We focus next on the 1973 sequel to the Amicus hit, Tales From The Crypt(1972), another horror anthology that draws upon the darkly humorous stories found in the groundbreaking E.C. Comics of the 1950's.The U.S. theatrical print, which shares a now out-of-print MGM Midnight Movies double dvd release with Crypt, was hastily edited to merit a PG rating from the MPAA, replacing two gory sequences with blatantly censored stills(involving Daniel Massey's tapped jugular vein and Terry-Thomas' clawhammered loaf), and two more are cut entirely from the print.You'll probably want to snare a UK region 2 Vipco disc to avoid this problem, as the print is fully uncut.Interestingly, the original ending which showed all five characters in zombie/corpse makeup which can be seen briefly in the international trailer(and made somewhat famous in British horror film reference books over the years) seems to have never made it to any existing print of the movie.Fancy that, chappies.The cast includes a pre-Doctor Who Tom Baker, gap-toothed comedic actor extraordinaire, Terry-Thomas, Denholm Elliot of Indiana Jones fame, and was directed by Ward Baker, no stranger to the anthology format himself, having helmed Asylum(1972) a year earlier.Onward!
Donna(Anna Massey) prefers to sip straight from the tap.
Five professional looking chaps board an elevator in a London office block that unexpectedly brings them to the basement, where they empty out into a comfortably furnished room that they quickly settle into, relating recurrent nightmares to each other each has been suffering from as of late.Midnight Mess finds Rodgers(Daniel Massey) tracking his sister Donna(Anna Massey,his sister IRL)who has recently inherited a tidy sum of money to a strange suburb where people rush to be indoors before the sun sets.He shanks her, stopping into a restaurant for a celebratory meal, where he discovers not only that his sibling isn't dead, but that he'll be providing the newly tapped beverage for the fanged patrons.In The Neat Job,Gritchit(Terry-Thomas) is an obsessive compulsive neat freak with a young trophy wife(Glynnis Johns) whose inability to comply with his demand for order drives her to ultimately plant a claw hammer in his forehead; neatly arranging all of his body parts and organs in labelled jars just as he would've wanted it.This Trick'll Kill You finds a magician named Sebastian(Curt Jurgens) looking for new tricks for his act while vacationing in India with his wife.He stumbles upon a young girl who charms a length of rope out of a basket, and when she climbs it to the top and the prestodigitator is unable to work out the trick, he convinces her to perform it in the couple's hotel room where he offs her and steals the enchanted length of rope.He attempts the trick himself, but when his wife climbs the outstretched rope, she disappears at the top, leaving only a puddle of blood on the ceiling.The rope then constricts around the magician's neck and hangs him, while the young girl appears, still alive down in the bazaar.
Gritchit(Terry-Thomas) seems to have gone to pieces over his messy new bride.
Bargain in Death has Maitland(Michael Craig) burying himself alive as part of a scheme to collect insurance money with a fellow conspiritor named Alex, who naturally double-crosses him, leaving him to suffocate in the premature grave.Two aspiring med students bribe the local gravedigger to unearth a corpse for their studies, which happens to be Maitland,but when he pops out of the coffin, scaring the would-be doctors, they run out into the street,causing a car driving by at that moment(containing Alex) to crash.Back at the open plot, the gravedigger apologizes for damage to the corpse's head, which he's gone and split open with his spade in the excitement.In Drawn and Quartered,a penniless artist named Moore(Tom Baker) living in Haiti finds out that back on the mainland, critics who've told him that his paintings were worthless have been selling them for top dollar behind his back.He enlists the services of a voodoo priest who implants the power to bring real life physical harm to whatever he paints or draws in his artistic mitts,which he uses for bloody vengeance upon the men responsible, realizing too late that the magic also affects an earlier self-portrait he'd done, with fatal results.The five men ponder the underlying meaning of their nightmares when the elevator door opens, revealing a graveyard which they walk out into and disappear, one by one.Sebastian relates that the five are souls damned for all eternity by their evil deeds, and forced to re-tell their stories every night ad infinitum.Credits.
Sebastian's(Curt Jurgens) hung rather extraordinarily, don't you think?
Ironically, the stories that comprise tonight's review were taken from the Vault of Horror comic itself; instead E.C. anthologies Tales From The Crypt and Shock SuspenStories provided the source of the material.Roy Ward Baker, who was responsible for genre classics like Quartermass and the Pit(1967), Scars of Dracula(1970), The Vampire Lovers(1970), as well as Asylum(1972) and tonight's feature, passed away last year at the ripe old age of 93.I love good horror anthologies like these.Studios should attempt them more often, instead of remaking successful foreign films and taking the piss out of the original in the name of meager box-office success.Vault, for me, is slightly stronger than Crypt, with more of a comic book feel and stronger overall stories.On the scale, it merits three big ones.
Tom Baker eats it.A closed-Tardis viewing will be in order, no doubt.
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