Shepperton Screams (Part XVI): The Monster Club (1981) dir. Roy Ward Baker

For sixteen weeks, Jose Cruz of The Grim Reader and I will be delving into the complete horror filmography of Amicus Productions and regaling you with our spirited discussions. Below is our mutual consideration of a final anthology film produced by Amicus's Milton Subotsky, THE MONSTER CLUB (1981). 

GR: Well. Here we are.

We’re in THE MONSTER CLUB (1981), to be precise, and oh boy is it the happenin’ place to be on a dark and chilly night when you got time to kill and want to share a drink with a fiend. The film is both the most and least appropriate to leave off on during a conversation concerning Amicus Studios. It has all the macabre, darkly witty qualities of the company’s former films, combining garish horror with a satirically pointed look at the very same conventions that they had built their reputation upon. Vampires leer with goofy fangs, creatures and critters dance with wild abandon, and a fellow who appears to be a Jewish werewolf comedian all lighten the air with their wink-wink, nudge-nudge mannerisms and hamminess. Its trio of terror tales is uniformly good to great, delivering solid thrills, innovative twists on old mainstays, and atmosphere as thick as London fog that would make any avid viewer’s black heart flutter.

It also brings a creative team together from the company’s old days that is swoon-worthy: a group of thespians including Vincent Price, John Carradine and Donald Pleasance; composer Douglas Gamley back at the bandstand; Roy Ward Baker (ASYLUM, AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS) directing; a script based on the short stories of R. Chetwynd-Hayes, the scribe who provided the sources for Amicus’ previous portmanteau FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974); and even ol’ smiling Milton Subotsky is back as one the producers. THE MONSTER CLUB is in every way a triumph and a perfect swan song for Amicus.

Except it’s not an Amicus movie.

As you alluded to in your earlier post, THE MONSTER CLUB is in no way, shape, or form a product of Subotsky’s and Max Rosenberg’s brainchild, rather a joint picture made under the strange entities known as Chips Productions and Sword and Sorcery Productions. It’s very true that it brings back many of the company’s members for this little ghastly jamboree, but THE MONSTER CLUB is not in fact a card-carrying member of the studio that dripped blood. This is a point that undoubtedly surprises a lot of folks, because the film feels like the genuine package so much that it’s hard not to imagine it sitting amongst the shelves with DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965) and TORTURE GARDEN (1967). And sure, if we had wanted to be sticklers about it, we could have excluded THE MONSTER CLUB and just ended this mini-blogathon with THE BEAST MUST DIE (1974). But, honestly, doesn’t that just sound depressing when you read it? THE MONSTER CLUB is truly an Amicus film in spirit, and that’s all that matters to me.

And in a way THE MONSTER CLUB points the way toward the new generation, namely in its wraparound segments, the vibrant life blood of youth coursing through the synthesized notes of the musical numbers that fuse punk and glam and Gothic into a heady mix that is just too good to resist. The headquarters of the eponymous society itself are sweeter than gargoyle lollipops (try them sometime), a pad that looks like it was hastily adorned with trappings from the nearest Spencer’s Gifts shop to make it look as “spooky” as possible, a set from a horror host’s program infused with a neon, late-night party atmosphere. It’s a glorious world that the vampire Eramus (Price) and his favorite author Chetwynd-Hayes (Carradine) reside in. Here is a place where the writer’s works, all in lurid paperback editions, are proudly displayed in a bookstore’s window. And not only do humans enjoy reading Chetwynd-Hayes’ shudder stories, but the monsters get a kick out of it too! This is a world where horror flourishes, a plane of existence that practically thrives on it and where everyone loves it unremittingly. When I die, I hope my soul goes to the disco spookhouse that is THE MONSTER CLUB, a place where I can strip my skin away to reveal the gyrating skeleton underneath or shake my booty in a rubber Halloween mask as I please.

I think you’re going to need to take it over from here. They’re playing my song…

NT: THE MONSTER CLUB is probably the only film in cinematic history bearing the credit of “Music by John Williams and UB40.” Oh, sure, the “John Williams” in question is an Australian guitarist, not the noted American composer, but the juxtaposition of the names and the associations they evoke is nonetheless appropriate: this final quasi-Amicus production is classic English horror of the ‘60s and ‘70s dressed up in the spandex and oversize blazers of the ‘80s. It’s a creaky Gothic castle redecorated as a punk rock club. The sight of old horror fogies like Vincent Price and John Carradine being given VIP treatment at a youth hot spot while electric guitars blare over the soundtrack proves that you’re right: this is an alternate world we’re visiting.

Each of THE MONSTER CLUB’s three segments (while maybe a touch goofier than usual) would have no real trouble fitting into the fold of any prior Amicus-produced anthology. However, one could not say this of the film’s wraparound segments, which mostly take place in the eponymous nightclub and could almost better be called “musical interludes.” The brightly hued, hip environs and patrons and upbeat, jocular tone of these segments is totally at odds with everything Amicus ever produced previous to this moment. This commingling of old storytelling sensibilities and glossy modern aesthetics is jarring, particularly because of the inability or disinterest on the part of Baker, Subotsky, Chetwynd-Hayes, et al. to blend these disparate parts into a unified whole. Instead, we’re provided with three typically pulpy Amicus horror tales punctuated by rock songs about vampire romance and weekend skeleton stripteases. I honestly don’t know what to make of it.

We could call it callous marketing. Perhaps the intention was to wrangle some final dollars out of the tired Amicus anthology formula by appealing to teenaged audiences through surface-deep appropriations of youth culture. Or, maybe the intention was to garner the interest of children through corny vampire humor. Without the checks and balances of his partnership with Max Rosenberg, Subotsky infects the film with an unadulterated strain of the childish glee and fascination with storybook monsters that we’ve endured previously in a more subdued fashion in the earlier anthologies. Third option: maybe what we see in the film is no more than these once-Amicus, now-ancient filmmakers following (or attempting to follow) the natural trends of horror in the 1980s towards the frivolous and excessive. Hell if I know. THE MONSTER CLUB feels at moments like all of these reasons and none of these reasons are responsible for its genesis.

Moreover, this confusion of intention produces a tonal inconsistency that throws into question our perception of every last thing we see on screen. Example: The many scenes of the titular rock club feature shots of sundry creatures in dime store Halloween masks who are bobbing and thrashing about to the tunes being played on stage, as if they populated a low-rent Mos Eisley Cantina. At no point is it made apparent to us whether or not we should be accepting those masks for the fleshy and furry faces of actual monsters. That’s the sort of diegetic limbo the film places us in throughout, somewhere between earnest worldbuilding and ludicrous spoof.

Re-watching the film has revealed to me that my feelings have cooled a bit since my last viewing. It’s a charming film, certainly, and (as I’ve touched on above) it’s uniquely bewildering, but it’s also pretty far from the best anthology that Amicus (or those persons directly related to Amicus) has to offer. As noted, tonal inconsistency is an issue, but worse yet is that the second segment (or, the entire middle section of the film) is utterly forgettable. (I should know; I’d forgotten it!) Still, THE MONSTER CLUB’s unmitigated juvenile enthusiasm for its subject matter carries it farther than you might expect. How can one quibble with the opening anthem’s declaration that “Monsters Rule, OK!”? Some things are obviously true.

GR: It’s too bad that George Pal had already called “Dibs!” on the title WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1951), because the dichotomy between the music video-jive of the wraparound segment and the hoary, Old World theatrics of the actual vignettes in THE MONSTER CLUB is pretty stunning. While Halloween-masked boogiers get funky on the dance floor, Eramus regales us with tales of shuttered misfit monsters, Borscht Belt bloodsuckers, and fog-shrouded ghoulery. Peanut butter and chocolate it most certainly is not, and yet I find it to be a delicious concoction nevertheless. Sure the two thematic worlds on presentation here could hardly be any more different to each other, but they’re both individually fun and full of their own special appeal that the big clanging noise they make when they run into each other is dulled by my overwhelming affection for each of them. Sometimes I think I’m much too loving for my own good.

