The
lowdown: 'The Vault of Horror' is a 1973 horror
anthology film from Amicus studios. It features five men who take an
elevator down to the basement
of an office building, where they find that they are trapped. They each
proceed to tell a story
about a dream they had of
their own death. The five stories are told in flashback: a man visits his
sister in a strange town, and
finds that the locals are
not what they seem; a newly married man insists on an ordered and neat
lifestyle, but his wife is just
too messy for his liking;
a couple in India will go to any lengths to obtain the secret of a woman's
magic trick; a man fakes his
death in order to claim
on the insurance, but finds that his partner in fraud cannot be trusted;
and an artist who was cheated by
art dealers and critics
uses voodoo to get his revenge. The final scene reveals why the men have
been brought to the vault.
Tom Baker stars as an artist
named Moore in the final segment, entitled 'Drawn and Quartered'. He visits
a witchdoctor in
Haiti after a friend tells
him that his paintings are selling for large sums of money, although he
has been told by "experts" that
they are no good and worthless.
Moore discovers that the voodoo powers given to him by the witchdoctor
means that whatever
happens to a painting also
befalls the subject of that painting. He draws a picture of a vase, for
example, and when he tears it
up the vase breaks. Moore
returns to London to enact his revenge on the three men who cheated him.
He paints portraits of
them, and uses the voodoo
powers to ensure that they each meet grisly ends. But he should never have
painted a self-portrait...
The
verdict: 'The Vault of Horror' is typical of the
Amicus films, with the horror elements very much understated. In fact,
most
of the stories feature black
humour rather than outright horror, and only the Tom Baker story has any
scenes that feature any
graphic violence (a man
getting his hands cut off in a paper guillotine). The Tom Baker story is
the highlight of the anthology,
although like most of the
stories, you can easily guess how it will end well before the final scene
of the segment. Tom himself
is perfectly cast as the
brooding artist who is determined to get his revenge. In short, 80 minutes
of entertaining fun that will not
give anybody nightmares.
Video Clips: Witchdoctor
7.7mb
Killer portrait 11.3mb |
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