Friday, August 24, 2012

TALES FROM THE CRYPT / Amicus Productions - 1972

It's Friday Night Horror Theater with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon... What we gots is another Amicus anthology, this time they took five stories from the pages of fifties pre-code EC horror comics. Actually, two stories are from Tales From The Crypt, two stories are from The Haunt Of Fear and one story is from The Vault Of Horror! After the implementation of the Comics-Code in January, 1954, EC and other horror comic publishers were forced to tame everything down to 'boring' or not be published. Everything turned to total crap, so, EC put all their effort into MAD Magazine, because, magazines were exempt from the code! We salute William Gaines and the many awesome artists and writers he employed!

Like with ASYLUM, Amicus uses creepy old classical music to their advantage, here, it's Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D minor! Sooooo, wif'aus further adieu, you can push the big red 'GO' button right there, NOW, Rufus The Gnat! Here's our classical soundclip for... TALES FROM THE CRYPT!

Dungeon favorite Freddie Francis directs this anthology about five people who get separated during a museum tour and end up trapped in a crypt with a mysterious cryptkeeper. They are all shown their dubious futures and given the option of avoiding their fates by not living out the rest of their lives!

AND ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE: Sexy Joan Collins hates her husband, she murders him on Christmas Eve to collect on his life insurance policy, but, ends up being attacked by a psychopathic killer dressed up as Santa Claus!

Oliver (THE FROZEN DEAD) MacGreevy plays Santa... Scary Xmas, everbloody!!

REFLECTION OF DEATH: Ian Hendry plays a guy who leaves his family for a younger woman, played by Angie Grant.

As they drive off into the night, their car crashes into a ravine, and, after Carl manages to escape the burning wreckage, Susan's nowhere to be found! He eventually realizes (people are repulsed by him) that he was killed in the wreck and is now a walking corpse. He suddenly awakens and is relieved that the whole thing was only a dream, but then, the car crashes exactly as it did in his dream and the horror is now real!

POETIC JUSTICE: A ruthless property developer (and, dick), played by Robin Philips, feels that his elderly neighbor, the kindly old dustman played by Peter Cushing, is an eyesore to the community. He launches a smear campaign against Peter, hoping that he will sell the property to him cheap and leave the area for good.

He commits suicide instead!

Peter had a few more skills than some people realized.

The greedy stinking little bastard is counting his dough when he hears something creeping around in his dark room...

Peter has returned a year later to give Robin's father a special Valentines Day gift!

WISH YOU WERE HERE: Ruthless business tycoon played by Richard Greene is declared bankrupt by his lawyer, but, his wife has discovered a statuette which can grant three wishes!

After he's killed in a car crash, wifey wishes her husband back to life, to live forever!

However, his body has been embalmed and that only means one thing... He must live in eternal agony... Forever!!

His wife tries to end the suffering by chopping him up with a sword, which only means that the pain gets even worse!

BLIND ALLEYS: Selfish Nigel Patrick takes over the running of a home for the blind, he uses funds allocated to the needs of his patients for his own comfort. He won't even buy them a few blankets! Patrick Magee is a helper.

When his neglect results in a death, Patrick and the other patients come up with a devious plan for revenge. First, they have to separate the German Shepherd from it's master with a trail of meat scraps...

After they starve the dog, Nigel gets trapped in a corridor lined with razor blades, and, when he tries to squeeze through, they let the hungry dog go, to feast on it's tasty master!!

And, if you try and escape your fate, you'll fall into this pit to a burning Hell!

Ralph Richardson plays a very British version of EC's Cryptkeeper!

2 comments:

  1. I'm not sure what I'm most ashamed of. That I'm old enough to say I saw this in the movies when I was 11 years ago.. that or the scene in which the heart was wrapped in the paper that I was so scared I wanted to leave the theater.

    Still a great movie, thanks for bringing it here.

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  2. I loved this movie so much I bought the book!
    There were a large number of theses turned out by English film studios in the early 1970s. Not sure why, but they were all fun.

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