Our first story, “The Shadmock,” introduced to us by way of head-scratching monster genealogy, is a rather delicate little sonata that plays up the pitiful poignancy of its main character before ratcheting up the gruesome terror for its crispy dénouement. Lovers Angela (Barbara Kellerman) and George (Simon Ward) catch wind that a local, rich hermit named Raven (James Laurenson, memorable for his sinister turn in the HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR episode “Rude Awakening”) keeps all of his valuables and bundles of cash locked in his mansion’s safe. Sniffing prime bait for a little thievery, Angela tries laying on the charm when she applies for a general secretary/housekeeper position under Raven’s employ. However, the lady finds the gentleman’s appearance a little upsetting.

Raven is the poster child for reclusive oddballs. His skin is milky pale from prolonged periods spent indoors, his oily hair parted down the middle in choirboy fashion and the dark rings under his puppy dog eyes hinting at a restless and tortured soul. That’s because Raven is a shadmock, that most despised of bastardized monsters, a Looney Tunes caricature of creepiness fueled by an intense hunger for affection and acceptance. The shadmock, though, is not without his own set of fangs, except that his comes in the form of a banshee-like whistle, one that renders those who hear it into a pile of singed flesh.

The first segment of THE MONSTER CLUB is probably the film’s best and undoubtedly its most unique. One cannot confuse it for any of the other adapted stories from R. Chetwynd-Hayes’ Amicus resume, in this or the previous FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974). It is perhaps most notable in its prevalent mood of loss and alienation. Any attempts at cheap shocks or cheesy humor are (mostly) dispelled in favor of painting a somber portrait of Laurenson’s character. In some ways this first story makes THE MONSTER CLUB feel more legitimate because it takes the time to study Raven’s monstrousness directly rather than superficially exploit it. It is the very fundamental difference between Raven and the other characters that serves as the story’s focal point. What is it that makes someone a monster? Is it an outwardly grotesque appearance? The potential or inclination to harm? Can a monster ever truly feel and, more importantly, find love?

We see that the shadmock is even an outcast amongst his own kind. During a masquerade, Raven’s fellow beasts effortlessly glide around the ballroom while he stands off to the side, a lonely island unto himself. While the other creatures here all wear similar masks, Raven’s opaque façade is especially indicative of his rank in their dark society. He is the plain, the unwanted, the unremarkable. His desperation is sharply illustrated for us when he comes upon Angela in the very act of pilfering his riches. In Raven there is neither rage nor even hurt at this betrayal occurring right before his eyes—the typical reaction of a wronged demon in this sort of story.

Instead he willingly tells Angela to take whatever treasures she wants… so long as he is able to hold on to her and have her love. It’s sickeningly sad, and the woman’s disgusted rebuke stings bitterly. Our hearts can’t help but go out to Raven as he emits his piercing whistle, tears brimming in his eyes. This is not an act of wanton vengeance. It’s pure, raw hurt. The image of the charred Angela advancing on George that caps off the story loses a bit of its punch because of this, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. The episode’s truly devastating moment has already come to pass.

The next story is “The Vampires.” Talk about your highs and lows. Now, I don’t necessarily hate “The Vampires,” but as my family has a fondness for saying about meals that didn’t particularly wow them: “Well, you don’t have to make this for me again.” That may be a little harsher than what I really feel, but the company that the second vignette keeps with its two bookending tales can’t help but make its charms feel diminutive in comparison. Which is honestly something that I hate doing with anthology films: basing the value of one story on how it stacks up against the others. So let’s try to look “The Vampires” right in its puss and call it out for what it is.

The story, for what it’s worth, mainly concerns a young boy named Lintom Busotsky (Warren Saire, and no points for figuring out the anagram) whose father (Richard Johnson) is a creature of the night straight off the boat from the old country. Lintom himself is constantly teased at school—palely shadowing the estrangement theme from “The Shadmock”—not because he is also a genuine Nosfertau, surprisingly enough, but just for being a lanky loser in general. And yet these playground taunts are evidence enough for one Mr. Pickering (Donald Pleasance) to recognize the boy’s allegiance with the undead. Eventually the man gains the child’s trust and makes a house call one day along with some of his associates, proving to the lad that his parents were right to warn him about “men carrying violin cases.”

The most unfortunate thing about “The Vampires” is that it feels like a retread back into the old Amicus days when they tried to inject blatant shtick into their tales of horror. Or, “The Dreaded Days of the VAULT” as they’re still known amongst the villagers. We get more goofy eye-teeth here ala “The Cloak” segment from THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1970) and Johnson goes all out as he puts on his Bela-in-the-opera-cape act for our “amusement.” It can get to be some pretty tedious stuff, all of which reaches its patience-trying apex in the tale’s climax when the vampire father reveals that he was wearing a “stake-proof vest” and a ketchup packet the whole time. To quote Johnson’s rabbi: “Oy vey!” This blatant fangfoolery deadens any potential impression that the story could leave upon our minds. To allude to an earlier comparison you made, this humor is generally not clever or innovative but rather as tired as an old, rubber chicken, thus cementing its status as generally forgettable.

There are some bits that work though. I was actually chuckling out loud when the two B-Squad members carry out the vampified and now-slain Pickering to their van, the solemn funeral dirge skipping in its track as one of the men tries to kick an errantly swinging gate door open and the long stake jutting out of the corpse’s body grinding against the floor of the vehicle as they stuff it into the back. But as you say, it’s all fairly unmemorable and were it not for the few titters it elicits from the audience it might have been hardly worth mentioning.

But let’s give three cheers to the final selection for bringing our spirits back up. “The Ghouls” does not attempt to look at monstrosity with a poetic eye or give it a jovial poke in its ribs like the two preceding tales but rather chooses to exist as a pure and wholesome example of the Saturday night creature feature. Which is to say it’s oodles of good, creepy fun. Sam (Stuart Whitman), a film director in the process of shooting his latest horror picture, decides to do some location scouting to find the perfect patch of decrepit land to serve as the backdrop to his dreary drama. And that he certainly finds in the out-of-the-way town of Loughville (see above for “no points”), a rotting hamlet just off the highway and equipped with its very own insular, rolling fog. Once there he is accosted by a skeevy, wild-haired innkeeper named Patrick Magee, his helpful and winsome daughter Luna (Lesley Dunlop), and a whole pack of rabid inhabitants who would like to have him over for dinner.

It’s nothing earth-shattering, but what I was most surprised by in re-watching this particular segment is how it breaks free of the limiting shackles that are inherent in the anthology format to become a kind of mini-movie in its own right. Once Whitman eludes the fetid claws of the hungry horde for the first time and holes up in the crumbling church with his female companion, “The Ghouls” begins to take on a slightly grander scale, echoing the type of siege pictures that genre pioneers Carpenter and Romero made so famous.

This makes “The Ghouls” both a call back to simpler horrors and an appropriation of contemporaneous genre movies all in one. On one side we have the ravenous ghouls hurling stones and cursing at our human hero, on the other the rough and tumble Whitman warding off his pursuers with a gilded crucifix. The story even has a neat bit of video game-esque worldbuilding when Whitman discovers a diary amongst the skeletal remains of the town priest chronicling the progressive invasion of the ghoul-people, complete with vivid illustrations in the style of Bernie Wrightson that paint the monsters in a more fantastic light than the dirty vagabonds that make up the murderous mob in reality. It all makes for a fairly invigorating experience, one that is punctuated by notes of both melancholy and that dark irony that short horror tales thrive on.

Ahh, I’ve become tired from my trademark wordiness yet again. I think I’ll leave the final estimation of this film in your reliable claws. I shall acquaint myself with a blood martini and listen to the next band’s set. I hear they have a killer groove.

But before I go I feel it is appropriate to raise a toast. Here’s to your tireless efforts, my friend, and here’s to the house that was Amicus.

