Tales from the Crypt (film)
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| Tales from the Crypt | |
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 Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Freddie Francis |
| Produced by | Milton Subotsky Max Rosenberg |
| Written by | Milton Subotsky (screenplay) |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | March 8, 1972 |
| Running time | 92 min. |
| Language | English |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Tales from the Crypt is a British horror movie, made in 1972 by Amicus Productions. It is an anthology film consisting of five separate segments, based on stories from EC Comics. Only two of the stories, however, are actually from EC's Tales from the Crypt. The reason for this, according to Creepy founding editor Russ Jones, is that Amicus producer Milton Subotsky did not own a run of the original EC comic book but instead adapted the movie from the two paperback reprints given to him by Jones. The story "Wish You Were Here" was reprinted in the paperback collection The Vault of Horror (Ballantine, 1965). The other four stories in the movie were among the eight stories reprinted in Tales from the Crypt (Ballantine, 1964).
In the film, five strangers encounter the mysterious Crypt Keeper (Ralph Richardson) in a crypt, and he tells each in turn the manner of their death. Richardson's hooded Crypt Keeper, more somber than the EC original (as illustrated by Al Feldstein and Jack Davis), has a monk-like appearance and resembles EC's GhouLunatics. However, in the EC horror comics, the other horror hosts (the Old Witch and the Vault Keeper) wore hoods, while the Crypt Keeper did not.
The screenplay was adapted into a tie-in novel by Jack Oleck, Tales from the Crypt (Bantam, 1972). Oleck, who wrote the novel Messalina (1950), also scripted for EC's Picto-Fiction titles, Crime Illustrated, Shock Illustrated and Terror Illustrated. A sequel, The Vault of Horror, was released in 1973.
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[edit] Synopsis
Five strangers go with a tourist group to view old caves. Separated from the main group, they find themselves in a room with the mysterious Crypt Keeper, who details how each of the strangers will die.
The first segment is adapted from "... And All Through the House," originally published in The Vault of Horror #35 (February-March 1954). After Joanne Clayton (Joan Collins) kills her husband on Christmas Eve, she prepares to hide his body but hears a radio announcement stating that a homicidal maniac (Oliver MacGreevy) is on the loose. She sees the maniac outside her house but can't call the police because of her husband's body. The segment ends with the maniac, dressed as Santa Claus, being let into the house by Joanne's little daughter. He strangles Joanne to death.
In "Reflection of Death" (from Tales from the Crypt #23, April-May 1951), Carl Maitland (Ian Hendry) abandons his family to be with Susan Blake (Angela Grant). After they drive off together, they are involved in a car accident. He wakes up in the wrecked car and attempts to hitchhike home, but no one will stop for him. Arriving at his house, he sees his wife (Susan Denny) with another man. He knocks on the door, but she screams and slams the door. He visits Susan at her apartment and learns she is blind. She tells him that two years have passed since the accident, which blinded her and resulted in his death. Maitland looks in a mirror and realizes he is dead. Awakening in the car with Susan, he knows the experience was only a dream -- but then sees that he is just about to really crash the car.
In the third segment, "Poetic Justice" (The Haunt of Fear #12, March-April 1952), Edward Elliott (David Markham) and his son James (Robin Phillips) are a snobbish pair who resent their neighbour, retired garbage man Arthur Grymsdyke (Peter Cushing) who owns a number of animals and entertains children in his house. To get rid of what they see as a blight on the neighborhood, they push Grymsdyke into a frenzy by conducting a smear campaign against him, first resulting in the removal of his beloved dogs, and later exploiting parents' paranoiac fears about child molestation. A kindly widower, Grymsdyke commits suicide after receiving hateful valentines. He believes they were sent by all of the neighborhood, but in truth, they came from James. Returning from the grave on Valentine's Day, one year later, Grymsdyke kills the son by ripping his heart out and inserting it into a valentine left for the father.
"Wish You Were Here" (The Haunt of Fear #22, November-December 1953), is a variation on W. W. Jacobs' famed short story "The Monkey's Paw." Businessman Ralph Jason (Richard Greene) is close to financial ruin. His wife Enid (Barbara Murray) discovers a Chinese figurine and wishes for a fortune. Ralph is killed on the way to collect it. She uses her second wish to bring him back to the way he was just before the accident but learns that his death was due to a heart attack (caused by a skeletal ghoul, who follows Ralph on a motorcycle and ultimately scares him to death, as a result of the figurine). When she once again wishes for him to be brought back to life, she finds she has trapped him in eternal pain because his body had been embalmed.
In the final segment, "Blind Alleys" (Tales from the Crypt #46, February-March 1955), Major William Rogers (Nigel Patrick), the new director of a home for the blind, makes drastic financial cuts, reducing heat and rationing food for the residents, while he lives in luxury with Shane, his German Shepherd. When he ignores complaints, the blind residents exact revenge by constructing in the basement a maze of narrow corridors lined with razor blades. They starve the Major's dog, place the Major in the maze's centre, release the dog and turn off the basement lights.
After completing the final tale, the Crypt Keeper reveals that he was not warning them of what would happen, but telling them what had happened, they had all committed their various sins and died their various ways. Clues to this "twist" can be spotted throughout the film, including Joan Collin's character wearing the broach her husband had given her for Christmas just before she killed him. The door to Hell opens, and the visitors all enter. "Who is next?" asks the Crypt Keeper, who then turns to face the camera and says, slowly and melodramatically, "Perhaps, it's you!"
[edit] DVD Release
Tales From The Crypt along with the sequel, The Vault of Horror, was released on a double feature DVD on September 11, 2007.
[edit] Connections to the TV Series
All Through the House, Blind Alley, and Wish You Were Here were all somewhat adapted into episodes for the Tales From the Crypt television show. Blind Alley and Wish You Were Here were both changed.
Blind Alley was now about a beautiful blind girl who came to live at the house, and the other residents took their revenge on the new owner because he began using her for sexual gratification in return for changing the living conditions.
Wish You Were Here became Last Respects and served as a type of loose sequel to the original story. The statue is changed back into a monkey's paw, and the story deals with three sisters finding it. One wishes for a million pounds, and she and the second sister are in a car crash where she dies, and her life insurance policy is for one million pounds. When the third sister wishes that the dead sister was the way she was just before the crash, she learns that she was actually killed by the second sister. In a form of revenge, the third sister gives her last wish to her sister, but she did not say which sister she wanted to give it to, beating the monkey's paw at it's own game. The wish is transferred to the dead sister, who comes back to kill the second sister.
[edit] External links
- Tales from the Crypt at the Internet Movie Database
- Tales from the Crypt at Rotten Tomatoes
- New York Times: Vincent Canby review
- Chicago Sun Times: Roger Ebert review
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