At the Earth’s Core (1976) – Amicus Films – movie review

At The Earth’s Core (1976)

Directed by Kevin Conner
Screenplay by Milton Subotsky

starring: 
Doug McClure
Peter Cushing
Caroline Munro

This is the third Amicus film based on the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs. At The Earth’s Core feels like a combination between The Time Machine and Journey to the Center to the Earth. In the book all the creatures were dinosaurs. For the movie, the studio created their own giant monsters to terrorize our characters.

The first thing you’ll notice is Peter Cushing’s terrible accent (German?). It’s pretty much the same accent he used in The Beast Must Die. In this film he plays Dr. Abner Perry, inventor of an earth moving submarine (The Iron Mole) that can dig its way to the core. With his co-pilot and investor, David (Doug McClure), they set off through the bedrock and find an inner world. This world is ruled by a race of humanoid beings similar to the Morlocks. They serve and worship a group of reptilian bird creatures who communicate their desires through telepathy. The ruling race rounds up the humans. The men are turned to slaves and their women are sacrificed to these reptilian bird men.

David overcomes many obstacles to free the humans and teach them how to fight against the dominant race. He also rescues, Dia (Caroline Munro), from being sacrificed and the two fall in love. The wild creatures in the film are clunky, man-in-a-suit costumes that would make Toho laugh. But they do have a certain understated charm. Doug McClure delivers a melodramatic performance and seems to be aware of it at times which almost makes it comical. Munro seems to be having a grand time herself smiling and even laughing at times in the film when she’s caught unaware of the camera. It’s a moderately fun fantasy flick with amusing creatures, often for all the wrong reasons – ei. zippers, wires and rubbery horns. I really didn’t get the garish pink and purple lighting for the film; it looked like they were lighting the sets for a soft-core porn flick.

For a studio that started out with such serious modern gothic horror and above average acting, this seems like a silly product. However, the movie was quite popular and profitable for the studio. If you watch it, your enjoyment will stem from the unintended comical aspects more than anything else. Have some fun with it.

Amicus Films Overview

There were a bunch of Caroline Munro publicity shots for this film. Here’s some of them:

ok, this one was from the James Bond flick

I’ve made some great steps in reviewing much of the Amicus Films releases. Check out all the links to the reviews I’ve done so far. Amicus Films Overview 

The Uncanny (1977) – movie review

The Uncanny (1977)

Milton Subotsky post Amicus film
The Rank Organisation

directed by Denis Héroux

Peter Cushing
Donald Pleasence
Ray Milland
Joan Greenwood
Donald Pilon
Samantha Eggar

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Awesomely creepy music puts you in the mood during the opening credits. In the first scene, Wilbur Gray, (Peter Cushing) looks nervously out his window into the dark alley and shadowed streets. He then leaves his apartment in a rush, carrying a case file. Several felines follow his moves with their eyes and in this short scene feel very ominous.

Gray enters the home of a publisher, Frank Richards (Ray Milland) who has little faith in what he has written. Gray mentions how people believe in alien conspiracies and incidents but with his theory he has proof. The publisher’s cat growls at him, to which he turns to the cat and says, I know everything. He presents case files that would back up his theory that cats are evil and conspiring in tandem to take over the world from humans.

Tale one bloody and gruesome. A Maid and the Nephew of a wealthy old crone attempt to steal the Last Will and Testament that cuts the nephew out of the inheritance and leaves everything to her numerous cats. In the process, the maid winds up killing the wealthy old woman. The cats are not pleased. This turns into the Cujo moment of Catdom. Over a period of many hours the old lady’s cats bludgeon the maid to death. This film was originally given an ‘X’ – rating, presumably because of the violence in this segment.

The second story about a young girl, Lucy, orphaned that goes to her aunt and uncles stately home to live. The aunt is immediately detest over the girl’s cat. An older cousin bullies Lucy and purposely says hurtful things to her about not having parents. She accuses and blames Lucy for things she did not do. It all plays a little like a 1970’s After School Special, but it gets quite nasty in the end. The aunt has a company whisk away the cat while Lucy sleeps but the cat, Wellington, returns. The cat leads Lucy to a book on witchcraft that belonged to her mother. After reading, Lucy tricks her bully older cousin into stepping into a Pentagon she drew in the garden greenhouse. There she reads a spell that shrinks the girl to a size, no bigger than a mouse. That is where Wellington takes over chasing the girl under the bed in some decent miniatures and back-screen effects. The cat chases the cousin out from under the bed and that is where Lucy puts her foot down on the matter of bullying.

