The Vault of Horror (1973)

That was an excellent one.

Good concept, poorly executed.

An Exercise In Nonsense

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

THE VAULT OF HORROR is an Amicus anthology and by that definition alone it's going to be a lot of fun. The first story is definitely nothing special. It's typical, seen-it-a-million-times-before fare and the ending rips off Polanski's THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS. The second story is the comedy horror piece of the film, and is actually very good on reflection, with excellent pacing. A typical short story with a macabre touch and a neat set up help to move this story along and Terry-Thomas has an excellent role which was obviously written for him. The bit where his wife gets ready for him coming home at six is an excellent scene and this story is a perfect example of the "horror and humour" tradition.All actors in the third rope-charming story are excellent and the two antagonists definitely deserve what they get. This is also the animated inanimate object section (ASYLUM had moving body parts, TALES FROM THE CRYPT a crawling hand, DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS a moving plant) and for some reason I just love these bits. I guess it's just the effects work which enthrals me. The fourth story is very short but a good macabre yarn. Influences range from Poe to Stevenson, and even Burke and Hare are reinvented for the seventies as a pair of university students. There are some 'comedy' moments in the story too, and it benefits from the setting of a graveyard to add some atmosphere to the events. Like all of the stories in these Amicus films, the participants get their just desserts come the end of the tale.Tom Baker's final tale is the best of the bunch and with an excellent, well-executed story of revenge and voodoo, similar to Roy Castle's segment from DR. TERROR'S but far more effective and horrific. Denholm Elliott also appears and there are some nifty gore scenes, the most notable being when a man's hands are cut off with a guillotine (pretty graphic for the time). This segment is perfect in every way, it's clever and has a twist ending in the tale you can see a mile off. How much you enjoy THE VAULT OF HORROR depends really on your appreciation of this particular genre. If you're not fond of these anthology films then you might find the proceedings a bit laboured and clichéd. If you are a fan of British '70s horror though, you will definitely enjoy the things on offer here. There's nothing truly powerful, very original, scary or frightening, but it's a good enough way to have a few laughs, watch a decent cast go through their paces and just sit back and relax with the 'cosy toes' feel that this film brings.

Five men in an office building take take an elevator to the ground floor, only to find themselves ending up in the sub basement with no way out. To pass the time, all five tell a tale about their dreams in this poor follow up to Amicus's Tales From The Crypt. None of the stories told in this anthology measure up to the ones in the afore mentioned "Tales", although there are a few that I enjoyed. The first story, in which a murderous brother goes to visit his sister, where he ends up meeting a fitting end,and the third in which a man and woman on vacation in India debunk a magician, and then murder a rope charmer,and must deal with the dire consequences. This story also has what will probably be the WEIRDEST fight scene ever recorded. The best parts of the fourth story are where they show a vintage "Vault Of Horror" comic book, and a scene in where the main character is reading a novilization of the "Tales From The Crypt" movie! As is in most British horror movies of the time, the gore here is at a bare minimum. So if you're a gore hound, you're probably gonna walk away disappointed. What little gore there is, is quite obviously red paint or tomato juice. And despite the title.of the movie, there really isn't much horror in this movie. "The Vault Of Weird" would have been a more appropriate title. Unlike the previous production of Tales From The Crypt, most of the storied presented here just don't work.

I had seen a few horror portmanteau movies over the years but I had never seen this film until recently. I had liked Tales From The Crypt to which this film is something of a sequel but this is mostly inferior to its predecessor.The premise of five apparently successful businessmen descending into the sub-basement of an office block where they find themselves locked into the well appointed room they have landed in with nothing better to do than drink whisky and tell each other their nightmares is not a particularly novel or strong one and the twist that they are all already dead would surprise nobody watching it. The framing story in this kind of film has to be strong and if it is like Dead of Night the twist in this part of tale has to be especially surprising but in both these aspects The Vault of Horror fails. The five segments are pretty variable in quality though one of them, the last, is pretty good. The opener 'Midnight Mess' has a neat twist in it and Daniel and Anna Massey as long lost siblings are pretty good but I thought it could have done with a few more minutes. One of the problems in the film is that it is littered with fairly big names who don't have to do much and in this story Mike Pratt- then a big name on British TV after the success of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)- gets about two lines before he is killed off. His character's back story seemed interesting but like so much of the film his part feels a bit underdeveloped.The Neat Job is part 2 and stars the great Terry-Thomas and Glynis Johns. Both are very watchable in what seems to be a light-hearted story about a fussy husband who drives his new wife to distraction because of his overwhelming neatness but the twist of having her to such distraction that she chops up him up and neatly labels his body parts in jars just does not work for me though the final shot is , well, neat.This Trick'll Kill You is better, telling as it does of a husband and wife magician team who spot a great trick on a holiday in India which they decide to steal by killing the trick's original magician only for the victim and her trick to exact spectacular revenge. The downside is that Curt Jurgens plays the thieving magician and he is, as he had a tendency to be, a touch hammy. Pass marks thoughWhich Bargain in Death does not earn. Owing something to a Ray Milland film based on an Edgar Allan Poe story about a man scared of being buried alive it is the most underdone of the stories presented and the music used at the point at which the film twists suggests farce. Michael Craig and Edward Judd were good actors and at the start of the piece there is a hint of a gay lovers plot that would have been daring for the early seventies but that is about it.Drawn and Quartered is the final story and stars Tom Baker just before he was reduced to working on building sites prior to being plucked to stardom as the fourth Doctor Who. In this story he plays an artist who, sick of rejection by the London Art Establishment, has decamped to Haiti. When there he discovers his paintings are actually selling well and that a trio of critics and art dealers who told him his work was rubbish have got rich on it.Being set partly in Haiti it is predictable that voodoo is on the menu as Baker seeks to gain his revenge and the closure of the story is predictable but the murders Baker dreams up are delightfully grizzly- the middle one is a genuine hand over your eyes moment- and it is curious to see a pre-Who Baker. He was of course very good in that latter role but everything he has done since has sounded like a slightly camp reprise of it. Here he is just a very good young actor.This film is disappointing for the most part but I have seen worse for sure.

(62%) An entertaining portmanteau based spook show that passes the test of there being more good sections than bad, in fact none of the segments are what I'd call being of poor quality. The cast has a few famous British faces including the always fun Terry-Thomas in one of, if not the best section of the whole piece. Dr Who star Tom Baker also appears. All the stories are interesting enough with good pacing to each meaning this never really drags once; although it must be said that this isn't a very scary film and I doubt anyone ever lost much sleep over it. There is a bit of blood and gore, not a lot though, but this is still an entertaining watch that is worth tracking down for fans of classic British horror.