The Vault of Horror (film)
Encyclopedia
The Vault of Horror is a British
Cinema of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...

 portmanteau
Anthology film
An anthology film is a feature film consisting of several different short films, often tied together by only a single theme, premise, or brief interlocking event . Sometimes each one is directed by a different director...

 horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 made in 1973 by Amicus Productions
Amicus Productions
Amicus Productions is a British film production company, based at Shepperton Studios, England. It was founded by American producer and screenwriter Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg.-Horror:...

. Like its predecessor, Tales from the Crypt, it is based on stories from the EC Comics
EC Comics
Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books specializing in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series...

 series written by Al Feldstein
Al Feldstein
Albert B. Feldstein is an American writer, editor, and artist, best known for his work at EC Comics and, from 1956 to 1985, as the editor of the satirical magazine Mad. Since retiring from Mad, Feldstein has concentrated on American paintings of Western wildlife...

 and Bill Gaines. The film was directed by Roy Ward Baker
Roy Ward Baker
Roy Ward Baker , born Roy Horace Baker, was an English film director, credited as Roy Baker for much of his career. His best known film is A Night to Remember which won a Golden Globe for Best English-Language Foreign Film in 1959...

, and filmed on location and at Twickenham Studios.

The film stars Terry-Thomas
Terry-Thomas
Thomas Terry Hoar Stevens was a distinctive English comic actor, known as Terry-Thomas. He was famous for his portrayal of disreputable members of the upper classes, especially cads and toffs, with the trademark gap in his front teeth, cigarette holder, smoking jacket, and catch-phrases such as...

, Dawn Addams
Dawn Addams
Dawn Addams was an English actress in motion pictures of the 1950s.-Life and career:She was born Victoria Dawn Addams in Felixstowe, Suffolk, England, the daughter of Ethel Mary and Captain James Ramage Addams. Her mother died when she was young, and she spent her early life in Calcutta, India...

, Denholm Elliot, Curd Jürgens
Curd Jürgens
Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens was a German-Austrian stage and film actor. He was usually billed in English-speaking films as Curt Jurgens.-Early life:...

, Tom Baker
Tom Baker
Thomas Stewart "Tom" Baker is a British actor. He is best known for playing the fourth incarnation of the Doctor in the science fiction television series Doctor Who, a role he played from 1974 to 1981.-Early life:...

, Michael Craig
Michael Craig (actor)
Michael Craig is a British actor, known for his work in film and television in both the United Kingdom and Australia. Craig was born in Poona, Maharashtra, British India, the son of Donald Gregson, a captain in the 3rd Indian Cavalry. He came to England with his family when aged three, and went to...

, Terence Alexander
Terence Alexander
Terence Joseph Alexander was an English film and television actor, best known for his role as Charlie Hungerford in the British TV drama Bergerac.-Early life and career:...

, Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns is a South African-born Welsh stage and film actress, dancer, pianist and singer . With a career spanning seven decades, Johns is often cited as the "complete actress", who happens to be a trained pianist and singer...

, Mike Pratt, Robin Nedwell
Robin Nedwell
Robin Nedwell was an English actor. He is best remembered for his role as Duncan Waring in the television comedy series Doctor in the House and its sequels...

, Geoffrey Davies
Geoffrey Davies
Geoffrey Davies is a British actor. The son of an accountant, he was educated at Grammar School and studied at Art College to be a commercial artist before becoming an actor...

, Daniel Massey
Daniel Massey (actor)
Daniel Raymond Massey was an English actor and performer. He is possibly best known for his starring role in the British TV drama The Roads to Freedom, as Daniel, alongside Michael Bryant...

 and Anna Massey
Anna Massey
Anna Raymond Massey, CBE was an English actress. She won a BAFTA Award for the role of Edith Hope in the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner’s novel Hotel du Lac.-Early life:...

.

None of the film's stories are actually from Vault of Horror comics. All but one appeared in Tales from the Crypt, the exception being from Shock SuspenStories
Shock SuspenStories
Shock SuspenStories was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. The bi-monthly comic, published by Bill Gaines and edited by Al Feldstein, began with issue 1 in February/March 1952. Over a four-year span, it ran for 18 issues, ending with the December/January 1955 issue.- Artists and writers...

. The film omits the Vault Keeper character from the comics.

Plot

Framing Story - Five strangers board a descending lift, one by one, in a modern office block in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. They reach the basement, though none of them have pressed for that destination. There they find a large, elaborately furnished room which appears to be a gentlemen’s club. The lift door has closed and there are no buttons to bring it back, nor any other exit. Resigned to waiting for help, they settle down with drinks and talk. The conversation turns to dreams, and each man tells of a recurring nightmare.