The 3rd story is a campy affair featuring actors from the 1930s. It stars Donald Pleasance as Valentine De’ath, a horror actor and a cat hater who replaces a prop in the movie with the real thing, killing his actress wife. Now his dim-witted actress girlfriend, Edina, can take her place. At first she’s amused by the wife’s cat which Valentine calls “Scat”. Valentine sends off Scat’s newborn kittens to a pest control. Scat is not happy. The cat torments the couple in some random slap-stick antics. Meanwhile, the film ‘Dungeons of Terror’ begins re-filming only to find that Edina is a horrible actress. Attempting to coach her on a scene in the torture dungeon Scat leads Valentine to accidentally kill his new leading lady.

It’s a decent anthology in the Amicus tradition. By 1977 these stories were considered ‘old-hat’ and not very popular with the horror watching youth, but as an adult I can appreciate the old style story-telling aspects of the film. I’d say it’s worth seeing just for the violent and bloody first segment, whose gory style has never been repeated in film (not with cats, anyway).

See all my other Amicus Films and related movie reviews here:
Amicus Films – The Studio that Dripped Blood Overview

hiss-n-boots

creepy old lady sighting # 18

Donald wit a wig!

traps have been set…

the foreign posters really capture the essence of the films….NOT!

The Beast Must Die (1974) – Amicus Films – movie review

The Beast Must Die (1974) – Amicus Films – movie review

Directed by Paul Annett.
Screenplay by Michael Winder
Based on the short story “There Shall Be No Darkness” by James Blish

Calvin Lockhart, Peter Cushing, Marlene Clark, Michael Gambon, Charles Gray, Anton Diffring, Ciaran Madden, Tom Chadbon

This had quite a different feel for an Amicus film. The film is part who-dun-it mystery, part action-film and seems far removed from Modern Gothic influence. It also has a simple gimmick that makes it worthy of a William Castle film. This is a werewolf film, but unlike any werewolf film you have seen.

First, I absolutely love the main theme for this film. It’s a sharp hard hitting funk tune driven by a percussive guitar bed and a bold horn section delivering the melody. It is music you’d expect to find in early 70’s films like, Superfly and Shaft, but here it is, in a modern werewolf flick.

A wealthy investor, Tom Newcliffe, invites a handful of guests to his home for a long weekend. Each guest has hidden secrets and a shady past that entails a trail of death left behind them. The weekend corresponds to a full moon, a harvest moon, that will be present for three days. Tom informs his guests that one of them is a werewolf, that none can leave the estate, and that by the end of the visit, they will know the identity of the creature. Fences are electrified, vehicles are disabled and the whereabouts of the guests are monitored by a state-of-the-art surveillance system. Tom is an avid hunter, made apparent by the mounted trophy heads upon the walls, and he will hunt down this devilish miscreant.

In the very beginning of the film you are asked to watch the clues and see if you can guess which guest is the werewolf. Several attempts at murder are made upon Tom, deepening the mystery. Each character has their own eccentricities which arouse suspicion, but one by one, they begin to die.

As the tension mounts and the hunt progresses to a climax, the film suddenly stops. The narrator says you have 30 seconds to guess, who is the werewolf? A clock comes on the screen, ticking off the seconds as the film shows stills of each house guest. Place your guess. When the film restarts, all is revealed.

The film is less than perfect; day-for-night shots just look like daytime, Cushing’s Norwegian accent is less than perfect, and a few of the characters are not explored enough. It is clear that the werewolf is a dog, perhaps a black German Shepherd. However, the gimmick makes it a flick worth seeing, even just for film culture historical reasons. It’s a novelty, but it adds an element of fun to an otherwise average film by today’s standards.

Check out more Amicus film reviews at my master page: Amicus Overview

(note: don’t know why all the trailers have an orange tint. My dvd movie is sharp with naturally vivid colors)

Mad House (1974) – Amicus Films – movie review

Mad House (1974) – Amicus Films – movie review

Directed by Jim Clark
(Amicus in association with AIP)

Vincent Price
Peter Cushing
Robert Quarry
Linda Hayden

Vincent Price plays Paul Toombes, a veteran actor celebrating his career in the horror film genre and his most popular character, Dr. Death. At the party, they run a reel of horror films as an homage, and it plays like a tribute to Vincent Price himself, showing scenes from The Haunted Palace, Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror and The House of Usher. Toombes graciously accepts the accolades with his new (very young) wife to be for both him and the co-creator of the Dr. Death character, Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing). But before the night is over his fiancé is murdered. Toombes falls apart and enters an asylum even though the police remain suspicious of him.

