lawyer she had been asking for. He answers in the negative and introduces himself as a doctor. Barbera dismisses him, and says she has plenty of experience with the medical profession, having been in mental institutions before. Martin asks her to clarify but she says that all she needs is to be let out, what happened wasnt her fault and they should instead look for someone called "Lucy".....
Story #3 "Lucy Comes To Stay"
Barbera is brought home from another stay in a mental institution by her brother George (it is implied throughout the story that Barbera is a habitual drug user, which causes her to hallucinate and blame actions she carries out herself on someone called "Lucy") , she says she feels a lot better after her stay in hospital and that what happened will never happen again. When they arrive home, Barbera is told that they will have a live in carer, Nurse Higgins, to look after her until she gets back on her feet. She doesnt appreciate this one bit and resents the implication that she is an invalid and requires someone to look after her, and, more importantly, to act as a prison guard.
Later that night, Nurse Higgins is called away after a family emergency, and Barbera awakens to find herself alone in the house, so she immediately finds a hidden stash of drug and takes several of the little yellow pills. Lucy ( Britt Ekland) suddenly appears and says that she let herself in after tricking George and Nurse Higgins into leaving by making a fake telephone call from the garage. Lucy is very charismatic and forceful, and tells Barbera that they will need to work quickly if theyre going to escape. Barbera says she doesnt feel too good and Lucy conjectures that she has been taking "those pills" again, which Barbera denies, but Lucy says she knows when she is being lied to. Lucy and Barbera debate abut George wanting to keep Barbera sedated and submissive so that he can make off with the fortune left to Barbera by their late father. Lucy wins the argument and tells Barbera to get the £100 she had been saving for a new dress, so they can use it to rent a room somewhere and go into hiding. Lucy says she has everything planned, and they will leave that night, once George is asleep by stealing his car.
That night, while George is taking a phone call from Nurse Higgins to tell him that the family emergency was a fake, an unseen hand pours some sort of powder into his tea, which George then drinks and falls alseep.
Lucy wakes Barbera and tells her to pack, then she takes a pair of scissors and cuts the phone line, saying that they don't want Nurse Higgins calling the police before they've had a chance to get away.
Barbera once again takes some pills form her hidden stash and swears that she wont take any more when Lucy catches her with them. Lucy accuses her of always choosing drugs over everything else, and not owning up to the fact that she secretly hates both Lucy and George. Lucy gets angry and leaves when Barbera says she cant get through the day without taking the pills, so Barbera follows her, and runs into Nurse Higgins who has just got back. They go through to the study and there they find George slumped in his chair dead, with a pair of scissors sticking out of his chest.
Nurse Higgins tries to call for an ambulance but finds the phone dead, so she follows Barbera upstairs, only to have Lucy stab her in the chest as she reaches the top.
Lucy tells Barbera she is now free of all of them...
Barbera tells Dr.Martin that Lucy is the one they want, not her, and Martin asks where they can find Lucy. Barbera turns to the mirror and, while pointing at herself says "shes right here!" before laughing insanely.
Dr.Martin wonders if Rutherford is playing games with him, and if Dr. Starr actually exists, being as that thus far, all of the patiens he has seen have names beginning with the letter "B", as in "B. Starr", bu tMax says he cannot say anything until Martin makes his choice, before leading him to the final patient.
Max explains that this one is a cut above the rest, as unlike the others, he his a Doctor by the name of Byron (Herbert Lom ).
Byron sits at his workbench making a model of a human arm, and introduces himself cordially as the tow men enter his room...
Story #4 "Mannequins Of Terror"
Byron explains to Martin that he is an accomplished neurosurgeon and Doctor of internal medicine, but of late he has found a new hobby, namely that of making anatomically correct human figurines, which he shows Martin a cabinet full of the almost robot like dolls. He goes on to explain that the figures are not only an accurate cosmetic likeness of the people he has modelled them on, but also internally identical, containing functional eyes, internal organs and a fully functioning brain. He says that is is his belief that one can will life into their likeness, in a similar manner to what God used to create Adam and Eve. Martin finds this concept ridiculous, and declares Byron to be mad when he produces a figure of himself. Byron says he intends to project his consciousness into the figure, and that Rutherford had him locked up.
Martin and Max leave Byron in peace, and Rutherford is informed that Martin is on his way down.
Martin lambastes Rutherford for his poor treatment of the patients, none of whom have had any attempt to make any kind of treatment to help them escape their delusions, but once again Rutherford insists that everyone he has just seen are completely and incurably insane.
Upstairs, Byron lays on his bed clutching the figure of himself in his hands and staring at it intensely.
Rutherford explains that the only real cure for all of them is a lobotomy, which although Martin agrees would be effective, it would also turn anyone it is used on into a mindless vegetable.
Byron still stares at the figure of himself, and suddenly a spark of life appears in its eyes, and the figure begins moving by itself. Byron places the figure on the floor and it begins walking towards the door.
Max enters Byrons room to drop off his dinner, and doesn't notice Byrons homonculus sneak out of the door and make its way into the dumb waiter used to bring the patients food up from the kitchen.
Rutherford asks Martin for his choice, but before he can answer, they are disturbed by a nurse bringing them some refreshments. Martin says he does not intend to choose, instead, he intends to return home and report the asylum for malpractice, as Rutherfords regieme is of no medical or psychological benefit to anyone concerned. Rutherford disputes Martins observations.
Unnoticed as the two men argue over physchiatric treatments for the patients, Byrons homonculus climbs on to Rutherfords desk, where it then picks up a surgical scalpel that Rutherford had left there, and stabs Rutherford in the back of the neck with it.
Martin rushes to Rutherfords aid, but he is dead. He looks up and sees Byrons homonculus walking away, at first he seizes it, but then throws it to the floor. The figure raises its arms defensively, but Martin stamps on it, he removes his foot to reveal still pulsing viscrea flowing out of the figures crushed torso.
Upstairs, Byron cries out in agony, and Max rushes to see what is wrong....
Martin flicks the switch on Rutherfords desk and runs upstairs to find Max horrified at what he has just seen. Martin enquires on Byrons condition, but Max tells him not to go in to the room, as Byrons body has been crushed, as though a weight fell upon him from a great height.
Martin concludes that "Byron" was Dr. Starr, Max asks him if that was his choice, to which Martin replies that it was obvious. Martin then makes for Max's office, saying he intends to call for help, Max makes to stop him, but he is too slow, and Martin enters the room, finding a body hidden under a blanket on the bed. The dead man has been strangled, and Max tells him that he died two days ago, and he hadnt had a chance to get rid of it yet. Martin asks who he was, and is told that the mans name was "Max". Horrified, Martin realises that "Max" is actually Dr. Starr, and that he has killed the real Max and replaced him, as he tries to escape, Dr. Starr (Geoffrey Bayldon ) strangles him from behind with his stethoscope.
As Martin lays dying on the floor, Dr. Starr listens to his heart beat, and when it stops, he begins laughing like a maniac.
Another Doctor arrives for a job interview, and is greeted at the door by "Max", who ushers him inside and then "closes the door to keep out the draughts, as Dr. Starr used to say", before giving one final evil grin to the camera....
Starring many big names (for the time), these low/medium budget films told several stories mainly concerning ghosts and the supernatural in a typically British way, and usually featured some sort of twist ending.
The fifth of these films was 1972's "Asylum", also known as "House of the crazies" for its US release.
Asylum contained dramatisations of stories written and scripted by writer Robert Bloch , who also scripted the film adaptation of Alfred Hitchcocks "Psycho".
This film was the very first Amicus anthology film I ever saw, when it was shown on ITVs Friday night horror movie slot back in the early 1990s, and in a way it kick started my liking for films in the anthology genre as a whole.
Framing Story
Dr. Martin (Robert Powell ) arrives at the secluded "Dunsmoor Asylum For The Incurably Insane", intending to secure a job as a psychiatrist. He is expecting to be interviewed for the position by the manager of the place, a Dr. B Starr, but instead finds the wheelchair bound and incredibly stubborn Dr. Rutherford (Patrick Magee ) waiting for him instead.
Over the course of some verbal sparring between the two men, Rutherford reveals that Dr. Starr suffered a total and complete mental breakdown, and thus was incarcerated in his own asylum, and, should Dr. Martin be able to identify him by interviewing several of the patients there, he will be "considered" for the job.
Rutherford goes on to explain that the patients he is to interview are all completely and incurably insane, and have a penchant for inventing completely false stories,displaying many different alternate personas and being somewhat violent, and as such, the door to the wing he is about to go into can only be opened by pushing a button on his desk, so as to prevent the maniacs from escaping, but Martin reassures Rutherford that he has dealt with severely mentally disturbed people before.
Martin ascends the stairs to the wing he is to interview in and is greeted by Max the orderly, who tells him he has been instructed to give no indications whatsoever which patient is Dr. Starr.
He leads Martin the the first room, where he is to interview "Bonnie"...
Story #1 - "Frozen Fear"
Bonnie and Walter are lovers, however Walter is married to the posessive heiress Ruth. Ruth is a practitioner of Voodoo, and after an argument over wanting a divorce from her, which she will not grant, Walter executes his plan to escape from her.
Walter surprises Ruth by showing her the large chest freezer (still something of a novelty in early 1970s Britain) he has bought for her and had installed in the cellar, she is overjoyed at the gift he has given her, but Walter says there is another surprise for her, when she asks what it is, he responds by bludgeoning her to death with an axe.
Hours pass, and Walter dismembers the body and wraps the individual pieces of it up in brown paper, before neatly packing them inside the freezer, where he hopes they will lay undiscovered for quite some time.
As he finishes off celaning up the murder scene, he notices Ruths Voodoo bracelet still left lying around, so he casually tosses it in the freezer along with the body parts, telling her to "rest in pieces".
The phone rings, and Walter tells Bonnie he has finished his task, Bonnie tells him she is coming, but they will need to take the body parts along with them when they escape, in order to dispose of them somewhere along the way. Walter isnt too pleased about this but goes along with the idea anyway.
He pours himself a stiff drink and sits down to wait for Bonnies arrival, when suddenly he hears a strange noise coming from the kitchen. He is terrified to see Ruths Dismembered head, still wrapped in brown paper, rolling by itself across the kitchen floor, stopping to glare at him ominously as it reaches the doorway. Walter throws his glass at the head, but the head suddenly vanishes. Walter, putting this down to a hallucination brought on by guilt, decides to go down and check to make sure he wasn't imagining things.
He cautiously makes his way down to the cellar, and is shocked to see the freezer lid open. When he looks in the freezer, Ruths dismembered arm shoots up and grabs him by the throat.
Bonnie arrives later, and calls out Walters name, but finds nothing in the house save for the broken glass and spilt drink on the kitchen floor, then, the cellar door creaks open ominously on its own.
She heads down there to see what is happening, but still doesn't find Walter anywhere. Morbid curiosity compels her to look in the freezer, and she finds herself looking at Walters dead body. She makes to go back upstairs, but finds Ruths severed but still breathing head staring back at her, she flees in terror but is set upon by Ruths other body parts. She tries to escape by going through another door, but finds it locked.
She grabs the axe that Walter used to kill and dismember his wife with and tries unsuccessfully to attack the various body parts as they crawl towards her, but she is unable to stop any of them. Suddenly, one of Ruths arms drops down from the rafters and grabs her face, so Bonnie begins wildly slashing at it with the axe....
Bonnie concludes her story by revealing that the police found her laying unconscious the following morning, and that they told her that she had strangled Walter. She says she tried to tell them about Ruth and her various body parts, but everything was gone. She then turns round and reveals a large ugly scar across her face, inflicted upon herself while she was slashing with the axe.
Outside the room, Dr. Martin diagnoses Bonnie as having an acute case of paranoid psychosis, to which Max shrugs his shoulders and moves him to the next room.
Bruno sits cross legged on the table, sewing imaginary cloth with an imaginary needle and thread. Dr. Martin asks him what he is doing, and Bruno begins his tale...
Story #2 - "The Weird Tailor"
Bruno (Barry Morse ) is a jewish tailor who has fallen on hard times. When the rent man comes calling, Bruno is unable to pay him, and instead offers to make him a suit, his offer is refused, and he is tol he has until Saturday morning to come up with the money or he will have to leave.
Bruno tells his wife the sad news, but then their spirits are uplifted when a man named simply "Smith" (Peter Cushing ) enters the shop and asks if Bruno can make him a suit.
Smith produces a bolt of strange cloth, which glows with an other worldly aura, and gives Bruno a set of very detailed instructions governing how the suit is to be made, and what times he can work on it, all of these times being in the early hours of the morning. Brun offers to take Smiths measurements but Smith explains that the suit is to be a surprise gift for his son, and that he needs it completing as soon as possible, promising to pay him £200 (still a lot of money in 1972) when he completes and delivers it to him on Friday morning.
Bruno spends four nights working slavishly on the garment, but manages to get it completed in time and delivers it himself to Smiths house.
Bruno finds Smiths house in darkness and a state of disrepair, which surprises him as Smith appeared to be a very wealthy man, Smith explains that he cannot pay him the £200 as promised, but will settle up with him afterwards. Bruno refuses to hand over the suit until he receives payment, but Smith assures him that there is nothing in the house worth taking, aside from a very rare one of a kind book of magic that he spent his entire fortune on. Bruno becomes angry and looks in one of the rooms to find a body in a coffin, he accuses Smith of being a murderer, but Smith points out that the body is that of his son, who died of natural causes some time ago, and the suit is made of a magical cloth which when he puts it on the body, his son will return to life.
Bruno refuses once again to hand over the suit without payment, but Smith pulls a revolver from his pocket and the two men fight, ending with the gun going off accidentally and killing Smith.
Bruno grabs the book of magic spells and flees the house.
His wife asks what is wrogn when he returns home, and he tells her that Smith was a fraud and to burn the suit because of its unnatural abilities, he says that he will sell the book and get the money that way. As he inspects the books contents, he notices that his wife hasnt fired up their boiler, meaning she is not burning the suit as he requested, she tells him that she thinks that if someone sees the suit on display in the window, that they will come in and buy it, so, to that end, she has dressed their mannequin, who she has named "Otto" in the suit. Bruno cries out in horror, but by then it is too late, Otto has come to life and begins rampaging through the shop, stopping to throttle Bruno.....
Bruno pleads with Dr. Martin to find and stop Otto, but Max coldly locks him back in his room and leads Martin to the next room.
Barbera ( Charlotte Rampling ) sits staring at herself in the mirror, and asks if Dr. Martin is the lawyer she had been asking for. He answers in the negative and introduces himself as a doctor. Barbera dismisses him, and says she has plenty of experience with the medical profession, having been in mental institutions before. Martin asks her to clarify but she says that all she needs is to be let out, what happened wasnt her fault and they should instead look for someone called "Lucy".....
