Tales From the Crypt Vault of Horror Blu Ray Review

Tales From The Catacomb / Vault Of Horror

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Amicus was a British film company founded past 2 Americans, Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg, and the simply serious rival to U.k.'s premier horror movie producers, Hammer Films. In fact Amicus made a wide variety of pictures: teen-oriented films like It'due south Trad, Dad! (their beginning production, 1962) as well as a number of sci-fi thrillers, amongst them Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965), The Terrornauts (1967) and The Land That Fourth dimension Forgot (1975). Withal, Amicus became most synonymous with a particular type of horror movie: anthologies, portmanteau, all essentially modern variations of the classic Dead of Night (1945).

Amicus produced seven such films. So, when the company folded in the mid-1970s, Subotsky produced one more, The Uncanny (1977). Most offered five short tales averaging around 15 minutes in length, loosely continued to a larger, framing story. These were shrewdly made piddling movies. Because each segment took only a few days to shoot, Amicus was able to beget name actors. They feature genre stars Peter Cushing and/or Christopher Lee, British actors who had flirted with Hollywood stardom (Richard Greene, Joan Collins), respected stage actors who occasionally appeared in films (Ralph Richardson, Patrick Magee), up-and-coming talent (Charlotte Rampling, Tom Baker) and, sadly, a few others that had fallen on difficult times, either because of personal problems (eastward.m., Ian Hendry) or who struggled when the once-bustling British film industry fizzled (Terry-Thomas, Richard Todd). The quality of these anthologies varied greatly, surprisingly enough. For example, Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) is enormously enjoyable, but Amicus's side by side 1, Torture Garden (1967), is unaccountably bad.

This is likewise reflected in Shout! Factory's Blu-ray double feature of Tales from the Crypt (1972) and Vault of Horror (1973); both arrange stories from classic EC horror comics of the 1950s. Tales from the Crypt is merely marvelous, the single best instance of Amicus'southward horror anthologies. Nearly inexplicably Vault of Horror, fabricated soon after, isn't half equally good.

Nevertheless, each motion-picture show gets a about-perfect 1080p transfer, with Vault of Horror offered in high-def no less than 3 different ways, including the home video premiere of its original uncut version. The uncut version offers a scrap more than (though, by today'due south standards, extremely mild) gore, which in the shorter edit by and large replaced these shots with odd freeze-frames.

In Tales from the Crypt, five strangers (Joan Collins, Ian Hendry, Robin Phillips, Richard Greene, and Nigel Patrick) tour old catacombs, each a bit unsure exactly how they arrived and why they're there. A mysterious Crypt Keeper (Ralph Richardson) questions each visitor, triggering memories that unfold something like flashbacks.

In the first and best segment, "And All Through the House," Joanne Clayton (Collins) brutally murders her husband on Christmas Eve while, upstairs, their young daughter (Chloe Franks), unaware of her mother's crime, anxiously awaits the arrival of Santa Claus. As Joanne cleans up the blood and moves the torso around (to make it appear that he died accidentally), a radio in the living room alternates between warm Christmastime music and reports of a homicidal maniac loose in the neighborhood - dressed as Santa Claus.*

In "Reflection of Decease," man of affairs Carl Maitland (Hendry) leaves his wife and children for his mistress, Susan (Angela Grant). However, en route to their dear nest they are involved in a horrific motorcar accident, and a mazed and bewildered Maitland struggles to brand information technology back home.

"Poetic Justice" casts Phillips as James Elliott, a wealthy snob who through a smear campaign and other bullying tactics drives their kindly garbage man neighbor, Arthur Grimsdyke (Peter Cushing), into committing suicide on Valentine'south Day. One year later…

A modern take on The Monkey'due south Manus, "Wish You Were Here" finds financially strapped Ralph Jason (Greene) in possession of a Chinese figurine with the power to grant iii wishes. His well-meaning wife, Enid (Barbara Murray), wishes for a fortune, which indeed comes truthful: Her married man dies on the highway and thus she'll inherit his insurance money. But information technology gets worse. Much worse.

The last segment is "Bullheaded Alleys," with Patrick starring as the martinet manager of a home for the blind. He drastically cuts their oestrus and nutrient budget to pay for the expensive paintings and rich food and vino to which he treats himself and his constant companion, a Belgian Malinois named Shane. When one of the bullheaded men dies from the managing director's ill handling, the aging blind men, led by George Carter (Patrick Magee) plot their ingenious revenge.

Virtually everything about Tales from the Crypt works. The segments are compact just never feel rushed. Three of the five tales are really adaptations from other EC comic books, The Haunt of Fear and The Vault of Horror, though this hardly matters. They effectively capture the spirit of those wondrously ghoulish and clever magazines, while maintaining the look of a slick (if modestly budgeted) contemporary British motion picture. Indeed, the fine art direction is part of the fun: e.thou., Joan Collins'due south austere, modernistic domicile somehow enhances the gruesomeness of the events happening there.

That segment and the last i are well chosen; each offers an ingenious piffling story imaginatively directed by cinematographer-turned-director Freddie Francis. "Reflection of Death" always seemed rather perfunctory in earlier habitation video releases, merely comes off much, much better on Blu-ray. Possibly this is because the loftier-def transfer helps pull off the segment's dark-for-nighttime cinematography so much ameliorate.