Upon being released from rehabilitation, Toombes is called upon to resurrect his Dr. Death character in a TV series. He is hesitant but is convinced by his friend Herbert to play the part. When they begin filming, mysterious murders of the crew are carried out by a man in a black cloak with a skull face. Toombes is unsure of his innocence as his mental instabilities revive and lead him into trippy visual scenes and strange encounters with his neighbor, the spider lady.

Mad House is an amusing who-dun-it tale for its time. It’s not terribly suspenseful or scary, but it’s a well-told story of murder, mayhem and mystery. I love the make-up on the Dr. Death character which I had first seen on the cover of Famous Monsters magazine, several years before I saw the film. In the music over the last scene and closing credits, its actually Vincent Price singing the song.

Price and Cushing give the film a certain charm to the movie and that’s enough to make it worth watching for horror fans of the older films genre. It is the last film for Vincent Price that would be released through AIP (American International Pictures) making the homage to his character’s (and his own) career even more poignant. It’s a fitting epitaph to an era of gothic horror films as new, higher budgeted, more aggressive and special effects heavy films like, The Exorcist, Halloween, Jaws, and Alien would take over the horror market.

Check out more Amicus film reviews at my master page: Amicus Overview

 

And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973) – Amicus Films – movie review

And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973)

Directed by Roy Ward Baker
Starring: Peter Cushing, Ian Ogilvy, Stephanie Beacham, Herbert Lom, and Patrick Magee

This is the only Amicus Films pre-1900’s gothic period piece. It starts with a ride in a horse-drawn coach and a small introduction narrative. Catherine and Charles Fengriffen are newly married and Catherine is being shown around the castle estate. Stephanie Beachman looks wonderful as Catherine in her Victorian dress, bustier showing an impressive amount of cleavage. Charles, (Ian Ogilvy) is showing her the family ancestral portraits when she is unduly mesmerized by a painting of Henry (Herbert Lom), grandfather to Charles. Soon there are strange occurrences tormenting the young newlywed. Windows open and doors lock by themselves. An eyeless apparition of a man with no right hand appears. A disembodied hand attacks Catherine. Subsequently friends, workers and servants of the family begin to die. I imagine at the time some of these scenes would have been quite chilling. I have to say Beacham does scream quite a bit in this film, which, as an old-time horror fan, gives me an enjoyable satisfaction.

When Catherine is discovered to be with child, examined by a secretive family doctor, Dr. Whittle (Patrick Magee), the details of the haunting begin to make themselves known. The woodsman that lives on the property is suspect of the mounting murders but the story is not so simple. When Charles calls in a doctor from London, played by the impeccable Peter Cushing, it certainly elevates the mystery aspect. He portrays a psychiatrist looking to find the facts, a character reminiscent of his role as Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles. He discovers there is a curse upon the house and the male children that are born within it, associated with the philandering ancestor, Henry Fengriffen. It is up to Dr. Pope to discover if this curse is real or imagined, supernatural or by the hands of the living.

If you can put yourself in the mindset of the era, you may enjoy the tale that unfolds. I can’t say it would be to everyone’s tastes, but if you like the slower story-telling pace of 60’s and 70’s films and you like period pieces, this is a good viewing choice. It’s not the best of its kind, but eerie nevertheless. Despite the dated effects and style, it is a decent gothic story with both mystery and paranormal aspects. It’s visually colorful and vibrant, and looks great in HD (not always the case with older films). The film is based on the novel Fengriffen by David Case, written for screen by Roger Marshall and deftly directed by Roy Ward Baker.

Trivia: The gothic estate used in the film is Oakley Court, now a 4-star Hotel near Bray village, Berkshire England. The estate was also used in, The Brides of Dracula (1960), Nightmare (1963), The Plague of the Zombies (1966), The Bells of St. Trinian’s (comedy-1954) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).

