Creepshow, Continued...
A lot of horror anthology films came out of England in the groovy '60s and '70s, many put out by Amicus Productions. Most of these featured loads of dry, dark humor mixed with a strong dose of E.C. horror comics humor. As in the Creepshow movies, bad characters always received their well-deserved come-uppance, usually in some gruesome manner that smacked of Old Testament justice. The old Brit-thologies usually had wonderfully Gothic titles, my favorite being The House That Dripped Blood, which featured a fine, kooky vampire story with Ingrid Pitt. I remember wondering when I first heard of the movie, years ago, what they would entitle the sequel... The Cottage That Oozed Earwax? The Mansion That Squirted Pus?
The most uneven of the Brit-thologies from that era would have to be Dr. Terror痴 House of Horrors. Does any one dominant fear poke its toothy head out from the mad jumble of plotlines and themes in this one? Characters are confronted by the Grim Reaper, so maybe fear of death (no big surprise in a horror movie). Any viewer with a deep-seated fear of over-acting would certainly find this movie profoundly terrifying.
One story concerns a werewolf in an ancestral home, another tells of vampires in a small town, others bring in voodoo, a highly evolved plant that may take over the world, a severed hand with a life of its own... what next, a kitchen sink that eats people?
Considering that the linking story takes place on a train, you may well ask, where's the house in Dr. Terror痴 House of Horrors? It turns out Dr. Terror is a mysterious Old World stranger who tells fortunes, and the House of Horrors is his name for his tarot card deck. Ooooh, scaaary! It's as though the script had been written by an enthusiastic high-schooler who'd just finished reading a couple creepy comic books. But in spite of that, the movie does have a quaint, though dated, G-rated Halloween charm to it.
Tales That Witness Madness, which came out about a decade later, isn't perfect, but it's a whole lot better: more sophisticated, more clever, more visually stylish, and much more thought-out. The linking story also concerns a doctor, but this one is a psychiatrist who presents to a colleague the tales of several asylum inmates who all are there because they have eerie tales of madness (hence the title) to tell. Each unhinged patient is utterly fixated on some peculiar object, so in this case, obsession is the fear du jour. So far, so good. The objects and their vignettes are all fairly bizarre and imaginative, too.
We have an apple-cheeked lad obsessed with his imaginary playmate, a man-eating tiger... a meek gentleman and the elegant antique bicycle which takes him time-traveling... a suburban husband who's overly fond of a large, oddly shaped dead tree... and a beautiful literary agent and her voodoo doll.
The stars in this one are all better actors than those in Dr. Terror痴 House of Horrors. While House did manage to trot out Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, both hamming it up in the grand style of their old Hammer films, Tales features Donald Pleasence, Kim Novack and the lovely Joan Collins, who turns in the best performance as the sexy but frustrated housewife who can't understand why her husband is spending so much time with a dead tree.
In a more modern vein, John Carpenter's 1993 made-for-cable horror movie, Body Bags, really gets the whole anthology concept right. Physical violence and disfigurement are the chief fears in this one. Carpenter himself, made up as a ghoulish coroner, presents tales of a nasty serial killer at a gas station, a hair-restoration treatment plan gone wrong, and a creepy eye transplant in which the personality of the deceased donor takes over the hapless recipient. Body Bags wallows happily in its grisly excesses and holds together very well. Carpenter clearly had a lot of fun playing the coroner, and that also makes this movie very enjoyable. His appearance as host is pleasantly reminiscent of the story prefaces that Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling used to provide on their old shows.
Any discussion of horror anthology movies would be incomplete without mention of Trilogy of Terror from 1975 and its 1996 sequel, Trilogy of Terror 2. In the first, Karen Black plays all the female protagonists, and Lysette Anthony handles the leads in the second one. The stories in the first Trilogy address the roles a woman must play in relationships... and certainly relationships are always the stuff of fear... while the second is more of a batch of old-fashioned but well-chosen horror yarns. Karen Black and Lysette Anthony are both fine actresses with very beautiful, expressive eyes. Ms. Black can conjure up a truly wicked gleam in her sexy peepers, while Ms. Anthony can look chaste and doe-like one minute and perfectly devilish the next. Both movies end with a story about the best monster that horror writer Richard Matheson ever created: the Zuni Fetish Doll, or as I like to call him, Little ZFD.
Little ZFD is a gleefully wicked killer-doll from Africa with a mouthful of sharklike teeth and an oh-so-pointy spear. His hyperactive antics and shrill, demonic chatter are a joy to behold and hear. After watching Little ZFD in action, happily chewing on characters and scenery alike, I want to cry out, in the style of the spoiled, chubby rich girl from the original Willy Wonka movie, "Daddy, I want a Zuni Fetish Doll!"
Anthology horror movies are best watched on a rainy weekend afternoon when there's nothing on TV except sports and public-TV documentaries. They're like boxes of chocolate-covered bon-bons. The horror is served up in assorted bite-sized chunks, so you have a lot of different goodies to nibble on. If one piece doesn't satisfy (what, caramel again?), you can always hope the next piece will be more to your liking. So rent a few and check them out. Don't expect any major scares... just a lot of sweet little chills. But keep an eye out for that Zuni Fetish Doll!
END
