Review – Tales from the Crypt

This is one of the best-known samples from the group of horror anthology movies made in England in the 60s and 70s. It owes at least part of its notoriety to its connection with William Gaines’ infamous Tales from the Crypt comic book series, consisting of five tales reproduced from the comics strung together with a bracketing story hosted by Ralph Richadson as a monk-like Crypt Keeper. The bracket reeks of director Freddie Francis’ previous effort, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, but the rest is pure EC. Three of the stories work fairly well. In the lead-off tale, Joan Collins murders her husband and is in turn slaughtered by a psycho in a Santa suit. The second is a silly but amusing zombie rework of It’s a Wonderful Life. And the final segment presents the amusing but over-wrought revenge visited upon the cruel manager of a rest home for blind men. The third and fourth segments are a little harder to take. The third tells the story of a kindly old man driven to suicide by his greedy neighbors. This segment suffers from its own quality; Peter Cushing does such a good job as the sympathetic victim that the story becomes more depressing than scary or amusing. The fourth story is a cheap reheat of “The Monkey’s Paw” (indeed, it practically admits as much), entertaining only during the “death rides a pale motorbike” scene. Overall this is a good example of its sub-genre but not much else. Mildly amusing