The Vault of Horror - 1973

The Vault of Horror - 1973

Below the Crypt lies Death's waiting room The Vault of Horror

Seeing as this is the last Amicus movie I'm going to be reviewing this month I've decided to change the format of my synopsis.  Honestly I wish this idea came to me from the beginning.

Segment 1 Midnight Mess:  A man hires a private detective in order to find his long lost sister.  It turns out she lives in a strange town where there have been 17 disappearances and no one goes outside for fear of "them".

Segment 2 The Neat Job: An aging life-long bachelor marries the daughter of a colleague, unaccustomed to sharing space with someone he goes balistic whenever something is out of place.  His wife lives in terror every time the husband comes home trying desperately to get any misplaced items back into place.

Segment 3 This Trick'll Kill You: A husband and wife magician team visit India in order to find new tricks for their acts.  They come across a street performer who is able to erect a rope strong enough to climb up using a magic flute.  The husband offers to pay the performer for this trick but she refuses.

Segment 4 Bargain in Death: A failing author plans to fake his own death so his best friend can collect the insurance money but he isn't expecting his friend to betray him and leave him for dead in his own coffin.

Segment 5 Drawn and Quartered: A struggling artist living in Haiti finds out he was cheated by his associates into believing his paintings are worthless while they're making a fortune off them.  He visits a voodoo priest to get revenge and now whatever he paints becomes real.

     Once again we start off with a dud but this one isn't nearly as bad as "And All Through the House".  Just like that one this one was remade for the Tales From the Crypt series.  This segment is not too bad and unlike "All Through..." I don't feel the need to skip it when I watch the movie.  Perhaps I'm biased because the later episode is one my favorites from Tales From the Crypt.  In "Mournin Mess" the monsters are ghouls instead of vampires as they are here.  The makeup was done a heck of a lot better too.  The goofy prosthetic teeth the vampires are given look like they're barely being held in their mouths.  They look more like walruses than vampires and I can't help but chuckle every time they're revealed in the end.  Even though I don't particularly like this segment I gotta give it up to them for casting real life brother and sister Daniel and Anna Massey as movie siblings.  I love it when movies do that.  From Beyond the Grave did something similar with Donald and Angela Pleasence.

 

 The Vault of Horror Segment 1 Midnight Mess

Tales From the Crypt S03 Ep10 Mournin Mess

Which do you find more terrifying?

     I love this next segment.  I don't know if we're meant to sympathize more with the wife who can't seem to do anything right or the overbearing husband who berates his wife over silly things like forgetting to put spaghetti sauce on the shopping list.  Honestly I sympathize with both.  I tend to go batshit when someone moves or borrows something of mine without telling me but at the same time I can understand trying to do your best to please someone who seems impossible.  Unlike its HBO counterpart I like this one way more.  The HBO one featured a career driven husband forced into retirement who neglected his wife for their entire marriage and since they never had kids she became the world's most eccentric cat lady.  In that one you tend to sympathize more with the husband because the wife is so nutty and unreasonable.  However, in this version its the husband who is an unreasonable bully.  Two versions of the same story, both different, but one is way better.

     I don't have a whole lot to say about the rest of the movie except that Drawn and Quartered is my favorite segment.  Its more creative and inspired (even though it pays homage to The Picture of Dorian Grey) than the rest and its sense of ironic retribution is reminiscent of the comic books.  Although I haven't seen all the Amicus horror flicks this remains my favorite.  90/100

Tales From the Crypt - 1972

 

Tales From the Crypt - 1972

Death lives in the vault of horror!

 

      Tales From the Crypt is another anthology film from Amicus Productions.  Each of the segments are based off stories from the old EC Comics of the same name, as well as The Vault of Horror and Haunt of Fear(the Tales From the Crypt TV show did the same thing).  The first segment, "And All Through the House, features a woman who kills her husband on Christmas eve only to be stalked by a murderous psychopath dressed as Santa Claus.  The second segment, "Reflections of Death", is about a man who is leaving his wife for his mistress but gets in a car crash.  When he wakes up no one seems to recognize him.  The third segment, "Poetic Justice", is about a man who does his best to drive the neighborhood widower to commit suicide and succeeds.  "Wish You Were Here" is Tale From the Crypt's macabre take on The Monkey's Paw.  Our final segment is titled "Blind Alleys", a former Army Sergeant takes over a home for the blind and his negligence, callousness, and selfishness causes the tenants to capture and put him in an elaborate death trap.

     This is one of the weaker Amicus flicks I've seen.  The movie starts off with a story I don't like here, in the comic, or even as the second episode of the HBO series.  This version I'd say is the worst.  The TV version gives us a little more insight into why this woman just decides to kill her husband but here we're not given so much as a motive other than insurance money.  The guy even seems kind of nice as he's placing a present under the tree to"the best wife in the world".  I guess its even more disappointing that I usually love stories where horrific things happen on the happiest day of the year.  

     The rest of the movie is pretty good and I have a hard time picking out which segment I like best out of what remains.  If I had to pick one I'd have to say its Blind Alleys.  This is another one that shows up in the HBO series but I think Amicus' version is much better.  The actor who plays the lead blind man is just so good!  I don't know if he really was blind but he pulls it off excellently, he's also really menacing when it comes time to punish the Sergeant.  

     Peter Cushing shows up again as the widower in Poetic Justice.  Its all the more tragic that at the time this movie was filmed Cushing lost his wife in real life and wanted to play this part so much he was willing to take a pay cut.  I suppose this was a form a therapy for him.  I really liked this segment and its mostly because of Cushing.  I'd say most people recognize him as Grand Moff Tarkin from the first Star Wars movie, or as Frankenstein in the Hammer Frankenstein films where he pretty much plays an asshole, for the savvy they may even recognize him as the famous vampire hunter Van Helsing.  Regardless all these characters have one thing in common, they're all strong or in charge characters.  What I like so much about this one is its so against type for Cushing.  He's really sad, sympathetic and vulnerable in this role and it may be my favorite because of that.