NT: Once again, I fear you’ve unearthed my coffin-brain and scooped the exact thought and word content onto your plate, at least with regard to what I felt needed to be said about this particular picture. Well, perhaps you’ve only scooped out nearly all of my words. Like the noble Humegoo, I’ll make use of whichever dangling nouns and verbs are left in my ravaged neural network while attempting to offer some closing thoughts on these segments and the film in total. Pardon Humegoo inarticulateness. Here me go.

I think your reading of “The Shadmock” is on point. It’s the most emotional and affecting tale to come out of a Subotsky production, and it ranks as my favorite sub-half hour slice of horror we’ve discussed over these past few months. Essentially a whistling-monster infused reimagining of DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978) in miniature, “The Shadmock” forces us to confront our notion of the monstrous in a way similar to how the earlier film encouraged us to reevaluate our conception of the archetypal heroic young lovers. Despite his sickly pallor, unflattering hairstyle, and combustible whistling, can we in truth call Raven a monster? Or is his monstrousness a result of his society’s labeling of him as a monster, for reasons difficult to put into words? Moreover, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to classify the callous, indifferent couple, Angela and George, as the real monsters of this piece? What makes Raven a monster in this world is his loneliness and his desperation for human (or monster) connection. The merciless nature of those around him (even the damned cat is without pity!) makes of Raven a curious, repugnant creature by contrast. To desire love, above all earthly things? Aaagh!

Though perhaps I’m a monster, too, because I couldn’t help but get a kick out of the abrupt cut the film makes from a close-up of Raven’s anguished face to a close-up of B. A. Robertson’s face snarling out the first few lines of a rock song (“Sucker for Your Love”) back at the Monster Club. No time to wallow: the party must go on. (And to note: Robertson’s twitchy performance of this ditty, filmed for its duration in that extreme facial close-up, is among my favorite moments in the film. I like to think his performance is belying the early stages of a transformation into one breed of beast or another.)

Moving on, I’ll take a pass on “The Vampire.” In my family, we have the saying “If you can’t say anything nice, make sure he isn’t wearing stake-proof vest.”

Unsurprisingly, I’m also in agreement with you on the merits of “The Ghouls.” It’s a fine segment for us to go out on, and—as is par for the course with Amicus/Subotsky—it’s as ridiculous as it is genuinely suspenseful. (As you mention, the villagers in their tattered rags and bluish complexions are a peculiarly ramshackle vision of ghoulishness. Or, as Eramus would explain, “smaller budget.”) You’ve singled out my favorite aspect of the episode by mentioning the storybook history lesson of Loughville: I found those Wrightson-esque visualizations of the ghouls to be more horrid than anything Amicus has ever given us. Initially, I was surprised to find myself being so drawn into the ghastly static narrative of this story within a story, but the terrifying power of those lined faces and limbs—doing things as innocuous as dancing or peeking out from the bed covers—repulsed me in a way the main narrative’s moving images never could. (More evidence for the power of oral and visual storytelling, right?) This brief tangent within “The Ghouls” reads a little like a Lovecraftian tale of fiendish human degeneration, and that type of story never fails to set my skin a’crawling.

After all of the above has transpired, we wind up back at the Monster Club, and we watch as Vincent Price dances and claps out of time at the front of the stage upon which The Pretty Things play some English faux-reggae. This is after he has given a long, impassioned, winking speech to the assembled creatures of the night, arguing for humanity rightful place in the ranks of monsterdom (because of all the war, genocide, and assorted murders committed by humans, you see…). This is an appropriate end to our Amicus journey. Amicus was at times ahead of the curve in the horror business, at most other times behind, and sometimes so far off the curve its point failed to register on the graph. Their productions were at times deathly serious and at times were presented with a tongue so firmly planted in cheek they risked choking on it as it slipped down their throat. Amicus tried just about everything, to varying levels of success, during its short tenure in horror cinema, and that rambunctiousness has earned my appreciation (and I’m certain it has earned yours, too). Their films were perhaps never great, but they were always game, and they were—without (much) pretension—never embarrassed to be making the sort of horror they were making, whatever its negligible artistic value. The Amicus films were, in a sense, like Vincent Price dancing to reggae. We love them an offal lot.

Shepperton Screams (Part XII): From Beyond the Grave (1974) dir. Ken Connor

For sixteen weeks, Jose Cruz of The Grim Reader and I will be delving into the complete horror filmography of Amicus Productions and regaling you with our spirited discussions. Below is our mutual consideration of Amicus's FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974). Check back every week for more dialogues and (naturally) more nightmares.

GR: Having plundered the collected works of American frighteners Robert Bloch and Entertaining Comics to varying degrees of success, Amicus turned to the short stories of one of their fellow countrymen, Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes, to supply the sundry beasts and bloody bits for their next portmanteau feature, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974). Chetwynd-Hayes was a literary brother to Bloch in many ways, mainly in the manner in which he utilized stock genre tropes and seasoned them with black humor, though Chetwynd-Hayes lacked some of the sharpness in prose that Bloch demonstrated with his snap endings and biting dialogue, be it however laden with bad puns. Chetwynd-Hayes’ fiction was a bit jollier in comparison, but his stories were an ideal fit for Shepperton Studios, always eager as they were to leaven their grisly subjects with little winks and pokes at the audience.

FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE is especially notable for its expert art direction and inventive design. The film is filled with neat little camera transitions, a delicious color palette, and sumptuous sets. The screen becomes awash in hues of blue when the supernatural is present, showing us ghostly vistas of fog and skeletal trees as well as decadently decorated parlors of Gothic furniture festooned with dust and cobwebs. Even the most innocuous of decisions—letting a blood drop fall from a ceiling to fill the camera lens with red—add a significant amount of visual wit to the proceedings. The overall technical skill of FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE is somewhat surprising when you take into account that this was director Kevin Connor’s very first film at the helm. Having worked previously as an editor and sound editor on a handful of features, it’s evident that Connor brought his expertise and that of cinematographer Alan Hume (THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS, STAR WARS: EPISODE VI – RETURN OF THE JEDI), art director Bert Davey (THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, SUPERMAN III, ALIENS) and set decorator Simon Wakefield (BATMAN BEGINS, CASINO ROYALE, MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND) to the project to give us a very pretty-looking picture.

Sadly, the style seems to outweigh the substance here. As wonderfully macabre as all the knick knacks are, the stories themselves are not quite as memorable as one would hope. Whereas Bloch had his share of ingenious little plots—you could easily name them off as “That one with the head-eating cat” or “The one where those body parts came back to life” and have someone instantly recognize which one you’re talking about—Chetwynd-Hayes’ offerings run a little on the dry side and, had it not been for the engaging and fun tech work, might be completely forgettable. There’s at least one entry here that stands firmly on its own two legs as a singular horror fable while the others fall on the wayside. Two of them are practically interchangeable! But we’ll get to that in the bit.

The film’s wraparound segment involves a curiosity shop called Temptations Ltd. owned by the Proprietor (Peter Cushing), a quiet little man whose shop is packed to the brim with grim antiquities that would make any genre fan’s heart skip a beat. This uniting framework is used once more to promote the moral justice of the Amicus universe, though here the punishments seem quite disproportionate to the crimes of our characters. Instead of the murderers and sadists that we’ve seen before, the victims of otherworldly justice in FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE are basically just a bunch of folks who are trying to skimp on paying the Proprietor the proper price for his artifacts. Whether it’s switching tags on the items or boorishly haggling for a lower rate, these folks find out that even if you’re nothing but a cheat in Amicusland, you’re screwed. It’s even wryly remarked that the film’s final customer, a young lad low on funds, still has to go through the hellish wringer before Cushing sees that he did in fact pay him the total and correct amount for his purchase. No one’s safe!

Speaking of which, I suggest that you step away from that iron maiden you’re eyeing there to give us your side of the story before ol’ man Cushing kicks us out for loitering.

NT: For me, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE is the dark horse among the Amicus anthologies.

