Somebody fed the cryptkeeper!
Man, it's been a long time since I've seen an anthology flick. I've kinda missed them.
Regarded by some as THE anthology flick, Tales From The Crypt (based of course on the comic book) gives us five people who find that they were brought together not by their mutual interest in touring catacombs but in their macabre recent history. Addressed by the robed Cryptkeeper (Ralph Richardson, looking a lot less gaunt than the animatronic one with the fondness for bad puns), each of them gets their own segment, some of course more successful than others, and then there's the "twist" in the wraparound story which should be detected as soon as the first story wraps up.
The first story stars Joan Collins, which caused my heart to sink, since few things wave the red flag of suckitude quite like the presence of Joan Collins. She plays an apparently bored housewife who decides one Christmas Eve to do in her husband, while outside, an escaped lunatic prowls. Easily the weakest of the five stories, this one feels neither suspenseful nor wickedly fun. Collins' character is neither nasty enough to be very interesting boo-hiss material (quite unlike some other catacombs tourists), and she's not smart enough to root for, since any cursory forensic examination of her husband's demise should make fairly clear that not all is as she would make it seem from a distance. Curious that her fireplace is immaculately white, however. I'll give this story this: the ending surprised me, even though it probably shouldn't have. I was just expecting something else.
The second story is a remarkable improvement, though, with Ian Hendry playing a philandering husband who, on the night he finally decides to leave his wife and family for his lover, has a serious car crash and finds the world increasingly unfriendly. Shot largely though this guy's point of view, the "shocker" ending is completely predictable but that's part of what makes the story as a whole work; if we weren't more sure about what was going on than Hendry's philanderer is, that sense of rising dread just wouldn't be the same.
The third story stars Peter Cushing ("He did more than play Grand Moff Tarkin, you cultural illiterates!" said the wisecracking robot) (Wisecracking robot? Never mind.) as an elderly puppeteer, in mourning for his recently departed wife (as Cushing himself was at the time) and standing in the way of a greedy developer's plan to develop his land. So, the developer (Robin Phillips) hatches an insidious, incredibly cruel plan to get the puppeteer out of the way. Not entirely unpredictable, still, the Valentine's poem at the end is a nice touch and Cushing's performance is choked with authenticity. Phillips makes for a delightfully despicable villain (or, dammit, is it David Markham?), who, by the time the Cryptkeeper's done with him, makes us hate him even more by his failure to even understand the depths of his depravity.
The fourth story is a bit of an enigma, failing to fit in with the others in two ways so glaring that even the guy with the turtle shell on his head on Space Bar (on which I saw this movie) was able to point them out. Nevertheless, it taps in to my weird issues with the idea of eternal torment nicely, giving me the heebie jeebies in a big way. Basically a retelling of "The Monkey's Paw" (complete with frequent references to that story), it has (Richard Greene) as a man whose wife (Barbara Murray) decides to wish three times upon a Chinese idol, and of course in the end wishes she hadn't. Aside from its residence outside of the identity established by the other stories, it's still a creepy, effective take on the tale.
The last story is the most ludicrously implausible, and yet maybe the most effective. Nigel Patrick plays a retired Army Major put in charge of a home for the blind, which he proceeds to run like Miss Hannigan's orphanage. This guy actually sics his dog on a group of old blind men! Yes, the boo-hiss factor here is jacked up to absurd and wonderful altitudes (he even makes a point to remind them of that "Kingdom of the blind" saying), and what he gets in the end is excruciating to watch, and yet it's so, so satisfying to see it. Or, well, not see it, but just know what's been done. This story asks for an awful lot of faith in the engineering and carpentry prowess of a bunch of blind men, but c'mon, blind people are so much fun in the movies! However, if there is some significance (tied to the aforementioned saying) to the dog being named King, I missed it.
It all ties up in the wraparound nicely, except for that fourth story, whose discrepancies the movie has no apparent interest in explaining. And blessedly, we scarcely have to put up with Collins at all after her story is out of the way.
Yeah, you should probably give this a look if you haven't already. Like a lot of anthology films from the time, this was directed by Freddie Francis (RESISTING the temptation to comment on that gay name of his) (aw, shit).
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