The merely problematic story is "Poetic Justice," mainly because the focus is on the victim rather than the perpetrator, undoubtedly the result of Cushing opting against playing the part ultimately essayed by Richard Greene in favor of Grimsdyke and, probably, the subsequent beefing-up of his part. (One can easily run across Grimsdyke geared for another, less famous thespian like Michael Ripper or Peter Madden.) Like Grimsdyke, Cushing was a widower at this fourth dimension; both badly miss their wife, both named Helen. As Cushing was, even then, such a honey player, and a famously kind and generous man like Grimsdyke, watching that character suffer so terribly is hard to endure; even Grimsdyke'south revenge offers picayune solace and seems so out of grapheme, whether Grimsdyke and the actor playing him.

Inexplicably, The Vault of Horror is almost a consummate bust, with none of its five segments every bit adept as the weakest ones establish in Tales from the Crypt. For one thing, the stories (ironically, none actually adapted from The Vault of Horror comic book; all just one are derived from Tales from the Crypt) aren't as advisedly chosen. Some are beyond the limitations of the budget, others are miscast, and three of the five accept grimly humorous aspects that don't work at all. Before in his career, managing director Roy Ward Bakery generally made better movies than those helmed past Freddie Francis, merely by the 1970s Bakery ofttimes seemed to exist on autopilot. Vault of Horror is directed with little enthusiasm and less flair.

Another trouble is that where in Tales from the Crypt the protagonists were all well-to-do greedy and/or selfish individuals whose criminal or morally objectionable actions prove their undoing (even Richard Greene's character is identified as a ruthless industrialist, even though the audience sees none of that behavior), in Vault of Horror the circumstances are a flake different. In "The Neat Chore," for instance, Terry-Thomas plays an obsessive-compulsive neat freak that drives his doting wife (Glynis Johns) to murder and insanity. The entire segment is conceptually misguided. Johns is a sugariness, immensely likeable actress while Terry-Thomas, the emblematic British cad, is hard to dislike even at his most roguish. Yet here he plays a human being with clinical mental illness. Information technology's no fun at all to watch him browbeat his well-meaning wife into panic attacks.

In "Drawn and Quartered," Tom Baker plays a struggling artist in Haiti who learns that 3 men (one played by Denholm Elliott) dorsum in Britain have cheated him out of a fortune, and so he exacts his revenge using voodoo. While the 2d-all-time segment overall, Baker's madness and sadism don't engender much sympathy, quite unlike Patrick Magee and the other bullheaded men's justice-serving revenge on Nigel Patrick in "Blind Alleys."

Given the limited upkeep, the filmmakers probably shouldn't have attempted the Haitian setting of "Fatigued and Quartered" or the Indian one and special furnishings demands plant in "This Fox'll Kill You lot," though that segment comes closest to capturing the essence of Tales from the Catacomb. Curd Jürgens and Dawn Addams play married magicians in India looking for means to spice up their human activity. They discover a girl (Jasmina Hilton) performing an uncannily real Indian rope flim-flam. They unsuccessfully try to "buy" the trick that she insists is existent magic. Determined to learn its secret they plot to murder her.

The other segments are fifty-fifty weaker. "Midnight Mess" has the novelty of casting existent-life siblings Daniel and Anna Massey every bit blood brother and sis but the plot, with the brother tracking down an estranged sister to murder her for her inheritance, merely to find her neighborhood overrun with vampires, is badly washed in every respect save for one startlingly good on-set up special effects done with mirrors. "Bargain in Death" is a supremely muddled insurance scam story, with Michael Craig buried alive only to accept his partner-in-crime (Edward Judd, wasted in a one-line operation) skip boondocks and his body "rescued" by medical students-turned-grave robbers Tom (Robin Nedwell) and Jerry (Geoffrey Davies). The joke, completely lost on non-British audiences, is that Nedwell and Davies previously starred as med students on the popular (but long-cancelled) British sitcom Medico in the Firm and thus reprise their roles in all merely name.

Video & Audio

Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror are presented in 1080p widescreen, approximating their original theatrical attribute ratios. The video transfer on each is uncommonly good, equally are the DTS-HD Chief Sound mono (English language merely, with optional English subtitles). The added clarity and strong color noticeably enhance the effectiveness of Tales particularly. Further, where the earlier DVD of Vault of Horror utilized only the severely cutting American release version, Shout! Factory's release includes the gorier, uncut version in both 1.85:1 widescreen and 1.33:1 open up-matte (though I tin can't imagine why anyone would want to watch information technology that way), the latter on a 2d Blu-ray that too contains the one.85:1 widescreen American theatrical cut. (All three are high-def). The cut scenes manifestly were obtained past Shout! with help from the BFI.

Extra Features

Additionally, Vault of Horror includes alternate opening titles, when the movie was briefly issued under the title Tales from the Catacomb Ii, too as a iv:iii black and white trailer. Oddly, no extras at all for Tales from the Crypt, the far superior of the ii films.

Parting Thoughts

Disappointing as even the uncut Vault of Horror is, its release on Blu is still most welcome, while Tales from the Crypt is a huge care for in high-def. Highly Recommended.

* When I was in loftier school, we booked a 16mm print of Tales from the Crypt for Halloween, where we dressed upward a student in a Santa Claus conform. He jumped out of the auditorium's orchestra pit at the advisable moment, sending the first several rows of students fleeing up the aisles.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His credits include film history books, DVD and Blu-ray audio commentaries and special features.

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Source: https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/65334/tales-from-the-crypt-vault-of-horror/

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