The horror anthology ready reckoner
In honour of it being nearly Halloween, we've got a ready reckoner that's a bit different from our usual ones. Martin runs down horror anthologies from the last 60 years...
Some of the very best horror fiction comes in grisly little morsels unsuited to full-length screen adaptation. Roger Corman’s acclaimed 1960s ‘Poe cycle’ set legendary genre writers such as Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont to adapting and extending the Boston poet’s work, but most horror short stories reached the screen as episodes within horror ‘anthologies’.
In this ‘portmanteau’ or episodic horror, the diverse episodes are linked (usually with creaking artifice)around an assembly of doomed sinners, a tradition begun with the genre-defining British Dead Of Night (which also seems to have introduced the ventriloquist’s dummy as an object of madness and horror, in the still-chilling Michael Redgrave episode).
Fallen into disuse as a narrative technique in film horror, some of the chapters in these tales of damnation are still worth a shiver…
Dead Of Night (1945)
What’s in it: A shaggy-dog story about golf rivals, played for laughs; a pretty spooky ghost story set around a ‘children’s’ Christmas party (couldn’t see one child under 26 myself); a chilling tale of prophesy featuring a bus-accident with special effects apparently done by Dinky-toys; and…
Best bit: Michael Redgrave’s unhinged ventriloquist remains the template for chillers such as Devil Doll (1964) and Magic (1978), and the fact that you’re not expecting a film this old to finally scare you will only increase the effect! Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors (1965)
What’s in it: An estate agent called back to survey the land his family used to own finds it infested by werewolves; a suburban house is overtaken by intelligent, murderous vines; Roy Castle brings some Voodoo tunes back from Haiti and is sadly not killed by spirits quick enough to stop him rendering several jazz trumpet solos; a newly-wed couple find their adopted neighbourhood is full of vampires; and…
Best bit: Heartless art critic Christopher Lee drives an artist to cut off his hand – which then pursues the hapless scribe all over London.
Torture Garden (1967)
What’s in it: A wicked nephew kills his uncle by withholding his medicine, then falls under the bizarre influence of his Uncle’s cat, who adjures him to repeated murders; an aspiring actress comes all too close to the horrific truth as to why one of her idols hasn’t aged in 40 years; a man is murdered by a grand piano (a definite fast forward); and… Best bit: An uncharacteristically nervous Jack Palance beards fellow Poe-collector Peter Cushing in his secret treasure-trove of Poe memorabilia, and gets him drunk enough to reveal the prize of the collection…
The House That Dripped Blood (1970)
Best bit: In the opening story, a horror writer creates a vicious strangler for his next novel – and then finds a strange face at the window… Tales From The Crypt (1972)
Best bit: Gentle Widower Peter Cushing returns from the grave for revenge on the persecutors who blackened his name. Hard to choose, though: all the Tales are effective and sometimes truly shocking.
Asylum (1972)
Best bit: Richard Todd’s murdered wife returns from the freezer (in pieces)for revenge upon him.
Vault Of Horror (1973)
Best bit: Haitian-based painter Tom Baker uses a very artistic form of voodoo to take revenge on those who defrauded him of the fair price for his paintings.
From Beyond The Grave (1973)
What’s in it: Ian Bannen’s nagging wife becomes the focus of black magic when his new girlfriend suggests that voodoo might be the answer; Ian Carmichael has an invisible demon on his shoulder that is determined to make him murder his wife; Ian Ogilvy (what a lot of Ians in this film!)buys a time-travelling door; and…
Best bit: A possessed mirror urges new owner David Warner to kill so that its previous owner may become corporeal again. Creepy!
The Uncanny (1977)
What’s in it:A cat, wife-murdering Donald Pleasance and an iron maiden – no way this is gonna turn out well; an orphaned girl’s cruelly treated puss returns from the dead; and…;
Best bit: Inheritance-stealing maid Susan Penhaligon is savagely revenged-upon by her victim’s moggies; what the police find when they finally get wind (literally)of the crime scene is a bit of a shocker.
Creepshow (1982)
What’s in it: Murdered whiner ‘Uncle Nathan’ (John Amplas) comes back to haunt his family and demand cake; Stephen King ventures into acting as a dumb farmer infected with alien spores; Leslie Nielson torments his wife and her lover Ted Danson by burying them up to their neck in sand as the tide comes in; E.G. Marshall is a rich shut-in plagued by the cockroaches he most fears; and… Best bit: A college professor comes into possession of a strange, vicious creature in a crate, and casts an arch eye on his shrewish wife, Adrienne Barbeau.
Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye (1985)
Tales From The Darkside: The Movie (1990)
What’s in it: A nerd takes revenge on a bully by reviving a Mummy; pharmaceutical tycoon David Johansen takes out a contract on a cat seeking revenge for vivisection experiments; and…
Best bit: James Remar witnesses a demon performing a grisly murder and is granted earthly prosperity – so long as he promises to never reveal what he saw.
Grim Prairie Tales (1990)
What’s in it: Miserable old moaner decides to take a shortcut into sacred Indian burial land; Superman veteran Marc McClure gets a ride he wasn’t expecting from an ostracised, pregnant girl; Lisa Eichhorn is shocked to find her Civil War veteran father involved in a race-related lynching; a talented gunslinger is haunted by his most recent victim; and…
Best bit: Just for once, it’s the linking tale; the stories are mostly pants.