Story #3 "Lucy Comes To Stay"
Barbera is brought home from another stay in a mental institution by her brother George (it is implied throughout the story that Barbera is a habitual drug user, which causes her to hallucinate and blame actions she carries out herself on someone called "Lucy") , she says she feels a lot better after her stay in hospital and that what happened will never happen again. When they arrive home, Barbera is told that they will have a live in carer, Nurse Higgins, to look after her until she gets back on her feet. She doesnt appreciate this one bit and resents the implication that she is an invalid and requires someone to look after her, and, more importantly, to act as a prison guard.
Later that night, Nurse Higgins is called away after a family emergency, and Barbera awakens to find herself alone in the house, so she immediately finds a hidden stash of drug and takes several of the little yellow pills. Lucy ( Britt Ekland) suddenly appears and says that she let herself in after tricking George and Nurse Higgins into leaving by making a fake telephone call from the garage. Lucy is very charismatic and forceful, and tells Barbera that they will need to work quickly if theyre going to escape. Barbera says she doesnt feel too good and Lucy conjectures that she has been taking "those pills" again, which Barbera denies, but Lucy says she knows when she is being lied to. Lucy and Barbera debate abut George wanting to keep Barbera sedated and submissive so that he can make off with the fortune left to Barbera by their late father. Lucy wins the argument and tells Barbera to get the £100 she had been saving for a new dress, so they can use it to rent a room somewhere and go into hiding. Lucy says she has everything planned, and they will leave that night, once George is asleep by stealing his car.
That night, while George is taking a phone call from Nurse Higgins to tell him that the family emergency was a fake, an unseen hand pours some sort of powder into his tea, which George then drinks and falls alseep.
Lucy wakes Barbera and tells her to pack, then she takes a pair of scissors and cuts the phone line, saying that they don't want Nurse Higgins calling the police before they've had a chance to get away.
Barbera once again takes some pills form her hidden stash and swears that she wont take any more when Lucy catches her with them. Lucy accuses her of always choosing drugs over everything else, and not owning up to the fact that she secretly hates both Lucy and George. Lucy gets angry and leaves when Barbera says she cant get through the day without taking the pills, so Barbera follows her, and runs into Nurse Higgins who has just got back. They go through to the study and there they find George slumped in his chair dead, with a pair of scissors sticking out of his chest.
Nurse Higgins tries to call for an ambulance but finds the phone dead, so she follows Barbera upstairs, only to have Lucy stab her in the chest as she reaches the top.
Lucy tells Barbera she is now free of all of them...
Barbera tells Dr.Martin that Lucy is the one they want, not her, and Martin asks where they can find Lucy. Barbera turns to the mirror and, while pointing at herself says "shes right here!" before laughing insanely.
Dr.Martin wonders if Rutherford is playing games with him, and if Dr. Starr actually exists, being as that thus far, all of the patiens he has seen have names beginning with the letter "B", as in "B. Starr", bu tMax says he cannot say anything until Martin makes his choice, before leading him to the final patient.
Max explains that this one is a cut above the rest, as unlike the others, he his a Doctor by the name of Byron (Herbert Lom ).
Byron sits at his workbench making a model of a human arm, and introduces himself cordially as the tow men enter his room...
Story #4 "Mannequins Of Terror"
Byron explains to Martin that he is an accomplished neurosurgeon and Doctor of internal medicine, but of late he has found a new hobby, namely that of making anatomically correct human figurines, which he shows Martin a cabinet full of the almost robot like dolls. He goes on to explain that the figures are not only an accurate cosmetic likeness of the people he has modelled them on, but also internally identical, containing functional eyes, internal organs and a fully functioning brain. He says that is is his belief that one can will life into their likeness, in a similar manner to what God used to create Adam and Eve. Martin finds this concept ridiculous, and declares Byron to be mad when he produces a figure of himself. Byron says he intends to project his consciousness into the figure, and that Rutherford had him locked up.
Martin and Max leave Byron in peace, and Rutherford is informed that Martin is on his way down.
Martin lambastes Rutherford for his poor treatment of the patients, none of whom have had any attempt to make any kind of treatment to help them escape their delusions, but once again Rutherford insists that everyone he has just seen are completely and incurably insane.
Upstairs, Byron lays on his bed clutching the figure of himself in his hands and staring at it intensely.
Rutherford explains that the only real cure for all of them is a lobotomy, which although Martin agrees would be effective, it would also turn anyone it is used on into a mindless vegetable.
Byron still stares at the figure of himself, and suddenly a spark of life appears in its eyes, and the figure begins moving by itself. Byron places the figure on the floor and it begins walking towards the door.
Max enters Byrons room to drop off his dinner, and doesn't notice Byrons homonculus sneak out of the door and make its way into the dumb waiter used to bring the patients food up from the kitchen.
Rutherford asks Martin for his choice, but before he can answer, they are disturbed by a nurse bringing them some refreshments. Martin says he does not intend to choose, instead, he intends to return home and report the asylum for malpractice, as Rutherfords regieme is of no medical or psychological benefit to anyone concerned. Rutherford disputes Martins observations.
Unnoticed as the two men argue over physchiatric treatments for the patients, Byrons homonculus climbs on to Rutherfords desk, where it then picks up a surgical scalpel that Rutherford had left there, and stabs Rutherford in the back of the neck with it.
Martin rushes to Rutherfords aid, but he is dead. He looks up and sees Byrons homonculus walking away, at first he seizes it, but then throws it to the floor. The figure raises its arms defensively, but Martin stamps on it, he removes his foot to reveal still pulsing viscrea flowing out of the figures crushed torso.
Upstairs, Byron cries out in agony, and Max rushes to see what is wrong....
Martin flicks the switch on Rutherfords desk and runs upstairs to find Max horrified at what he has just seen. Martin enquires on Byrons condition, but Max tells him not to go in to the room, as Byrons body has been crushed, as though a weight fell upon him from a great height.
Martin concludes that "Byron" was Dr. Starr, Max asks him if that was his choice, to which Martin replies that it was obvious. Martin then makes for Max's office, saying he intends to call for help, Max makes to stop him, but he is too slow, and Martin enters the room, finding a body hidden under a blanket on the bed. The dead man has been strangled, and Max tells him that he died two days ago, and he hadnt had a chance to get rid of it yet. Martin asks who he was, and is told that the mans name was "Max". Horrified, Martin realises that "Max" is actually Dr. Starr, and that he has killed the real Max and replaced him, as he tries to escape, Dr. Starr (Geoffrey Bayldon ) strangles him from behind with his stethoscope.
As Martin lays dying on the floor, Dr. Starr listens to his heart beat, and when it stops, he begins laughing like a maniac.
Another Doctor arrives for a job interview, and is greeted at the door by "Max", who ushers him inside and then "closes the door to keep out the draughts, as Dr. Starr used to say", before giving one final evil grin to the camera....
Thursday 14 March 2013
Amicus Horror Anthologies - Tales From The Crypt (1972)
During the 60s and 70s, British film makers Amicus productions made a
series of films containing several short horror stories, linked by a
framing story.
Starring many big names (for the time), these low/medium budget films told several stories mainly concerning ghosts and the supernatural in a typically British way, and usually featured some sort of twist ending.
The fourth to be released was "Tales From The Crypt" in 1972, which oddly enough, did actually feature two stories ("Reflection of Death" and "Blind Alleys") that were adapted from the original Tales From The Crypt comic.
Framing Story
A group of tourists are taking a guided tour around some catacombs that contain the bodies of catholic martyrs who died during the reign of Henry VIII. The guide warns the group that the catacombs are dangerous, and they should all remain together, however five group members (Joan Collins , Ian Hendry , David Markham , Robin Phillips and Nigel Patrick ) become separated from the rest when Joanne Clayton (Collins) finds that she has lost her broach, which is quickly found lying on the floor by Carl Maitland (Hendry).
They follow a tunnel, and enter a torchlit room that was previously hidden by a sliding stone door, which is a dead end. As they try to go back the way they came, the door slides shut, and the robed crypt keeper (Ralph Richardson ) says that there is no way out via that door, and they should sit, as they are there for a purpose.
He asks them why they came to the catacombs, and all of them say they don't know exactly why they came, they just felt compelled to in some fashion, he then asks them what their plans are when they eventually leave....
Story #1 "....and All Through The House"
Its Christmas eve in the Clayton household. The house is all trimmed up and full of festive cheer, that is until Joanne (Collins) batters her husband to death with a fire poker.After she gleefully retrieves his expensive life insurance policy documents from the hidden safe, she is stopped in her tracks before she can dispose of the body by the sound of her daughter Carol calling her form her bedroom. Carol asks if Santa has been yet, and she replies in the negative, and tells her to go to sleep otherwise Santa wont come.
Back downstairs she works feverishly to clean up the bloody mess and dispose of the body, stopping only to open her present from her late husband, which contains a broach (the same one she momentarily lost earlier).
The carol singing on the radio is suddenly interrupted by an emergency news announcement saying that a homicidal maniac from the nearby lunatic asylum has escaped, and is suspected to be prowling the area wearing a Santa Claus outfit.
Joanne continues cleaning up the murder scene, while outside, a man wearing a Santa outfit cases the house, Joanne notices him, and makes to call the police, but stops when she realises that if the police come, they will find her husbands corpse and know she killed him, so instead she locks all the doors and windows, just as the leering evil Santa glares at her through the window.
She manages to drag the body through to the cellar and dumps it down the stairs, making it look like her husband fell down them and died in an accident.
Just as she is satisfied that she has disposed of all the evidence, she notices that Carols bedroom door is open, and that Carol is out of bed. Carol has sneaked downstairs and let "Santa" in, the maniac then barges in to the house and chases Joanne for a short while before strangling her to death...
Joanne clutches at her throat and vehemently denies she has any intention of killing her husband, to which the crypt keeper coolly replies "hadn't you?".
Next, he asks Carl what he was doing, he replies he was on his way home to see his wife and children, the crypt keeper asks him what he was going to do then....
Story #2 "Reflection Of Death"
Carl Maitland (Hendry) packs his bags and leaves, telling his wife he is going away on business, she asks him if he cant leave it till the morning but he insists he must go now and he doesn't know when he will be back, he then bids his wife and children goodbye.
In reality, Maitland is abandoning his family to run away with his mistress Susan, and has no intention of returning. He goes straight round to her flat, where she has already had all of her furniture taken away in preparation for their escape. They drive away into the night, but Carl is showing signs of tiredness so Susan offers to drive for a while to let him get a bit of sleep.
He wakes from a bad dream, and their car is immediately involved in an accident, Carl blacks out when he hits his head as the car careens off the road and over a cliff.
Waking to find himself thrown clear of the smoking wreck, his immediate first concern is for Susan, but he can find no trace of her anywhere. Seeing that he seems to have been burned, he heads back up to the road way, where he firstly scares a tramp, then he tries unsuccessfully to thumb a lift.
He eventually makes it back home on his own, but is staggered to see his wife embracing another man, when he knocks on the door, his wife answers, then promptly screams and slams the door in his face, he then notices that the name tag under the doorbell reads "Wilson" and not "Maitland".
He makes his way on foot to Susans flat, hoping to get some answers there. When she answers the door, she seems oddly vacant, and doesn't recognise him, he even has to tell her who he is, to which she replies that it cant be Carl. He asks where she has been, and then notices that all her furniture has been brought back to her flat. He demands to know what is going on, but Susan begs him to go away. After he turns on the lights, he notices Susan is holding a white cane, and she says that she had the furniture brought back after the crash, when she was blinded, and when Carl was killed, two years ago.
Carl is outraged and says he doesn't believe it, but when he sees his reflection in the glass topped table, he finds himself looking into his own rotting corpse face..he screams.. and wakes up in the car from having a bad dream, the car is immediately involved in an accident, Carl blacks out when he hits his head as the car careens off the road and over a cliff..........
Carl looks both guilty and confused, and the crypt keeper asks him if that is why he is in such a hurry, he wants to abandon his wife and children. Carl denies he is going to do that, and asks how the crypt keeper knows, but he once again assures them he has a purpose.
James Elliot (Phillips) asks the crypt keeper what sort of game he is playing, and what he wants of them. The crypt keeper merely says that he wants to show them something that they will learn from, and something they must know, James says he doesn't want to, but is told he must....
Story #3 "Poetic Justice"
Arthur Grimsdyke (Peter Cushing ) is a kindly old man who lives alone save for his beloved pet dogs. He enjoys entertaining the local children in his home, and the local children love to hear his stories and like the toys he gives them that he has repaired after finding them at his job as a bin man for the local council.
Edward Elliot and his son James live over the road from Mr. Grimsdyke, and both of them dislike him intensely, simply because they want to buy his house to sell on to make money from their property development business. Mr. Grimsdyke flatly refuses to sell, and says that he wants to remain in the house he and his late wife shared until the day he dies. James, being more mean spirited and ruthless than his father, hatches a plan to force Mr. Grimsdyke to sell them his house for a knock down price.
That night, James digs up one of their neighbours prized rose gardens, which immediately gets blamed on Mr. Grimsdykes dogs, resulting in them being confiscated by the police, despite Mr. Grimsdykes pleadings, which fall on deaf ears.
Mr Grimsdyke uses a ouija board to communicate with the spirit of his late wife, which spells out the word "DANGER", leaving him confused as to who the danger is to, he assumes it means one of the children.
The next part of James plan sees Mr. Grimsdyke being sacked from his job by using their connections with their local councillor to imply that he is too old and infirm to carry on his job, and that they can simply get a younger man in to do the job cheaper. The councillor says that if they do sack him, he will lose his pension, but agrees to get rid of him regardless when James points out that it will save the council a large amount of money.
Mr Grimsdyke is overjoyed when one of his dogs returns to him, but this annoys James even more, so he further twists the knife by inviting the local childrens parents round and casually suggesting to them that Mr. Grimsdyke is a child molester and that his house is filthy and unkempt, the immediate consequence of which is that all the children are banned from seeing or indeed having anything to do with the man they saw as a grandfartherly figure.
James surmises that all they need is one more thing to make Mr Grimsdyke lose all hope and sell up to them, and with valentines day coming up, he has just the thing.
On valentines day, Mr. Grimsdyke receives a large stack of mail, all of which are valentines cards. He assumes that people are being kind to him, but is saddened that when he opens them up, all the cards contain horrible verses, suggesting that everyone hates him and that he should kill himself. Mr Grimsdyke finally breaks down crying.
A week passes, and Grimsdykes dog has been howling for days on end, which annoys both James and Edward, however Edward notes that he has not seen Mr. Grimdyke since valentines day. The rush over to his house to see if he is alright, and find the door open. Once inside, they note that the house is clean and spotless, unlike the rumours they had been spreading about the old man. They hear a creaking noise coming from the back room, and James finds that Mr. Grimsdyke has hung himself.