This review is part of a series I am doing to review all the Amicus horror films.
You can check out all the reviews from links at this page:
Amicus Films – overview

 

 

The Skull (1965) – Amicus Films – movie review

The Skull (1965)

Amicus Films

Whenever you get Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the same film it is a treat. Add to that, a screenplay based on a story by Robert Bloch and director Freddie Francis, you have the trifecta of old-school British horror goodness.

The film concerns the accursed skull of the Marquis de Sade. Christopher Maitland (Cushing) and Sir Matthew Phillips (Lee), are collectors of occult artifacts. Maitland is offered the skull by a shady dealer and recognizes it as part of Lee’s collection. Knowing it must have been stolen he turns down the offer to purchase the skull. He contacts his fellow collector about the stolen item and Phillips tells him, he is happy to be rid of the accursed skull. He warns Maitland to stay away from it however, Maitland soon develops an obsession with the skull. When he re-visits the shady dealer, he finds the man dead and steals the skull. Once in his home the artifact haunts and torments Maitland, driving him to insanity and provoking him to kill.

The film is subtle, relying on atmosphere and mood to relay the psychological conflict between Maitland and the skull. The silent battle is brought to the screen superbly by Cushing. The visuals are dated and may be considered hokey by today’s standards, but none-the-less effective as the skull floats through the rooms of Maitland’s abode, taunting him to evil deeds. The gothic atmosphere provides a visual appeal that I find interesting. The Skull is quite different than most horror of the time, relying on the psychological horror rather than blood and gore, and the battle of wills rather than the usual perversions associated with the Marquis de Sade. It is a fantastic film for those who like old-style horror.

This review is part of a series I am doing to review all the Amicus horror films.
You can check out all the reviews from links at this page:
Amicus Films – overview

 

 

From Beyond the Grave (1974) – Amicus Films – Movie Review

From Beyond the Grave (1974)
Amicus Films

Stars: Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, Angela Pleasence, Ian Bannen, Diana Dors, David Warner, Ian Ogilvy, Margaret Leighton

Directed by Kevin Conner

This is without a doubt my favorite Amicus Films anthology film. Released in 1974, this is the first horror film I ever went to see in theaters without my parents. I wanted to go see The Exorcist, but they said no, they wouldn’t let me to see it. So they let me go see this instead (with a friend). It may have been rated- R, but (except for The Exorcist) they didn’t really check ID’s back then. If you showed up with money, you were in. The stories were adaptations from R. Chetwynd-Hayes.

The wrap-around concerns an antique shop, Temptations Limited, with a humble proprietor played by Peter Cushing. We watch as people enter the shop and each one selects an item, and then attempts to rip off the shop owner from his asking price. One changes tags with a cheaper item, another talks him down in price, saying the item is a worthless fake. Each item the customers take home has a wicked curse upon it. I often felt the series, Friday the 13^th, which aired in the 1980’s, had more in common with this film than its namesake. Cursed antiquities in a shop is an excellent jumping-off point to tell many different stories.

The Gate Crasher – Edward, played by David Warner purchases an antique mirror for a pittance, claiming it was worthless. He mounts it in his apartment and everything is fine until one night when he and his friends decide to hold a séance. A spirit is trapped within the mirror and needs Edward to kill in order for him to regain his energies and escape the reflective glass.

An Act of Kindness – Christopher Lowe is treated poorly by his wife and his young son has no respect for him. He stops and talks to a street vendor everyday and learns the man is a veteran. Christopher claims he is a veteran too, bragging to the man about a medal he had received. The next day he goes into the antiques shop and procures a medal, so he can show the veteran. The man invites Christopher to dinner and to meet his daughter, who is a witch. The witch kills the wife and to take her place as spouse and mother, but not for long. However, Christopher also meets his untimely demise. Stars Donald Pleasance and his daughter, Angela Pleasance, who looks exactly like her father. Despite the more intricate story, this is my least favorite of the segments found here.

The Elemental – Reggie purchases a small pill case from the shop but also inherits a small but nasty demonic entity. On the train ride home, a psychic spiritualist, Madame Orloff, tells him about the elemental and hands him a business card to call if there’s trouble. It isn’t long before he is forced to admit something is afoot and calls her in to cleanse the home. The cleansing is very comical with Madame Orloff exorcising the entity, squeezing Reggie’s face, screaming and yelling, as the home is wrecked in the process. Reggie’s wife cringes on the couch as paintings and knick-knacks fly, couch pillows are relieved of their feathers and winds blow through the home like a bad winter storm. The psychic claims the entity is gone, but is it?