Midnight Mess (Tales from the Crypt #35) – Harold Rodgers (Daniel Massey
Daniel Massey (actor)
Daniel Raymond Massey was an English actor and performer. He is possibly best known for his starring role in the British TV drama The Roads to Freedom, as Daniel, alongside Michael Bryant...

) tracks his sister Donna (Anna Massey
Anna Massey
Anna Raymond Massey, CBE was an English actress. She won a BAFTA Award for the role of Edith Hope in the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner’s novel Hotel du Lac.-Early life:...

) to a strange village and kills her to claim her inheritance. After settling down for a post-murder meal at the local restaurant, he discovers the town is home to a nest of vampires: Donna is not as dead
Undead
Undead is a collective name for fictional, mythological, or legendary beings that are deceased and yet behave as if alive. Undead may be incorporeal, such as ghosts, or corporeal, such as vampires and zombies...

 as he thinks, and he becomes the dish of the night when his jugular vein
Jugular vein
The jugular veins are veins that bring deoxygenated blood from the head back to the heart via the superior vena cava.-Internal and external:There are two sets of jugular veins: external and internal....

 is tapped out as a beverage dispenser.

The Neat Job (Shock SuspenStories #1) – The obsessively neat
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Obsessive–compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry, by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety, or by a combination of such obsessions and compulsions...

 Arthur Critchit (Terry-Thomas
Terry-Thomas
Thomas Terry Hoar Stevens was a distinctive English comic actor, known as Terry-Thomas. He was famous for his portrayal of disreputable members of the upper classes, especially cads and toffs, with the trademark gap in his front teeth, cigarette holder, smoking jacket, and catch-phrases such as...

) marries Eleanor (Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns is a South African-born Welsh stage and film actress, dancer, pianist and singer . With a career spanning seven decades, Johns is often cited as the "complete actress", who happens to be a trained pianist and singer...

), a young trophy wife
Trophy wife
Trophy wife is an expression used to describe a wife, usually young and attractive, who is regarded as a status symbol for the husband, who is often older and affluent.-History:The term's etymological origins are disputed...

 who is not quite the domestic goddess he hoped for. His constant nagging about the mess she makes eventually drives her mad. She hits him over the head with a hammer then cuts him up, storing the pieces in neatly labelled jars – including his “odds and ends.”

This Trick’ll Kill You (Tales from the Crypt #33) – Sebastian (Curd Jürgens
Curd Jürgens
Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens was a German-Austrian stage and film actor. He was usually billed in English-speaking films as Curt Jurgens.-Early life:...

) is a magician on a working holiday in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, where he and his wife are searching for new tricks. Nothing impresses until he sees a girl charming a rope out of a basket
Indian rope trick
The Indian rope trick is stage magic said to have been performed in and around India during the 19th century. Sometimes described as "the world’s greatest illusion", it reputedly involved a magician, a length of rope, and one or more boy assistants....

 with a flute. Unable to work out how the trick is done, he persuades her to come to his hotel room, where he and his wife Inez (Dawn Addams
Dawn Addams
Dawn Addams was an English actress in motion pictures of the 1950s.-Life and career:She was born Victoria Dawn Addams in Felixstowe, Suffolk, England, the daughter of Ethel Mary and Captain James Ramage Addams. Her mother died when she was young, and she spent her early life in Calcutta, India...

) murder her and steal the enchanted rope. Sebastian plays the flute, and the rope rises; Inez climbs it, only to disappear with a scream. An ominous patch of blood appears on the ceiling, and the rope coils round Sebastian's neck and hangs
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...

 him. Their victim reappears alive in the bazaar.

Bargain in Death (Tales from the Crypt #28) – Maitland (Michael Craig
Michael Craig (actor)
Michael Craig is a British actor, known for his work in film and television in both the United Kingdom and Australia. Craig was born in Poona, Maharashtra, British India, the son of Donald Gregson, a captain in the 3rd Indian Cavalry. He came to England with his family when aged three, and went to...

) is buried alive as part of an insurance scam concocted with his friend Alex (Edward Judd
Edward Judd
Edward Judd was a British actor.Born in Shanghai, China, he and his English father and Russian mother fled when the Japanese attacked China five years later....

). Alex double-crosses Maitland, leaving him to suffocate. Two trainee doctors Tom (Robin Nedwell
Robin Nedwell
Robin Nedwell was an English actor. He is best remembered for his role as Duncan Waring in the television comedy series Doctor in the House and its sequels...

) and Jerry (Geoffrey Davies
Geoffrey Davies
Geoffrey Davies is a British actor. The son of an accountant, he was educated at Grammar School and studied at Art College to be a commercial artist before becoming an actor...

) bribe a gravedigger (Arthur Mullard
Arthur Mullard
Arthur Ernest Mullard, original surname Mullord was an English comedy actor.- Early life :...

