When you think of comic book adaptations, your brain can’t help but zip to the modern, gargantuan complexities of connected superhero universes or even the edgy likes of more mature fare like Sin City or The Crow. However even before the likes of Superman hit the hig screen in Richard Donner’s timeless, primary coloured, love letter, a darker, nastier brand of funny book had already hit cinemas in the form of EC Comic’s Tales Of The Crypt courtesy of British, anthology-loving studio, Amicus. Arguably the best of the production company’s series of seven portmanteau movies, TOTC told the various stories of five rotten pieces of work as they meet their maker thanks to some particularly brutal karma and seeing as it all worked so well, it wasnt exactly a twist ending to find out that Amicus went back to the EC Comics well to make The Vault Of Horror – one of the sister titles to TOTC. Could Amicus not only do the comic book double, but keep up the high standard set by their previous anthology – the equally marvelous Asylum? Best open that Vault and find out…
As five strangers enter a lift in a fancy high-rise building, they are all collectively flummoxed when the thing promptly ignores their button pressing and whisks them past the ground floor to the sub-basement. When the doors open, the quintet are further surprised to see that the level is made out like a gentleman’s club with classy booze, a flickering fireplace and ornate chairs to boot and while the men deside to make the most of these unexpected creature comforts, their idle chat reveals that all five of them are being plagued by reoccurring nightmares that each feel horribly real.
While it seems odd that five white, middle-aged men in the 1970s would do something as strange as talk about their feelings (surely the most far-fetched aspect of the story) we soon find out what’s haunting these disparate strangers.
First there’s Harold Rogers who plots to murder his estranged sister in order to score the family Inheritance, but after offing the private detective who tracked her down and then stabbing his sibling, he soon finds out that the population of the strangle little town he finds himself in only comes out at night for a good reason. Next, we hear from obsessively neat Arthur Critchit, who mercilessly nags his new, hapless trophy wife Eleanor until she spectacularly snaps and after that we deal with ruthless magician, Sebastian and his equally conniving wife who will happily commit murder if they can get their hands on a brand new trick.
Next up is Maitland, whose reoccurring nightmare sees his scam of faking his own dead by having himself buried alive go chillingly awry and finally we spend some quality time with impoverished artist, Moore, who foolishly utilises voodoo in order to gain revenge on the men who have cheated him.
But once all five men have gotten these nightmares off their chest, there’s still a couple more questions left to ask – like where in the blue hell are they and, more importantly, how will they leave?
While The Vault Of Horror isn’t a patch on Tales Of The Crypt, or even the fiendishly complex Asylum – the previous anthology released by Amicus – it’s still a greatly enjoyable ride that brings all the twisted humour, morbid justice and enthusiastic character actors you could possibly want from a film like this. By now, with five anthology movies in the books, Amicus could probably have made these bloody things in their sleep and while there is a sense of Vault deliberately trying to be a far more simpler affair than Asylum, it still manages to get that mix of arch camp and macabre thrills correct to such a degree, you can’t help but be swept along by its string of dastardly denouements.
Once again, the mixture of EC’s spiteful brand of just desserts and the cream of the character actor crop proves to be an irresistible combo even though the familiar faces of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are nowhere to be seen. For a start, the appearance of gap-toothed, serial cad Terry-Thomas manages to score high marks for nailing that viciously humourous streak that the comics boasted and his back and forth with an increasingly frenzied Glynis Johns gives us the unforgettable sight of the mother from Mary Poppins burying a claw hammer in her spouse’s skull in a fit of rage.
In comparison, some of the other stories veer slightly into the realms of bland; a murderous Daniel Massey’s brush with a town full of vampires has a marvelously ghoulish ending, but it’s a bit of a chore to get there. Similarly, the tale featuring Curd Jürgens’ villainous magician certainly has its moments – chiefly involving his wife’s genuinely creepy demise – but this and Michael Craig’s buried alive segment could noticably use a bit of tightening up and you can’t help but feel that the movie could have benefited from an encore appearance from Ralph Richardson’s melodramatic Crypt Keeper – or any malevolent ring leader to be honest – but thankfully the final story swoops in and saves the day thanks to the bug-eyed talents of Tom Baker who is in full, malevolent, beardy-weirdy mode in a gleefully malicious tale of vengence.
On paper (or canvas, at least) that story stubbonly refuses to make an ounce of sense, but luckily, logic has never been a requirement for success when it comes to Amicus anthologies, and so, after finding that a confederacy of bastards have been allowing him to believe his art is worthless, while they’ve been making a fortune, Baker’s intense paint slapper vows to get his own back. Obviously, as he’s currently squirreled away down in Hati, he obviously seeks out the nearest witch doctor and pays to have his painting hand enchanted into being a weapon of mass destruction (Baker’s absurdly threatening line reading of “I want to buy Voodoo” may be dumb as fuck, but it also may be the single greatest line the Doctor Who actor has ever uttered). From here, he paints portraits of the guilty parties (one of whom is played by the mighty Deholm Elliot) only to desecrate them with wonderfully fatal results that range from a forced suicide to someone suddenly choping their own hands off in a paper guillotine. Better yet, the story has a kickass ending that sees Baker’s artistic assasin meet a wonderfully ironic end thanks to an airtight safe, a can of turps and a speeding truck. Sure there’s flaws in the story – why the fuck would you finish a self portrait immediately after you’ve been given the gift to kill whatever you’ve just painted? – but if these movies didn’t frequently douse themselves in silliness, they wouldn’t be anywhere near as fun as they are and it’s a real shame that Amicus didn’t manage to make more EC adaptations such as Haunt Of Fear or Shock SuspenStories.
While Amicus made better anthologies, they also made worse (although none of them were ever truly bad) and this collection of noxious narratives is definately one that shouldn’t be locked in a vault.
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