Dr Terror's House of Horrors (1965)

Plot
Five strangers board a train and are joined by a mysterious fortune teller who offers to read their Tarot cards. Each man has a different story to tell including an architect who returns to his ancestral home to find a werewolf out for revenge, a doctor who finds out his wife is a vampire, a huge plant which traps the occupants of a house inside, a musician who gets involved in voodoo and an art critic who is tormented by the severed hand of a famous artist.

Review
As with many of my other reviews for Amicus films, I always start off with the point that they tried to rival Hammer as far as British horror went but never really managed to compete consistently with them. However they did find their niche in the genre, in particular the horror anthology. Dr Terror's House of Horrors is their best one and it's probably coincidental that it was their first one too. Inspired by the black humour-filled E.C. comics of the 50s, Dr Terror's House of Horrors was to set off Amicus' long-standing obsession with making horror anthologies. It was a successful formula as long as most of the stories in them were entertaining. You were always going to get some clunkers but with the array of acting talent that Amicus managed to get to appear in small roles, it was a price worth paying. Peter Cushing stars as Dr Schreck, the sinister fortune teller who forms the wrap around story for this one. He draws you to the screen the moment he arrives because you don't know his true motives. He seems friendly enough but why are all of his predictions so nasty? He reads each of the characters their fortune which in turn become the separate stories. Then right at the end there's a devilish twist as the doc reveals his true motives.

The first story is your basic werewolf story where some people are killed by a werewolf but no one knows who the it is until the twist ending. Like many other werewolf stories, it's pretty flat and there's little to get excited about. You don't actually see anyone in make-up, simply a mean-looking dog which growls at the camera. Running in at around fifteen minutes, the story isn't too long and drawn out and is harmless enough, if a little predictable. Thankfully it's got the best atmosphere of the film and the entire segment is played straight which at least adds a little credibility. The second story owes a lot to Day of the Triffids (to which director Freddie Francis directed extra footage) in which a plant begins to grow and develop a taste for killing. It seems a little absurd at times and does drift off towards being pure camp and that's because the idea isn't explained very well. The story doesn't run for too long which is probably a good thing as the "special effects" get a little silly - it's simply a plant of the end of a piece of wire being wriggled around in front of the camera! Come on, you didn't expect technical wizardry did you? Bernard Lee, more famous known as 'M' from the James Bond films, makes an appearance here. The third story once again fails to excite as Donald Sutherland believes that his wife is a vampire. It follows the same vampire storyline that most of the other genre films have done and, like the werewolf one, is pretty dull and lifeless as a result. The only saving grace is the final twist to the tale which is laughable but you've got to feel sorry for Sutherland's character for being so gullible and dumb all along.