At the funeral, it is revealed that Edward paid for it all, but both he and James look guilty as people say nice things about the late Mr. Grimsdyke.
A year passes, and James finds some leftover valentines cards in his desk drawer, which he immediately burns. Edward asks what he is doing, and James says that it is a year since Mr. Grimsdyke killed himself, which both of them still very obviously feel guilty about.
At the graveyard, Mr. Grimsdykes corpse rises out of the ground, and makes its way to the Elliot house, where it creeps up and surprises James as he works late into the night.
The next morning, Edward comes downstairs and finds James slumped over his desk. He assumes he is simply asleep until he sees copious amounts of blood splattered around and a note written in blood on the desk.
The note reads "Happy Valentines day!, You were mean and cruel, right from the start, now you really have no..." He then cries out in horror as James' still beating heart plops out when he unfolds the paper further.....
James admits the whole thing is true, he didn't like Mr. Grimsdyke, but makes no apology for what happened.
Ralph Jason (Richard Greene) asks what he is doing there....
Story #4 "..Wish you were here"
Ralph Jason is a greedy and ruthless businessman, who after a series of bad investments finds himself on the verge of bankruptcy. He elects not to declare bankrupt and instead tells his wife they are going to have to sell some of their collection of art treasures form around the world to pay off the money he owes. She says she doesnt want to, but understands the need to, and she points out that a chinese statuette that they have says on its base that it will grant three wishes to whomever owns it, but to be careful what one wishes for.
Jason laughs off the fantastic notion, but his wife, saying that it cant hurt, grasps the statue and wishes for lots and lots of money. Just then, Ralphs solicitor calls and says that Ralph has inherited a ton of money from somewhere, and he needs to see him right away. Ralph speeds off in his car immediately, but is followed by a man in black riding a motorbike. As the biker gets closer, Ralph notices in his rear view mirror that the biker is actually death himself, and the shock causes a road accident, in which Ralph is killed.
the solicitor, a man named Charles, is the first to break the bad news to Ralphs wife, she becomes hysterical and tells Charles about the magic statue, he doesnt believe a word of it, but she insists on making another wish. She wishes that Ralph were back here with her right now, exactly as he was just before the accident.
Their front door swings open, and a team of undertakers fetch in Ralphs body in a coffin, and explains that it wasn't the car accident that killed him, it was a heart attack, so he is still dead, even though she got her wish for him to be there with her exactly as he was before the accident.
They crack open the coffin and find Ralph embalmed inside it, Charles leaves, but Ralphs wife, thinking she is being clever, uses the last wish to wish for Ralph to be be alive now, full of life, forever. Ralph suddenly comes back to life, but is screaming in agony. Charles rushes back in and seeing the reanimated Ralph, he realises that the body has been embalmed, and that the formaldehyde inside him would be causing Ralph untold agony, and would continue to do so forever, being as that his wife wished for him never to die again.
Ralph pleads with his wife to do something, so she grabs one of the antique swords mounted on the wall and proceeds to try and kill Ralph with it, but only succeeds in chopping his now immortal body up into pieces.
Charles points out that because of his wifes wish, Ralph will be alive and suffeirng forever....
Major William Rogers (Nigel Patrick) demands to know what people are seeing, but the crypt keeper says he only needs to be concerned about what he will see........
Story #5 "Blind Alleys"
Rogers has been appointed to the position of superintendent of a care home for elderly blind men. Right from the moment he walks in with his beloved pet Belgian Shepard dog, it becomes obvious that he cares little for the welfare of the residents or the staff in the home.
In order to save money, and thus provide himself with a large income and luxurious living conditions, he makes several harsh cutbacks. the homes heating system is hardly used, even in winter, and the residents food is reduced to being little more than cheap and tasteless slops.
One of the residents, Carter (Patrick Magee ) becomes the spokesman for the residents. He pleads with Rogers to turn the heating on, or at least provide them with warm blankets, explaining that blind peoples other senses are sharpened when they lose their sight, so thus they feel the cold, and taste bad food worse. Rogers is unmoved, and tells Carter that having many years experience as an officer in the army qualifies him to run the place efficiently, and also reminds Carter that "in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king!".
Soon enough, the residents begin to fall ill one by one from lack of food and from various cold related illnesses. Carters friend Greenwood is deathly ill, so Carter asks Rogers for a doctor, Rogers doesn't see the point but agrees to take a look for himself, but by the time they get there, Greenwood has died.
The residents, led by Carter, begin to plot revenge. Using leftover food scraps, they lure Rogers dog into the cellar and lock it in a room, then they ambush rogers himself and lock him down there in the room next to where they are keeping the dog.
Days pass, and save for Carters occasional taunts through the door, and the incessant barking of the starving dog, all Rogers hears is the sounds of the residents building something from the wood scraps kept down there.
Eventually, the door to Rogers cell swings open, and Rogers emerges to see that the residents have built some king of maze. He follows the path, which seems to lead to an open door, but just as he reaches it, it slams shut in his face. he notices the stairs lit up and heads towards them, but finds his path blocked by a wire fence. He continues following the path as best as he can in the dim light, and finds that his only way forward is to squeeze through a section of the maze where the wall is studded with razor blades. He makes it through with a few wounds but otherwise unharmed, but he finds himself at a dead end. Suddenly, a door in front of him swings open, and his beloved dog, who has gone mad from starvation, flies out and runs towards him growling and slavering at the mouth, Rogers turns to run, but remembers the way back is through the razor blades, which he cant possibly get through quick enough, he hesitates for a second, and Carter throws a light switch, plunging the cellar into total darkness. Roger screams as the dog tears him to shreds.
Rogers, unimpressed, demands to know why they are being held up, as he is on his way to a new job. The crypt keeper tells them all they are now free to go, and a stone door slides open, revealing a bright light beyond. Ralph rushes to the exit, but stops when he sees that they aren't where they think the are. he asks what this place is, and the crypt keeper explains that beyond the door lies a place where people go who have died unrepentant of their misdeeds in life, he wasn't warning them after all, he was merely showing them the reason why they have been damned to hell for all eternity.
Ralph falls screaming from the precipice into the lake of fire below, and the others, realising there is nothing they can do, silently file through and drop into the pit of hell.
His job done, the crypt keeper returns to his throne, and asks "who is next?", before turning to the audience and saying "perhaps..you?".....
Starring many big names (for the time), these low/medium budget films told several stories mainly concerning ghosts and the supernatural in a typically British way, and usually featured some sort of twist ending.
The fourth to be released was "Tales From The Crypt" in 1972, which oddly enough, did actually feature two stories ("Reflection of Death" and "Blind Alleys") that were adapted from the original Tales From The Crypt comic.
Framing Story
A group of tourists are taking a guided tour around some catacombs that contain the bodies of catholic martyrs who died during the reign of Henry VIII. The guide warns the group that the catacombs are dangerous, and they should all remain together, however five group members (Joan Collins , Ian Hendry , David Markham , Robin Phillips and Nigel Patrick ) become separated from the rest when Joanne Clayton (Collins) finds that she has lost her broach, which is quickly found lying on the floor by Carl Maitland (Hendry).
They follow a tunnel, and enter a torchlit room that was previously hidden by a sliding stone door, which is a dead end. As they try to go back the way they came, the door slides shut, and the robed crypt keeper (Ralph Richardson ) says that there is no way out via that door, and they should sit, as they are there for a purpose.
He asks them why they came to the catacombs, and all of them say they don't know exactly why they came, they just felt compelled to in some fashion, he then asks them what their plans are when they eventually leave....
Story #1 "....and All Through The House"
Its Christmas eve in the Clayton household. The house is all trimmed up and full of festive cheer, that is until Joanne (Collins) batters her husband to death with a fire poker.After she gleefully retrieves his expensive life insurance policy documents from the hidden safe, she is stopped in her tracks before she can dispose of the body by the sound of her daughter Carol calling her form her bedroom. Carol asks if Santa has been yet, and she replies in the negative, and tells her to go to sleep otherwise Santa wont come.
Back downstairs she works feverishly to clean up the bloody mess and dispose of the body, stopping only to open her present from her late husband, which contains a broach (the same one she momentarily lost earlier).
The carol singing on the radio is suddenly interrupted by an emergency news announcement saying that a homicidal maniac from the nearby lunatic asylum has escaped, and is suspected to be prowling the area wearing a Santa Claus outfit.
Joanne continues cleaning up the murder scene, while outside, a man wearing a Santa outfit cases the house, Joanne notices him, and makes to call the police, but stops when she realises that if the police come, they will find her husbands corpse and know she killed him, so instead she locks all the doors and windows, just as the leering evil Santa glares at her through the window.
She manages to drag the body through to the cellar and dumps it down the stairs, making it look like her husband fell down them and died in an accident.
Just as she is satisfied that she has disposed of all the evidence, she notices that Carols bedroom door is open, and that Carol is out of bed. Carol has sneaked downstairs and let "Santa" in, the maniac then barges in to the house and chases Joanne for a short while before strangling her to death...
Joanne clutches at her throat and vehemently denies she has any intention of killing her husband, to which the crypt keeper coolly replies "hadn't you?".
Next, he asks Carl what he was doing, he replies he was on his way home to see his wife and children, the crypt keeper asks him what he was going to do then....
Story #2 "Reflection Of Death"
Carl Maitland (Hendry) packs his bags and leaves, telling his wife he is going away on business, she asks him if he cant leave it till the morning but he insists he must go now and he doesn't know when he will be back, he then bids his wife and children goodbye.
In reality, Maitland is abandoning his family to run away with his mistress Susan, and has no intention of returning. He goes straight round to her flat, where she has already had all of her furniture taken away in preparation for their escape. They drive away into the night, but Carl is showing signs of tiredness so Susan offers to drive for a while to let him get a bit of sleep.
He wakes from a bad dream, and their car is immediately involved in an accident, Carl blacks out when he hits his head as the car careens off the road and over a cliff.
Waking to find himself thrown clear of the smoking wreck, his immediate first concern is for Susan, but he can find no trace of her anywhere. Seeing that he seems to have been burned, he heads back up to the road way, where he firstly scares a tramp, then he tries unsuccessfully to thumb a lift.
He eventually makes it back home on his own, but is staggered to see his wife embracing another man, when he knocks on the door, his wife answers, then promptly screams and slams the door in his face, he then notices that the name tag under the doorbell reads "Wilson" and not "Maitland".
He makes his way on foot to Susans flat, hoping to get some answers there. When she answers the door, she seems oddly vacant, and doesn't recognise him, he even has to tell her who he is, to which she replies that it cant be Carl. He asks where she has been, and then notices that all her furniture has been brought back to her flat. He demands to know what is going on, but Susan begs him to go away. After he turns on the lights, he notices Susan is holding a white cane, and she says that she had the furniture brought back after the crash, when she was blinded, and when Carl was killed, two years ago.
Carl is outraged and says he doesn't believe it, but when he sees his reflection in the glass topped table, he finds himself looking into his own rotting corpse face..he screams.. and wakes up in the car from having a bad dream, the car is immediately involved in an accident, Carl blacks out when he hits his head as the car careens off the road and over a cliff..........
Carl looks both guilty and confused, and the crypt keeper asks him if that is why he is in such a hurry, he wants to abandon his wife and children. Carl denies he is going to do that, and asks how the crypt keeper knows, but he once again assures them he has a purpose.
James Elliot (Phillips) asks the crypt keeper what sort of game he is playing, and what he wants of them. The crypt keeper merely says that he wants to show them something that they will learn from, and something they must know, James says he doesn't want to, but is told he must....
Story #3 "Poetic Justice"
Arthur Grimsdyke (Peter Cushing ) is a kindly old man who lives alone save for his beloved pet dogs. He enjoys entertaining the local children in his home, and the local children love to hear his stories and like the toys he gives them that he has repaired after finding them at his job as a bin man for the local council.
Edward Elliot and his son James live over the road from Mr. Grimsdyke, and both of them dislike him intensely, simply because they want to buy his house to sell on to make money from their property development business. Mr. Grimsdyke flatly refuses to sell, and says that he wants to remain in the house he and his late wife shared until the day he dies. James, being more mean spirited and ruthless than his father, hatches a plan to force Mr. Grimsdyke to sell them his house for a knock down price.
That night, James digs up one of their neighbours prized rose gardens, which immediately gets blamed on Mr. Grimsdykes dogs, resulting in them being confiscated by the police, despite Mr. Grimsdykes pleadings, which fall on deaf ears.
Mr Grimsdyke uses a ouija board to communicate with the spirit of his late wife, which spells out the word "DANGER", leaving him confused as to who the danger is to, he assumes it means one of the children.
The next part of James plan sees Mr. Grimsdyke being sacked from his job by using their connections with their local councillor to imply that he is too old and infirm to carry on his job, and that they can simply get a younger man in to do the job cheaper. The councillor says that if they do sack him, he will lose his pension, but agrees to get rid of him regardless when James points out that it will save the council a large amount of money.
Mr Grimsdyke is overjoyed when one of his dogs returns to him, but this annoys James even more, so he further twists the knife by inviting the local childrens parents round and casually suggesting to them that Mr. Grimsdyke is a child molester and that his house is filthy and unkempt, the immediate consequence of which is that all the children are banned from seeing or indeed having anything to do with the man they saw as a grandfartherly figure.
James surmises that all they need is one more thing to make Mr Grimsdyke lose all hope and sell up to them, and with valentines day coming up, he has just the thing.
On valentines day, Mr. Grimsdyke receives a large stack of mail, all of which are valentines cards. He assumes that people are being kind to him, but is saddened that when he opens them up, all the cards contain horrible verses, suggesting that everyone hates him and that he should kill himself. Mr Grimsdyke finally breaks down crying.
A week passes, and Grimsdykes dog has been howling for days on end, which annoys both James and Edward, however Edward notes that he has not seen Mr. Grimdyke since valentines day. The rush over to his house to see if he is alright, and find the door open. Once inside, they note that the house is clean and spotless, unlike the rumours they had been spreading about the old man. They hear a creaking noise coming from the back room, and James finds that Mr. Grimsdyke has hung himself.
At the funeral, it is revealed that Edward paid for it all, but both he and James look guilty as people say nice things about the late Mr. Grimsdyke.
A year passes, and James finds some leftover valentines cards in his desk drawer, which he immediately burns. Edward asks what he is doing, and James says that it is a year since Mr. Grimsdyke killed himself, which both of them still very obviously feel guilty about.
At the graveyard, Mr. Grimsdykes corpse rises out of the ground, and makes its way to the Elliot house, where it creeps up and surprises James as he works late into the night.
The next morning, Edward comes downstairs and finds James slumped over his desk. He assumes he is simply asleep until he sees copious amounts of blood splattered around and a note written in blood on the desk.
The note reads "Happy Valentines day!, You were mean and cruel, right from the start, now you really have no..." He then cries out in horror as James' still beating heart plops out when he unfolds the paper further.....
