Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors

Sin Tax Terror

Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors
UK 1965 Directed by Freddie Francis
Amicus Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Yeah, this one will have some spoilers.

Okay... so I finally got around to watching the very first of the Amicus studio horror films, Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors. The studio would go on to make many more films in this vein and were particularly noted for their famous portmanteau horror movies such as Tales From The Crypt and Vault Of Horror (which were adaptations of some of the tales in the old, pre-code EC Horror Comics, of course). There had been other movies around before which pitched mostly horror stories as a collection of tales, obviously but... not that many of them. Perhaps the most famous of these was the 1945 Ealing production Dead Of Night, which the producer of this movie was said to have been inspired by. Even one of Roger Corman’s ‘Poe inspired’ films from a few years earlier would fit the bill but, for the most part, this idea of having three to five different horror stories with a linking narrative device was not so commonplace... but the success of this one opened up a flood of similar product, including many by Amicus studios themselves.

Now I wasn’t exactly expecting a bad movie when I sat down to watch this but I was certainly surprised by the quality and entertainment value of this film. I can kinda see why both audiences and, perhaps puzzlingly, critics of the time reacted so positively towards this and, not having seen any of the others (yet, there’s a pile of unwatched Blus sitting directly opposite where I am typing this) I’d have to wonder if this is the best of the batch.

The film starts with five passengers, strangers to each other, boarding the compartment of a train... they are played by (in order of the segments which star them as the lead) Neil McCallum, Alan Freeman (that’s right ‘pop pickers’, the famous radio DJ), Roy Castle (in what I think is his debut role, a last minute replacement for Acker Bilk who had a heart attack), Christopher Lee and, another unknown but up and coming young star to be, Donald Sutherland. Then the great Peter Cushing as the titular character, Dr. Terror, comes on board. Actually, the title of the film is a complete cheat but Cushing does go on to elaborate when we find his name is Dr. Schreck, a doctor of metaphysics it would seem (obviously a nod to the actor who played Orlock in the original Nosferatu). In German, he says, the name means ‘terror’, although I don’t think it actually quite means that in the German translation, according to somebody very close to me. We also find out that the Tarot cards in which he reads the fortunes of each of the five passengers in turn, are often referred to by ‘clients’ as his House Of Horrors.

Yeah, the cast list sounds great and it doesn’t stop there. It’s filled with loads of great character actors or British celebrities such as Bernard Lee, Michael Gough and singer Kenny Lynch. Cushing was doing a lot of films released in ‘65 actually, including Dr. Who And The Daleks (again with Roy Castle), The Skull (reviewed here) and She (these last two with Christopher Lee in them too). With a cast like this, the acting is practically taken care of but the brilliant ridiculousness of the mini stories, as Peter Cushing tells each character his possible, ultimate fate which we see play before us as a little mini movie, coupled with some fine cinematography of note, really helps seal the deal on what is a very entertaining package.

The stories are just enchanting and it’s no wonder that Amicus hit upon the idea of aping those EC comics a few years later... this could almost be an issue of any of those old EC titles. Here’s a quick run down of the basic ideas showcased here in terms of plot...

Neil McCallum’s story is of an architect who goes to look at the possibility of knocking out a wall for the current owner of his childhood’s home but, instead, he accidentally knocks out a coffin hiding the dead ancestor of a former owner from centuries before, complete with a threat of werewolvery. Is there a werewolf lurking in the area? Well you’ll soon find out. Actually, as I was watching this section and came to the bit where he’s knocking the plaster out of the wall and uncovering the formerly locked cellar’s dark secret, I found myself wondering if Dario Argento had maybe seen and been influenced by this movie at some point. That could easily have been David Hemmings chipping way at the wall in Deep Red (aka Profondo Rosso, reviewed here). When I watched the documentary extra on this Blu Ray (something which I don’t usually do... who has time to watch all these?), I found myself somewhat justified/validated as one of the people on the extras said more or less the same thing about the possible Argento connection.

