In England, five men in business suits board a train compartment and get settled in for their trip to the town of Bradley. At the last minute, a sixth traveler joins them, Dr. Schreck, a little disheveled, with bushy eyebrows and wearing a long black coat. As the trip begins, the men converse and discover that Schreck (whose name, it is noted, means fear or terror) has a tarot deck which he says can predict the future. He then proceeds to do a reading for each man as five vignettes play out. In the first, an architect named Dawson (Neil McCallum) is asked by a rich woman to plan out some structural changes in an old house he formerly owned. Breaking down a wall, he discovers the coffin of Cosmo Valdemar, a previous owner who claimed that the Dawsons stole the house from him and said he would return from the dead to reclaim the house. Dawson is not a believer, until a servant girl is killed, perhaps by a wolf, and the blood trail leads to the coffin. Soon enough, Dawson will believe. In the second reading, Bill (Alan Freeman) and his family are cleaning up their vacation home when they come across a large vine that resists being cut; it actually seems to propel the shears out of Bill's hands when he tries to cut it. An expert is called in, the family dog is strangled by the vine, and ultimately, the vine tries to encircle the house to trap the family inside. The third reading features trumpet player Biff Bailey (Roy Castle) who gets a booking with a jazz band in the West Indies and, against advice, sneaks out to witness an authentic voodoo ritual. He likes the melody of the voodoo chant and copies it down, and, despite being warned not to by a voodoo priest, plays a jazzy arrangement of the chant at a nightclub in London. He will soon regret this.
The fourth man, art critic Franklyn Marsh (Christopher Lee), is a bit aloof and disdainful of the tarot process, but Schreck goes ahead and tells him that his destiny is wrapped up with an artist named Landor (Michael Gough) whose work Marsh mocks. Landor exposes Marsh to public ridicule, so one night, Marsh hits Landor with his car, resulting in the severing of the artist's hand so he can no longer paint. Soon, Marsh finds himself stalked by a disembodied hand and suffers an ironic fate brought on by the hand. The last tale features Bob Carroll (Donald Sutherland), who is soon to be a newlywed. The reading reveals that his bride is a vampire, which of course leads to nothing good for Carroll. All five of the readings end with the Death card revealed. The men are all a bit rattled by Schreck's fortunes, and when they disembark at Bradley, they have one more surprise in store.
This is the first (and one of the best) in a series of horror anthology films from the British studio Amicus, with short horror vignettes presented in a narrative frame, like the classic 1945 film DEAD OF NIGHT. Each story is relatively short, getting wrapped up before it wears out its welcome. They are tonally quite similar, spooky and set at night, except for "Creeping Vine" which feels like a version of Hitchcock's The Birds. They're all consistently good, with "Creeping Vine" being the least, "Voodoo" being the best and most atmospheric, and "Vampire" having the best twist. Despite what you might think, the disembodied hand is a pretty good effect. Lee and Cushing, though OK, seem to be working at half-power here. The best performances are from Alan Freeman (better known in England as a DJ) as the man dealing with the vine, and Roy Castle as the jazz musician. In that sequence, which has more light moments than the others, there is a fun inside joke as Castle goes on the run in nighttime streets and sees a poster for a movie called Dr. Terror's House of Horrors with the five lead character names listed as actors. (Pictured at right; it's a quick moment so keep an eagle eye out.) The music in that segment, played by the Tubby Hayes Combo, is quite good. Even if the ends of the stories (and the movie itself) are fairly predictable, this is worth watching. Pictured at top are Cushing, Freeman and McCallum. [DVD]