James admits the whole thing is true, he didn't like Mr. Grimsdyke, but makes no apology for what happened.
Ralph Jason (Richard Greene) asks what he is doing there....
Story #4 "..Wish you were here"
Ralph Jason is a greedy and ruthless businessman, who after a series of bad investments finds himself on the verge of bankruptcy. He elects not to declare bankrupt and instead tells his wife they are going to have to sell some of their collection of art treasures form around the world to pay off the money he owes. She says she doesnt want to, but understands the need to, and she points out that a chinese statuette that they have says on its base that it will grant three wishes to whomever owns it, but to be careful what one wishes for.
Jason laughs off the fantastic notion, but his wife, saying that it cant hurt, grasps the statue and wishes for lots and lots of money. Just then, Ralphs solicitor calls and says that Ralph has inherited a ton of money from somewhere, and he needs to see him right away. Ralph speeds off in his car immediately, but is followed by a man in black riding a motorbike. As the biker gets closer, Ralph notices in his rear view mirror that the biker is actually death himself, and the shock causes a road accident, in which Ralph is killed.
the solicitor, a man named Charles, is the first to break the bad news to Ralphs wife, she becomes hysterical and tells Charles about the magic statue, he doesnt believe a word of it, but she insists on making another wish. She wishes that Ralph were back here with her right now, exactly as he was just before the accident.
Their front door swings open, and a team of undertakers fetch in Ralphs body in a coffin, and explains that it wasn't the car accident that killed him, it was a heart attack, so he is still dead, even though she got her wish for him to be there with her exactly as he was before the accident.
They crack open the coffin and find Ralph embalmed inside it, Charles leaves, but Ralphs wife, thinking she is being clever, uses the last wish to wish for Ralph to be be alive now, full of life, forever. Ralph suddenly comes back to life, but is screaming in agony. Charles rushes back in and seeing the reanimated Ralph, he realises that the body has been embalmed, and that the formaldehyde inside him would be causing Ralph untold agony, and would continue to do so forever, being as that his wife wished for him never to die again.
Ralph pleads with his wife to do something, so she grabs one of the antique swords mounted on the wall and proceeds to try and kill Ralph with it, but only succeeds in chopping his now immortal body up into pieces.
Charles points out that because of his wifes wish, Ralph will be alive and suffeirng forever....
Major William Rogers (Nigel Patrick) demands to know what people are seeing, but the crypt keeper says he only needs to be concerned about what he will see........
Story #5 "Blind Alleys"
Rogers has been appointed to the position of superintendent of a care home for elderly blind men. Right from the moment he walks in with his beloved pet Belgian Shepard dog, it becomes obvious that he cares little for the welfare of the residents or the staff in the home.
In order to save money, and thus provide himself with a large income and luxurious living conditions, he makes several harsh cutbacks. the homes heating system is hardly used, even in winter, and the residents food is reduced to being little more than cheap and tasteless slops.
One of the residents, Carter (Patrick Magee ) becomes the spokesman for the residents. He pleads with Rogers to turn the heating on, or at least provide them with warm blankets, explaining that blind peoples other senses are sharpened when they lose their sight, so thus they feel the cold, and taste bad food worse. Rogers is unmoved, and tells Carter that having many years experience as an officer in the army qualifies him to run the place efficiently, and also reminds Carter that "in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king!".
Soon enough, the residents begin to fall ill one by one from lack of food and from various cold related illnesses. Carters friend Greenwood is deathly ill, so Carter asks Rogers for a doctor, Rogers doesn't see the point but agrees to take a look for himself, but by the time they get there, Greenwood has died.
The residents, led by Carter, begin to plot revenge. Using leftover food scraps, they lure Rogers dog into the cellar and lock it in a room, then they ambush rogers himself and lock him down there in the room next to where they are keeping the dog.
Days pass, and save for Carters occasional taunts through the door, and the incessant barking of the starving dog, all Rogers hears is the sounds of the residents building something from the wood scraps kept down there.
Eventually, the door to Rogers cell swings open, and Rogers emerges to see that the residents have built some king of maze. He follows the path, which seems to lead to an open door, but just as he reaches it, it slams shut in his face. he notices the stairs lit up and heads towards them, but finds his path blocked by a wire fence. He continues following the path as best as he can in the dim light, and finds that his only way forward is to squeeze through a section of the maze where the wall is studded with razor blades. He makes it through with a few wounds but otherwise unharmed, but he finds himself at a dead end. Suddenly, a door in front of him swings open, and his beloved dog, who has gone mad from starvation, flies out and runs towards him growling and slavering at the mouth, Rogers turns to run, but remembers the way back is through the razor blades, which he cant possibly get through quick enough, he hesitates for a second, and Carter throws a light switch, plunging the cellar into total darkness. Roger screams as the dog tears him to shreds.
Rogers, unimpressed, demands to know why they are being held up, as he is on his way to a new job. The crypt keeper tells them all they are now free to go, and a stone door slides open, revealing a bright light beyond. Ralph rushes to the exit, but stops when he sees that they aren't where they think the are. he asks what this place is, and the crypt keeper explains that beyond the door lies a place where people go who have died unrepentant of their misdeeds in life, he wasn't warning them after all, he was merely showing them the reason why they have been damned to hell for all eternity.
Ralph falls screaming from the precipice into the lake of fire below, and the others, realising there is nothing they can do, silently file through and drop into the pit of hell.
His job done, the crypt keeper returns to his throne, and asks "who is next?", before turning to the audience and saying "perhaps..you?".....
Wednesday 13 March 2013
Amicus Horror Anthologies - The House That Dripped Blood (1971)
During the 60s and 70s, British film makers Amicus productions made a
series of films containing several short horror stories, linked by a
framing story.
Starring many big names (for the time), these low/medium budget films told several stories mainly concerning ghosts and the supernatural in a typically British way, and usually featured some sort of twist ending.
The third of these was "The House That Dripped Blood", released in 1971.
Framing Story
Detective Inspector Holloway (John Bennett ) of Scotland Yard is assigned to investigate the mysterious and sudden disappearance of popular actor Paul Henderson (Jon Pertwee ). Initially visiting the house that Henderson was renting from a Mr. A.J Stoker , he finds the gates locked and barred, so he calls in and introduces himself at the local police station. Holloway resents being pulled away from more important duties to, as he puts it "chase around after temperamental film stars".
Sergeant Martin, the local bobby who reported the disappearance, admits that although he filed the report as quickly as he could, he did leave out an important part, namely that this wasn't the first time that something had happened to people who had lived in that house. He hands Holloway a file containing reports of previous cases relating to Mr.Stokers mysterious house, and they begin to read together....
Story #1 - "Method For Murder"
Pulp novel writer Charles Hillyer (Denholm Elliott ) and his wife Alice rent the property from Mr. Stoker. Alice doesn't like the houses "olde worlde" atmosphere, but Charles loves it due to is extensive library containing many of his favourite classic horror novels, and the fact that he needs some peace and quiet to finish writing his new book (he is suffering from writers block due to the hustle and bustle of living in London).
His creative juices soon start flowing, and he begins writing a story centred around a character called "Dominic", who is a psychopathic murderer who escaped from an insane asylum and stalks the countryside looking for victims. He even presents his wife with a picture he has drawn of the character, saying he was inspired that very afternoon while staring out of the window.
Over the next few days, Charles works away feverishly on his book, becoming more and more obsessed with the character of Dominic, saying that he feels as though the character is actually a real person.
That night, as he takes a break from writing to smoke a cigarette, Charles sees what he believes is "Dominic" standing at the top of the stairs reflected in a mirror, but when he turns round, there is no one there. He pours himself a stiff drink but is startled by the sound of an evil laugh coming from upstairs, but when he checks on it, once again, no one is there. He returns to his study and sees that the picture he drew of "Dominic" has gone missing, and decides to call it a night after Alice comes home and startles him.
The drawing mysteriously reappears on his desk the next day, but as he watches the screwed up picture float away when he throws it in the nearby river, he is terrified to see a ghostly looking "Dominic" fish the paper out of the water while grinning at him evilly.
Clearly shaken up, he returns home and tells Alice what he has seen, but she tells him he is working too hard and should take a rest from writing, but Charles refuses and says he must get his book finished.
That night, while once again working late, he looks up and sees the ghostly form of "Dominic" staring at him through the window, he cries out in terror and flees the room, causing Alice to come and see what is wrong. He explains that "Dominic" is in his study, but when she enters the room, there is no one there, despite Charles insistence that he can still see him, firstly sat in his reclining chair, and then hiding in a dark corner. Alice once again implores him to take a break from writing, and tells him to go and see a doctor, he reluctantly agrees. The doctor/psychiatrist he sees doesn't offer much by way of help, except to tell him he needs to see him a few more times.
Charles once again gets writers block, and explains to Alice that the psychiatrist says that it appears that he is letting himself become too overtaken by the character of "Dominic", in many ways using the character to act out some of his own dark fantasies.
While Alice is in the kitchen, Charles wakes from a brief sleep to see "Dominic" seemingly strangling her, he rushes to her aid, but finds her alone and terrified of him. He asks what happened and she says that it was Charles who was strangling her. She calls for his psychiatrist to come and see him immediately, but the psychiatrist insists once again that "Dominic" is actually an extension of Charles darker side, who bears some hostility to his wife and the world around him, and like an actor that has become too immersed in a part, he is beginning to act out the role of "Dominic" for real.
Whilst attending another session at the psychiatrists offices, Charles explains that he finds it odd that despite writing about murders for years, that he should suddenly start to want to commit murder himself, when he doesn't get a response to his statement, Charles looks up and sees "Dominic" standing over the psychiatrists dead body, and he laughs maniacally as Charles screams in horror.
Alice paces around their home worriedly, when suddenly "Dominic" enters the room, instead of being terrified, she embraces him and asks if everything went according to plan. "Dominic" removes his mask and wig and says everything went fine, Alice says that with Charles out of the way, they can run away together and make a new life living off the money made from Charles's books. The phone rings and Alice is informed that Charles has been found dead, strangled, alongside the psychiatrist. Shocked, she asks "Dominic" what has happened, as the plan was for it to be made to look as though Charles had gone insane and killed the psychiatrist. "Richard", as she now calls him, says that he killed both of them because it felt "better that way", but Alice says that it was stupid because the police will now be looking for a killer, perhaps even "Richard" himself. "Richard" says he doesn't know anyone by that name, as he is called "Dominic", before he strangles Alice to death.....
Holloway closes the file and holds his head in his hands as Martin explains that they found Dominic/Richard stood over Alice's corpse, laughing like a loon. He adds that it is not the man that is at fault, but the house itself, as it has something wrong about it. Holloway dismisses the notion as being absurd, and says he wants facts, not fantasies. Martin proceeds to tell him the tale of a Mr. Grayson, another tenant of the house...
Story #2 - "Waxworks"
Phillip Grayson (Peter Cushing ) is a former stockbroker who has retired to the country, and is now looking forward to a nice quiet life of leisure.Grayson is a lonely man, who although he never married, he is obsessed with a woman he knew in his youth, and spends a lot of time thinking about her.
One day while exploring the local town, he goes into a wax work museum, and is astonished to find that amongst the assorted poor quality exhibits, one of the wax figures resembles his lost love, seated in an alcove with the decapitated head of a man resting before her on a silver platter.
The proprietor of the establishment calls her "Salome", and explains that she has a strange effect on people who see her, causing them to see all sorts of strange things as they look at the figure. He goes on to explain that he modeled the waxwork on his dead wife, who was herself a murderess who was executed by the state for her crimes after she killed his best friend.Clearly shaken, Grayson leaves the museum, telling the owner he will not be wanting to return. Although he tries to stop himself from thinking about it, he secretly yearns to return there, just so he can stare at the image of his lost love, even in his dreams he ends up going there and finds that the figure instead has had its head replaced with a bare skull.
He is woken from his daydream by the sudden arrival of his friend Neville (Joss Ackland ) at the door.
It is revealed that in the past, Neville and Grayson had a falling out over the very same woman that Grayson spends so much time thinking about, but they forgive each other, realising that neither of them could have had her.
While Grayson shows Neville around the town, they end up in the wax museum at Neville's insistence, where he is shocked to see the wax image of the woman they both loved, and he quickly becomes enchanted by her. Neville leaves for home the next day, but both men find themselves drawn back to the wax museum, where Grayson finds Neville stood gazing at "Salome", but manages to tear himself away. Later, Neville once again turns up at Graysons house and apologises for his behaviour, and says that there is something evil about the place, Grayson agrees with him and offers Neville a room for the night, but Neville says he must leave.
The next day, Neville calls him and says that no matter how hard he tries, he cannot bring himself to leave, and that he needs to go back to the museum, Grayson tells him not to go and to wait for him at his hotel, but when he gets there, Nevilles room is deserted. Grayson rushes to the museum, and to his horror, he finds Nevilles severed head now resting on Salomes platter. The museums proprietor approaches Grayson with an axe, and tells him that it was he who killed his friend, and framed his wife for the murder so that he could embalm her body and keep her to himself forever, and that over the years he has had to deal with many would be suitors to her image. There is a brief struggle, but finally the axe wielding mad man corners Grayson...
A young man enters the museum, and once again the proprietor launches into his monologue about the figure of Salome being beautiful, except now it is Graysons head on her platter.....
Holloway is getting bored of hearing Martins fantastical tales, but once again Martin insists that there is something rotten about the house which does things to everyone who lives in it. Holloway asks if Henderson was the next person to live there, but Martin tells him there was one other before him, but he doesn't know the full details of what happened. Holloway decides to visit Mr. Stoker to find out what happened and to ask for the keys so he can look around the place himself.
Stoker insists that he did try and warn people about the house, and is surprised that the policeman hasn't figured it out yet, still, he tells him the story of Mr. Reid and his daughter....
Story #4 - "Sweets To The Sweet"
Mr. Stoker shows widower John Reid (Christopher Lee ) and his young daughter around the house, when Reid complains that it is cold, Stoker sets the log fire going, causing Reids daughter to flee in terror, he explains that his daughter is scared of fire. Reid asks his solicitor to hire a child minder who can look after and teach his daughter while he is away on business, which eventually results in him hiring Mrs. Norton, a widow and former teacher. Mrs. Norton notices that Reid is very cold and uncaring towards his child, and finds that he doesn't even allow her to play with toys, or behave as one would expect a child to behave, even denying her the opportunity to go to school or play with other children. The child, whose name is Jane, once again demonstrates that she is scared of the fire, but Mrs. Norton manages to talk her out of her irrational fear, after assuring herself that Reid is not abusing the girl by burning her.
Over the next few days, Jane proves to be a very bright little girl, and Mrs. Norton asks for permission to buy her some toys to play with, Reid agrees on the condition that the toys are educational.