The Door – Finally, my favorite story of the bunch concerns a wood carved door from ancient times. A young man, William, purchases the door and installs it for a closet, more as ornamentation for the room than necessity. His wife Rose finds it rather displeasing. Working late one night in the den, William sees the door open. What lies behind it is a secret blue room from the 16^th Century. He enters the room and reads a journal upon a desk. He discovers the door was owned by occultist, Sir Michael Sinclair, who created the door so he would be able to walk amongst future times and live forever by capturing the souls of others. There are some creepy and suspenseful scenes in this segment as William hears footsteps approaching and each time he enters the room, the footsteps get closer to the blue room. Eventually Sir Michael kidnaps Rose and the couple has to battle him for their very souls.

This is one of the few Amicus Films that still bears some relatively creepy scenes that haven’t completely lost their impact over time with me, most notably in The Gate Keeper and The Door segments. After seeing this as a youngster, I remember having to make sure the closet door in my room was securely closed and feeling the urge to cover my mirror with a pillowcase. It doesn’t have the same effect now, but it still remains my favorite Amicus anthology.

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This review is part of a series I am doing to review all the Amicus Anthologies and horror films.

You can check out all the reviews from links at this page:
Amicus Films – overview

Tales From the Crypt (1972) – movie review

Tales From the Crypt (1972)

It seems quite fitting that I should be reviewing this now because last year I chose this film for top holiday viewing. The ‘All Through the House’ segment is quintessential holiday horror.

In 1972, Amicus Films gained the rights to produce a film of shorts based upon the William Gaines comics Tales From the Crypt and Vault of Horror. Milton Subotsky penned the screenplay himself based on the comic tales. The film stars Peter Cushing, Joan Collins, Patrick Magee and Ralph Richardson and is directed by Freddie Francis. These shorts pushed irony and the ‘surprise ending’ to its jarring best, shocking the viewer in the final moments of each segment. Even though they are somewhat dated, the stories are still entertaining today because of this aspect.

The film starts out with several people on tour through an ancient crypt. Five of them are separated from the group and sealed off in a room. Enter, the Cryptkeeper, who when asked, “What are we doing here?” is all to happy to show them. So, we are introduced to five segments:

All Through the House I love the way this first scene plays out. A woman (Joan Collins) is tending to the fireplace in her home with a brass tool. The husband is in his chair reading his newspaper. He brings the paper up to read it closely, blocking our view of his face. A moment later the newspaper is splashed with blood that quickly seeps through the printed sheets. The paper falls and the woman is standing behind the dead husband with the bloody fireplace ‘poker’ in her hands. What really makes me laugh is that the brass tool is bent from the blow – she must have really hated her husband. Brilliant scene. The story goes on to reveal an escaped lunatic that is wearing a Santa costume loose in the neighborhood. The woman struggles to clean up the evidence of the murder, fight off the psychotic Santa and keep her young daughter in bed. The segment has little dialogue and is made more ironic by the celebratory Christmas music being played throughout its running time. This segment was remade in the Tales From The Crypt series but I prefer this version.

Reflection of Death A man kisses his wife before heading out on a business trip. He and his mistress leave town by car with no intentions of returning. Unfortunately, they have a nasty car crash. The film then switches to first person POV as the man wakes up in a ditch alongside the road and tries to find his way home. You can probably guess what has happened to him by the fact that everyone he sees flees from him in horror. But the reveal to himself is the clincher in this segment and it surely brings a smile to my face every time I watch it.

Poetic Justice Peter Cushing plays the old widower, Arthur Grimsdyke. He is a pleasant man, friendly to all the neighborhood children and townspeople, but living in sorrow over the passing of his wife. A real-estate investor who would like him to sell his home, starts a secret campaign to drive him from the neighborhood. After some particularly cruel acts, Grimsdyke commits suicide. The real-estate investor vows to keep his actions a secret, but secrets like this can never stay buried, if you know what I mean.

Wish You Were Here is probably the weakest segment of all. A man and his wife find a statue that can grant them three wishes. Naturally all these wishes backfire. It is the familiar ‘monkey’s paw’ story and I have seen it done better in other films. When the husband dies the wife wishes him back, but he has already been embalmed. He screams and writhes in pain as the fluid courses through his veins. There is one glaring continuity fault with this segment, which I hadn’t really noticed until viewing it several times.

