4. The Vault Of Horror
Amicus films' 1973 offering was billed in some areas as Tales From the Crypt 2. Featuring future Doctor Who Tom Baker, future Bond villain Curt Jurgens, comedian Terry Thomas and more, Vault of Horror is a perfect film pairing with Tales From the Crypt. Like the previous movie, the stories were adapted from stories published in EC Comics' Tales From the Crypt and Shock SuspenStories but ironically enough, none from the comic which shared the name with this film. Five men enter an elevator that takes them to the basement. There they find they are unable to reenter the elevator or exit the basement, but noticing the fine collection of free booze, they decide to kill some time, wait to be rescued and share their recent nightmares.
Midnight Mess Rodgers stands to inherit a fortune, but only if he can find and bump off his long lost sister. After discovering her location (and murdering the detective who found her) Rodgers goes to polish her off and claim her inheritance. His sister Donna has taken up residence in a small town, where he is warned not to hang around after dark. Unsurprisingly, he not only ignores the warning but is nonplussed by reports of 17 bodies discovered drained of blood. After stabbing his sister to death, he settles down for a nice post sororicidal meal at a local restaurant. He wonders why the "tomato soup" tastes so weird and why his reflection is the only one he can see in the mirror of the packed restaurant. Kind of predictable but fun nonetheless, although the vampire makeup would not be entirely out of place in an elementary school play. Neat fact of the day Rodgers and Donna were played by real-life siblings Daniel and Anna Massey.
The Neat Job Swinging middle aged, obsessive compulsive geriatric Arthur (Terry Thomas) has just gotten married and his new bride isn't quite getting with his "A place for everything and everything in its place agenda." She's constantly cluttering up his home and disrupting his very neat and ordered life. Soon, fights over where she's put the spaghetti sauce and his constant nagging drives his sweet, ditzy wife to plant a hammer in his head, chop him into little pieces and place them in neatly labeled jars. We can only assume that his "twig and berries," ended up in the "odds and ends" jar. Arthur's nagging wears a bit thin, even on the viewer but where else can you see Terry Thomas prancing about in women's underwear? Arthur kind of had the hammer to the head coming, but like Ian Hendry's adulterer in Tales From the Crypt, does he deserve a seat in the anteroom to hell alongside murderers?
This Trick Will Kill You
Future Bond Villain Curt Jurgens, plays a magician on the hunt for a new magic trick to wow his audiences. His quest takes him to India, where he and his wife Inez spent their days dickishly exposing the market magicians and ruining their performances. Then, they see a magic trick that even he can't explain. Keen to add it to his show, he attempts to buy the mysterious Indian Rope Trick from the performer, but when she refuses to sell, the couple turns to murder. Unfortunately, the rope has a mind of its own and a hankering for revenge... Jurgens gets off lucky as the rope only whips him like a schoolboy in a locker room before finally hanging him by the neck until he is dead.I still don't know what the hell the rope did to his wife; transport her to hell? Smashed her to atoms against the ceiling? While Jurgens is creepy and villainous, it is impossible to ignore the fact that he is thoroughly unconvincing as a magician.
Bargain In Death The most forgettable segment of Vault of Horror tells the story of Maitland and an insurance scam that takes an unforeseen twist. Maitland has faked his death, been buried alive and arranged for his friend Alex to dig him off so they can make off with that sweet insurance money. As is prone to happen in movies like this (why doesn't anyone in them ever see it coming?) Maitland is betrayed, Alex pockets the money and leaves his former friend to suffocate in a coffin six feet under. Luckily he has a copy of the movie adaptation of Tales From The Crypt with him to pass the time! In what appears to be an amazing spot of luck, medical student grave robbers, Tom and Jerry dig him up hoping to find a corpse to use in their anatomy studies. Maitland bursts out of the coffin gasping for air and sends Tom and Jerry scampering away. The gravedigger bashes Maitland's skull in and offers the body up to the students, apologizing for the damage to his head. After being buried alive and having his head bashed in with a shovel, one would assume that Maitland has gotten a little bit more than his just deserts. Unfortunately whoever sits in judgment over the unlucky visitors to the Vault of Horror evidently finds insurance fraud to be as distasteful as murder and obsessive compulsive behavior
Drawn And Quartered Before he threw on his signature scarf and leaped into the Tardis, Tom Baker's acting career was spotty at best. In between digging ditches, Baker seized a plum role in The Vault of Horror as a wronged artist named Moore, who uses voodoo to get his revenge. As Moore, Baker sports a Rasputin like beard but you see flashes of the compelling personality that won him the role as The Doctor and endeared him to generations of fans. Moore is an artist based in Haiti who discovers that while his agent was telling him his works were worthless, he was getting critical acclaim with his agent pocketing the profits. Moore learns how to make whatever he paints become a reality and jets off to London to meet out a lil Tom Baker vengeance. He tracks down the three men he holds responsible (including Raiders of The Lost Ark's Denholm Elliot) and one by one he paints a portrait of their demise. As punishment for lying about the value of his paintings, Moore gauges the eyes out of the critic's portrait. The art critic is later blinded when acid is thrown in his face. Another has his hands cut off with a guillotine after Moore pledges that after he handed his paintings to others for sale, he would never hold anything again. For his final victim, a simple painting of a red dot on the forehead of his portrait forces the agent to shoot himself in the head. Everything is going along swimmingly, until Moore nearly suffocates when his self portrait is stored in an airtight safe. From there it's only a matter of time before he is hoist by his own petard and gets his head crushed under the wheel of a truck. A glaring plot hole mars this otherwise intriguing story. WHY THE HELL would Tom Baker paint a voodoo picture of himself?