The Vault of Horror

The Vault of Horror (1973)

Runtime: 86 minutes

Directed by: Roy Ward Baker

Starring: Daniel & Anna Massey, Terry-Thomas, Glynis Johns, Curd Jurgens, Dawn Addams, Michael Craig, Edward Judd, Tom Baker, Denholm Elliott

From: Amicus

For a movie that I've seen people say was “lesser Amicus”, at least I can call this good, although the movie it was the sequel to-Tales from the Crypt-was better.

The framing story was rather basic and hardly any time is spent setting things up... five middle-aged men hop into an elevator and mysterious they end up in the sub-basement, where they sit around and talk about their recurring nightmares, each of them involving themselves meeting grisly demises. It should not be a spoiler for me to mention that in an anthology based on old EC Comics, where bad things happen to bad people. Ironically, despite there being a Vault of Horror comic series, all the stories are from the Tales from the Crypt comic.

These tales (revolving around such things as Eastern magic, insurance scams, a man who is OCD and possibly on the autism spectrum also, etc.) are uneven yet none were bad... all had various merits and all were macabre delights, including a few twists that happened. I appreciated the famous faces (such as Terry-Thomas, Curd Jurgens, Tom Baker, and Denholm Elliott) & figuring out what the ending of the film had to be a few minutes in did not diminish what I thought was a good movie, a joyous way to spend 90 minutes.

Note that the movie in its original form was released in the United States with the rating of R. Later, some gory moments were taken out so it could be re-released as a PG picture and this was the version I saw via an older release on DVD. The Scream Factory release has the original cut but thankfully for me that can also be found on YouTube, even if it isn't as such and you'll have to do some digging. A few gory moments were taken out and the only one which was regrettable was how the first story ended, as it was a great and creative sight gag.