There's something so deliciously cheesy about British horror films from the 60s and 70s. Badly dubbed, erratically edited and with cranky dialogue they're awful yet wonderful at the same time.
Most anthology films seem to take the basic template of the superb Dead of Night, yet fail in two important respects. One is the colour. The 80s may be the biggest fashion disaster, but for home decor the ubiquitous browns and oranges of this era are a horrific mistake to be forever avoided. The other is that Dead of Night's framing story was at least as interesting as the tales that it surrounded. In The Vault of Horror it's just five blokes sat around a table discussing nightmares. The ultimate resolution to this is quite familiar to fans of Brit Horror, and is pretty much identical to similar conclusions in Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and sort-of prequel Tales From The Crypt (1972).
The stories themselves don't lend much to narrative tension, given that it's openly stated that they're dreams. Mind you, most of the tales are campy affairs that only pre-PC Britain could have produced anyway. Middle class vampires with their own restaurant chain; a hen (cockerel?) pecked housewife with a hammer fetish; a stereotyped India, replete with sitars and magic rope trick; and Tom Baker as a portrait artist specialising in voodoo. It's the sort of thing ripe for satire, which makes it all the more disappointing that Steve Coogan's "Dr. Terror's House of Horrible" wasn't really very good. The Indian girl with the rope trick is even a white actress (Jasmina Hilton) browned up, for goodness' sake!
The film could make for a good study, as it shows an interesting line in what really frightened middle class Englishmen at the time. Not mummies, demons or Frankenstein's monster. Instead we get misogyny and racial minorities. The fourth story sets itself out from the preceding ones by actually opening strongly - a man buried alive - rather than the somewhat laborious pace of the others. However, it too goes nowhere, and with Arthur Mullard as a gravedigger it's the campest of the lot.
Prize for the best segment then goes to the voodoo art of Tom Baker in the final tale. Punningly titled "Drawn and Quartered", the rankness of this subtitle is only bettered by the first's "Midnight Mess". Not scary, witty or particularly inspired, it's weird because this film is rubbish, yet I really quite liked it.
Most anthology films seem to take the basic template of the superb Dead of Night, yet fail in two important respects. One is the colour. The 80s may be the biggest fashion disaster, but for home decor the ubiquitous browns and oranges of this era are a horrific mistake to be forever avoided. The other is that Dead of Night's framing story was at least as interesting as the tales that it surrounded. In The Vault of Horror it's just five blokes sat around a table discussing nightmares. The ultimate resolution to this is quite familiar to fans of Brit Horror, and is pretty much identical to similar conclusions in Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and sort-of prequel Tales From The Crypt (1972).
The stories themselves don't lend much to narrative tension, given that it's openly stated that they're dreams. Mind you, most of the tales are campy affairs that only pre-PC Britain could have produced anyway. Middle class vampires with their own restaurant chain; a hen (cockerel?) pecked housewife with a hammer fetish; a stereotyped India, replete with sitars and magic rope trick; and Tom Baker as a portrait artist specialising in voodoo. It's the sort of thing ripe for satire, which makes it all the more disappointing that Steve Coogan's "Dr. Terror's House of Horrible" wasn't really very good. The Indian girl with the rope trick is even a white actress (Jasmina Hilton) browned up, for goodness' sake!
The film could make for a good study, as it shows an interesting line in what really frightened middle class Englishmen at the time. Not mummies, demons or Frankenstein's monster. Instead we get misogyny and racial minorities. The fourth story sets itself out from the preceding ones by actually opening strongly - a man buried alive - rather than the somewhat laborious pace of the others. However, it too goes nowhere, and with Arthur Mullard as a gravedigger it's the campest of the lot.
Prize for the best segment then goes to the voodoo art of Tom Baker in the final tale. Punningly titled "Drawn and Quartered", the rankness of this subtitle is only bettered by the first's "Midnight Mess". Not scary, witty or particularly inspired, it's weird because this film is rubbish, yet I really quite liked it.