Director: Freddie Francis
Writer: Milton Subotsky
Stars: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Neil McCallum
Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes
Link: https://amzn.to/3nHe816
Synopsis
Five men board a train, and they’re all assigned to share the same compartment. It’s a bit crowded, but not uncomfortable… until the sixth man, a creepy looking old man with an accent. The old man nods off to sleep and drops his bag. He’s carrying tarot cards. His name is Dr. Schreck, master of astrophysics. Schreck translates to “terror,” so they joke that his name is “Dr. Terror.” He calls his deck “My house of horrors.” He offers to give each of them a tarot reading.
The men tap the cards three times, he shuffles, and he presents their destinies:
Werewolf
Jim Dawson is an architect, and there’s a rich old woman, Mrs. Biddulph, who wants him to fix up her house. His family lived in that house for centuries before he had to sell it. The servant Valda immediately starts acting creepy.
The owner of the house wants a wall torn down, which requires quite a bit of inspection on Jim’s part. He knocks a hole in the wall and finds a coffin inside. The old servant Caleb explains that his must be the tomb of Cosmo Valdemar, the werewolf. He once swore the house belonged to him, and that he would someday return. Jim says that can’t be true, as the plaster is new.
They dig it out. Once they have left the room, we see it open and someone crawls out. Jim and Caleb return and find large dog prints leading away from the coffin. Mrs. Biddulph returns, but she says she’s never been down in the basement before.
Later that evening, Caleb and Jim find Valda’s body outside, covered in blood. They follow the blood trail inside the house. Jim goes back to the coffin and opens it up. It’s not empty anymore; there’s an old corpse inside. Jim knows what’s up and melts down a silver cross to make silver bullets. He waits for the coffin to open the next night. It gets out and goes after Mrs. Biddulph. He shoots it several times, but it doesn’t work. Turns out things aren’t quite what Jim thought…
Creeping Vine
The next man, Bill Rogers, tries the cards. He’s going on holiday, and when he returns, he finds an ugly vine crawling up the outside of the house. He can’t cut it with his hoe or his clippers.
Bill calls in an expert to identify the plant, and watches the plant kill the family dog. He thinks the plant may have mutated and evolved intelligence enough to know who its enemies are. He finds a brain in his microscope; he doesn’t see the vine creeping in the window behind him until it strangles him. Then it cuts the phone line and traps them inside. Mr. Hopkins gets out by using fire, but he leaves the family behind.
Voodoo
Biff goes next. He’s a musician, and his agent just got him a new gig in the West Indies. He offends the cigarette girl, and the local band leader points out that they are into voodoo, and many people here are into it. The band leader warns Biff to stay away from them.
Naturally, Biff follows them out later that night to watch them do their voodoo dance out in the jungle. He starts to write down the notes for their music, maybe for his act. They catch him in the act. The priest says the great god Damballa will get revenge on Biff for stealing from him.
They return to civilization, and Biff does in fact incorporate voodoo music into his act. He plays the voodoo-inspired tune at the club, and the doors start opening and closing in the wind, which has begun to pick up. Suddenly, it gets really windy, and papers and junk starts flying everywhere. The patrons start to get up and leave, but the band keeps on playing. Biff takes the music home with him to refine it.
He returns home to find Damballa in his living room.
Disembodied Hand
Mr. Franklin Marsh is a skeptic of the tarot cards, and also an art critic as a profession. He really hates the work of Eric Landor. The two men argue over the worth of Mr. Landor’s work. He then looks at a new artist and loves the work– it was done by a chimpanzee. Everyone has a good laugh at Marsh, especially Landor.
Landor starts following Marsh around, messing with his concentration and his sanity. Marsh doesn’t like these games, and he runs over Landor with his car. Landor loses his hand in the “accident.” Landor kills himself shortly afterwards.
Around the same time, Marsh starts seeing a disembodied hand crawling in his car. He throws it out the window, but it follows him home. He burns it in the fireplace, but then gets a surprise at work the next day. He puts the hand in a box and throws it in the river. It’ll never find him again, will it?
Vampire
Dr. Box Carroll is a newlywed. He cuts himself on the can opener, and his new bride, Nicole, wants to lick the blood off. The night after bedtime, she gets up, turns into a bat, and flies out the window. She meets Dr. Blake, Bob’s doctor partner.
There’s a strange case of anemia at the hospital this morning. The boy just doesn’t have enough blood, and there are bite marks on his neck. Blake jokes that it looks like a vampire, but they know that couldn’t be real. Blake took blood samples for testing, and when Bob explains this to Nicole, she’s very interested in where Blake’s lab is located. The bat attacks Drake, but he scares it off by making a cross with his arms.
The little boy returns to the hospital, and Drake wants to spend the night watching the boy to see what happens. He shoots the bat. Nicole comes home with a wounded hand. Drake knows it is Nicole, and he starts sharpening wooden stakes. He tells Bob all about vampires and how to kill them. That night, Bob stakes her.
The police thinks he’s crazy. Dr. Blake comes in and denies knowing anything about vampires. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” he says. The police carry Bob out, arrested for murdering his wife. “This town isn’t big enough for two doctors. Or two vampires.” Dr. Blake smiles and turns into a bat.
Each and every time, the final card, which explains how to avoid the future, it comes up with the death card. They all come to the conclusion that none of them have a future. They are all already dead. Dr. Schreck/Terror vanishes, leaving nothing but his cards. The train stops, and they all disembark– in Hell. They read the newspaper headline: “Train crashes– Five Dead.”
Commentary
These guys are all having a really bad day. The story with the creeping vine was pretty dumb, albeit acceptably short. The werewolf story could have been a little longer, but the others were just about right.
The acting was decent. About the only actor who didn’t really fit here was Cristopher Lee. His role as a whiny art critic was very out of character for him, and no, I don’t think he really pulled it off. Peter Cushing was fine, but despite being the titular character, his role wasn’t that big.