Mrs. Norton arrives the next day bearing gifts, but Jane is most excited by the doll she is given. Reid enters and seizes the doll, throwing it on the fire in front of the child, he then lambasts Mrs. Norton for buying it her, saying she is forbidden from owning dolls. Mrs. Norton says that Reid blames Jane for his wife dying, but Reid counters by saying he was actually glad his wife is dead, and that Mrs. Norton would not understand his reasons for being cold to the child.
That night, Jane sneaks out of her bedroom and goes into her fathers study, where she takes a large old book from one of the shelves and begins reading it. The next day, Mrs. Norton catches Jane reading from the book again and finds that the book itself is a volume containing information about witch craft and black magic.
She once again raises her concerns over the childs welfare with Mr. Reid, and accuses him of being scared of something, but just as he is about to answer, a power cut knocks out all the lights. Mr.Reid goes to get some candles, but finds they have all gone from the drawer where he kept them hidden, he goes to search for another stash of candles he keeps hidden, and finds that several are missing from the box. He notices Jane standing at the top of the stairs and angrily demands she tell him what she has done with them, but ends up slapping her face when she remains silent.
A phone call the next day sees Mr. Reid called away on business, but while he is talking, Jane collects a hand full of hair clippings from her fathers electric razor. As Reid conducts his business meeting, he suddenly collapses with violent chest pains, meanwhile back at home, Jane laughs childishly as she appears to be stabbing something with a hatpin, but is disturbed by Mrs. Norton insisting that she come with her for a walk as it is such a nice day, as they leave, Reids pain stops just as suddenly as it started.
Reid is woken in the middle of the night, once again struck down by chest pains, Mrs. Norton calls for a doctor in spite of Reid protests, but the doctor can find nothing wrong with him, putting it down to a simple case of indigestion.
Reid finally tells Mrs. Norton the truth, Jane, like her mother before her, is a witch, and she has made a wax doll in the image of her father, which she uses to torture him. Mrs. Norton doesn't believe him, but changes her mind as Reid begins screaming in agony again, and she turns round to see Jane clutching a crude wax image of her father. She tells Jane to hand over the doll, but Jane instead throws it on the fire, as the figure melts, Reid screams in agony, while Jane just grins.
Stoker tells Holloway that once again, it wasn't the mans fault, it was the house, but Holloway tells him he only deals in fact, not fiction, and demands to know the details of Paul Hendersons arrangement with him. Stoker says he tried to dissuade Henderson from renting the property, but as he insisted on having it, he let him rent it....
Story #4 "The Cloak"
Paul Henderson (Pertwee) is an actor who has a reputation for being somewhat temperamental and rude, seeing himself as being a great actor despite the fact that he has only really ever starred in a series of low budget, low quality films. His latest gig is playing a vampire in a low budget vampire film, which although he believes is beneath him, he accepts the role anyway.
Arriving in grandiose style at Mr. Stokers house, later than he arranged to meet him originally, he and his co star Carla (Ingrid Pitt ) find the house adequate for his needs. Stoker tries to warn him about the houses peculiarities, but Henderson laughs it off, citing himself as being an "expert on the occult".
On set, Henderson lambasts the low budget nature of the film, right down to poor quality sets and costumes, even physically damaging the props while extolling the virtues of "classic" horror films. Henderson rejects his vampire costume, and says he will supply his own, and luckily while he is in his dressing room, he finds a card advertising a costume shop nearby, which he visits.
In the shop, he asks the owner, a sinister looking man named Von Hartmann, if he has a "real vampires cloak", and attempts to impress the man with his name and supposed knowledge of the occult, which fails miserably. Von Hartmann produces a lead casket containing a very old and authentic looking cloak, lined with blood red silk and sporting a fine silver bat shaped clasp, which he says he can buy there and then for the tiny sum of 13 shillings. Henderson pays up immediately, and Von Hartmann says it is lucky he came, as he is closing down the shop, Henderson bids him farewell and leaves, to which Von Hartmann says that he can now "rest in peace".
On set again, Henderson begins to notice a few odd things happening whenever he puts the cloak on, for example he always feels a sudden chill when he wears it, and notices that he no longer has a reflection in the mirror, but, ever the professional, he wears the cloak while doing his scenes.
While filming a scene with Carla, it ends with the vampire biting his female victim, and, much to Carlas alarm, Henderson actually bites her, and he is given a warning from the director not to get too carried away with the role.
That night, he tries an experiment while standing in front of a mirror, he once again puts on the cloak, and notices his reflection has vanished, then, as the clock strikes midnight, he undergoes a horrifying transformation, he grows a pair of fangs, , his skin goes an ashen grey, and suddenly he finds himself floating above the ground, he quickly crashes back to the ground and takes off the cloak, hiding it in the cupboard under the stairs.
On the next shooting day, he apologises to Carla for his indiscretion, and is relieved to learn that none of the scenes they are doing that day involve him having to wear the cursed cloak.
Carla comes round for dinner, and while pouring drinks for them both, he notices that there is a newspaper story about Von Hartmann, whose body was found in his burnt out shop, apparently having been dead for years.
Henderson explains to Carla that Von Hartmann must have been a vampire, and the cloak caused him to become a vampire himself, so he says he is going to burn it, Carla tells him he is being stupid, and convinces him to wear the cloak to prove it has no power over him. He puts the cloak on just as the clock strikes midnight, and is relieved that nothing happens to him, but then notices that the cloak he is wearing isn't his, and Carla reveals she has the original one, and puts it on. Henderson tries to stop her, but she carries on regardless.
She reveals that the vampires loved his films so much, that they wanted him to become one of them forever, and she suddenly sports a pair of fangs and flies menacingly towards him, transforming into a bat as she draws nearer, Henderson screams in terror......
Holloway dismisses the tale as crazy nonsense, and demands Stoker hand over the keys to the house so he can have a poke around himself, but Stoker strongly advises against him going there alone, but Holloway insists, so Stoker hands them over.
By the time he gets to the house and lets himself in, it is dark, and because the house has no electricity connected to it due to it being vacant, he has to light a candle to see with while he walks around. Inside, the house is the same as it was while Henderson was living there. Finding nothing of interest upstairs, he descends to the cellar, where he finds a door chained and padlocked. He breaks open the lock and enters the chamber beyond, becoming startled when the door slams shut behind him, but he notices a new coffin in there with him. As the clock strikes midnight, the coffin opens, and Henderson, now a full fledged vampire, leaps out and attacks him. Holloway manages to stab Henderson through the heart with a broken piece of wood, which causes the vampire to fade away, leaving only the cloak behind, but then Holloway is attacked by Carla in bat form. With no way to escape the crypt, Holloway screams....
The next morning, Stoker stands outside the house. He turns to the audience and asks if we now understand that the house reflects the personality of the person or persons in it, and treats them accordingly. He says he hopes it finds a good tenant soon, and perhaps one of us would like it, because there is nothing to be afraid of, if you're the right kind of person......
Starring many big names (for the time), these low/medium budget films told several stories mainly concerning ghosts and the supernatural in a typically British way, and usually featured some sort of twist ending.
The third of these was "The House That Dripped Blood", released in 1971.
Framing Story
Detective Inspector Holloway (John Bennett ) of Scotland Yard is assigned to investigate the mysterious and sudden disappearance of popular actor Paul Henderson (Jon Pertwee ). Initially visiting the house that Henderson was renting from a Mr. A.J Stoker , he finds the gates locked and barred, so he calls in and introduces himself at the local police station. Holloway resents being pulled away from more important duties to, as he puts it "chase around after temperamental film stars".
Sergeant Martin, the local bobby who reported the disappearance, admits that although he filed the report as quickly as he could, he did leave out an important part, namely that this wasn't the first time that something had happened to people who had lived in that house. He hands Holloway a file containing reports of previous cases relating to Mr.Stokers mysterious house, and they begin to read together....
Story #1 - "Method For Murder"
Pulp novel writer Charles Hillyer (Denholm Elliott ) and his wife Alice rent the property from Mr. Stoker. Alice doesn't like the houses "olde worlde" atmosphere, but Charles loves it due to is extensive library containing many of his favourite classic horror novels, and the fact that he needs some peace and quiet to finish writing his new book (he is suffering from writers block due to the hustle and bustle of living in London).
His creative juices soon start flowing, and he begins writing a story centred around a character called "Dominic", who is a psychopathic murderer who escaped from an insane asylum and stalks the countryside looking for victims. He even presents his wife with a picture he has drawn of the character, saying he was inspired that very afternoon while staring out of the window.
Over the next few days, Charles works away feverishly on his book, becoming more and more obsessed with the character of Dominic, saying that he feels as though the character is actually a real person.
That night, as he takes a break from writing to smoke a cigarette, Charles sees what he believes is "Dominic" standing at the top of the stairs reflected in a mirror, but when he turns round, there is no one there. He pours himself a stiff drink but is startled by the sound of an evil laugh coming from upstairs, but when he checks on it, once again, no one is there. He returns to his study and sees that the picture he drew of "Dominic" has gone missing, and decides to call it a night after Alice comes home and startles him.
The drawing mysteriously reappears on his desk the next day, but as he watches the screwed up picture float away when he throws it in the nearby river, he is terrified to see a ghostly looking "Dominic" fish the paper out of the water while grinning at him evilly.
Clearly shaken up, he returns home and tells Alice what he has seen, but she tells him he is working too hard and should take a rest from writing, but Charles refuses and says he must get his book finished.
That night, while once again working late, he looks up and sees the ghostly form of "Dominic" staring at him through the window, he cries out in terror and flees the room, causing Alice to come and see what is wrong. He explains that "Dominic" is in his study, but when she enters the room, there is no one there, despite Charles insistence that he can still see him, firstly sat in his reclining chair, and then hiding in a dark corner. Alice once again implores him to take a break from writing, and tells him to go and see a doctor, he reluctantly agrees. The doctor/psychiatrist he sees doesn't offer much by way of help, except to tell him he needs to see him a few more times.
Charles once again gets writers block, and explains to Alice that the psychiatrist says that it appears that he is letting himself become too overtaken by the character of "Dominic", in many ways using the character to act out some of his own dark fantasies.
While Alice is in the kitchen, Charles wakes from a brief sleep to see "Dominic" seemingly strangling her, he rushes to her aid, but finds her alone and terrified of him. He asks what happened and she says that it was Charles who was strangling her. She calls for his psychiatrist to come and see him immediately, but the psychiatrist insists once again that "Dominic" is actually an extension of Charles darker side, who bears some hostility to his wife and the world around him, and like an actor that has become too immersed in a part, he is beginning to act out the role of "Dominic" for real.
Whilst attending another session at the psychiatrists offices, Charles explains that he finds it odd that despite writing about murders for years, that he should suddenly start to want to commit murder himself, when he doesn't get a response to his statement, Charles looks up and sees "Dominic" standing over the psychiatrists dead body, and he laughs maniacally as Charles screams in horror.
Alice paces around their home worriedly, when suddenly "Dominic" enters the room, instead of being terrified, she embraces him and asks if everything went according to plan. "Dominic" removes his mask and wig and says everything went fine, Alice says that with Charles out of the way, they can run away together and make a new life living off the money made from Charles's books. The phone rings and Alice is informed that Charles has been found dead, strangled, alongside the psychiatrist. Shocked, she asks "Dominic" what has happened, as the plan was for it to be made to look as though Charles had gone insane and killed the psychiatrist. "Richard", as she now calls him, says that he killed both of them because it felt "better that way", but Alice says that it was stupid because the police will now be looking for a killer, perhaps even "Richard" himself. "Richard" says he doesn't know anyone by that name, as he is called "Dominic", before he strangles Alice to death.....
Holloway closes the file and holds his head in his hands as Martin explains that they found Dominic/Richard stood over Alice's corpse, laughing like a loon. He adds that it is not the man that is at fault, but the house itself, as it has something wrong about it. Holloway dismisses the notion as being absurd, and says he wants facts, not fantasies. Martin proceeds to tell him the tale of a Mr. Grayson, another tenant of the house...
Story #2 - "Waxworks"
Phillip Grayson (Peter Cushing ) is a former stockbroker who has retired to the country, and is now looking forward to a nice quiet life of leisure.Grayson is a lonely man, who although he never married, he is obsessed with a woman he knew in his youth, and spends a lot of time thinking about her.
One day while exploring the local town, he goes into a wax work museum, and is astonished to find that amongst the assorted poor quality exhibits, one of the wax figures resembles his lost love, seated in an alcove with the decapitated head of a man resting before her on a silver platter.
The proprietor of the establishment calls her "Salome", and explains that she has a strange effect on people who see her, causing them to see all sorts of strange things as they look at the figure. He goes on to explain that he modeled the waxwork on his dead wife, who was herself a murderess who was executed by the state for her crimes after she killed his best friend.Clearly shaken, Grayson leaves the museum, telling the owner he will not be wanting to return. Although he tries to stop himself from thinking about it, he secretly yearns to return there, just so he can stare at the image of his lost love, even in his dreams he ends up going there and finds that the figure instead has had its head replaced with a bare skull.
He is woken from his daydream by the sudden arrival of his friend Neville (Joss Ackland ) at the door.
It is revealed that in the past, Neville and Grayson had a falling out over the very same woman that Grayson spends so much time thinking about, but they forgive each other, realising that neither of them could have had her.
While Grayson shows Neville around the town, they end up in the wax museum at Neville's insistence, where he is shocked to see the wax image of the woman they both loved, and he quickly becomes enchanted by her. Neville leaves for home the next day, but both men find themselves drawn back to the wax museum, where Grayson finds Neville stood gazing at "Salome", but manages to tear himself away. Later, Neville once again turns up at Graysons house and apologises for his behaviour, and says that there is something evil about the place, Grayson agrees with him and offers Neville a room for the night, but Neville says he must leave.
The next day, Neville calls him and says that no matter how hard he tries, he cannot bring himself to leave, and that he needs to go back to the museum, Grayson tells him not to go and to wait for him at his hotel, but when he gets there, Nevilles room is deserted. Grayson rushes to the museum, and to his horror, he finds Nevilles severed head now resting on Salomes platter. The museums proprietor approaches Grayson with an axe, and tells him that it was he who killed his friend, and framed his wife for the murder so that he could embalm her body and keep her to himself forever, and that over the years he has had to deal with many would be suitors to her image. There is a brief struggle, but finally the axe wielding mad man corners Grayson...
A young man enters the museum, and once again the proprietor launches into his monologue about the figure of Salome being beautiful, except now it is Graysons head on her platter.....
Holloway is getting bored of hearing Martins fantastical tales, but once again Martin insists that there is something rotten about the house which does things to everyone who lives in it. Holloway asks if Henderson was the next person to live there, but Martin tells him there was one other before him, but he doesn't know the full details of what happened. Holloway decides to visit Mr. Stoker to find out what happened and to ask for the keys so he can look around the place himself.