When we began preparing for these dialogues, I was surprised to realize that FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE existed. I’d previously seen every one of Amicus’s anthologies, and yet somehow this one had managed to elude my memory. Of course I fondly reminisced about the one in which Peter Cushing ran a curiosity shop, but, I thought, wasn’t that in THE VAULT OF HORROR? It was only while watching FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE—the production company’s (sorta) penultimate portmanteau—for the second time that faint recollections of the individual episodes began to flicker across my consciousness like the blue flame of a spooky séance candle. In my experience, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE began to resemble an Amicus-patented Vengeful Corpse: dead and long forgotten in my ignorance, the film was resurrected by a second viewing and crept its way inexorably into my den, eager as it was to unleash its delectable morbidity upon me once again.

In truth, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE might be my favorite Amicus film we’ve done thus far (though TORTURE GARDEN runs a close second). Why, then, had I almost completely forgotten about the film and all of the small, ghoulish treasures contained within? It’s difficult to say.

It’s not the fault of director Kevin Connor (MOTEL HELL) or the assembled cast and crew. As you’ve duly pointed out, this is an attractive film full of technical flourishes that set it apart from the usually quite static (if still attractive and appropriately atmospheric) Amicus visual style. The acting is on par with what we’re accustomed to in these bite-sized sketches of wicked souls, and we even a get few new welcome faces added to the roster who put in distinctive performances of their own (Donald and Angela Pleasence, David Warner). The score is effective, the sets are impeccable, and the production’s (most likely) miniscule budget was wrung dry. FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE feels invigorated by its fresh but experienced creative talent behind the camera, unlike our last entry, THE VAULT OF HORROR, which gave the impression that Amicus was exhausted with (or perhaps had exhausted) the anthology format.

You’ve pointed towards the writing as a possible culprit for the film’s unmemorable status, but I’m not sure that I can agree. These four segments feel no more featherweight than any other segment we’ve seen in an Amicus portmanteau and— as you also note—they certainly express a similarly wry wit interspersing the bloodshed. The film’s longer than average running time might lead us call them quieter, more slow-burning tales in comparison to what we’re used to from Bloch and EC Comics by-way-of Milton Subotsky. Yet, I can’t think of a finale in the Amicus oeuvre more explosive than the one we witness in the final tale, “The Door.” Hell, even “The Elemental” jumps farther over the top than we’re accustomed to with its climactic living room windstorm. All four tales are recognizably Amicus material, and (I’d argue) they’re stronger than the majority of their peers.

So what is it about these tales, then, that prevents them from sticking? My best guess relates back to your remark about how two of these tales are essentially interchangeable (I’m guessing you’re referring to the first and the fourth). FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE presents a coherence that’s foreign to us anthology connoisseurs. Rather than being disparate tales plucked at random from an author’s collected works and crammed (however clumsily) into the confines of a frame narrative (looking at you, HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD), these four tales are all of a piece. Each focuses around witchcraft, the occult, and the ancient supernatural evil that lurks in the cracks of the world (and within the cracks of various mundane antiques). These tales work together, revising each other’s basic themes and story content. This grouping of tales isn’t designed to be as attention-grabbing as we might expect (we’re not barreling swiftly from a story about a head-munching cat to a story about a murderous piano, after all), and thus they do tend to blend together in our minds. This is made especially apparent when, as you’ve said, two of the episodes only significantly differ in the identity of the haunted object and in the story’s final outcome. Even the film’s curious anthology format (which finds the film moving sequentially in time from the events of the frame narrative to the events of each tale without utilizing the conceits of flashbacks or visions of potential futures) encourages us to view the film as a cohesive unit, as a single chronological story rather than subdivided bits of horror fantasy. When we think of Amicus anthologies, we think of their wild variety of horror elements, their abandonment of consistent tone, and their tendency towards a disregard for internal coherence. FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE possesses none of these attributes, and I can only imagine this is what left it underrated in my estimation until now.

Now, I’m going to go gaze into the beyond (courtesy of this nifty haunted mirror) while you give your further thoughts on these specific curiosities.

GR: As a matter of fact, I do agree with you in regards to the high amount of sturm und dang on display in FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE, as it truly is the most ferocious Amicus picture we’ve yet seen when it comes to scenery-destroying action. So why then, as you admit, does it leave such a foggy impression in the mind? Let’s see if we can find out.

“The Gate Crasher” is the first of our crackly tales, telling of the young Edward Charlton (David Warner) who purchases a gilded, antique mirror from Cushing’s store to enliven the atmosphere of his flat. It’s a great conversation starter, as it so proves when his friends are inspired by the spooky looking-glass to hold a séance. Afterward Edward is haunted by a Rasputin-like figure from the mirror-world who demands that Edward feed him blood. Because what else do ghosts do? Connor and company certainly start with their best foot forward here, as “The Gate Crasher” is the vignette in which they really let loose with those little flourishes I mentioned earlier. The séance scene is particularly notable, the blue flame of the candle dancing high like an angered wraith as the camera pans around the little table to each of the participants’ leery faces. When Warner is transported to the mirror-world in a dream, the primary color scheme and close camera angles recall the memorable, off-the-cuff night terror that Cushing himself suffered in the “Waxworks” episode of THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1970).

Even at its abbreviated length, “The Gate Crasher” comes close to feeling a little overlong, the narrative supported solely on our protagonist’s seemingly endless supply of plasma to his new, reflective friend. The bit with Warner knifing a prostitute is a cute little wink pointing towards his future turn as Jack the Ripper in TIME AFTER TIME (1979), though it is curious how, in his hypnotized state, Warner doesn’t bother cleaning up the sticky mess in his apartment yet makes it a point to dress in his pajamas before going to bed! The story becomes an intriguing parable of a man descending into the pit of addiction, as we see Charlton’s once handsome lodgings go to shambles and his healthy pallor transformed into a waxy, sickly countenance. The Face, as it is credited, is like a demonic monkey on Charlton’s back that constantly demands more hits of the juice it loves so much; as it so tellingly intones to him at one point, “You must feed me.” Charlton eventually becomes lost himself, a restless specter ready to plague the next foolish mortal to fall under the mirror’s hold. And if that’s too self-consciously high falutin’ for you, check out that bit when the Face, finally released from his prison, orders Charlton to take his own life with the instructions of “Grip my shoulders. Now thrust forward.” That naughty monkey!

The following story, “An Act of Kindness,” is probably the film’s high mark for a number of reasons. For one, it probably has the strongest sense of character and purpose of the lot, not to mention being the one that is perhaps the most cleverly and tightly plotted. I don’t say this merely because “An Act of Kindness” has a twist ending but because for the whole of its running time you are never entirely sure where it’s going to end up. It has a canny unpredictability that’s gripping to watch. Ian Bannen portrays Christopher Lowe, a by-all-means average man who tries to become just a little more than that in the eyes of a streetside ragman, Jim Underwood (Donald Pleasence). He does this by obtaining an honorary military medal from Temptations Ltd. and Pleasance duly offers Bannen his home and heart, not to mention the hospitality of his daughter Emily (Angela Pleasence). Not only are the Underwoods remarkably kind, they also know just how to alleviate Bannen of his nasty wife and apathetic child with a little brand of their own magic.

Or is that really the case? “An Act of Kindness” is a sneaky little number, and its general atmosphere (barring the wickedly cruel finale) seems like an anomaly compared to the wild and woolly haints and ghouls that inhabit the other stories. The second vignette derives its chills from more quietly shuddersome moments, like when the veiled and white-faced Emily stalks over Diana Dors as she sleeps, a gleaming knife in her hand. Angela Pleasence is wonderful here, even outshining her father a bit as the waifish girl whose toothy smile can inspire warmth and cold-blooded terror equally. “An Act of Kindness” feels more substantial for its tragic arc of events as well; when we see Bannen, we see the insignificant worker ant who only wishes to have some kind of importance to his fellow humans, so much so that he’s willing to lie about who he really is. He sees his own life as having so little merit that he must build up an alternate, more heroic personality just to receive some kind of warmth. He’s not trying to scam Cushing out of one of his antiquities just for the sake of material possession like the others. He needs the medal to become important. It’s this that makes his ultimate fate seem harsh. He was merely a stooge, a means to an end. Just as he was in life.