) to dig up a corpse to help with their studies. When Maitland’s coffin is opened, he jumps up gasping for air, causing Tom and Jerry to run out into the middle of the road in front of Alex’s car, which crashes. The gravedigger kills Maitland and when trying to close the sale of the corpse apologises to Tom and Jerry for the damage to the head.

Drawn and Quartered (Tales from the Crypt #26) – Moore (Tom Baker
Tom Baker
Thomas Stewart "Tom" Baker is a British actor. He is best known for playing the fourth incarnation of the Doctor in the science fiction television series Doctor Who, a role he played from 1974 to 1981.-Early life:...

) is an impoverished painter living on Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

. When he learns that his work has been sold for high prices by dealers and critics who told him that it was worthless, he goes to a voodoo priest and his painting hand is given voodoo power; whatever he paints or draws can be harmed by damaging its image. Returning to London, Moore paints portraits of the three men who cheated him, and mutilates them to exact his revenge. However he has previously painted his own self-portrait, and he must protect it to prevent himself being harmed.

When the story of the final dream is told, the five ponder the meaning of their nightmares. The lift door opens, and they find themselves looking out onto a graveyard. They walk out and disappear one by one. Sebastian (Jürgens) explains that they are damned souls doomed to tell the story of their evil deeds for all eternity.

Cast

  • Daniel Massey
    Daniel Massey (actor)
    Daniel Raymond Massey was an English actor and performer. He is possibly best known for his starring role in the British TV drama The Roads to Freedom, as Daniel, alongside Michael Bryant...

     - Harold Rogers
  • Terry-Thomas
    Terry-Thomas
    Thomas Terry Hoar Stevens was a distinctive English comic actor, known as Terry-Thomas. He was famous for his portrayal of disreputable members of the upper classes, especially cads and toffs, with the trademark gap in his front teeth, cigarette holder, smoking jacket, and catch-phrases such as...

     - Arthur Critchit
  • Curd Jürgens
    Curd Jürgens
    Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens was a German-Austrian stage and film actor. He was usually billed in English-speaking films as Curt Jurgens.-Early life:...

     - Sebastian
  • Michael Craig
    Michael Craig (actor)
    Michael Craig is a British actor, known for his work in film and television in both the United Kingdom and Australia. Craig was born in Poona, Maharashtra, British India, the son of Donald Gregson, a captain in the 3rd Indian Cavalry. He came to England with his family when aged three, and went to...

     - Maitland
  • Tom Baker
    Tom Baker
    Thomas Stewart "Tom" Baker is a British actor. He is best known for playing the fourth incarnation of the Doctor in the science fiction television series Doctor Who, a role he played from 1974 to 1981.-Early life:...

     - Moore
  • Anna Massey
    Anna Massey
    Anna Raymond Massey, CBE was an English actress. She won a BAFTA Award for the role of Edith Hope in the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner’s novel Hotel du Lac.-Early life:...

     - Donna Rogers
  • Glynis Johns
    Glynis Johns
    Glynis Johns is a South African-born Welsh stage and film actress, dancer, pianist and singer . With a career spanning seven decades, Johns is often cited as the "complete actress", who happens to be a trained pianist and singer...

     - Eleanor Critchit
  • Dawn Addams
    Dawn Addams
    Dawn Addams was an English actress in motion pictures of the 1950s.-Life and career:She was born Victoria Dawn Addams in Felixstowe, Suffolk, England, the daughter of Ethel Mary and Captain James Ramage Addams. Her mother died when she was young, and she spent her early life in Calcutta, India...

     - Inez
  • Edward Judd
    Edward Judd
    Edward Judd was a British actor.Born in Shanghai, China, he and his English father and Russian mother fled when the Japanese attacked China five years later....

     - Alex
  • Denholm Elliott
    Denholm Elliott
    Denholm Mitchell Elliott, CBE was an English film, television and theatre actor with over 120 film and television credits...

     - Diltant
  • Robin Nedwell
    Robin Nedwell
    Robin Nedwell was an English actor. He is best remembered for his role as Duncan Waring in the television comedy series Doctor in the House and its sequels...

     - Tom
  • Geoffrey Davies
    Geoffrey Davies
    Geoffrey Davies is a British actor. The son of an accountant, he was educated at Grammar School and studied at Art College to be a commercial artist before becoming an actor...

     - Jerry
  • Terence Alexander
    Terence Alexander
    Terence Joseph Alexander was an English film and television actor, best known for his role as Charlie Hungerford in the British TV drama Bergerac.-Early life and career:...

     - Fenton Breedley
  • Ishaq Bux
    Ishaq Bux
    Ishaq Bux was an Indian actor.He is best remembered by his roles of Omar in Raiders of The Lost Ark and the fakir in Octopussy .Filmography:...

     - Fakir
  • John Forbes-Robertson
    John Forbes-Robertson (actor)
    John Forbes-Robertson was a British actor best-known for being the only actor other than Christopher Lee to play the title role in the Hammer horror series of Dracula films....