Stoker insists that he did try and warn people about the house, and is surprised that the policeman hasn't figured it out yet, still, he tells him the story of Mr. Reid and his daughter....
Story #4 - "Sweets To The Sweet"
Mr. Stoker shows widower John Reid (Christopher Lee ) and his young daughter around the house, when Reid complains that it is cold, Stoker sets the log fire going, causing Reids daughter to flee in terror, he explains that his daughter is scared of fire. Reid asks his solicitor to hire a child minder who can look after and teach his daughter while he is away on business, which eventually results in him hiring Mrs. Norton, a widow and former teacher. Mrs. Norton notices that Reid is very cold and uncaring towards his child, and finds that he doesn't even allow her to play with toys, or behave as one would expect a child to behave, even denying her the opportunity to go to school or play with other children. The child, whose name is Jane, once again demonstrates that she is scared of the fire, but Mrs. Norton manages to talk her out of her irrational fear, after assuring herself that Reid is not abusing the girl by burning her.
Over the next few days, Jane proves to be a very bright little girl, and Mrs. Norton asks for permission to buy her some toys to play with, Reid agrees on the condition that the toys are educational.
Mrs. Norton arrives the next day bearing gifts, but Jane is most excited by the doll she is given. Reid enters and seizes the doll, throwing it on the fire in front of the child, he then lambasts Mrs. Norton for buying it her, saying she is forbidden from owning dolls. Mrs. Norton says that Reid blames Jane for his wife dying, but Reid counters by saying he was actually glad his wife is dead, and that Mrs. Norton would not understand his reasons for being cold to the child.
That night, Jane sneaks out of her bedroom and goes into her fathers study, where she takes a large old book from one of the shelves and begins reading it. The next day, Mrs. Norton catches Jane reading from the book again and finds that the book itself is a volume containing information about witch craft and black magic.
She once again raises her concerns over the childs welfare with Mr. Reid, and accuses him of being scared of something, but just as he is about to answer, a power cut knocks out all the lights. Mr.Reid goes to get some candles, but finds they have all gone from the drawer where he kept them hidden, he goes to search for another stash of candles he keeps hidden, and finds that several are missing from the box. He notices Jane standing at the top of the stairs and angrily demands she tell him what she has done with them, but ends up slapping her face when she remains silent.
A phone call the next day sees Mr. Reid called away on business, but while he is talking, Jane collects a hand full of hair clippings from her fathers electric razor. As Reid conducts his business meeting, he suddenly collapses with violent chest pains, meanwhile back at home, Jane laughs childishly as she appears to be stabbing something with a hatpin, but is disturbed by Mrs. Norton insisting that she come with her for a walk as it is such a nice day, as they leave, Reids pain stops just as suddenly as it started.
Reid is woken in the middle of the night, once again struck down by chest pains, Mrs. Norton calls for a doctor in spite of Reid protests, but the doctor can find nothing wrong with him, putting it down to a simple case of indigestion.
Reid finally tells Mrs. Norton the truth, Jane, like her mother before her, is a witch, and she has made a wax doll in the image of her father, which she uses to torture him. Mrs. Norton doesn't believe him, but changes her mind as Reid begins screaming in agony again, and she turns round to see Jane clutching a crude wax image of her father. She tells Jane to hand over the doll, but Jane instead throws it on the fire, as the figure melts, Reid screams in agony, while Jane just grins.
Stoker tells Holloway that once again, it wasn't the mans fault, it was the house, but Holloway tells him he only deals in fact, not fiction, and demands to know the details of Paul Hendersons arrangement with him. Stoker says he tried to dissuade Henderson from renting the property, but as he insisted on having it, he let him rent it....
Story #4 "The Cloak"
Paul Henderson (Pertwee) is an actor who has a reputation for being somewhat temperamental and rude, seeing himself as being a great actor despite the fact that he has only really ever starred in a series of low budget, low quality films. His latest gig is playing a vampire in a low budget vampire film, which although he believes is beneath him, he accepts the role anyway.
Arriving in grandiose style at Mr. Stokers house, later than he arranged to meet him originally, he and his co star Carla (Ingrid Pitt ) find the house adequate for his needs. Stoker tries to warn him about the houses peculiarities, but Henderson laughs it off, citing himself as being an "expert on the occult".
On set, Henderson lambasts the low budget nature of the film, right down to poor quality sets and costumes, even physically damaging the props while extolling the virtues of "classic" horror films. Henderson rejects his vampire costume, and says he will supply his own, and luckily while he is in his dressing room, he finds a card advertising a costume shop nearby, which he visits.
In the shop, he asks the owner, a sinister looking man named Von Hartmann, if he has a "real vampires cloak", and attempts to impress the man with his name and supposed knowledge of the occult, which fails miserably. Von Hartmann produces a lead casket containing a very old and authentic looking cloak, lined with blood red silk and sporting a fine silver bat shaped clasp, which he says he can buy there and then for the tiny sum of 13 shillings. Henderson pays up immediately, and Von Hartmann says it is lucky he came, as he is closing down the shop, Henderson bids him farewell and leaves, to which Von Hartmann says that he can now "rest in peace".
On set again, Henderson begins to notice a few odd things happening whenever he puts the cloak on, for example he always feels a sudden chill when he wears it, and notices that he no longer has a reflection in the mirror, but, ever the professional, he wears the cloak while doing his scenes.
While filming a scene with Carla, it ends with the vampire biting his female victim, and, much to Carlas alarm, Henderson actually bites her, and he is given a warning from the director not to get too carried away with the role.
That night, he tries an experiment while standing in front of a mirror, he once again puts on the cloak, and notices his reflection has vanished, then, as the clock strikes midnight, he undergoes a horrifying transformation, he grows a pair of fangs, , his skin goes an ashen grey, and suddenly he finds himself floating above the ground, he quickly crashes back to the ground and takes off the cloak, hiding it in the cupboard under the stairs.
On the next shooting day, he apologises to Carla for his indiscretion, and is relieved to learn that none of the scenes they are doing that day involve him having to wear the cursed cloak.
Carla comes round for dinner, and while pouring drinks for them both, he notices that there is a newspaper story about Von Hartmann, whose body was found in his burnt out shop, apparently having been dead for years.
Henderson explains to Carla that Von Hartmann must have been a vampire, and the cloak caused him to become a vampire himself, so he says he is going to burn it, Carla tells him he is being stupid, and convinces him to wear the cloak to prove it has no power over him. He puts the cloak on just as the clock strikes midnight, and is relieved that nothing happens to him, but then notices that the cloak he is wearing isn't his, and Carla reveals she has the original one, and puts it on. Henderson tries to stop her, but she carries on regardless.
She reveals that the vampires loved his films so much, that they wanted him to become one of them forever, and she suddenly sports a pair of fangs and flies menacingly towards him, transforming into a bat as she draws nearer, Henderson screams in terror......
Holloway dismisses the tale as crazy nonsense, and demands Stoker hand over the keys to the house so he can have a poke around himself, but Stoker strongly advises against him going there alone, but Holloway insists, so Stoker hands them over.
By the time he gets to the house and lets himself in, it is dark, and because the house has no electricity connected to it due to it being vacant, he has to light a candle to see with while he walks around. Inside, the house is the same as it was while Henderson was living there. Finding nothing of interest upstairs, he descends to the cellar, where he finds a door chained and padlocked. He breaks open the lock and enters the chamber beyond, becoming startled when the door slams shut behind him, but he notices a new coffin in there with him. As the clock strikes midnight, the coffin opens, and Henderson, now a full fledged vampire, leaps out and attacks him. Holloway manages to stab Henderson through the heart with a broken piece of wood, which causes the vampire to fade away, leaving only the cloak behind, but then Holloway is attacked by Carla in bat form. With no way to escape the crypt, Holloway screams....
The next morning, Stoker stands outside the house. He turns to the audience and asks if we now understand that the house reflects the personality of the person or persons in it, and treats them accordingly. He says he hopes it finds a good tenant soon, and perhaps one of us would like it, because there is nothing to be afraid of, if you're the right kind of person......
Tuesday 12 March 2013
Amicus Horror Anthologies - Torture Garden (1967)
During the 60s and 70s, British film makers Amicus productions made a
series of films containing several short horror stories, linked by a
framing story.
Starring many big names (for the time), these low/medium budget films told several stories mainly concerning ghosts and the supernatural in a typically British way, and usually featured some sort of twist ending.
The second of these films was "Torture Garden", released in 1967.
Framing story
Five people ( Michael Bryant , Beverley Adams ,Barbera Ewing , Jack Palance and another man) are invited by "Dr. Diabolo" (Burgess Meredith ) to view the "Torture Garden". For the small price of half a crown, they will see the horrors that man gleefully inflicts upon his brother.
When the patrons pay up and enter, they find that the side show exhibit contains nothing but cheap and tacky waxworks, culminating in Dr. Diabolo pretending to kill a man using the electric chair. Angrily, they accuse him of swindling them, but as he removes his black robe and devil mask, revealing a smart suit underneath, he tells them that this show is only for the tourists, and that the real horrors are behind a curtain at the back of the room, which they can see, for a payment of five pounds each (a lot of money in 1967), and, if they aren't terrified by what they see, he will give them their money back. curiosity gets the better of everyone and they pay up. After he has collected the money(which oddly enough resembles a pile of $10 bills, even though the price was stated as £5), Diabolo then burns it while grinning evilly.
In the back room, the patrons find nothing there waiting for them, save for a section concealed behind a curtain, in which sits a waxwork figure of a woman holding a pair of shears and several threads. Once again Diabolo is accused of swindling them, but he explains that the woman is in fact the goddess of fate, Atropus, whose shears can cut short a human life in an instant if it is deemed unworthy. Those who are interested can be told their futures, simply by gazing at the shears, and by doing so can seeing their inner evil, hopefully learning from the experience and thus avoiding it...one by one, the patrons step up...
Story #1 - "Enoch"
Colin Williams (Bryant) is a greedy, spendthrift playboy who is up to his eyeballs in debt. He arrives at his uncles house after receiving a mysterious summons to visit. His uncle reveals that he is dying, and that he needs to give Colin an important message before he dies, which Colin assumes to mean that his uncle intends to leave him his considerable fortune. However the uncle reveals that he is penniless, but now is not the time to be discussing the sordid subject of money, as Colin's life depends on the warning he must give him. Colin angrily demands to know where his uncle keeps his money, but again the uncle pleads poverty, and begs Colin to listen before it is too late, but then begins coughing and asks Colin to pass him his medicine, which Colin does, but holds it back at the last minute, saying that he will give him his medicine only when he reveals to him where he has hidden his fortune. Silently, while struggling to reach his medicine, the uncle dies at Colins feet, to which Colin merely remarks "damn..".
After dealing with the local doctor (who remarks that it was odd that his uncle always paid for things using very old and valuable gold coins) undertakers, Colin begins tearing the house apart looking for hidden riches, eventually finding a hidden trap door in the bedroom floor, which leads to a cellar. In the cellar, he finds a coffin buried under a thin layer of dirt, so, using a shovel he finds down there as well, he digs it up, opens it and is horrified to see that it contains a headless skeleton and a lblack cat, which promptly runs off back upstairs.
That night, after a restless sleep, he finds himself awoken by the cat meowing. He stares at it, and the cat begins speaking to him telepathically, telling him its name is "Balthazar", and that it wishes to serve him, as it served his uncle, and he will be rewarded so long as he does things which the cat needs to be done. It goes on to explain that his uncle was ungrateful and buried it in the cellar, but now it is free and it is hungry.
He follows the cat as it leads him to the outhouse, where a tramp is asleep on top of some hay bales. The cat compels him to kill the tramp with a pitch fork, Colin resists at first, but the cat uses its magical powers to inflict pain and force him to kill.
Colin wakes up on the sofa, believing he had just had a nightmare, but then he notices the trap door still open. When he goes down into the cellar, he finds the cat sitting next to a freshly turned mound of earth, and the cat tells him he will be rewarded. Colin digs the earth up, and finds the buried underneath is a small chest containing a horde of gold coins. The cat then tells him he must kill again, Colin refuses, but once again he is tortured into agreeing to kill the housekeeper, which he does when she comes running into the house when she sees the tramps mangled corpse outside.
As Colin attempts to dispose of the two bodies by packing them in a large trunk, a policeman arrives and asks if he has seen the missing tramp, he says he hasn't and is simply trying to leave and go home. The policeman offers to help him move the trunk, but then spots blood running out from inside it.
Colin is arrested for murder, and pleads innocence, but his rantings to the local doctor about the cat being evil and living inside his head only serve to make him sound like he is insane. The doctor asks why the heads of the two corpses were missing, and Colin explains that that is what Balthazar eats.
That night, Colin screams that Balthazar has come for him, but the desk sergeant ignores him, until he hears a blood curdling cry of terror and then Colin falls silent. The sergeant rushes to the cell, and finds Colin's headless corpse laid on the bunk.
Later that night, as the sergeant is writing up his report, the cat enters and mesmerises him, just like it did with Colin....
Atropos's shears close and snip a thread. Colin wakes up after seemingly being in a trance, the others ask him if he is alright, and he says it felt like he had been gone for days. He claims that Diabolo had hypnotised him, but Diabolo remarks that he has never met him before in his life, so how could he know anything about him, much less make a story up about him in the few minutes he was mesmerised by the shears. Colin admits that he does indeed have an uncle who lives in the country, and that he was on his way to see him about something but Diabolo swiftly moves on, asking who will be next to learn their destiny...
Story #2 - "Terror over Hollywood"
Carla Hayes (Adams) is a struggling young actress. While helping her room mate Millie prepare for a date with the fading film star Mike Chambers. As Millie takes a shower, Carla allows her one and only "good" dress to get burned by the iron, and then says that she cant lend her any of her clothes because she doesnt have anything smart enough. Mike arrives and Millie hides in the bedroom, while Carla lies and tells him that she has the flu, then she proceeds to go with Mike to the restaurant that he was going to take Millie to.
While ther, Mike spots a famous actor called Bruce Benton, and a hot shot producer, Eddie Storm, sat conversing in a corner. He rudely butts in on their conversation and asks Eddie to come with him so he can buy him a drink and have a little chat while Carla gets to know Bruce a little better.
Mike pleads with Eddie to give him a job in his latest picture, but Eddie refuses and says that Mike is a has been and thus has been "black balled" out of the profession, Mike storms out in a huff and goes to drown his sorrows in a cheap dive bar across town.
Meanwhile, Carla has suitably impressed Bruce with her knowledge of his films, so much so that Eddie offers her the part of second lead in his new movie, alongside Bruce as the main star, she gleefully accepts, but also notes that neither of the men are eating any of the food they have ordered, to which both men make rather odd sounding excuses about wanting to keep their weight down.
