The best Amicus anthology? - From Beyond the Grave (1975) Discussion

[–] maverick-media 17 years ago

1) From Beyond the Grave
2) Asylum
3) Tales From the Crypt
4) The House That Dripped Blood (The Cloak was pretty bad)

I haven’t seen the others you’ve mentioned or at least don’t remember seeing them, but it such a long time ago... I will see them in the near future. I agree with you though, From Beyond the Grave is a very good movie, I enjoyed all the stories, even The Elemental, which although funny works well. A lot of the other movies have, like you wrote, one or even two that were weak if not rubbish chapters.

http://www.maverick-media.co.uk

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[–] rich_groovy 17 years ago

If I remember rightly, The Uncanny was a Hammer film, one of their later efforts and a last ditch attempt to cash in on the anthology format that was working so well for Amicus. Personally I preferred Asylum and Dr Terror's House of Horrors to From Beyond the Grave, though it was still pretty good (the David Warner and Ian Ogilvy segments were best, and Ian Bannen was fantastic).

Weirdly, theres another Amicus portmanteau film that never seems to be mentioned - Tales that Witness Madness. Its not on the imdb's list of the films (though there is an entry for it), but Psychomania (which isnt an anthology) is.

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[–] it001k0306 17 years ago

Wasn't a Hammer film, mate. Nor was it Amicus but it was down to Milton Subotsky - the Amicus big cheese. He came up with this and 'The Monster Club' (1980) after Amicus had effectively folded.

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[–] 17 years ago

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[–] andyg35 17 years ago

I've always thought From Beyond the Grave to be the best of the British 60s/70s
horror anthologies although I like all the films on your list, as well as Tales That Witness Madness. I love the 'witchcraft' segment with Ian Bannen, Diana Dors and the Pleasence father and daughter combination....Donald's a legend of course, but Angela is truly spooky in this one. All the stories are good though, crackling with atmosphere with a nice Peter Cushing wrapper thrown around it. Top stuff.

AndyG

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[–] colonel_gadaffi 17 years ago

I think 'The Monster Club'(1980) holds up against any Brit horror anthology including FBTG.Granted the second story is rubbish but the first story the shadmock and the third the atmospheric village of ghouls lie on the scary scale as high if not higher than any anthology story from the 60's and 70's.I remember watching this in the cinema as a kid thinking it would be easy,I came out knowing I was had by these two and I knew my friends were the same.Plus you get the King of horror Vincent Price boogying with buxom beauty Fran Fullenwider,what could be better?

MONSTERS RULE OK!!

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[–] vancleef1980 17 years ago

FBTG is by far the best Amicus anthology without a doubt. The wraparound is superbly done and Peter Cushing's quiet but sinister shopkeeper is classic Cushing. Unlike previous Amicus efforts ALL of the stories in FBTG are excellent and it has the finest cast. My personal favourite has the be The Elemental Margaret Leighton is a hoot as Madam Orloff.

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[–] fiftyfootqueenie 17 years ago

For me (late to the party as I am) it's:

1. Asylum
2. From Beyond the Grave
3. The House that Dripped Blood
4. Vault of Horror
5. Tales that Witness Madness (not Amicus, I know)
6. Tales from the Crypt
7. Dr Terror's House of Horrors

I've not yet seen Torture Garden (huzzah! One to look forward to) and I have no doubt It'll be excellent. I like The Uncanny for the simple reasons that it's a horror anthology made in the '70s and features cats. But it's so utterly awful, really, that I can't bring meself to add it to the list.

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[–] Stink_Face 16 years ago

I have seen all of those apart from Tales That Witness Madness - Unless Tales That Witness Madness features a story with a blind man and a dog in a war veterans home with a tyranical supervisor. I saw the compendium that this story was on and had taped it late night off the tv and ran out of tape half way through that story! Damn. It might have been tales from the crypt then perhaps? Maybe someone can help.

I've got the remainder all on DVD and would love to know how I could get hold of Tales That Witness Madness though - Has anyone out there got a copy I could buy or copy for me and send via www.yousendit.com to me?

I'd be prepared to pay for it.

Simon

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[–] Classicslover_Rob 16 years ago

simon-650, that is the final story in "Tales from The Crypt", made 1972, and you can get it on amazon.com or anywhere selling Region 1 DVD. It's about a home for the blind, taken over by a mean, ex-army chap with an alsatian. It is a double feature with the heavily cut "Vault of Horror".

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[–] fiftyfootqueenie 16 years ago

You can get Tales that Witness... on VHS from Amazon. It's not, as far as I know, out on DVD yet.