     - Wilson
  • Maurice Kaufmann
    Maurice Kaufmann
    Maurice Harington Kaufmann was a British actor of stage, TV and film, particularly well-utilized in whodunnits and horrors who acted from 1954 to 1981, when he retired....

     - Bob Dickson
  • Arthur Mullard
    Arthur Mullard
    Arthur Ernest Mullard, original surname Mullord was an English comedy actor.- Early life :...

     - Gravedigger
  • Mike Pratt - Clive
  • Marianne Stone
    Marianne Stone
    Marianne Stone was a British character actress. She appeared in many films from the early 1940s to the late 1980s...

     - Jane
  • Erik Chitty
    Erik Chitty
    Erik Chitty , was an English film and television actor.-Early life:Chitty was the son of a flour miller. He attended Dover College and Jesus College, Cambridge where he was one of the founders of the Cambridge University Mummers, before training at RADA and becoming a professional actor...

     - Old Waiter
  • Tommy Godfrey
    Tommy Godfrey
    Tommy Godfrey was an English film and television actor, mostly playing working-class Cockney characters.His television credits included Love Thy Neighbour, Mind Your Language, The Avengers, Bless This House, Till Death Us Do Part, Z-Cars, Softly, Softly, The Goodies and On the Buses.His film...

     - Landlord
  • Jerold Wells
    Jerold Wells
    Jerold Wells was an English actor. He appeared primarily in British comedies. Some of his best-known roles were in Time Bandits, where he played Benson, a mentally disturbed follower to Evil, and in Jabberwocky, where he played a footless man known as Wat Dabney.He starred in films including '...

     - Waiter

Production

  • In the segment "Bargain in Death", the person of Maitland can be seen reading a copy of the novelization of the earlier Amicus film, Tales from the Crypt. The same instalment featured Geoffrey Davies
    Geoffrey Davies
    Geoffrey Davies is a British actor. The son of an accountant, he was educated at Grammar School and studied at Art College to be a commercial artist before becoming an actor...

     and Robin Nedwell
    Robin Nedwell
    Robin Nedwell was an English actor. He is best remembered for his role as Duncan Waring in the television comedy series Doctor in the House and its sequels...

    , both appeared on the British TV show Doctor in the House
    Doctor in the House
    Doctor in the House is a 1954 British comedy film, directed by Ralph Thomas and produced by Betty Box. The screenplay, by Nicholas Phipps, Richard Gordon and Ronald Wilkinson, is based on the novel by Gordon, and follows a group of students through medical school.It was the most popular box office...

    . Mike Pratt has a small part in Midnight Mess. The same instalment featured a brother and sister as characters. They were played by real life brother and sister actors Anna Massey
    Anna Massey
    Anna Raymond Massey, CBE was an English actress. She won a BAFTA Award for the role of Edith Hope in the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner’s novel Hotel du Lac.-Early life:...

     and Daniel Massey
    Daniel Massey (actor)
    Daniel Raymond Massey was an English actor and performer. He is possibly best known for his starring role in the British TV drama The Roads to Freedom, as Daniel, alongside Michael Bryant...

    , whose father was the legendary Raymond Massey
    Raymond Massey
    Raymond Hart Massey was a Canadian/American actor.-Early life:Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna , who was born in Illinois, and Chester Daniel Massey, the wealthy owner of the Massey-Ferguson Tractor Company. Massey's family could trace their ancestry back to the American...

    . The tower featured in the opening scenes is the Millbank Tower
    Millbank Tower
    Millbank Tower is a high skyscraper in the City of Westminster at Millbank, on the banks of the River Thames in London, in the United Kingdom. The Tower was constructed in 1963 for Vickers and was originally known as Vickers Tower. It was designed by Ronald Ward and Partners and built by John...

     in London.

DVD release

The Vault Of Horror, along with its predecessor Tales from the Crypt, was released on a "Midnight Movies" double feature DVD on September 11, 2007. This version is the edited, 1974 US theatrical release with some of the gorier scenes removed/altered in order to receive an MPAA PG rating.

The supposedly complete, restored and uncensored version was first shown on the British TV channel Film4
Film4
Film4 is a free digital television channel available in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, owned and operated by Channel 4, that screens films.-Programming:...

 on 25 August 2008; however, even this version omitted the original closing shots of the film, where the main characters are seen with skeletal faces, indicating their clearly deceased state (no prints with this shot intact have ever surfaced, and there is no evidence it was ever in the final release prints).

Factual error

  • In Drawn and Quartered, as Moore enters the voodoo priest's hut, there is a totem typical of Native American
    Native Americans in the United States
    Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

     tribes in the United States Pacific Northwest
    Pacific Northwest
    The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...

    .

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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