Since 1965, the anthology movies of Amicus Productions had been providing us with movie after movie of grim karma and numerous things returning from the grave in order to inflict a righteous revenge on the shifty bastards who wronged them – but as the horror genre proceeded to take a violent turn away from overacting british actors dying extravagantly in gothic surroundings, so the portmanteau movies looked in danger of being laid to rest themselves. However, in 1974, the series made one last lurch from its burial mound with the aptly titled From Betond The Grave, the final and flawed entry in a series that had quietly epitomised and entire subgenre.
Some familiar faces (did Peter Cushing ever turn any role down?) were joined by some new ones, but it seemed that the anthology well had finally run dry, as the tone zigzagged awkwardly, the stories seemed samey and the twists just didn’t pack the darkly humorous punch they used too. But while the movie marked the end of an era (rival studio Hammer was similarly running out of steam) there was still the occasional moment that brought the corpse back to life.
Welcome to Temptations Limited, a shop packed full of antique bric-a-brac that’s run by a gaunt, pipe chewing owner who seems as mild mannered as his soothing, northern accent, but a selection of dishonest passers by are about to learn that the shop’s motto “Offers You Can’t Resist” carries an ominous warning.
Take smug playboy Edward Charlton, for example – he’s frankly chuffed that he managed to con the proprietor out of a valuable mirror worth £250 (it’s the 70s, remember) by only paying £25 and hangs the thing in his swinging bachelor pad to really tie the room together. However, when he finds that it’s haunted by a hungry spirit that demands blood sacrifices, he finds himself bringing prostitutes back home to stab to death – I mean sure, we’ve all been there, right?
The next unfortunate soul who tries to pull a fast one on the unassuming shopkeeper is Christopher Lowe, a frustrated office drone who finds a reprieve from a hateful wife and son in the friendship of peddler, Jim Underwood. However, the basis of the friendship is actually built on Lowe’s pathetic lies concerning his role in the war and after stealing a medal from Temptations Limited to enforce his bullshit, he finds that his growing relationship with Underwood’s daughter has sinister, supernatural repercussions. Later yet, price changing husband finds he has to hire the services of an eccentric psychic to remove the invisible and very surly spirit that’s apparently sitting on his shoulder and and finally a young writer and his wife discover that the ornate new door they’ve bought sometimes unhelpfully opens into a blue-hued ghost dimension that come with its own challenges – but what sin has the writer committed to demand such a penance?
The last of Amicus’ anthology reign is regrettably its least for a variety of reasons, but the main one is that is seems to have all run out of ideas. It’s a shame because From Beyond The Grave has an incredibly strong start thanks to an opening salvo that not only features David Warner in top, foppish, ascot wearing form, but it also features a basic concept that feels interestingly reminiscent of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (switch skinless Uncle Frank with the bloodthirsty ghost lurking in the mirror and it starts to feel awfully familiar). Watching the man who was posed to become immortal two years later thanks to a flying pane of glass and The Omen reduced to sweaty, prostitute stabbing drone manages to tread the bloody line between high camp and old school chills just as good as any Amicus installment to date – but the entry proves to be so strong, it unbalanced everything that comes after.
The final story, “The Door”, proves my point perfectly as the tale of a couple stumbling upon another dimension is way too similar to Warner’s misadventure to be effective –two bearded ghosts trapped in another dimention that hunger for fresh souls in one movie – what are the odds? But not even a genuinely neat Uno reverse card on the usual twist (the couple live because it’s revealed that the writer hasn’t tried to con the shopkeeper) isn’t anywhere near enough to avoid you having a jarring sence of ghostly deja-vu (deja-boo?).
What makes matters worse, it that the middle two stories just aren’t particularly effective. The second tale “An Act Of Kindness” may feature Donald Pleasance acting opposite his real-life daughter, Angela, but it’s also criminally slow and ends on something of a confusing note that’s more likely to invoke a shrug than a gasp. The third story, The Elemental, is even worse as it attempts to put a humourous spin on a tale of demonic possession, but fails on two points when it neglects to be either funny or scary despite some impressive overacting on the part of Margaret Leighton. Maybe the fault lies with director Kevin Connor, who later found sturdier ground with the studio when he shifted into helming Doug McClure’s camp fantasy epics such as The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot and At The Earth’s Core, but here seems nowhere near as comfortable mining the macabre humor that Freddie Francis and Ray Ward Barker seemed to do with ease.
In fact, thanks to it’s rather lackluster parade of weak schlock, the it real plus point that From Beyond The Grave is that it managed to complete Amicus’ British Character Actor Bingo Card by including the likes of Warner, Pleasance and even Diana Dors to the pantheon of portmanteau appearances – so there’s that, I suppose. Of course, we can’t bring up the subject of Amicus’ cast without a major nod in the direction of the effortlessly iconic Peter Cushing who, throughout these movies, has played either supernatural aggressor, victim or, in the case of Tales From The Crypt’s tragic Grimsdyke, both in the same story – but while he helps send off the series with yet another elderly dude in fingerless gloves who obviously knows more than he’s letting on.
While there’s never been a truly bad offering from the seven anthology offerings the studio put out over a nine year period, From Beyond The Grave regrettably has more bad points than good and as a result, peaks way too early with the sight of a crazy-haired David Warner trying to entice women back to his bachelor pad of death to appease his bossy mirror. Maybe not the big finish the series deserved, but it’s oddly fitting that at the end of its run, the portmanteau movies of Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg succumbed to an unhappy ending.
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