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[–] Stink_Face 16 years ago

Tales That Witness Madness on VHS - Will have a quick butchers for it then!

You left your pants on the highway . . .

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[–] Stink_Face 16 years ago

Cheers matey - However I have the Vipco Vault (really good) but cannot play Region 1's on my player, so really need to get it on Region 2 unless my DVD packs up and I buy a new multi-region player.

You left your pants on the highway . . .

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[–] andyg35 16 years ago

Simon

If you're still interested I picked up a very passable 'Tales That Witness Madness' from ebay...it's a 4:3, copied from a tape but did the job. They pop up quite regularly.

AndyG

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[–] richwicz 16 years ago

My own personal favourites among the Amicus anthologies are:

1.From Beyond the Grave
2.Asylum
3.Tales from the Crypt
4.Vault of Horror
5.The House that Dripped Blood

It was really annoying to hear that the MGM R1 of Vault of Horror is the censored U.S. TV version.As soon as I heard both Tales & Vault were being released on DVD I had a feeling MGM would release the cut version of Vault,at least Tales is fully uncut.

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[–] Sick_Spazmoid 16 years ago

1) The House That Dripped Blood
2) Asylum
3) Tales From the Crypt
4) Vault of Horror
5) Dr Terrors House of Horrors
6) Torture Garden
7) From Beyond the Grave

____________________
I see undead people...

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[–] ollie_clixby 16 years ago

It is cool how everyone has their own personal favourites despite some of the stories in some films being quite weak. I certainly would never put Torture Garden higher than 5th place - all but one of those tales is awful.

My personal order would be:

1) Tales From The Crypt
2) From Beyond The Grave
3) The House That Dripped Blood
4) Dr. Terrors House of Horrors
5) Asylum
6) Vault of Horror
7) Torture Garden

The first two just have such an amazing atmosphere to them.

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[–] DDAY44j 16 years ago

Logically I can only rank the ones that I have seen so here they are:

1) Tales From the Crypt
2) From Beyond the Grave
3) Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
4) (tie) Torture Garden, The Vault of Horror, and The House that Dripped Blood

I really like them all so it's difficult to delineate them after number 3. I have to say that Tales From the Crypt is the best because it's the only one that doesn't possess at least one vignette that is blatantly campy, comedic, or weak. From Beyond the Grave and Dr. Terror's House of Horrors are really helped by the Peter Cushing wraparounds. Additionally, The House that Dripped Blood may have been ranked higher had the Vampire segment not been completely laughable. However, despite the flaws they are all very entertaining.

Not all films are underrated, misunderstood, or decent for the time period; some just suck.

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[–] 16 years ago

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[–] michael-heathcote3 15 years ago

Yes definitely Tales From the Crypt for me too, it captures the essense of comic horror better than most and has a fantastically eerie atmosphere. Next would be From Beyond the Grave, more heavily influenced by Ealing's great Dead of Night. TFTC has a couple of weakish ones but its strong ones are very strong, 3 of them being the best 3 of the series for me, the Father Christmas story is utterly spooky. The rest of the films aren't really up to much if we're being critical, far too unscary and sometimes just silly.

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[–] freudified_n_funkified 15 years ago

My preferred order for the Amicus anthologies:

1) From Beyond the Grave
2) Tales from the Crypt
3) The Monster Club
4) Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
5) The House that Dripped Blood
6) Vault of Horror
7) Asylum
8) Torture Garden

Torture Garden was painfully bad, which is all the stranger since Freddie Francis hit home runs with Dr. Terror's House of Horrors a few years before and Tales from the Crypt just a few short years later. Vault of Horror and Asylum both disappointed since I usually really enjoy Roy Ward Baker's direction, but the slapdash writing let them down. Subotsky failed to follow up his script for Tales from the Crypt with Vault and I'm just not a fan of the work Robert Bloch did on these anthologies - with The House that Dripped Blood being his only truly passable effort. Otherwise he was uneven and mediocre, his best tales only ever ending up just alright despite elevation from great actors. However, From Beyond the Grave was absolutely superb - next to Dead of Night the finest portmanteau movie I've seen. And The Monster Club was a whackjob blast from top to bottom - a truly joyous, slightly post-modern spin on the subgenre. I wish more of R. Chetwynd-Hayes' stories were in print, since his source material made for the most interesting and consistent of these flicks.

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[–] Danimal_77 14 years ago

Torture Garden is not nearly as bad as some make it out to be. The only poor story was the last one about Poe. All others were EXCELLENT and creepy. I FAR prefer Torture garden over many of the others. Here's my list from best to worst, including Tales That Witness Madness (not Amicus, I know) and The Monster Club.