Mike, now hopelessly drunk, tells the bartender of the dive bar that he knows things about Eddie Storm and his career, and plans to blackmail him, the bartender gives Mike a free drink and then telephones Eddie, who tells him to "take care of the matter". The bartender drives the inebriated Mike home, and then knocks him out and leaves him locked in his garage with the car engine running.
The next morning Millie reads in the newspaper that Mike died in a freak accident after getting drunk and gassing himself with car exhaust fumes, Carla says she doesnt care as she has been offered a role in a movie alongside Bruce Benton. She apologises half heartedly to Millie for screwing her over, but says that in this business you have to take the chances when you see them. Millie says she doesnt want to become a star that way, but Carla coldly remarks that she will become a star, any way possible.
After a week of filming, Carla attempts to seduce Bruce, someone she has idolised since her teenage years, but he will have none of it, and instead seems more preoccupied with two strange men who are hanging around the set. Carla give Bruce a gold watch as a present, he initially refuses it but she forces him to accept, he then says he has to leave for a meeting with the two men. Eddie arrives and gives Carla a friendly warning to stay away from Bruce, but she casually dismisses it. They go outside and see Bruce getting into a car with the two men and speeding away, Eddie identifies the two men as gangsters, and he and Carla give chase.
Bruce is shot in the head by the gangsters who then dump his body in the woods, when Carla and Eddie find him, Eddie assures her that he will be ok, and that they need to take him to Dr. Heim at Sunset Crest Sanatorium. Carla waits at the sanatoium and eventually Eddie and Dr.Heim enter and say that Bruce will be back at work on monday morning, Carla says that is impossible as Bruce was most definitely dead when they brought him in, but Eddie says that Dr. Heim is a brilliant and gifted surgeon and that Bruce will be fine.
Monday morning comes and Bruce is indeed back on set, without even so much as a trace of any scarring on his head from being shot. In her dressing room, Eddie tells Carla that the man she saw dead was Bruces body double, who owed a lot of money to the local gangsters for gambling debts, and that it was common practice for film stars ot have doubles to help them cope with the increasing workload as they get older. Carla says she doesnt believe him and reveals that she has been doing some investigating of her own, for example she found out that in 1944, Eddie was involved in an accident and had his head and chest crushed, but after being operated on at Dr. Heims private clinic, he now looks so good that he doesnt show a trace of any wounds or scarring, event though his injuries should have killed him. Eddie warns her not to pry any more and leaves, but she vows to get some answers from Bruce when she sees him.
When she confronts Bruce, she tells him that she loves him, but he tells her to leave him alone, she then spots the watch she gave him on his wrist, and realises that something strange is going on, she tries to embrace him but he pushes her away, scratching his face as she falls back. the scratches reveal a layer of metal underneath his skin, and Bruce finally admits the truth, that he, as well as the other actors in the "top ten" are in fact cyborgs, a human brain in a synthetic body, created by Dr. Heim who are all truly immortal, Carla is repulsed by the idea of people giving up their humanity simply to gain fame and fortune, and tries to leave, but then Eddie and Dr. Heim come in and say that because she now knows their secret, she, like Mike before her, must be killed so keep it a secret. Bruce says he has a better idea, instead of killing her, she should become one of them, Eddie and Dr. Heim like the idea, and Dr. Heim says he can operate immediately..Carla screams in terror.
Carla attends the premier of her and Bruce's film, and a reporter asks her if this means that she is to now be considered to be one of the "top ten", she stares emotionless at the camera, while in the background, two fans yell that Carla is "a living doll"....
Atropos' shears close, this time not cutting a thread, Carla looks confused, but Dr. Diabolo explains that what she has just seen is a warning, made of the same stuff that dreams are made of, and that hopefully she has learned something from seeing one possible future. Her cousin Dorothy asks if she is alright, she says she is, and Diabolo asks who will be next, Dorothy says she is not afraid and steps forward....
Story #3 - "Mr. Steinway"
Dorothy Endicott (Ewing) is a music journalist who enters into a relationship with a young concert pianist called Leo. Leo spends most of his time playing his grand piano, which he calls Euterpe, after the muse of music. His manager Maxine chides him over putting Dorothy before his career, as all the late nights and very little practice time are causing his music playing abilities to suffer, Leo responds by telling Maxine she sounds exactly like his mother, and that he loves Dorothy and for the first time in years he actually feels happy for once. As he says this, the pianos lid mysteriously slams shut all by itself.
Dorothy comes round and lets herself into Leos flat, finding him slumped asleep on the pianos keyboard.
She wakes him and says they have been invited round to someones house for dinner, he begins to try and make an excuse to not go but instead agrees. Dorothy sits down and begins playing a few notes on the keys but the lid once again slams down on its own, she only just manages to move her hands out of the way.
Over drinks, Leo tells Dorothy that Euterpe talks to him, and is jealous of his relationship with her, Dorothy thinks he is making a joke but he insists he is serious.
Dorothy goes to see Maxine, and says that Leo will end up having a nervous breakdown unless she cancels his latest tour, but Maxine instead accuses Dorothy of being too possessive, and tells he that she doesn't really love him, she just wants the fame of being married to a famous musician. Dorothy responds by telling Maxine that its obvious that all she is intereste din is making money out of Leos music and working him into the ground, and that she probably encourages his belief in "Euterpe" in order to get him to devote more and more of his time to playing.
She goes round to se eLeo and finds that the piano is playing music at deafening levels, but Leo answers the door too quickly for him to have been playing it, Leo says that the piano was playing itself, but she explains that the piano is an inanimate object made out of wood, metal and ivory, and that it has no life of its own. She says that they need to get away from it all for a while and that he should cancel his concert tour, Leo just looks confused.
Later, she offers him an ultimatum, leave with her, or she will leave him, he says that he will go with her. While he is packing, Dorothy hears the piano playing a funeral dirge, she thinks that it is Leo playing it, but when she goes through into his music room, the piano is gone. She walks up to the stool that remains and the Euterpe pushes the door shut, and then rolls across the floor on its own, eventually pushing her out of a window where she falls to her death, Leo comes in and sits down to play the piano as though nothing has happened.
Atropos' shears snap shut, again not cutting the thread. Carla rushes to comfort her cousin who is clearly upset at what she has seen. Colin asks her what she has seen, but she tells him that all she saw was an illusion. Dr. Diabolo reappears, this time wearing a smart white suit, and says they should feel free to call what they see whatever they want, an illusion, a hallucination or a memory of the future. He then asks who will be next, and one of the remaining men steps forward, saying he is eager to sample Diabolo's wares....
Story #4 - "The man who collected Poe"
Ronald Wyatt (Palance) is an avid collector of works by Edgar Allan Poe. While attending a party held to honour fellow Poe enthusiast Lancelot Canning (Peter Cushing ), he stumbles upon a very rare book, one of only six to exist, and offers to buy it from Canning for a huge amount of money. Canning refuses, not wanting to break up his collection, but offers Wyatt the chance to see his full collection if he wants to visit his house in America.
Wyatt jumps at the opportunity, and is extremely jealous to see that not only does Canning own every edition of every book written by Poe, but also many personal items that belonged to or were used by the author.
Over drinks, Canning explains that his father started the collection many years ago, and that he would have been called a fanatic had he been alive today, he then offers a toast to Poe himself, calling him "the only man who has ever fully understood the mysteries from beyond the grave",which Wyatt happily joins in. Hours pass and Canning has drunk rather a lot and is feeling somewhat drunk, Wyatt tries to light his pipe, but finds he has no matches, so Canning offers him his lighter, which Wyatt steals. Canning says that he has a few more things to show him that he keeps locked in the cellar, and that he should feel priviliged as no one has been down there since his father died.
Canning directs Wyatts attention to a pile of handwritten manuscripts, all of which contain original unpublished stories written by Poe himself. Wyatt cant believe it and says he thought he knew about everything Poe had ever written, including the unpublished works, but the names on the manuscripts he had never heard of before. Wyatt immediately offers to buy some of the manuscripts, but again, Canning refuses to sell. Wyatt then enquires what part in Poes life did an ornate gold box on the table play, Canning says it didn't, but stops Wyatt from looking inside it anyway, before trying to escort Wyatt back upstairs. Wyatt says he wants to see more, and grabs a hand full of pages from another table, noting that the paper they're written on looks like new, with a quick inspection of the watermark showing that the paper was made in 1966. He puts two and two together and accuses Canning of creating almost perfect counterfeits of work supposedly done by Poe, but Canning worriedly insists that the work was not written by him, instead, he says that the works were created by the gold box Wyatt had looked at earlier.
Wyatt syas that when he asked Canning earlier about the box, he said it had nothing to do with Poes life, but Canning corrects him, it indeed had nothing to do with his LIFE, but it did have something to do with his DEATH. He explains that his grandfather was a grave robber, and one of the graves he opened was that of Edgar Allan Poe, where he collected the dust that the body had decomposed into and placed it in the gold box. Wyatt opens the box and finds it empty, calling Canning a liar, but Canning goes on to explain that his granfather was not only a grave robber, he was also a student of the occult, and managed to reanimate Poes remains, and thus, the unpublished manuscripts that Wyatt hold in his hand are in fact genuine articles, written by Poe himself, who is still alive.Wyatt dismisses Cannings words as drunken twaddle, but Canning insists that he put the manuscripts back and come back upstairs with him. Wyatt notices that on Cannings keyring is a thrid key which he has not yet used, and demands to know if it is the key to an as yet unopened door, Canning says it isnt but Wyatt seizes the keys and tries to unlock the door. During the struggle as Canning tries to stop him, Wyatt grabs a candlestick and Beats Canning to death with it, saying that Canning will not stop him from seeing "all the treasures".
He enters the room, and finds, hidden within behind a secret panel, the immobile and silent form of Edgar Allan Poe. Wyatt introduces himself, and states that he wishes to help Poe publish all of his new works, but Poe says he only wants to die, as his discovery of all the secrets of the unknown led to him making a pact with the devil for eternal life, and the only way he can escape satans grasp is for another soul to take his place in hell. Wyatt asks if there is any other way he can help, and Poe tells him that if he burns him, then that would do the trick. Wyatt agrees to help his idol to die, but only in return for knowing his secrets. Poe agrees, and Wyatt sets fire to the room with his candle. Poe gives a chilling warning, that the person who releases someone from the devils mastery becomes a slave of satan themselves, and that Wyatt is now trapped.
Wyatt walks through the burning house, clutching Poes unpublished manuscripts, as Poe can be heard laughing.
Atropos's shears snap shut, cutting a thread. Wyatt laughs as he looks at Diabolo and says "its you isnt it?". The other man in the group demands to know what is going on, and who Diabolo really is. Diabolo says he is well known for his excursions into the minds of man, but this answer angers him. Diabolo says that it is his turn to gaze into the shears of fate, but he refuses, instead grabbing the shears and stabbing Diabolo to death. Colin, Carla and Dorothy flee in terror, only Wyatt remains, calmly smoking his pipe whilst standing in the entrance way.
When he thinks everyone has gone, Diabolo starts laughing, and congratulates the other man on a well acted out show, before standing up. Wyatt says he enjoyed the performance, but wanted to hang around to make a deal with Diabolo. Diabolo asks Wyatt for a light, and he produces Cannings lighter from his pocket, Diabolo grunts in agreement, and the smiling Wyatt leaves.
Diabolo grins as he walks over to replace the shears in the hands of the figure of Atropos. He muses to himself that he does occasionally lose one or two doing it this way, but its only sporting to give people a chance to escape his domain, he then turns to the camera, having sported horns, a pointed beard and a moustache and says "but will you?" .......
Starring many big names (for the time), these low/medium budget films told several stories mainly concerning ghosts and the supernatural in a typically British way, and usually featured some sort of twist ending.
The second of these films was "Torture Garden", released in 1967.
Framing story
Five people ( Michael Bryant , Beverley Adams ,Barbera Ewing , Jack Palance and another man) are invited by "Dr. Diabolo" (Burgess Meredith ) to view the "Torture Garden". For the small price of half a crown, they will see the horrors that man gleefully inflicts upon his brother.
When the patrons pay up and enter, they find that the side show exhibit contains nothing but cheap and tacky waxworks, culminating in Dr. Diabolo pretending to kill a man using the electric chair. Angrily, they accuse him of swindling them, but as he removes his black robe and devil mask, revealing a smart suit underneath, he tells them that this show is only for the tourists, and that the real horrors are behind a curtain at the back of the room, which they can see, for a payment of five pounds each (a lot of money in 1967), and, if they aren't terrified by what they see, he will give them their money back. curiosity gets the better of everyone and they pay up. After he has collected the money(which oddly enough resembles a pile of $10 bills, even though the price was stated as £5), Diabolo then burns it while grinning evilly.
In the back room, the patrons find nothing there waiting for them, save for a section concealed behind a curtain, in which sits a waxwork figure of a woman holding a pair of shears and several threads. Once again Diabolo is accused of swindling them, but he explains that the woman is in fact the goddess of fate, Atropus, whose shears can cut short a human life in an instant if it is deemed unworthy. Those who are interested can be told their futures, simply by gazing at the shears, and by doing so can seeing their inner evil, hopefully learning from the experience and thus avoiding it...one by one, the patrons step up...
Story #1 - "Enoch"
Colin Williams (Bryant) is a greedy, spendthrift playboy who is up to his eyeballs in debt. He arrives at his uncles house after receiving a mysterious summons to visit. His uncle reveals that he is dying, and that he needs to give Colin an important message before he dies, which Colin assumes to mean that his uncle intends to leave him his considerable fortune. However the uncle reveals that he is penniless, but now is not the time to be discussing the sordid subject of money, as Colin's life depends on the warning he must give him. Colin angrily demands to know where his uncle keeps his money, but again the uncle pleads poverty, and begs Colin to listen before it is too late, but then begins coughing and asks Colin to pass him his medicine, which Colin does, but holds it back at the last minute, saying that he will give him his medicine only when he reveals to him where he has hidden his fortune. Silently, while struggling to reach his medicine, the uncle dies at Colins feet, to which Colin merely remarks "damn..".
After dealing with the local doctor (who remarks that it was odd that his uncle always paid for things using very old and valuable gold coins) undertakers, Colin begins tearing the house apart looking for hidden riches, eventually finding a hidden trap door in the bedroom floor, which leads to a cellar. In the cellar, he finds a coffin buried under a thin layer of dirt, so, using a shovel he finds down there as well, he digs it up, opens it and is horrified to see that it contains a headless skeleton and a lblack cat, which promptly runs off back upstairs.
That night, after a restless sleep, he finds himself awoken by the cat meowing. He stares at it, and the cat begins speaking to him telepathically, telling him its name is "Balthazar", and that it wishes to serve him, as it served his uncle, and he will be rewarded so long as he does things which the cat needs to be done. It goes on to explain that his uncle was ungrateful and buried it in the cellar, but now it is free and it is hungry.