“The Elemental” makes it evident from its opening prologue that this segment is going to be the oft-dreaded (but generally not too terrible) “funny” one. Think “Golf Story” from DEAD OF NIGHT (1945) or “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” from CREEPSHOW (1982). Cushing indulges in a little humor himself when he tells customer Reginald Warren (Ian Carmichael) upon making his purchase “I hope you enjoy snuffing it.” Because Warren has bought a snuff box, you see. Apparently the little case is bedeviled, as Warren finds out when he is pestered by a spiritualist named Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton, channeling Aunt Bedelia) on the train ride home. The woman claims that Warren has an elemental perched on his shoulder, a mischievous demon that proceeds to make his life a living hell. Fairly stumped by his supernatural quandary, Warren calls on Orloff to help him exterminate the pest.

Most of this story’s humor stems from Leighton’s fruity turn as the cat-lady-as-exorcist Orloff. Her wavering, eccentric tone is matched by her brassy expletives such as when she commands the elemental to “Get out, ya bastard!” Leighton has quite a few lines that tickle the ribs due to the earnestness with which she delivers them, like when she describes the demon feeding off its victims’ energy (“Sucking up the fluids like a babe at his mother’s breast”) or the evil’s magnetism to Warren’s wife Susan (“She’ll attract them like flies to a dung heap!”). A disquieting moment occurs in the middle of the program when Warren’s familiar coyishly tickles Susan in bed only to start strangling her. The scene is rather unsettling in its own small way, though the sight of Nyree Dawn Porter struggling with her invisible attacker and her race to the bathroom as she retches at the poltergeist’s awful stench will certainly provoke some laughter. The exorcism finale is a pretty crackerjack set piece, as Orloff bellows her commands as pillows burst in an eruption of goose-feathers and a ghostly wind nearly tears the house right out of the ground. Its played-for-cereal ending is just a tad ludicrous though, as we see the now-possessed Porter strike down her hubby with a poker (déjà vu…) only to break down the front door with superhero flair as she exits into the night. “The Elemental” has such an odd mixture of terror and triviality that the moments when it plays for laughs feel more and more off-kilter and weird the more you think about them. This is perhaps epitomized no more succinctly than in another “context is everything” chestnut that Orloff offers on par with the Face’s orders from “The Gate Crasher”: “His main objective is to get inside you.”

Our final selection for the evening is pretty much simplicity personified in both title and content. It’s a weird fairy tale called “The Door” in which happy couple William and Rosemary Seaton (Ian Ogilvy and Lesley Ann-Down) acquire an ornate, Gothic stone door from Cushing’s shop to use it as the entryway to a pantry (!) in their home. When Rosemary fancifully imagines the door opening to a more dramatic space, William discovers that it does just that, as his meagre shelves are replaced with a sapphire-hued parlor of the previous century. Not only that, but it is the room of the dreaded Sir Michael Sinclair (Jack Watson), a depraved aristocrat who spent his sordid life immersing himself in the study of evil. And you can bet your ascot that Sir Michael is not resting easily now that the portal to his realm has been opened.

You were correct in your guesstimation that my earlier comment about the interchangeable stories was referring to “The Gate Crasher” and “The Door,” seeing as how they both deal with two different kinds of gateways that grant access to vampiric men of the past who terrorize the modern worlds of their young protagonists. They act as interesting companion pieces though, as the former shows our hero giving in to the power of darkness where the character from the latter tale hacks it to pieces with a battle axe. As pale as it might be as a reworking of the Bluebeard tale, “The Door” certainly grabs one’s attention with more adept technical skill and bombast. Light and darkness are used to good effect when William reads Sinclair’s journal, the implications of his sacrilegious acts made by the dancing shadow of a crucifix on the wall, and Sinclair’s own entrance is quite creepy as we initially see him only as a raggedly-breathing shadow before he is revealed for the bewigged bogey that he is. Once in the light, Sinclair becomes a regular cackling villain when he sweeps the fainted Rosemary off her feet, snickering to William as the lad tries to stop him “Two souls are better than one!” Enthusiasts of performers such as Tod Slaughter will surely get a kick out of that. And the segment ends on a real blood-and-thunder note as William lays waste to the evil door, the carvings oozing plasma and causing Sinclair to collapse like a heap of sticks. I especially liked how William’s blows on the door’s hinges apparently caused Sinclair’s spine to break in two! A small amount of cleverness and a rarely-seen happy ending make “The Door” stand out, but amongst its fellows it may seem like it’s retreading ground we’ve literally just seen. But, to be fair, typing all my thoughts out has actually made this story rise in my estimation. What’s up with that? Maybe I just have a thing for bloodsuckers in curly period wigs.

Okay, I think somebody better bash my head with a poker before I babble on any more than I have. Even this little sprite on my shoulder is pissed off at me now.

NT: If only that little gremlin had stopped you sooner: For the most part, you’ve summed up my exact feelings about each of these witchy tales. I could stare long and hard into the blue candle flame and try to drudge up some further interpretations from the beyond, but why bother? Amicus anthology tales are slight by design. All I shall offer are a few stray observations about these tales before moving on to place the final nail in this flick’s coffin.

I find “The Gate Crasher” to be a rather wonderful witch’s brew of horror subgenres. Part psycho-slasher (David Warner’s murder of prostitutes brings us into seedier territory than we’re used to); part ghost story (a séance and a haunted mirror, even if this mirror doesn’t give the ones from THE BOOGEYMAN (1980) or OCULUS (2014) much competition); part LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960) master/slave dynamic (yes, to Warner the ghost mirror commands, “Feed me!”); and part Lovercraftian tale of cosmic coercion (we learn that the mirror leads to a shadowy beyond of immortality and ultimate power, and that those who occupy this nether realm “are Legion.” The implication may be Satanic, but the details seem to point towards a horror far grander). I think the problematic homosexual undertones you’ve picked up on are on point: sure, the mirror man tries out the blood of women, but it’s ultimately the blood of Warner and his effeminate, cat-toting downstairs neighbor that return him to a corporeal state. Warner himself seems to be dealing with similar feelings of sexual confusion (recall, he’s unwilling to get all pointed and thrusty with his presumed galpal, Pamela). We can only hope that one day the masses become a little more understanding of other people’s lifestyles, enabling Warner and his extra-dimensional pals to come out of the ghost mirror.

“An Act of Kindness” is certainly the film’s best tale, for all the reasons you’ve mentioned. The segment captures in its characterization of Christopher Lowe (Ian Bannen) a depth, subtlety, and pathos rarely angled for in these roughly twenty minute long Amicus short films. But, yes, every scene is enlivened by the waifish, ghostly presence of Angela Pleasence. Her filmography is sparse, but those who have witnessed her in films like this and Jose Ramon Larraz’s SYMPTOMS (1974) aren’t soon to forget her. Her unsettling, improvised, nearly tuneless rendition of a creepy lullaby (which includes the charming and reassuring line, “eaten by worms in the cold wet earth”) while doing absent-minded chores around the house is going to rear up in one of my nightmares someday, I just know it.

When considered among to the other (quote unquote) funny episodes of prior Amicus anthologies (I’m thinking “Voodoo” from DR. TERROR or “Bargain in Death” from VAULT OF HORROR),  “The Elemental” is assuredly a cut or two above. I believe I chuckled a few times, thanks to the insuppressible Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton), so that’s something. For me, the ultimate success of this segment rests upon its POLTERGEIST-y climax, all sound, fury, and living room windstorms. The image of a possessed Susan (Nyree Dawn Porter) bursting out through the front door like She-Hulk in the final shot will never cease to strike a spark of amusement in me. Or perhaps that’s just the elemental perched on my shoulder pulling at my cheeks?

