Tales from the Crypt (DVD)

Tales From The Crypt is a camp and hugely enjoyable British horror anthology film from 1972 that I have watched countless times from a young age. It was produced by Amicus Productions, a company that had much fun with this genre and also gave us, amongst other films, Dr Terror's House Of Horrors, Asylum, Vault Of Horror and Beyond The Grave. Inspired by the lurid (and eventually banned) EC horror comics, Tales From The Crypt features more seventies fashions, yellow wallpaper, gigantic glasses of brandy and several characters getting their comeuppance in all manner of fiendish and nightmarish ways. As usual, we get several different short horror tales all ...  Read the complete review

This film was shown on Channel 4 recently, and I ended up watching most of it. I was actually trying to watch The Monk on BBC 2, which I had high hopes for, it being an adaptation of one of the great perverse Gothic novels, and scripted by Luis Bunuel. Sadly, The Monk turned out to be really boring, so I ended up watching this instead. It's one of the Amicus anthology movies from the early 1970s (Amicus were Hammer's leading rivals in the English horror movie field). They were all pretty much the same. Four or five character actors would arrive somewhere mysterious, where a slightly sinister guy would greet them and tell them their stories. There would ...  Read the complete review

Directed by freddie francis. Along with from beyond the grave and Dr terrors house of horrors this is undoubtably one of the best of the amicus anthology flicks based on the wiliam gaines comics. Sir ralph richardson stars as the crypt keeper who fortells the future of a group of tourists visiting historic catacombs. These premonitions form the stories (all through the house)features a matricidal joan collins and a homicidal santa claus. (the reflection of death)Starring Ian Hendry as afilandering husband traped between life and death after an accident.(poetic justice) vengence from beyond the grave with peter cushing in neighbour hood night mare .(wish you were here) ...  Read the complete review

The phenomenon of Tales from the Crypt seems to have no endings, only changes. This successful pun-filled style of presenting ironic horror tales had its beginnings in William Gaine's E.C. comic series. At one time, outlandish E.C. Comics were at the heart of a national furor over the "evils" of comic books, which were thought to lead to moral degeneracy. The big comic-book publishers were frightened into freezing E.C. out of their distribution network, which killed the business. This British movie was based on the Tales from the Crypt series, which spawned several subsequent movies (and many imitators), at least one television series, and a whole new wave ...  Read the complete review