31 DAYS OF HORROR 2022 - Day 8: DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965)

  

Five strangers on a date with their grim destinies.

On an eerie British night, five strangers share a train car wherein they are afforded glimpses into their individual destinies via tarot cards wielded by one Dr. Schreck (Peter Cushing), whose name translates as "terror" in German.

The legendary Peter Cushing as the titular doctor.

The quintet of short shockers features:

• an architect's assignment to a renovation job at his ancestral home, only to discover a horror that has lain dormant for 200 years
• a family menaced by a homicidal vine
• the dangers of cultural appropriation in the face of West Indian voodoo
• an arrogant art critic (Christopher Lee) being dealt gruesome justice  for destroying a man's career and leading him to suicide
• a newlywed American doctor (29-year-old Donald Sutherland) slowly piecing together the evidence that points to his French bride being a vampire

 The denouement for all is telegraphed a mile away, but the end result amounts to a fun watch.

SURPRISE!!! (not)

The first of Hammer rival Amicus Productions' portmanteau horror outings, this one was always a favorite among us monster kids during my formative years, and I even recall a classmate who would pick up a random deck of cards, spread it ominously, and spookily intone "DOCTOOOOOR TEEEERRRRRROOOORRR..."

As such vintage anthologies go, it holds up pretty well, though some might balk at its lugubrious pacing and lack of outright visceral shocks, but it is quite good as an entry level short story collection for those just cutting their teeth on the genre. The five stories operate at a campfire level, with none being too scary for younger viewers, and of the five my favorite is easily the one about the vampire. It has a fun twist (that alert audiences will see coming) and could easily have been expanded into a full feature, provided it had a script tight enough to be sustained at feature length. That said, it should be noted that the film is very much a product of its time and its country of origin, and the voodoo sequence is rife with British colonialist xenophobia and West Indian stereotyping common to its era, but at least all of the natives are portrayed by actual black people. 

DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS may have been the first of Amicus's anthology spook-fests, and it sure as hell wasn't the last, but we will get to that soon enough...

Poster from the original U.K. release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2022 - Day 7: THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM (1967)

The original German title: "The Snake Pit and the Pendulum."

 

 I had heard about this one for ages, and how could I not want to see a film with a title like THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM? I mean, talk about putting all the cards on the table! But, as too often happens, the promise of a lurid title does not guarantee entertaining sordid sleazery.

In 18th century Germany, the evil Count Regula (Christopher Lee) is sentenced to be drawn and quartered for conducting fiendish experiments that resulted in the deaths of twelve virgin girls. (His intent was to kill thirteen for his experiments, but the last one got away and led the authorities straight to him, so there you go.) In an opening scene shamelessly ripped off from Maria Bava's classic THE MASK OF SATAN/BLACK SUNDAY (1960), just before a spiked mask is affixed to his face (ahead of the drawing and quartering), the Count curses the descendants of his accusers, and then the narrative skips ahead by 35 years.

"Count Regula...I sentence you to death for the crime of shamelessly ripping off the opening sequence from Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY."

A nubile baroness (Karin Dor, best remembered as SPECTRE femme fatale Helga Brandt in the James Bond classic YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE) and her equally nubile servant, as well as a dashing young lawyer (former Tarzan Lex Barker), are invited to Count Regula's castle, where the baroness is to receive a large sum of money, while the lawyer seeks to learn details of his own nebulous origins. Along the way they encounter and travel with a monk (Vladimir Medar) who seems rather shady, and as they draw closer to the castle, the mundane world seems to blur into a nightmarish landscape of forbidding forests that are home to crumbling ruins of a once-thriving inn, and trees from which hang the corpses of dozens of men.

Eventually, all and sundry find themselves at Castle Regula, where the Count's servant prepares to revive the Count from the dead. Regula's experiments involved sorting out the secret of eternal life, with the blood of the baroness being the 13th and final component needed to ensure his immortality, and it is revealed that the baroness and the lawyer are the descendants of those who got Regula sentenced to death. From there it's a question of whether or not good will triumph over evil, and the results are predictable at best.

I'll give THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM this much: It has a lot of atmosphere in its locations and sets, which was likely a conscious attempt at cribbing from the flavor of classic era Hammer Gothics,

 

A touch of Hammeresque atmosphere.

but the end result is mercilessly padded out to get to anything truly involving, and by then it's a case of too little too late. Plus to say nothing of the film ripping off several elements from the vastly superior THE MASK OF SATAN/BLACK SUNDAY.

Count Regula's 12 virginal victims, perfectly preserved after 35 years...

...only to immediately go skeletal once the evil of the Count is vanquished.

Sadly, a great lurid title for its American release in no way guarantees a solid bit of entertainment. This bears certain stylistic similarities to far more enjoyable THE BLOODY PIT OF HORROR (1965) so go with that one instead.

 

 Poster from the French release.

Misleading packaging art for the DVD release.