The second segment, top lining Alan Freeman, tells of him and his family coming home from holiday to find a vine that’s been growing outside their house, getting increasingly hostile as the days/weeks go by. It slaps the garden shears out of Freeman’s hand when he tries to give it a prune and even kills the family dog when it gets too close. Eventually it reaches in through one of the windows and strangles a ‘Man from the Ministry’, played by Jeremy Kemp and, when his boss played by Bernard Lee comes to investigate, they are all held siege in the house by the killer plant. Will they get out or will the plant have its wicked way with them?

The third segment, featuring Roy Castle as jazz band leader Biff Bailey (what a brilliant name!), is pretty run of the mill but the tension and shot compositions more than make up for this riff on the old voodoo tropes. When playing in the West Indies, where he discovers Kenny Lynch singing too, he comes across a religious voodoo ceremony and starts copying down the notes of the melodies and rhythms used in it so he can rearrange it for his jazz band at some point. There’s a wonderful scene as he is lurking in the jungle where we cut from the voodoo dance ritual back to him and we have a native who has discovered him, glaring at him from behind. The edit repeats the trick three more times, each one adding another glaring native behind him until there are four of them. Later, when he takes the notes home and plays the new ‘jazz arrangement’ at a nightclub, voodoo winds wreck the joint and follow him home... for more consequences.

The fourth segment is a nice little riff on the old movie The Beast With Five Fingers (which is obviously one of the influences here). Christopher Lee is a stuffy art dealer who picks on an artist played by Michael Gough, with particularly scathing reviews. When Gough’s character has his revenge on the critic by showing him up as somebody who really doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Lee gets so fired up that he runs over Gough in the hopes of killing him. Alas, Gough survives but with his right hand severed. Unable to pursue his art, he kills himself in a wonderfully realised shot where the gun is aimed at the camera POV and then cuts sharply after the shot to the arm dropping the gun. The effect it creates here is even better than the version of a similar gun shot suicide in Hitchcock’s Spellbound, which is where I suspect the inspiration for this moment resides. Of course, with the artist out of the way, his severed hand begins to pursue Lee’s art critic to get its five fingered revenge on him.

The final ‘inner story’ segment is the tale of Donald Sutherland marrying and bringing his new French bride back to his home town in New England. Alas, despite signs which are pretty obvious to the audience, complete with a parody of the scene in Dracula/Nosferatu where Jonathan Harker (or his stand in here) cut their finger, the lady in question is a vampire who starts to prey off the blood of children in the district. The final little twist in this is genuinely one... possibly the only one... where you don’t ‘see it coming’ but it’s treated somewhat as the punchline to a joke, which possibly makes it a little less effective but, as far as I’m concerned, gives it a sense of fun which is not unwelcome.

Finally, after all five stories have been told, the train reaches its final destination and the ‘real identity’ of Dr. Terror is revealed... which is something I won’t spoil here. However, getting there is a wonderful journey and even the cluttered train carriage, which you would assume has limited space, although I suspect they possibly rebuilt it and just moved walls out of the way where needed, has some nicely composed and inventive shots. The way a number of heads are crammed together into one frame in the carriage in an early part of the film is superb and the director also does some nice stuff with the large head of Bernard Lee in the foreground and to the side of a shot where, in the mid-ground, two other characters form a triangle down to his head by their height in the shot. Great stuff.

One last cherry on the cake is the wonderful scoring by Elisabeth Lutyens, daughter of famous architect Edwin Lutyens and it evokes the kind of sound which has always been absolutely synonymous with this kind of movie in my head for decades. This is yet another I can number in the unreleased scores of this concert hall composer, which would include The Skull (only a re-recording has been made available) and The Earth Dies Screaming (which I reviewed here). Superb stuff and I wish somebody would find and restore these scores for a CD release at some point soon.

And that’s that. It’s no wonder, with films of this quality, that Amicus soon found themselves as the number one competitor, at least in the UK, for Hammer and their domination of the horror market at this period. Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors is a wonderful little comfort horror movie I could easily come back to a number of times in my life so, you know, that was six quid well spent, as far as I’m concerned, for this cracking Blu Ray release which also includes the trailer, a documentary of the film directed by Jake (Razor Blade Smile) West and a profile of Christopher Lee, which I haven’t got around to watching yet, alas. Certainly a recommended purchase from me and worth every penny, as far as I’m concerned.