Dr. Terror's House of Horrors

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Jay W Anthology horror movies are not for everyone. The format feels more like a setup for a TV show than it does for a feature film. But, if you are OK with a film that is comprised of 5 unrelated short stories, then this is an enjoyable horror film perfect for the Halloween season. The movie has a spooky but not overly scary vibe. The monsters range from werewolves and vampires to disembodied hands and killer plants. The movie has a sincere tone, which makes it just the right level of camp. It helps that this film has a cast of horror movie legends like Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Donald Sutherland. Around this Halloween season, let this Doctor make a house call. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 11/20/24 Full Review Horror fan 4 A great anthology film with no week link. This is a prime example of how you do a proper anthology film. Tim Treakle Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 11/19/24 Full Review Jack S A surprisingly intelligent and suspenseful horror anthology, especially considering the lurid title. Not particularly scary or surprising by today’s standards, but very well made and respectably performed. The always reliable Cushing/Lee team are typically creditable here. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 07/12/24 Full Review Audience Member You know you are in for a good horror classic when both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are involved. Each story that was told was brilliant, and each was a different take on what terror could be perceived as. When you watch older horror movies today, it is sometimes possible to find them predictable and nearly comical. One of the reasons is possibly the of the lack of graphics and technology, another more notable reason is that you've seen it all before. This movie succeeds regardless. I won't spoil the ending but it got me. I cannot imagine how those back in the 60's took it. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/23/23 Full Review Audience Member As soon as I saw that this 1965 Amicus film was directed by Freddie Francis I knew that the direction and photography would be beautiful. And I was right! I was also excited as I knew that this was a horror anthology film and starred two heavyweights of the genre, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. As well as Cushing and Lee the cast also includes Alan 'Fluff' Friedman, Donald Sutherland and Roy 'You're a Record Breaker!' Castle. We even get Kenny Lynch appearing in a cameo role. Travellers in a train compartment are joined by the very sinister Dr Schreck who whips out his deck of tarot cards and tells each of his fellow traveller's fortunes. Each fortune told is a separate episode in this anthology. The separate stories involve vampirism, a vine seemingly related to a Triffid that comes to life, lycanthropy, voodoo and black magic and a severed hand. I want to give more details away about each segment but there are so many brilliant twists and turns that writing any more would be like trying to tiptoe through a field full of landmines. Each episode is completely different from each other, taking place in a real breadth of locales and circumstances which keeps the film as a whole really varied and interesting. This film has all the ingenuity of five separate mini episodes of Tales of the Unexpected. Each concept is unpredictable, genuinely ingenious and likely to surprise most viewers. A joy from start to finish with perhaps the biggest twist coming after each of the characters fortunes has been told. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/19/23 Full Review Audience Member The first of the many omnibus horror films from Amicus Pictures, following the great tradition of Ealing Studio's Dead of Night (1945 and highly recommended). Amicus was clearly drawing from the EC Comics playbook (another of their films is called Tales from the Crypt) and the five tales told here are alternately silly and (trying to be) scary. For example, one tale features a plant that has evolved to be smart enough to defend itself from humans who might want to prune it. Another sees a disembodied hand determinedly pursuing and killing Christopher Lee, a rude art critic. On the less silly side, we are treated to somewhat routine werewolf and vampire tales (well actually the vampire one is pretty silly too but it is notable for featuring a young Donald Sutherland). Oh and in the fifth tale, a jazz musician tries to steal a tune from a voodoo ceremony and, of course, the voodoo gods catch up with him. The framing device for the stories is that the five men are in the same train compartment with Dr. Schreck (a.k.a. Dr. Terror, played by Peter Cushing) who then reads their fortunes using the tarot cards. The cards reveal what will be happening to each of the men unless a fifth tarot card helps them to avoid that end - but for each of them the fifth card is Death (and then the train crashes). Director Freddie Francis was cinematographer for some great films (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 1960; The Innocents, 1961; and later David Lynch's The Elephant Man, 1980, and The Straight Story, 1999) but there is nothing really distinguished about the photography here. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors

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