And despite its niggling impression of “been-there-done-that-literally-half-an-hour-ago,” I quite love “The Door.” Allow me to count the reasons: 1.) the absurdity of a grandiose antique door being installed on the hinges of a stationary pantry, 2.) said stationary pantry (who has ever even heard of such a superfluous thing?) doubling as a time travel portal, 3.) the sheer brutality of the drawn out final conflict in which the door and its demon get the butt of an ax handed to them, and 4.) the revised ending in which one of our victims is allowed to escape through good behavior, producing the cleverest sting in the tail we’ve had yet.

Again, if you average them out, I’d have no hesitation placing FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE near the very top of the Amicus canon. It’s lively, creative, provocative, well-acted, well-shot: a real devil of an anthology. I still wonder, then, why it so quickly faded from my memory. If I were to disregard the influence of its supremely unmemorable title, I might hazard that part of the reason is portmanteau fatigue. When I first viewed the Amicus anthologies several years ago, I tackled them all in short succession. By the time I arrived at this, their seventh anthology, I suppose I’d had enough of anthologies altogether. During our Shepperton Screams series, I’ve again made short order of them due to our schedule, and, believe me, I’ve felt the effects of this bombardment. I think there’s only so much anthologizing a poor elemental soul can take. Let’s agree to move on to redder pastures, shall we? Let’s see that if it’s at this late point in Amicus’s brief life that the screaming truly starts…

Next week: And Now the Screaming Starts (1973)

Shepperton Screams (Part XI): The Vault of Horror (1973) dir. Roy Ward Baker

For sixteen weeks, Jose Cruz of The Grim Reader and I will be delving into the complete horror filmography of Amicus Productions and regaling you with our spirited discussions. Below is our mutual consideration of Amicus's THE VAULT OF HORROR (1973). Check back every week for more dialogues and (naturally) more nightmares.

NT: The success of TALES FROM THE CRYPT at the international box office and the abundance of remaining comic book source material licensed from EC Comics encouraged Amicus to speedily put a follow-up film into production. Surprising, then, that the resulting anthology, THE VAULT OF HORROR (known in some territories at release as TALES FROM THE CRYPT II), wound up as different from its progenitor as it is. While THE VAULT OF HORROR follows the structure established in the prior film (a skimpy, graveyard-set wraparound supporting four short segments and one longer episode all adapted from EC horror comics), it diverges in its approach to tone. For better or worse, VAULT OF HORROR is a “funny” film. In our last discussion, I discussed the peculiar tonal balancing act TALES FROM THE CRYPT performed with its simultaneous dark, ironic humor and deathly sincerity. THE VAULT OF HORROR, on the other hand, sees its predecessor’s dark, ironic humor and raises it a handful of visual sight gags and punchlines.

I don’t particularly mind this alteration (the film ranks only slightly lower in my estimation than TALES), but it’s easy to imagine that it might rankle a few. For instance, it might rankle you, my friend. Having already heard your preliminary consideration of this film on the Hello! This is the Doomed Show podcast, I know you’re not too fond of the various jars of pickled cinematic goodies the film places on its cluttered shelves. I can’t exactly disagree with you: when comparing Amicus’s two EC anthologies to one another, VAULT OF HORROR is unquestionably the inferior product. It feels rushed, it feels cheaper, and it feels broader. Worst of all, it feels less inspired: up until this point, every Amicus anthology has sought to complicate the established formula in one way or another, but this one is content to lay dormant, to simply cash-in.

Fortunately, the problems listed above have never stopped me from enjoying a film. I recognize THE VAULT OF HORROR’s flaws, but I embrace it all the same. The wry, bloody charm of the comic originals emerges intact, I think, and the emphasis on overt, exaggerated humor in the film (without sacrificing the grislier aspects) is a valid method of representing the comics’ cornier qualities. (Its exaggerated humor also helps us horror historians discern a clearer bridge between the Amicus anthologies and the later HBO television series in terms of their approaches to adaptation.) In a prior discussion, I criticized director Roy Ward Baker for making ASYLUM (1972) too grim and humorless, and—if nothing else—I could never accuse him of doing the same in this one. Additionally, there are some striking moments and images to be found in THE VAULT OF HORROR (both of the comedic and the horrific variety) that could rival those populating TALES FROM THE CRYPT. It even manages to best TALES at a key moment: the conclusion of VAULT’s frame narrative hits a curiously melancholy (and, dare I say it, poignant) note that we haven’t seen in an Amicus production since the conclusion of DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965), and I’d go so far as to argue that this melancholy note is the better of the two. It also beats tumbling like lemmings into a white hot hell pit.

However, it must be noted: to (a white hot) hell (pit) with the censored version of THE VAULT OF HORROR. To achieve a PG rating from the MPAA for its American theatrical release, Amicus cut out the closing darkly comic visual punchlines from the first two segments. This censored version then became the version most widely distributed on home video, and thus the uncensored version exists today only in shoddy-looking composite bootlegs and open matte overseas releases. This is an unfortunate state of affairs. The cuts don’t amount to much of the running length (certainly less than a minute), but the effect of their absence on the film as a whole is devastating.

We’ve taken an elevator to hell with this one, pal. Do you still despise the ride?

GR: The inferno-like rage I might have previously held against THE VAULT OF HORROR has certainly cooled in the intervening years, but as I found out in watching it for this assignment there’s still a small but very present part of my brain that wails “This is no TALES!”, usually right around the start of “Midnight Mess.” But you’re certainly right. VAULT has its moments, and perhaps it’s my general disinclination towards it that helps to make them shine all the brighter. I can see this film slowly inching itself a little closer to my heart upon subsequent viewings, but there are aspects of it that taste like bitter, bloody broth in my mouth that I may never be able to get over.

Roy Ward Baker establishes a very different mood (as does Subotsky with his script) than the arch melodramatics that Francis had tinkered with so wonderfully in the prequel. The establishing shots of modern England—the House of Parliament on the Thames to be exact—are worlds away from the Gothic cemetery of TALES and the robustness of the previous film is traded in for a more dreary sense of foreboding, despite the footage itself looking like it could have been ripped from the reels of any old travelogue. This is the same sensation that, for me, carries on into the rest of the film with a few brief exceptions. Where TALES seemed vivacious, VAULT is on the whole pictorially lackluster; indeed, at one point I actually wrote “This movie looks like it has a cold.”

The cinematography doesn’t have the same pop as Norman Warwick’s compositions. The muddy browns and faded greys of DOP Denys N. Coop can’t help but rub off on me and bestow an overall sense of “blah.” This look isn’t a bad thing in of itself, but supplanted in the bigger-than-life world of garish comic book horror, it can’t help but look, as you say, cheap and run of the mill. Composer Douglas Gamley is one of the few hangers-on from TALES, but even his score can’t help but feel like a bittersweet reminder of the completely bonkers and one-of-a-kind orchestrations he made under Francis’ direction. It even becomes a bit unintentionally funny in the beginning when we see the gentlemen boarding the elevator as naturally as anything else, but then there are those intense horns of his blowing away in the background like we’re seeing the destruction of Pompeii.

The wraparound segment may seem to be uninspired and a bit far-fetched, but I actually have soft spot for it, recalling as it does the type of “gentlemen’s club” story that was quite popular in Britain, where gruesome subjects were discussed in between drinks and cigars to the nameless narrators willing to hear the accounts to their black finales. It also acts as a kind of bridge to the earlier DEAD OF NIGHT (1945) which also shared a host of tale-tellers provoked by the strange dream of one of their number into sharing accounts of the uncanny. Its patented weirdness (people calmly sitting down to tell each other scary stories while never *once* looking for a damn way out) is given a quietly mournful punctuation by the film’s climax as we see that the characters who were never in search of an exit have been in the eponymous vault the whole time, for those who might have been wondering when that shoe was going to drop.