1. From Beyond The Grave (1974) - The scariest of the bunch
2. Tales From the Crypt (1972)
3. Torture Garden (1967)
4. Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)
5. Asylum (1972)
6. The House That Dripped Blood (1971)
7. The Vault of Horror (1973)
8. Tales That Witness Madness (1973)
9. The Monster Squad (1980) - Last segment was very creepy though.

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[–] iconzero 14 years ago

1) Vault Of Horror
2) From Beyond The Grave
3) Tales From The Crypt
4) Dr Terrors House Of Horror
5) Asylum
6) The House That Dripped Blood

*beep* i bet you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose

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[–] Badlands1 14 years ago

1. Tales from the Crypt
2. Vault of Horror
3. From beyond the grave
4. House that dripped Blood

all the stories in "Tales" were good, that's why it has such a big influence today, with other movies copying it.
With the rest of Amicus's films half the stories are good and half are bad.

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[–] kanuffelrik 14 years ago

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

I like all of these types of movies (even when they get cheesy!); I thought this one was middle of the pack.

The segments: 'The Gatecrasher' was pretty good (and I agree with whoever said Hellraiser is reminiscent of this one) but I was expecting a better ending. 'An Act of Kindness' was OK. 'The Elemental' was my favorite and it had a nice funny side to it, but it almost got too jokey. I liked the ending though. 'The Door' had some nice atmosphere and creepiness when he first goes into the creepy blue room, but then it seemed like they rushed the ending. The framing story was OK because Peter Cushing is good, but the framing stories in "Asylum" and "Tales from the Crypt" are better IMO.

My ranking of the ones I've seen so far, although I like them all and they are all pretty close:

1. Tales from the Crypt
2. Asylum
3. From Beyond the Grave
4. Torture Garden

Vault of Horror is coming today from Netflix, so I'll see where that one places.
I haven't seen "Dr Terror's House of Horrors" or "The House that Dripped Blood" yet.

PS - I really loved "Dead of Night" [1945] the anthology that seemed to inspire the Amicus films. Dead of Night is really excellent.

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[–] thelastfaceyouwillsee 13 years ago

I watched FBTG last night - it had always been one of my favourite anthology horrors and I'm glad someone has already started this thread about their ratings of Amicus anthologies. Here's my list:

1) Tales from the Crypt (no weak stories and Cushing as Grimsdyke - a classic)
2) From Beyond the Grave (more great Cushing, no weak stories and a Pleasance double-act)
3) The House that dripped blood (Cushing, Lee, Pitt and Denholm Elliott)
4) Asylum (even the music creeped me out when i first saw this)
5) Dr Terror's House of Horrors (the vooddoo jazz story was a bit weak)
5) Vault of Horror (still waiting for a decent DVD release!!!)
6) Torture Garden (I like the Poe story best of all, the piano one was weak)

and then the non-Amicus movies...

7) Dead of Night (creepy but maybe one story too long? Oops - heresy!)
8) Kwaidan (a great Japanese anthology)
9) Tales that witness madness (a nude Mary Tamm!)
10) The Monster Club (weak linking story but the actual stories were all pretty good. Pity about the effects in the actual club...very poor masks).
11) Tales of Terror (could have been better)
12) The Uncanny (almost a waste of time)

...now I do it just to watch their f----n' expression change.

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[–] LouisRenault 12 years ago

My ranking:

1. From Beyond the Grave
2. The House That Dripped Blood
3. Tales from the Crypt
4. Vault of Horror
5. Asylum
6. Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
7. Torture Garden (but only because unseen)(edit: now seen: last place richly deserved)

It's a shame they're so absurdly expensive to buy; after all, they are a bit of fun, not must-haves.

I watched my recent purchase of The House That Dripped Blood last night and was astonished to find I'd never seen it. Very enjoyable - and I think the Pertwee/Pitt vampire bit has been most unfairly criticized. Those who enjoy the old Universal stuff will love it, right down to the Ernest Thesiger type who "doesn't go to the Kinema."

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[–] tabbycat 9 years ago

No question at all on #1:

Tales from the Crypt (1972)

Two tied for #2:

From Beyond the Grave (1973)
Vault of Horror (1973)

4. Asylum (1972)

Seen all the others, many almost 40 years ago.
Wasn't impressed by any of them.
Going to relook at Tales that Witness Madness, Monster Club, and Dr. terror's House of Horrors, but doubt it will change my mind.

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