Blind Alleys is my 2^nd favorite segment in the film. The new head of a retirement home for the blind, an ex-Major in the military, makes some harsh changes to the home. In glaring attempt to save money in order to increase his own pay, the Major cuts the heat and rations blankets. When one of the members gets sick the men beg the Major to get him medical attention and to increase the heat. He doesn’t and the man dies. After that, the inhabitants of the home plot their revenge. When they spring their trap the Major must run a gauntlet of danger, a maze that will essentially have him making choices of pain and injury. It’s a nasty but well-deserved demise for the corrupt Major.

The film became the most successful of the Amicus anthologies. It’s legacy lived on for many years to come, spawning an HBO series from 1989 – 1996 and several feature films baring the Tales From the Crypt moniker.

Worth a watch for nostalgia and historical footnote.

The All Through the House segment is fun horror viewing for the Holidays.

Related articles:
Amicus Film Overview
 (you can link to all the Amicus Films I have reviewed from this page)

Asylum (1972) – Movie review – Amicus Films

Asylum (1972) – movie review

Written by Robert Bloch and directed by Roy Ward Baker. Stars, Robert Powell, Patrick Magee, Peter Cushing, Britt Ekland, Herbert Lom, Charlotte Rampling and Barbara Parkins. A Doctor Martin shows up at an Asylum for a job interview as head doctor. A wheelchair bound Dr. Rutherford (Magee), the Asylum’s administrator, explains that the previous head doctor had suffered a mental breakdown and is now one of the patients at the institute. He then gives Dr. Martin a test to see if he is worthy of the job. If he can interview the patients on the second floor and discover which patient is his predecessor, he would basically have the job. An orderly, Max, escorts him from room to room, to meet each patient. Thusly, each interview takes the viewer into a different story.

While House that Dripped Blood used a minimalist style musical score, Asylum uses bold musical pieces by Modest Mussorgsky. The intro credits are accompanied by the powerful ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ as Dr. Martin drives up to the ominous asylum building. My favorite piece plays as Dr. Martin ascends the asylum stairs while observing disturbing paintings upon the walls showing harsh treatment of mental patients through history. The piece ‘Gnomus’ from Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures of an Exhibition’ accompanies the scene and is quite foreboding and sinister with its dissonant harmonies and broad brass blasts.

Frozen Fear – in the first room we are introduced to a woman named Bonnie. She recounts the tale of how she plotted with her married lover to kill his wife. The husband, Walter, chops his wife to bits and wraps the pieces in brown butcher paper, placing the pieces neatly in a basement freezer. However, the wife having studied voodoo can not die and the separate pieces crawl out of the freezer looking for revenge.

The Weird Tailor – tells a story of how a suspicious Mr. Smith (Peter Cushing) came into the Tailor’s shop with a unique fabric and pattern asking him to make this suit for him. When the tailor finishes, days later, he delivers the suit to Smith. He then learns of the suits magic powers of resurrection and Smith’s intentions for the suit. Trying to stop him he accidentally kills Smith and returns to his shop with the magic suit. However, when he awakens, he discovers his wife has put the suit on a mannequin and the mindless humanoid knows only to kill. This is my favorite segment of the film.

In Lucy Comes To Stay a young lady, Barbara (Charlotte Rampling) relays the story of how she had been watched closely because of a prior mental breakdown. She felt like a prisoner in her own home due to the watchful eyes of her brother George and her nurse. It wasn’t until her good friend Lucy (Britt Ekland) came for a visit that she saw her only chance at freedom.

Mannikins of Horror – In this segment, a Dr. Byron (Herbert Lom) is a scientist that is working on transferring his soul into a small toy robot by filling its insides with his own biological makings. He can telepathically control the small version of himself through meditation. However, the small toy is an evil incarnation of Dr. Byron that breaks contact with his master and does his own bidding. This segment is unintentionally humorous because watching the miniature toy with Herbert Loms head walking around can only be regarded as comical.

The film wraps up with a reveal to Dr. Martin, a couple of murders and a ‘patients running the asylum’ ending. Aside from The Weird Tailor segment, this is probably my least favorite of the Amicus anthologies. However, I think the wrap-around story is probably one of the most interesting and developed of all the Amicus anthologies. There are some bright spots in the film and it’s definitely worth a watch for completists and those who like movies from this era.