We skip out on the sardonic tones of the Cryptkeeper in order to hear the solemn realization of Curd Jürgens that he and his fellows are doomed to an eternity of telling each other of their horrid lives. It’s a quieter version of Hell than that of TALES FROM THE CRYPT for sure, and in some ways it seems much more terrifying and sad that instead of being forced into the fiery cauldron kicking and screaming like Ralph Greene these men realize in their hearts where they are and what they have done and walk out amongst the mist-shrouded graves to accept their fate. There was actually ghoulish makeup done by Roy Ashton for this scene that would’ve shown the cast as shrivel-faced corpses. That might have taken away some of the tragic sting, and its deletion from the final film due either to an editorial decision or the further bastardization of the censored version (it really is the worst) is perhaps for the better. It’s a strangely affecting ending to cap off a film that has given us such sights as vampires with snake fangs and grown men in ladies’ underwear. Such is the perplexing picture that is THE VAULT OF HORROR.

My glass is getting empty. Tell me about the strange visions (dreams, phobias, obsessions, fears…) that you had while listening to the gents recount their ghastly phantasms while I fill my decanter.

NT: You’ve perfectly summarized my feelings about the film’s denouement.  And, I agree, it’s an odd choice to infect the film with a strain of somber and restless sorrow after five straight tales of awkward chuckles. I’d argue that the choice was rooted in a desire to reflect (in reverse) the occasional abrupt tonal shifts the original EC comics audience experienced when moving between the humorous frame stories and ghastly narratives proper, but such an argument would seem somehow off. Despite the sly intelligence and subversive wit of the EC brand, such subtle pathos as that which the film’s ending creates for its audience was beyond the ken of those horrific funny books. Rather, understated pathos is Amicus’s game, and I think this ending is a product of the Amicus of DR. TERROR, THE PSYCHOPATH (1966), I, MONSTER (1971), and nearly every Peter Cushing performance creeping on set and making its presence known. It’s a curious marriage, but a fascinating one.

But on to a discussion of these tales from the… vault:

“Midnight Mess” (originally published in TALES FROM THE CRYPT #35, 1953): As with TALES FROM THE CRYPT, we open with a surprise murder. That film’s fire poker whack to the head is a good deal more shocking and visually arresting than the strangulation we witness in “Midnight Mess,” but the moment nonetheless stands as another deliberate call-back from this film to its successful predecessor. (As the Crypt-Keeper might say, “If it ain’t broke, beat it to death.”) The forced connection between the two films is especially obvious considering that this scene doesn’t exist in the original comic. This is because the film’s version sends Harold Rodgers (Daniel Massey) on an elaborate, sister-murdering inheritance scheme, while the original comic has its hero stopping by his sister’s place merely because he was passing through town. Yes, the film ramps up the stakes appreciably, but in truth Subotsky’s script works to improve upon its source in most every way. While us dedicated horror fiends can likely sniff out the town’s vampire menace before it’s revealed, the film at least tries to conceal this surprise through vague references to a shadowy “them” being those fiends responsible for all the blood-draining. Al Feldstein’s script for the comic, with its constant warnings to the protagonist from the townsfolk to “watch out for those darned vampires,” lacks this subtle grace. The addition of the inheritance plot—and Harold’s presumed murder of his sister, Donna (Anna Massey, his real life sister)—also adds a wonderfully ironic karmic twist to the ending revelation, which fails to connect on the four-color page. Yes, the fangs in this tale are quite ostentatious, and the jugular tap might be a step too far into comedy for some, but I relish these aspects. The tap, for instance, is lifted straight from the comic’s final panel. For me, this macabre and comical elevation of a standard horror premise is precisely what EC Comics excels at, and in this segment the film translates that sensibility to the screen with wicked skill.

“The Neat Job” (originally published in SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES #1, 1952): My favorite episode of the film, “The Neat Job,” is derived from the inaugural issue of one of EC’s pulp crime comics, yet its horrific twist ending (present in the original comic) makes it a fine fit for this gathering. Both the comic and the film act as wonderful exaggerations of the resentment that erupts from time to time when trying to please your significant other in a domestic setting, despite you and your partner’s wildly different conceptions of what “neatness” and “order” look like. Arthur (Terry-Thomas) places an undue amount of pressure on his new wife, Eleanor (Glynis Johns), to conform to his ideas of those concepts, and his constant berating of her when she fails to live up to his standards cause her to go a little mad in her attempts to do right by him. Unlike “…And All Through the House,” this tale is slightly more sympathetic to the plight of the housewife with a demanding husband, demonstrating the absurdity of his arguments and the helplessness of her situation until she empowers herself through violence. The fact that she screws up one final time by reversing the word order of Arthur’s catchphrase (“A place for everything, and everything in its place!”) is a delightfully quaint stinger that’s an invention of Subotsky’s own. To give our screenwriter/producer extraordinaire more credit, the film version elevates the silliness (the sight of Terry-Thomas wearing women’s underwear will not soon leave my mind’s eye) but also the grotesqueness of the source material (the lovingly long pan across the many jars or Arthur’s pickled parts was one of those grotesque moments trimmed from the American theatrical release). The episode’s best (because least explicable) joke of all is the casting of the fifty-year-old Glynis Johns as a young trophy wife of the sixty-year-old Terry-Thomas. Oh, how times have changed.

“This Trick’ll Kill You” (originally published in TALES FROM THE CRYPT #33, 1952): This episode is one of those standard-issue “supernatural revenge against evildoer” tales that EC (and Amicus) were so fond of. I like the segment, though I find in it scant material worth remark save for one particular scene that demonstrates Baker and Subotsky’s filmmaking intelligence when crafting their source for the screen. The scene I’m referring to is the one in which the magician, Sebastian (Curd Jurgens), and his wife, Inez (Dawn Addams), are testing out their new charmed rope magic trick back in their hotel room, shortly after murdering a young Indian girl for it. What the pair discovers is that the rope is not an illusion, of course, and after Inez climbs to the top of the rope she looks up above her, screams, and vanishes into the ceiling. Up until this point, the comic and film remain identical in their presentation of this scene. But then Amicus does it better: on the ceiling, at the exact spot where Inez vanished, blood begins to spread from above, bleeding through the paint. It’s a tremendously creepy moment, adding a touch of genuine fright that the comic original sacrifices for bombast (in the comic, Inez’s bloodless, dismembered doll limbs tumble down from the ceiling onto Sebastian). All of the THE VAULT OF HORROR’s previous visual scares have been deliberately laughable and extravagant, so this moment stands apart for its preference for chilling suggestion over outright gore, adding some surprising and very welcome variety to the proceedings. I appreciate the restraint.

“Bargain in Death” (originally published in TALES FROM THE CRYPT #28, 1952): Well, you can’t win them all. “Bargain in Death” is adapted almost precisely from its source comic, and yet it ends up so much sillier on the silver screen. From the blast of wind emanating from the scream of the casketed Maitland (Michael Craig) that sends the hair of the medical students blowing wildly back, to the cloyingly metafictional, intertextual reading one character is seen making of the novelization of Amicus’s own TALES FROM THE CRYPT, this is some goofy tripe. The implausibility of the central insurance scam—which, in its clumsiness, unintentionally implies that its two schemers are financially dependent homosexual lovers—ensures that we won’t discover much to take away from these events, except that perhaps medical school fees are much too high. If this were a longer segment, it would significantly mar the film. As it is, it’s a brief wisp of post-burial bad breath in the larger sensation.

“Drawn and Quartered” (originally published in TALES FROM THE CRYPT #26, 1951): Before he donned a scarf he wore a ginger beard. This segment stars Tom Baker (the fourth Doctor Who, and the second Doctor, after Jon Pertwee, to pop up in an Amicus anthology) as a poor and downtrodden painter living in Haiti who discovers that various critics and art dealers back in the homeland scammed him by telling him his art was worthless and then selling it for exorbitant prices for their sole profit. Pissed, Baker’s artist, Moore, employs the aid of voodoo to bestow his art with magical properties of revenge. Don’t worry, it doesn’t all blow up in his face or anything. Oh, never mind, yes it does. Of course it does. There’s a fine premise supporting “Drawn and Quartered,” but it’s not one chock full of bombshells. As soon as Moore realizes his powers, our minds flash back to the self-portrait he painted in the opening scene and we know precisely what’s about to occur. Like “Blind Alleys” from TALES, this final segment is given a much longer running time in which to weave its yarn. Unlike “Blind Alleys,” “Drawn and Quartered” doesn’t benefit nearly as much from the expansion. Subotsky and Roy Ward Baker aren’t certain what to do with the extra time, so they throw in another revenge murder for kicks (which enables them to bring in Denholm Elliott for a glorified cameo). Tellingly, the art dealer who becomes the victim of this final attack in the film only appears in the source comic by name: Moore is stomping off to take care of him when the neglectful workman’s turpentine makes goopy work of his self-portrait’s face. The comic realizes that by this point the conceit was worn out and needed its grim ending posthaste; the film, in contrast, attempts to squeeze the last glob of ruddy pigment out of the tube. A misstep.

