Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors (1965) – Review

While Hammer Films is understandably credited as the leading light in British horror during its impressive reign, that’s not to say they were the only kid on the block. Formed by American producers/screenwriters Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg, they made their mark by avoiding the usual sort of stuff that their distinguished competition would dip their clawed toes in (namely endless vampire flicks and Dracula and Frankenstein sequels) and instead made their name chiefly with a string of horror anthologies that Subotsky referred to as their portmanteau films.
In an attempt to ape the success of 1945’s Dead Of Night, a film rightly hailed as one of the greatest British horror movies ever made, Amicus delivered the first of it’s seven anthology movies with Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors and promptly stuffed it full of some of Hammer’s most familiar faces such as Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and director Freddie Francis. But while Amicus would perfect its anthologies over time, this is the one that started the ball rolling…

Five strangers board a train headed for the town of Bradley and try to make themselves comfortable even though it looks like old steam trains from the 60s were the fucking pits. Their number includes Scottish architect Jim Dawson, family man Bill Rogers, bumbling musician Biff Bailey, priggish art critic Franklyn Marsh and random American Dr. Bob Carroll, but while they exchange awkward social pleasantries while simultaneously trying to mind their own business (so British), a sixth member joins their carriage that soon causes their journey to be a memorable one.
Meet Doctor Schreck, a mysterious Getman man who claims to study the paranormal and after a spot of goading by the sceptical Marsh, he whips out a pack of tarot cards (which he refers to as his House Of Horror) and starts telling them their fantastical fates.
Dawson is the one to go first and is spun a fanciful tale about returning to his family home to make renovations for the widow who now owns the place, but soon he finds that an old werewolf curse thought long dead may be about to rise again. Next, Rogers is briefed on an altercation he and his family are about to have with as sentient, killer vine, while Bailey is told how his attempt at musical plagiarism while in the West Indies will incur the wrath of the vengeful voodoo god, Damballa.
Next in line to hear his outrageous, imminent and very fatal fate is the stuck up Marsh who learns that a running feud with an artist will soon lead to the critic running his nemesis down with his car in a fit of spite, but when the artist’s severed hand decides to go into business for itself and get to get some payback, Marsh will find that his critiquing days may soon be over. Finally Bob gets a story about how his new bride has a habit of sucking blood and turning into a bat when no one’s looking, but when the train finally arrives at its final destination, the quintet finally find out why their sixth member has a name that literally translates as “terror”.

Anyone who loves that rich, lush feel that  comes from British horror will no doubt feel remarkably soothed at the look and feel of Dr. Terror’s House Of Horror as virtually every movie made during that time and from that side of the pond will no doubt agree that it’s the genre equivalent of some comfy slippers and a nice cup of tea. However, while admittedly renders the movie absurdly watchable, the thing has all the viciousness and bite of Kermit The Frog smashed out on mescaline which unfortunately throws of the camp/creepiness balance in favour of the former and thus making things a little bit silly. Later in their run, Amicus started adapting stories from the 50s horror comics of EC, which gave their traumatic tales more of a harder edge; here, in the relatively bloodless realm of Dr. Terror, most of the stories end up being more ridiculous and quaint rather than the sort of stuff that chills the spine.
The best of the bunch proves to be the story about Christopher Lee’s massive wanker of an art critic whose disdain of Michael Gough’s rather cheerful painter lead both men to violent ruin. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but then these stories rarely felt the need to explain away such minor quibbles as a severed hand suddenly thirsting for payback or a household plant suddenly getting the urge to kill.

The rest of the stories of these five guys getting be murdered and fried prove to be a very mixed bunch which either border on the pointless (seeing Donald Sutherland rubbing shoulders with British horror royalty is way more surreal than his actual segment could ever hope to be) or just are too distractingly odd. The killer vine story seems to just be a pisstake of the fact that Francis directed Day Of The Triffids, but the sight of Bernard “M” Lee gravely saying things like “a plant like that… could take over the world.” and then trying to ward off thrashing plants with a burning newspaper is more likely to induce chuckles rather than fear. Similarly, Roy Castle’s segment, which not only sees him take a trip to a part of the West Indies that’s blatantly located within Shepperton but piss of the same voodoo deity who created Chucky, gets a little too problematic for comfort.
However, one of the great things about Amicus’ portmanteau movies is that even the luff stories are brought to life by the awesome casts – and failng that, we have Peter Cushing (who here weirdly looks like Richard Armitage) holding everything together with the ropiest German accent I’ve heard since ‘Allo ‘Allo. Of course, even his dignified scenery chewing can’t stop you from pondering the sillier aspects of the move. I mean, if you were the actual spirit of Death posing as a man, maybe you’d pick a non de plume that flies more under the radar and that doesn’t translate as “Doctor Terror” – also, if it’s revealed that the five victims are all doomed to actually die in a train crash, why tell them stories about them succumbing to the likes of vampires, werewolves and killer vines in the first place? Is death just fucking with these dudes to kill time or has the malevolent spirit just joined a creative writing course and fancies trying out what he’s learned by callously bullshitting the damned?

As their anthology movies continued, Amicus eventually managed to close that all important gap between the camp and moments that actually manage to startle you thanks to upping the cruelty and increasing the gore. But even as early as Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors is, guessing those outlandish twists are as fun as waiting for the final denouement in a Saw film or the climactic jump scare in a slasher.
It may have room for improvement, but all in all Dr. Terror’s house, is a very, very, very fine house.

🌟🌟🌟