Greenes
Please don't spend money on this.
Phonearl
Good start, but then it gets ruined
Moustroll
Good movie but grossly overrated
moonspinner55
Four stories (plus a linking prologue and epilogue) centering around an eerie estate in the English countryside that reflects the personalities of its tenants. "Is it haunted?" one potential renter asks. "Not exactly." Denholm Elliott plays a mystery writer whose latest creation, a mad strangler, haunts him at night; Peter Cushing, mourning the demise of his one great love, finds her replica in a waxworks museum in town; Christopher Lee is afraid of his own daughter, an angelic-seeming child with an interest in witchcraft; and Jon Pertwee is a ham actor of vampire films who becomes a real bloodsucker whenever he wears a vintage cloak. With a screenplay by "Psycho" author Robert Bloch (and an uncredited Russ Jones reportedly penning the second episode), the tales are imaginative and entertaining, although not particularly frightening--and not at all bloody. Two vampires rising from their coffins at midnight is about as scary as it gets. TV's "The Twilight Zone" did this kind of thing much better--these chapters are more on the level of "Night Gallery". Fine performances nevertheless, some twists and turns, and a solid direction by Peter Duffell, who doesn't rush things through and shows a sense of humor as well. **1/2 from ****
qmtv
Boring. I only made it to 18 minute mark. I just can't continue.Boring all the way. Music sucks. Cinematography is boring. Sets are boring. Acting and dialogue sucks. The story sucks.I just cannot sit through this nonsense.F, 1 star. Failure.
GusF
This is second only to "And Now the Screaming Starts!" as my favourite Amicus film. It's also the best of the three portmanteau films that I've seen. It has four very strong leading men - Denholm Elliott, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Jon Pertwee - and an equally strong supporting cast including Joss Ackland, Ingrid Pitt, Nyree Dawn Porter and John Bennett. The idea of using the same house to tell four different stories was a very good one, not least because it spared Amicus from building too many sets! I haven't checked out any of Hammer's new films yet but, when it comes to their old horror ones, I feel as if I have no more worlds to conquer so Amicus will be my first port of call for Gothic horror films from now on. Not to worry, I still have plenty of Hammer adventure films, thrillers, etc. to watch though!I loved all four segments but my favourite was certainly "The Cloak", both because Pertwee gave a fantastic performance as the veteran horror film star Paul Henderson (clearly modelled on Vincent Price, who was offered the role but had to turn it down due to his contract with AIP) and because it contains a wonderful (partially self-)parody of low budget horror films. There's a fantastic in-joke when Henderson describes Dracula as a great, old horror film before saying "the one with Bela Lugosi of course, not this new fellow." Another great in-joke is that Henderson's dressing room has photographs of his earlier roles, including one of Pertwee as the Third Doctor driving Bessie! Speaking of Christopher Lee, he can be seen reading "The Lord of the Rings" - of which, as is well known, he is a huge fan - 30 years before he appeared in the films.I'll rate the four segments individually before giving an average."Method for Murder" 9/10"Waxworks" 10/10"Sweets to the Sweet" 10/10"The Cloak" 10/10That comes to 9.75/10 but I'll round it up and give it full marks as it was such great fun.
Goingbegging
If you enjoyed Hitchcock's 'Psycho', without necessarily understanding the depth-psychology, you will be just as entertained by this little box of tricks, adapted from a quartet of short stories by the same author, Robert Bloch. The four episodes are based around one house, which itself turns out to be the murderer - as the various tenants are warned from the start by a distinctly unusual letting-agent. (No spoiler there!) The moment you hear Ingrid Pitt say of Jon Pertwee "At heart, he's pure Gothic", you realise you're in cliché country, confirmed by the mere presence of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as well. Even allowing for the cost of hiring these horror panjandrums, we're looking at a mighty low-budget effort. But the intimate scale and atmosphere is all part of it, and a lot of special effects might well have spoilt things (as they did with the James Bonds).So we sit back and settle for the predictable. Creaking stairs... chimes at midnight... sceptical police... plus, of course, certain in-jokes of minimal subtlety (a Dracula filmset with a poster reading 'Please be a Blood Donor'). Everything is here.Denholm Elliott does pretty well for a less-usual horror man. Another newcomer to the genre, Nyree Dawn Porter, scores decisively over the disappointingly wooden Joanna Dunham. Tom Adams is hopelessly miscast as a poor man's Frankenstein, and should have gone back to acting the same old smoothies. And the weird-looking John Bennett as the detective, who is meant to represent dull normality, actually manages to look more Hammer-Horror than any of them.