Now, I daresay I haven’t yet squeezed the last glob out of this conversation, so take it away.

GR: I’ll try to keep it brief and splatter my last few impressions of the film onto the canvas of discussion without making too much of a mess. I’ve been drinking.

“Midnight Mess”: As I stated earlier, this one kind of sours my view of the film right from the get-go and leaves me hungering for more. It reminds me of stories I used to write in middle school where the characters would lay their motivations right out before doing that very same thing. I’m talking about those fleeting five seconds where Jonathan goes to his sister’s place, tells her he’s there because of their late father’s inheritance, establishes his goal to get it no matter what, and then knifes said sister before leaving her to rot. Oh, and then he goes to a restaurant that’s directly across the street to grab a bite before returning home to claim his riches. And look, I understand that the very presence of vampiric diners demands at least a little suspension of disbelief from us but a murderer hanging around the exact neighborhood where he just committed his crime and going into a crowded eatery just to grab a glass of tah-mahto juice strains one’s patience. Subotsky’s rewriting of the main character’s motives for passing through the strange town hampers the narrative rather than beefing it up, and all of Feldstein’s fun set-pieces (the revealing mirror, the blood tap) lose some of their punch, especially if you have the horrid misfortune of seeing the edited version of the film which just shows the latter as a still shot with a big ol’ ink blot covering up Massey’s jugular faucet. It’s as if Baker felt the material unworthy of his time and passed over this appetizer in a rush to get on to the entrees. The only thing that THE VAULT OF HORROR does right is show us a switchblade-swinging Anna Massey, an element which was sadly lacking from the original comic book.

“The Neat Job”: It seems we have similar tastes in E. C. tales, as this is also my favorite entry from the film. I had been surprised when watching it in preparation for Richard’s podcast how much I ended up enjoying it, as my spotty memory of my initial viewing of the film on muddy VHS years before had not conjured up any fondness I might have attributed to it. Glynis Johns is cute as a button as the soft-voiced Eleanor trying to maintain her household and her sanity under the fastidious hand of Terry-Thomas. Seeing him with ascot and wine glass, all of the contents of his cabinets diligently marked, speaks to the prissy obsessive-compulsive within me, and it’s somewhat interesting that for all his demands Thomas never quite comes off as the abrasive brute one might imagine an abusive spouse as. He just happens to be very particular, and the comeuppance he receives is one perfectly matching his foibles which all of the best E. C. paybacks accomplished. Johns’ frantic last minute cleaning of the house, the messes only escalating in her hurry, is like something from a sitcom with the laugh track taken away, as tragic as it is funny because we know from Johns’ sensitive portrayal how much she truly wants to make her husband happy. I think Thomas would have approved of her tidiness in cataloguing his remains. As a matter of fact, they do share a laugh together at the end, even though his smile happens to be pickled.

“This Trick’ll Kill You”: It seems appropriate that this journey into magic and morbidity is the third entry of five in THE VAULT OF HORROR as it strikes me as middle-of-the-road. It doesn’t quite devolve into perfect inanity (we’ll be seeing that soon), but it’s really nothing to stand up and cheer for either. Curd Jürgens does have a nicely sinister air as the imposing Sebastian trying to find the secrets of an Indian girl’s fantastic dancing rope, while Dawn Addams appears to be caught in an attempt to literally act her face off as his wife Inez. When she climbed onto the magically suspended rope and proclaimed “It HOLDS me!” I imagined a vein tearing itself through her forehead. (There’s an equally unintentional hilarious bit where, after briefly examining the girl’s basket and feeling the rope for any sources of suspension, Sebastian angrily tells Inez “If I couldn’t figure out how it worked, no one can!” He’s a trained professional; no one can feel a rope like he can.) Thankfully that did not happen, and the slowly pooling plasma on the ceiling is an even better fate and the one truly chilling moment from the film as we’re left to ponder just what the greater cosmic forces have done to Inez. The feminine link that the Indian girl’s powers seem to have (her blessed rope was in the possession of only the mothers in her family) is an interesting twist that seems reminiscent of the world from Fritz Leiber’s CONJURE WIFE in which magic was solely practiced by the hands of women. The enchanted rope used to mete out punishment is rendered somewhat convincingly as it comes to full malevolent life to viciously whip at Sebastian as he tries to escape, and the final few seconds with the girl’s slightly smiling corpse tumbling from its hiding place to gaze up at her killer adds a nice stinger on this little sleight of hand act.

“Bargain in Death”: Oh, boy. I don’t know what kind of bargain the boys at Shepperton Studios thought they were making with this one, but I want my money back. Overall, this story has the same graveyard comic-vibe that informed many of E. C.’s stories, but something is just lost in translation in adapting “Bargain in Death” for the British screen. The art by Jack Davis from the original source (whose exaggerated style adorned everything from MAD Magazine to TV Guide) adds a lot to the corny aesthetic, but on camera with flesh-and-blood actors the whole affair is pretty lame and generally mind-boggling. “Bargain in Death” makes “Midnight Mess” feel like BRAVEHEART, if for no other reason than the fact that this vignette leaves one with the uncertain feeling of whether or not they really did see it or if it was just a crazy dream they suffered through during a two minute power nap they took while watching the movie. The utterly painful pandering (I could have sworn Michael Craig looked at the camera after his line “There’s no money in horror” as if to say “Wah-wah-wah!”) and the further need for characters to say exactly what’s on their mind (“I wonder how long it will take him to realize his friend Alex isn’t coming?” Craig’s partner in crime Alex said while driving, to no one in particular) is particularly irksome. When the bulldog groundskeeper of the cemetery tells the two medical students “Sorry bout the ‘ead,” I think he was talking about us.

“Drawn and Quartered”: The final fatal vision that is offered to us from the vault dwellers is this, a fanciful reworking of THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY and just about every voodoo story you might have encountered. Tom Baker has an intense power as the suffering artist Moore (with his red hair and beard, perhaps his first name is Alan), whose path of vengeance is marked in blood and vibrant pastels. I admit that I find the overall concept neat and actually like the various brands of death and mutilation that Moore enacts upon his enemies, though the solemn lead-ins with Moore confronting the paintings with their crimes and marking them for destruction are pretty much blown up when we see the actual, hysterical scenes of the characters getting what’s theirs. One, an art critic, is rightfully accused by his wife for sleeping around, so she decides to fix his lascivious eyes by grabbing what we can assume is a bottle of acid from a bureau in their bedroom and tossing it into his face. The other, a curator, tries to show his simple assistant how to properly use a paper cutter only to lose his precious hands in the process, said appendages seeming to fly off the table like a pair of mittens in a gust of wind. The final standoff between Baker and the oily Elliot does actually manage to generate some tension; I do love Baker’s preamble of setting the wristwatch on the table and saying “You have two minutes to live.” Between this, Elliot’s forced suicide, and Baker’s race back to the office to reclaim his watch a nice sense of urgency is worked up towards the end, but it can’t hold a candle to the sweaty climax of “Blind Alleys.” It along with the funereal wraparound end things on a fine enough note, but holding THE VAULT OF HORROR up to its predecessor can’t help but make on remiss for what could’ve been.

Next week: From Beyond the Grave (1974)