TALES FROM THE CRYPT - TV Film Review 2/1/07
Cast your mind back to the year 1972 long before the TV Series or the later films were made to the original Amicus Film Studios production of "Tales From The Crypt" based on the Comic Books with a slice of early seventies day-glo colour in the shape of a selection of short stories starting off with a Christmas theme (Uh? Obviously!) and a serious ham of a performance from Joan Collins being attacked by a psychotic Santa - Laughable - In a terrible way - And this would have been an "X" Certificate then! The blood looks like it has been left over from the kiddies play school paint set and just daubed on badly. Luckily as the stories progress they actually get tighter with a nasty tale with Peter Cushing ending in a bloody fashion and getting even nastier with the final tale; in the way a hungry dog and some razor blades, in the hands of a group of blind men gets very nasty indeed - Quite creepy in fact. At least we get the Crypt Keeper in the form of the excellent Ralph Richardson and not some animatronic puppet.
From what I can see it is only available from the USA as a Region 0 (All Regions) NTSC DVD and seems hard to find but is worth hunting down for the last two stories at least.......
posted by Hugh Jarrs | 8:22 pm
2 Comments:
Peter Cushing won an award in France for his touching performance as Arthur Grimsdyke in the Poetic Justice segment - Best Male Actor 1971 - The Licorne d' Or Award - 2nd French Convention Of Fantasy Cinema. This surprised me when I found this out since in general these films do not win awards. The Blind Alleys segment with Nigel Patrick at the end where he is forced to go through a corridor lined with razor blades or face his fierce dog is also a stand out episode. Freddie Francis staged this one really well using low angle shots to depict the blind men putting together this corridor out of wood and netting and on first viewing you're thinking, What the hell's going on? But it was bound to be something nasty, great suspense!
A novelised version of the movie was published to tie in with its release. I have a copy somewhere but I was amused when I watched the follow up movie to this one, The Vault Of Horror (1973), in which the actor Michael Craig who appeared in the Buried Alive segment was seen reading that very book in one scene!
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