Dr. Terror's House of Horror 1965

In 1965 Amicus Productions released the first of it's horror anthology Dr. Terror's House of Horror.  It was the first of seven horror anthology films that Amicus would release over the next decade.  The film was written by Milton Subotsky who was one of the founders of Amicus.  He wrote the screenplay with the 1945 anthology movie Dead of Night in mind which is a horror classic and one of the best horror anthologies ever made.  Freddie Francis directed but is better known for his work as a cinematographer for which he won two academy awards for Sons and Lovers and Glory. 

The wraparound story takes place on a train where five passengers are joined by Dr. Schrenk (Peter Cushing) who tells the other men his name in German means "terror".  He reveals a deck of Tarot cards he calls a "house of horrors" so now you know where the title comes from.  Dr. Terror is joined by Christopher Lee (of course!), Neil McCallum, Alan Freeman, Roy Castle, and Donald Sutherland.  This was Sutherland's third credited film role of his career and he was paid just 1,000 pounds for his work which would have been about $2500 dollars at the time.  I really can't tell you the titles of the five different stories as they were not given titles as much as they were labeled with the subject or situation happening in each story.  I liked the stories in order of how they are presented in the film meaning my least favorite is the first story and they improved from there with Lee's and Sutherland's being the fourth and fifth stories and the best two of the film by far.

There comes a time when an actor or actress is able to transcend films and roles and no matter what is going on around them they are still able to put in a remarkable performance.  We have that here especially from Lee, Cushing, and Sutherland.  Not that the rest of the stars are not good it just seems they also happen to be there.  If this was a Star Trek episode the others would be wearing red shirts.  The first story is boring, the second one is more funny than anything, the third is typical and I found it hard to pay attention to them.  The final two stories as I said were the best as well as the wrap around story which I also enjoyed.  Cushing is surprisingly creepy here which is something I am not used to as he is usually the one playing the straight man in horror films.  Thankfully the film is more fun than anything else and that's fine but I really had my heart set on something better as I've heard so many good things about this one.  I liked it but I wanted to like it more.  The film is worth watching for Cushing's work and the final two stories alone.  Three out of five tarot cards for this one.  The Horror Honey was not as kind and gives it two and a half.