He follows the cat as it leads him to the outhouse, where a tramp is asleep on top of some hay bales. The cat compels him to kill the tramp with a pitch fork, Colin resists at first, but the cat uses its magical powers to inflict pain and force him to kill.
Colin wakes up on the sofa, believing he had just had a nightmare, but then he notices the trap door still open. When he goes down into the cellar, he finds the cat sitting next to a freshly turned mound of earth, and the cat tells him he will be rewarded. Colin digs the earth up, and finds the buried underneath is a small chest containing a horde of gold coins. The cat then tells him he must kill again, Colin refuses, but once again he is tortured into agreeing to kill the housekeeper, which he does when she comes running into the house when she sees the tramps mangled corpse outside.
As Colin attempts to dispose of the two bodies by packing them in a large trunk, a policeman arrives and asks if he has seen the missing tramp, he says he hasn't and is simply trying to leave and go home. The policeman offers to help him move the trunk, but then spots blood running out from inside it.
Colin is arrested for murder, and pleads innocence, but his rantings to the local doctor about the cat being evil and living inside his head only serve to make him sound like he is insane. The doctor asks why the heads of the two corpses were missing, and Colin explains that that is what Balthazar eats.
That night, Colin screams that Balthazar has come for him, but the desk sergeant ignores him, until he hears a blood curdling cry of terror and then Colin falls silent. The sergeant rushes to the cell, and finds Colin's headless corpse laid on the bunk.
Later that night, as the sergeant is writing up his report, the cat enters and mesmerises him, just like it did with Colin....
Atropos's shears close and snip a thread. Colin wakes up after seemingly being in a trance, the others ask him if he is alright, and he says it felt like he had been gone for days. He claims that Diabolo had hypnotised him, but Diabolo remarks that he has never met him before in his life, so how could he know anything about him, much less make a story up about him in the few minutes he was mesmerised by the shears. Colin admits that he does indeed have an uncle who lives in the country, and that he was on his way to see him about something but Diabolo swiftly moves on, asking who will be next to learn their destiny...
Story #2 - "Terror over Hollywood"
Carla Hayes (Adams) is a struggling young actress. While helping her room mate Millie prepare for a date with the fading film star Mike Chambers. As Millie takes a shower, Carla allows her one and only "good" dress to get burned by the iron, and then says that she cant lend her any of her clothes because she doesnt have anything smart enough. Mike arrives and Millie hides in the bedroom, while Carla lies and tells him that she has the flu, then she proceeds to go with Mike to the restaurant that he was going to take Millie to.
While ther, Mike spots a famous actor called Bruce Benton, and a hot shot producer, Eddie Storm, sat conversing in a corner. He rudely butts in on their conversation and asks Eddie to come with him so he can buy him a drink and have a little chat while Carla gets to know Bruce a little better.
Mike pleads with Eddie to give him a job in his latest picture, but Eddie refuses and says that Mike is a has been and thus has been "black balled" out of the profession, Mike storms out in a huff and goes to drown his sorrows in a cheap dive bar across town.
Meanwhile, Carla has suitably impressed Bruce with her knowledge of his films, so much so that Eddie offers her the part of second lead in his new movie, alongside Bruce as the main star, she gleefully accepts, but also notes that neither of the men are eating any of the food they have ordered, to which both men make rather odd sounding excuses about wanting to keep their weight down.
Mike, now hopelessly drunk, tells the bartender of the dive bar that he knows things about Eddie Storm and his career, and plans to blackmail him, the bartender gives Mike a free drink and then telephones Eddie, who tells him to "take care of the matter". The bartender drives the inebriated Mike home, and then knocks him out and leaves him locked in his garage with the car engine running.
The next morning Millie reads in the newspaper that Mike died in a freak accident after getting drunk and gassing himself with car exhaust fumes, Carla says she doesnt care as she has been offered a role in a movie alongside Bruce Benton. She apologises half heartedly to Millie for screwing her over, but says that in this business you have to take the chances when you see them. Millie says she doesnt want to become a star that way, but Carla coldly remarks that she will become a star, any way possible.
After a week of filming, Carla attempts to seduce Bruce, someone she has idolised since her teenage years, but he will have none of it, and instead seems more preoccupied with two strange men who are hanging around the set. Carla give Bruce a gold watch as a present, he initially refuses it but she forces him to accept, he then says he has to leave for a meeting with the two men. Eddie arrives and gives Carla a friendly warning to stay away from Bruce, but she casually dismisses it. They go outside and see Bruce getting into a car with the two men and speeding away, Eddie identifies the two men as gangsters, and he and Carla give chase.
Bruce is shot in the head by the gangsters who then dump his body in the woods, when Carla and Eddie find him, Eddie assures her that he will be ok, and that they need to take him to Dr. Heim at Sunset Crest Sanatorium. Carla waits at the sanatoium and eventually Eddie and Dr.Heim enter and say that Bruce will be back at work on monday morning, Carla says that is impossible as Bruce was most definitely dead when they brought him in, but Eddie says that Dr. Heim is a brilliant and gifted surgeon and that Bruce will be fine.
Monday morning comes and Bruce is indeed back on set, without even so much as a trace of any scarring on his head from being shot. In her dressing room, Eddie tells Carla that the man she saw dead was Bruces body double, who owed a lot of money to the local gangsters for gambling debts, and that it was common practice for film stars ot have doubles to help them cope with the increasing workload as they get older. Carla says she doesnt believe him and reveals that she has been doing some investigating of her own, for example she found out that in 1944, Eddie was involved in an accident and had his head and chest crushed, but after being operated on at Dr. Heims private clinic, he now looks so good that he doesnt show a trace of any wounds or scarring, event though his injuries should have killed him. Eddie warns her not to pry any more and leaves, but she vows to get some answers from Bruce when she sees him.
When she confronts Bruce, she tells him that she loves him, but he tells her to leave him alone, she then spots the watch she gave him on his wrist, and realises that something strange is going on, she tries to embrace him but he pushes her away, scratching his face as she falls back. the scratches reveal a layer of metal underneath his skin, and Bruce finally admits the truth, that he, as well as the other actors in the "top ten" are in fact cyborgs, a human brain in a synthetic body, created by Dr. Heim who are all truly immortal, Carla is repulsed by the idea of people giving up their humanity simply to gain fame and fortune, and tries to leave, but then Eddie and Dr. Heim come in and say that because she now knows their secret, she, like Mike before her, must be killed so keep it a secret. Bruce says he has a better idea, instead of killing her, she should become one of them, Eddie and Dr. Heim like the idea, and Dr. Heim says he can operate immediately..Carla screams in terror.
Carla attends the premier of her and Bruce's film, and a reporter asks her if this means that she is to now be considered to be one of the "top ten", she stares emotionless at the camera, while in the background, two fans yell that Carla is "a living doll"....
Atropos' shears close, this time not cutting a thread, Carla looks confused, but Dr. Diabolo explains that what she has just seen is a warning, made of the same stuff that dreams are made of, and that hopefully she has learned something from seeing one possible future. Her cousin Dorothy asks if she is alright, she says she is, and Diabolo asks who will be next, Dorothy says she is not afraid and steps forward....
Story #3 - "Mr. Steinway"
Dorothy Endicott (Ewing) is a music journalist who enters into a relationship with a young concert pianist called Leo. Leo spends most of his time playing his grand piano, which he calls Euterpe, after the muse of music. His manager Maxine chides him over putting Dorothy before his career, as all the late nights and very little practice time are causing his music playing abilities to suffer, Leo responds by telling Maxine she sounds exactly like his mother, and that he loves Dorothy and for the first time in years he actually feels happy for once. As he says this, the pianos lid mysteriously slams shut all by itself.
Dorothy comes round and lets herself into Leos flat, finding him slumped asleep on the pianos keyboard.
She wakes him and says they have been invited round to someones house for dinner, he begins to try and make an excuse to not go but instead agrees. Dorothy sits down and begins playing a few notes on the keys but the lid once again slams down on its own, she only just manages to move her hands out of the way.
Over drinks, Leo tells Dorothy that Euterpe talks to him, and is jealous of his relationship with her, Dorothy thinks he is making a joke but he insists he is serious.
Dorothy goes to see Maxine, and says that Leo will end up having a nervous breakdown unless she cancels his latest tour, but Maxine instead accuses Dorothy of being too possessive, and tells he that she doesn't really love him, she just wants the fame of being married to a famous musician. Dorothy responds by telling Maxine that its obvious that all she is intereste din is making money out of Leos music and working him into the ground, and that she probably encourages his belief in "Euterpe" in order to get him to devote more and more of his time to playing.
She goes round to se eLeo and finds that the piano is playing music at deafening levels, but Leo answers the door too quickly for him to have been playing it, Leo says that the piano was playing itself, but she explains that the piano is an inanimate object made out of wood, metal and ivory, and that it has no life of its own. She says that they need to get away from it all for a while and that he should cancel his concert tour, Leo just looks confused.
Later, she offers him an ultimatum, leave with her, or she will leave him, he says that he will go with her. While he is packing, Dorothy hears the piano playing a funeral dirge, she thinks that it is Leo playing it, but when she goes through into his music room, the piano is gone. She walks up to the stool that remains and the Euterpe pushes the door shut, and then rolls across the floor on its own, eventually pushing her out of a window where she falls to her death, Leo comes in and sits down to play the piano as though nothing has happened.
Atropos' shears snap shut, again not cutting the thread. Carla rushes to comfort her cousin who is clearly upset at what she has seen. Colin asks her what she has seen, but she tells him that all she saw was an illusion. Dr. Diabolo reappears, this time wearing a smart white suit, and says they should feel free to call what they see whatever they want, an illusion, a hallucination or a memory of the future. He then asks who will be next, and one of the remaining men steps forward, saying he is eager to sample Diabolo's wares....
Story #4 - "The man who collected Poe"
Ronald Wyatt (Palance) is an avid collector of works by Edgar Allan Poe. While attending a party held to honour fellow Poe enthusiast Lancelot Canning (Peter Cushing ), he stumbles upon a very rare book, one of only six to exist, and offers to buy it from Canning for a huge amount of money. Canning refuses, not wanting to break up his collection, but offers Wyatt the chance to see his full collection if he wants to visit his house in America.
Wyatt jumps at the opportunity, and is extremely jealous to see that not only does Canning own every edition of every book written by Poe, but also many personal items that belonged to or were used by the author.
Over drinks, Canning explains that his father started the collection many years ago, and that he would have been called a fanatic had he been alive today, he then offers a toast to Poe himself, calling him "the only man who has ever fully understood the mysteries from beyond the grave",which Wyatt happily joins in. Hours pass and Canning has drunk rather a lot and is feeling somewhat drunk, Wyatt tries to light his pipe, but finds he has no matches, so Canning offers him his lighter, which Wyatt steals. Canning says that he has a few more things to show him that he keeps locked in the cellar, and that he should feel priviliged as no one has been down there since his father died.
Canning directs Wyatts attention to a pile of handwritten manuscripts, all of which contain original unpublished stories written by Poe himself. Wyatt cant believe it and says he thought he knew about everything Poe had ever written, including the unpublished works, but the names on the manuscripts he had never heard of before. Wyatt immediately offers to buy some of the manuscripts, but again, Canning refuses to sell. Wyatt then enquires what part in Poes life did an ornate gold box on the table play, Canning says it didn't, but stops Wyatt from looking inside it anyway, before trying to escort Wyatt back upstairs. Wyatt says he wants to see more, and grabs a hand full of pages from another table, noting that the paper they're written on looks like new, with a quick inspection of the watermark showing that the paper was made in 1966. He puts two and two together and accuses Canning of creating almost perfect counterfeits of work supposedly done by Poe, but Canning worriedly insists that the work was not written by him, instead, he says that the works were created by the gold box Wyatt had looked at earlier.
Wyatt syas that when he asked Canning earlier about the box, he said it had nothing to do with Poes life, but Canning corrects him, it indeed had nothing to do with his LIFE, but it did have something to do with his DEATH. He explains that his grandfather was a grave robber, and one of the graves he opened was that of Edgar Allan Poe, where he collected the dust that the body had decomposed into and placed it in the gold box. Wyatt opens the box and finds it empty, calling Canning a liar, but Canning goes on to explain that his granfather was not only a grave robber, he was also a student of the occult, and managed to reanimate Poes remains, and thus, the unpublished manuscripts that Wyatt hold in his hand are in fact genuine articles, written by Poe himself, who is still alive.Wyatt dismisses Cannings words as drunken twaddle, but Canning insists that he put the manuscripts back and come back upstairs with him. Wyatt notices that on Cannings keyring is a thrid key which he has not yet used, and demands to know if it is the key to an as yet unopened door, Canning says it isnt but Wyatt seizes the keys and tries to unlock the door. During the struggle as Canning tries to stop him, Wyatt grabs a candlestick and Beats Canning to death with it, saying that Canning will not stop him from seeing "all the treasures".
He enters the room, and finds, hidden within behind a secret panel, the immobile and silent form of Edgar Allan Poe. Wyatt introduces himself, and states that he wishes to help Poe publish all of his new works, but Poe says he only wants to die, as his discovery of all the secrets of the unknown led to him making a pact with the devil for eternal life, and the only way he can escape satans grasp is for another soul to take his place in hell. Wyatt asks if there is any other way he can help, and Poe tells him that if he burns him, then that would do the trick. Wyatt agrees to help his idol to die, but only in return for knowing his secrets. Poe agrees, and Wyatt sets fire to the room with his candle. Poe gives a chilling warning, that the person who releases someone from the devils mastery becomes a slave of satan themselves, and that Wyatt is now trapped.
Wyatt walks through the burning house, clutching Poes unpublished manuscripts, as Poe can be heard laughing.
Atropos's shears snap shut, cutting a thread. Wyatt laughs as he looks at Diabolo and says "its you isnt it?". The other man in the group demands to know what is going on, and who Diabolo really is. Diabolo says he is well known for his excursions into the minds of man, but this answer angers him. Diabolo says that it is his turn to gaze into the shears of fate, but he refuses, instead grabbing the shears and stabbing Diabolo to death. Colin, Carla and Dorothy flee in terror, only Wyatt remains, calmly smoking his pipe whilst standing in the entrance way.
When he thinks everyone has gone, Diabolo starts laughing, and congratulates the other man on a well acted out show, before standing up. Wyatt says he enjoyed the performance, but wanted to hang around to make a deal with Diabolo. Diabolo asks Wyatt for a light, and he produces Cannings lighter from his pocket, Diabolo grunts in agreement, and the smiling Wyatt leaves.
Diabolo grins as he walks over to replace the shears in the hands of the figure of Atropos. He muses to himself that he does occasionally lose one or two doing it this way, but its only sporting to give people a chance to escape his domain, he then turns to the camera, having sported horns, a pointed beard and a moustache and says "but will you?" .......
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