Tales from the Crypt (1972)

Directed by: Freddie Francis

Being a big fan of Hammer Films it's easy to also have a soft spot for Amicus Productions as Amicus always felt like the poor man's Hammer. Not that their movies were not as good as Hammer's, as a lot of them were, but you get the feeling the company didn't really have the same budget as Hammer as most of their movies are set in a "modern" time instead of the usual Hammer period pieces. Another reason Hammer and Amicus go so well together is all the Hammer stars (both actors and directors) that worked for Amicus as well.

One thing that Amicus were really good at, and I don't think Hammer did any at all, are anthology movies. I like anthology movies as even at worse case scenario you usually get at least one great story... that's at least better than to have to suffer through a total snooze fest with no entertaining value at all. And when it comes to the Amicus anthology movies you usually get much more of the good than the bad.


And now, over to the movie: We start with some tourists visiting some catacombs somewhere in England, and while most of the tourists are following the guide five manage to get left behind and not finding a way out. That's until a door opens and they find a big room with five stone chairs in the middle - no one is there and they decide that this party really blows and head for the door when it slams shut and behind them a monk looking man appears. You never get to know who he is in the movie, but this is the Crypt Keeper - looking and sounding very different from the yattering pun machine that was presenting the Tales from the Crypt TV series in the 90's. He tells the five people that they need to see what he will show them and here's where the short movies within the movie starts...


First out is ...And All Through the House, and here we find Joanne (Joan Collins) celebrating Christmas by bashing her husband's head in... by being that naughty just around Christmas time you'd suspect that Joanne wouldn't get a visit from Santa Claus, but you're so wrong about that! While she's taking care of her hubby's dead body a radio announcement is letting us know that a man has escaped from the home of the criminally insane, and he is wearing a Santa costume. Of course he is headed straight for Joanne's house and starts to knock on the door trying to get in... Joanne would have been safe if it wasn't for her stupid daughter who thought that Santa should come inside the house instead of freezing outside. There's one reason why I really hate kids... retards!

Second out is Reflection of Death, and just as the first one this is kinda short (but that's a good thing as it's without a doubt the weakest of the lot). Here we have a guy called Carl (Ian Hendry) who abandons his wife and two kids for his mistress, while driving with her to their new home they get into a car crash. Carl is dragging himself from the scene of the crash looking for his mistress, but can't find her. So he decides to go back home to his wife again - who he freak the shit out when she opens the door (and strangely enough the name on the door is different now and she seems to have a new hubby... that's weird!), he keeps scaring people along the way (we only see things from his point of view) and ends up at his mistress' old apartment where she is living again. There he (and we) finally get a look of himself and it turns out the car crash happened two years ago and he's now a walking corpse... he wakes up screaming in the car (this was apparently just a dream) just about to be part of the same car crash he just dreamt about.


Third out is Poetic Justice, and here we have Peter Cushing playing an old gentle garbage man that some of his snobbish neighbors just can't stand. All because of what he's working with and that he is taking care of stray dogs (oh, the noise!) and is visited by the neighborhood's children (which he gives toys to, toys that he has found in the garbage and repaired). A father and son team from the other side of the street starts an smear campaign to get rid of the old man and first they have the police getting rid of his dogs. When that's not enough they imply to the children's parents that he might be a child molestor, so all the children are forbidden to go to him. Then they even manage to get him to lose his job, and when that's not enough they send him a lot of nasty Valentine cards on Valentine's Day. This last thing is too much for poor old Mr. Grimsdyke (Cushing) and he hangs himself... One year later he his back visiting his old neighbors though, and he leaves a Valentine card of his own...

The fourth story is Wish You Were Here, and this is a variant of the old "The Monkey's Paw" story. Be careful what you wish for, it just might come true! In this one we have a business man, Ralph Jason (Richard Greene), who is having financial troubles - luck have it that his wife spots a text on the bottom of a small statue in their home telling them about three wishes. Not that they believe in such things, but they do make a wish for money and ta-da! the phone rings and the money situation seems to be clearing up. But, on his way to his lawyer Ralph dies in a car crash - his wife desperately wants him back and makes another wish: to get him back as he was right before he crashed. Well, poor old Ralphie-boy died of a heart attack before the crash so he comes back to her in a coffin... So, she uses the third and last wish to make him alive now and forever as he was before he died. He comes back to life, but is screaming in pain due to having been embalmed... when his wife can't take his screams any more she uses a sword on him, chopping him to pieces and still he's screaming...


And the last story is Blind Alleys, and it takes place in a home for the blind, where Major William Rogers (Nigel Patrick) is the new director. Not knowing how to lead the blind he resorts to how he lead his men in the army and that might not be the best of ideas... he's also a cheap bastard taking away almost every little luxury thing the blind men enjoyed (like heat in the building, blankets, real food... you know, luxury stuff). When one of the blind dies from the cold the rest of them decides that enough is enough and lock the Major up in a small cell while they're doing some woodwork outside his door. When they finally open up his door he finds a small corridor that he needs to get through to get to safety... a corridor that has a shitload of razor blades stuck to the walls! And if that wasn't bad enough, they release the Major's now very hungry dog on him inside the corridor...

The movie ends with the Crypt Keeper letting us know why we have seen all of this and I'll let you find that out all by yourself... so find yourself a copy of this movie and watch it dammit!


Tales from the Crypt is based on an old comic book from the 50's with the same name, although some of the stories in this movie were taken from the magazine The Vault of Horror, which was published by the same people at the same time as Tales... The tone is quite dark in this movie, but with a dark sense of humor mixed in with the horror, just like the original magazines. And it works very well for me... This is not my favorite Amicus anthology movie (that honor goes to The House That Dripped Blood), but it's a damn fine one!

You get some great acting and the directing by Freddie Francis is flawless, we get the usual 70's style weird angles (which I love) and wild close ups (especially in the car crash in the second story). This a great example of classic early 70's british horror cinema with one of the greats, Peter Cushing. You can't go wrong with that! (and I must confess that I actually jumped up by something in the first story... yep, even yours truly can be scared by a movie ;-)).