    Despite All Through the House this is a pretty solid movie and since its the first segment I reckon you could just press skip and not have to worry about it.  The stories aren't at creepy and atmospheric as From Beyond the Grave, just like the stories they are based on they took a more visceral approach with this one.  I find it perplexing that they used the title Tales From the Crypt but mentions the Vault of Horror in the tagline.  The Vault of Horror was the next anthology Amicus released but were they going to use a different title for that or was it all just one big marketing screw up?  The Crypt Keeper makes in appearance (as he appeared in the comics not like the undead ghoul of the show) in this movie and is credited as the Crypt Keeper but is he really The Vault Keeper?  The Vault Keeper isn't in the next movie but was the Crypt Keeper suppose to reprise his role in that one?  It raises many questions that only an obsessed fan would ask.  Even though I don't like the first one 4 out of 5 segments is still pretty good 83/100.

EC's Crypt Keeper

Amicus' Crypt Keeper

HBO's Crypt Keeper.  CK's had more faces than Michael Jackson.

From Beyond the Grave - 1974

 

From Beyond the Grave - 1974

Terror to delight worshipers of the Macabre.  

     From Beyond the Grave is an anthology of 4 stories written by British author R. Chetwynd-Hayes connected by use of an antique shop.  The stories include The Gate Crasher about a man who purchases a mirror at the shop that is a portal to underworld, An Act of Kindness about an unhappily family man who befriends a veteran and his daughter, The Elemental about a man who has a chance meeting with a medium who tells him he's got a demon on his shoulder, and The Door about a man who purchases an ornate door for his home and finds out the door opens to another dimension.

     Amicus Productions released several anthology horror films during the 70's and in my opinion this is the best, not to say that the others are lacking in any way.  From Beyond the Grave has this rather nasty and gloomy atmosphere that affects me more than the jump scares or visceral horror of today.  My favorite segment is The Gate Crasher which is very similar to Julia's plot in Hellraiser.  It involves a man who buys an antique mirror and a spirit who requires blood in order to return to the land of the living.  My least favorite segment is The Elemental.  Its like a lot of segments in anthology movies meant to lighten the mood with a comedic twist.  Its not bad and I don't skip it when watching the movie but at the same time its still a weak link.

 I find it amusing that Donald and Angela Pleasence are playing father and daughter in this movie.  I always love it when they do this in movies  This is my first time seeing her.  Heck I didn't even know he had a daughter.  She looks exactly like him too and I can't help but find her attractive.  This raises all kinds of troubling questions about my sexuality like do I really want to sleep with Donald Pleasence.

     Amicus seemed to be picking up where Hammer Films left off by leading the way in the field of British horror.  I feel like anyone who's a fan of the Hammer films is also going to be a fan of Amicus largely because they employed a lot of the same actors(Christopher Lee, Ingrid Pitt, Peter Cushing).  The characters are well developed, its well acted, and the stories are spooky.  I honestly can't think of a better movie to watch for Halloween. 90/100

Opposing Force aka Hell Camp

It sure has been a long time since I posted anything here but I saw a movie last night that really got me thinking.  I didn't even seek this one out or hear about it from word of mouth, in fact I just watched it on a whim.  I may very well be the last person to view and record vhs tapes.  This was as true back in the early 2000's as it is now.  The night I recorded Red Dragon on Encore was a very unusual night.  Having used the vhs format for so long I understood how viable blanks were after repeat viewings and recordings so I was usually pretty careful about not falling asleep while recording something.  This night was different however and I accidentally ended up recording all of Encore's programming that night.  It included Red Dragon, Opposing Force, Superfly, with a repeat showing of Red Dragon.  Can you imagine some weird insomniac staying up all night and watching these movies one after another?  Actually it kinda sounds like fun to me.

Opposing Force - 1986

"In Hell Camp you are an animal... to be broken, lied to, humiliated and violated." 

     A group of soldiers are taking part in a combat training exercise.  One by one they get captured and find out the point of the exercise wasn't combat training but preparing them for the physical and psychological abuses of POW camps.  The commanding officer goes over the edge while torturing one of the prisoners and they escape.  He then hunts them down actively trying to kill them.

     In many ways Opposing Force is ahead of its time.  The lead character in the movie is a female soldier who enters the program in order to get combat certified even though women are still not approved for combat in the military.  And this is a struggle that continues in real life to this day.  At one point she's even waterboarded and most of us didn't even know what that was until the Bush administration.  I expected a majority of the movie to consist of the commandant chasing and killing the prisoners but the movie tends to center more around the camp and the tactics used there.  I was pleasantly surprised by this because I thought it was going to be another ridiculous 80's action flick. The mental and physical torture adds a lot of depth, making a statement rather than just entertainment.

     The acting in Opposing Force is pretty solid.  Soon after their capture the prisoners get paranoid, turn on one another, and unsuccessfully try to escape.  The conditions and torture (not to mention the use of live rounds) at the camp makes you believe they're doing this for real rather than simulating it.  The most powerful preformence goes to Tom Skerrit when he finds out the commandant raped Lieutenant Casey.  He flips out, starts screaming, and demands to end the training and take command himself.  The commandant himself is pretty menacing but doesn't push it over the top when he loses it.

I give this an 86/100.  The only thing that disappointed me was how abruptly it ended.  It feels like the chase should have lasted longer but they didn't have enough money or something ended up on the cutting room floor.  The ending itself wasn't particularly good either but everything leading up to it was great.  I'd definitely recommend this movie.