Torture Garden (film)
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| Torture Garden | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Freddie Francis |
| Produced by | Max Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky |
| Written by | Robert Bloch |
| Starring | Burgess Meredith, Jack Palance Peter Cushing |
| Music by | Don Banks, James Bernard |
| Cinematography | Norman Warwick |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Torture Garden is a 1967 horror film made in the UK by Amicus Productions. It was directed by Freddie Francis and scripted by Robert Bloch. It stars Burgess Meredith, Jack Palance, Michael Ripper, Beverly Adams, Peter Cushing, Maurice Denham, Ursula Howells, Michael Bryant and Barbara Ewing.
It is one of producer Milton Subotsky's trademark "portmanteau" films, an omnibus of short stories linked by a single narrative.
[edit] Plot
Five people visit a fairground sideshow run by the sinister Dr. Diablo (Meredith). Having shown them a handful of haunted-house-style attractions, he promises them a genuinely scary experience if they will pay extra. Their curiosity gets the better of them, and the small crowd follows him behind a curtain, where they each view their fate through the sheers of the female deity Atropos.
In "Enoch", a greedy playboy (Bryant) takes advantage of his dying uncle (Denham), and falls under the spell of a man-eating cat. In "Terror Over Hollywood", a Hollywood starlet (Adams) discovers her co-stars are androids. In "Mr. Steinway", a grand piano by the name of Euterpe becomes jealous of its owner's new lover (Ewing) and takes revenge. And in "The Man Who Collected Poe", a Poe-collector (Palance) murders another collector (Cushing) over a valuable Poe manuscript - only to be avenged by Edgar Allan Poe himself.
[edit] Miscellanea
- The score was a collaboration between Hammer horror regulars James Bernard and Don Banks
- The silent (and almost motionless) part of Atropos was played by Clytie Jessop, who also played Miss Jessel in The Innocents (1961) and the "woman in white" in Nightmare (1964). Torture Garden director Freddie Francis was cinematographer on the former and directed the latter.
- After a revvial screening of the film in Hollywood in the early 2000s, co-producer Max J. Rosenberg dismissed Jack Palance's performance in the fourth epsidoe, saying that the actor "pranced around like a wounded gazelle."