Amicus Films overview 

The House That Dripped Blood (1970) – Movie review

The House That Dripped Blood (1970)

This is the third anthology by Amicus Films and features both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in separate segments. The stories and screenplay were once again written by Robert Bloch. The film was directed by Peter Duffel and features an interesting and unconventional soundtrack by Michael Dress. It opens with scenes of the house itself, a sufficiently creepy but real dwelling. The camera passes through black iron gates to see the brick façade with Ivy crawling up its surface, cathedral windows and jutting turrets. Inside the home is furnished with antiquities from bygone eras and dated design. We cut to Inspector Holloway (John Bennett) from Scotland Yard questioning a local officer, Sergeant Martin about the disappearance a of film star. Paul Henderson was last  seen in the home he had rented in the countryside. Martin pulls out a case file on the house and its strange history. He goes into stories about the inhabitants and how they all came to untimely demise. So we enter each segment:

Method for Murder
A writer, Charles Hillyer (Denholm Elliott), looking to finish his latest murder/horror novel moves into the home with his wife, hoping the isolated country surroundings will give him the peace he needs to create. Once moved in, he immediately conjures his main protagonist, a brute psychotic named Dominic, who likes to strangle his victims with his bare hands. However, soon Charles is seeing the strangler in the house; in the dark corners of the hallway and outside in the garden. Will reality prevail of will the writer be strangled to death by his own character?

Waxworks
Next up, Phillip Grayson (Peter Cushing) is a retired theater actor, looking for a quiet place to call home. We soon see that he is distraught over a long lost love named Salome. Wandering aimlessly through the local town he comes across Jacquelin’s Museum of Horror where he finds a beautiful figure that looks exactly like, Salome. The proprietor explains she was cast from real life and relays the story of how she was murdered. Mr. Grayson leaves in a flustered state and is soon having strange dreams surrounding this figure in the museum and her alluring beauty. The dream sequence is a fantastic piece of shock horror visuals. He is awakened by a visiting friend, Neville, who had also courted the beautiful Salome. While in town, Neville also discovers the wax image in the museum. Quite strangely the competition between the two old friends is reignited. Only one can be with her and the winner gets his wish!

Sweets to the Sweet
In the third story, John Reid, (Christopher Lee) is a single father raising his daughter Jane. Jane is about 6 or 7 years old with long blonde locks and innocent blue eyes. He moves into the country home to be away from the town and populous. He hires a teacher for Jane, unwilling to let her go to public schools. The teacher, a widowed Mrs. Norton, soon learns the strange parameters of the father and daughter relationship. Jane is strangely fearful of fire, is withdrawn and angry. Mr. Reid will not let his daughter play with other children and will not permit toys in the house. Mrs. Norton soon realizes that Mr. Reid is terrified of his daughter. The reasons become clear one night when a black out leads Mr. Reid to discover missing candles and Mrs. Norton discovers that Jane has been reading books on witchcraft.

The Cloak
The final story concerns the missing actor, Paul Henderson (John Pertwee). In town for a low budget film production of Dracula, he searches out his own wardrobe to replace the unauthentic clothes the film production has given him. He finds a cape in a small costume shop. When he puts it on, he is empowered with the powers of a real vampire. This tale has comedic elements as Mr. Henderson is dumbfounded by not seeing his reflection in the mirror and accidentally bites his co-star, Carla, played by the lovely, Ingrid Pitt. There is even a scene that mirrors The Lost Boys as Henderson begins to float at the strike of midnight and is stunned by the incident. Henderson states that he wants to play his role like Bela Lugosi, not that new guy, in an obvious reference to Hammer films. This is my least favorite of the stories but not bad for campy entertainment.

The film wraps up with Inspector Holloway finally visiting the House and discovering Henderson and Carla in the basement. They are now full-fledged vampires and asleep in their coffins, that is, until they are disturbed by the investigator. This is another good Amicus anthology with well-written stories and convincingly acted parts. It is not scary like more modern films (none of the Amicus films or films from that age are) but the stories are interesting tales of the macabre.

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This review is part of a series I am doing to review all the Amicus Anthologies and horror films.

Related articles:

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors

Torture Garden

Amicus Films Overview – the Studio That Dripped Blood

Ingrid Pitt career overview by Robbinsrealm