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.
No comments:
Post a Comment