- Directed by Roy Ward Baker
- Written by Al Feldstein, William M Gaimes, Milton Subotsky
- Stars Curd Jurgens, Terry-Thomas, Tom Baker
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 27 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qddgkeh51jo
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s a very good anthology of five horror shorts showing the fates of five different men brought together in the tie-together. Each one is well done, with a strong cast and high production values that still hold up after nearly fifty years.
Synopsis
Five strangers take a defective (or cursed) elevator and get trapped in a basement vault. “A strange situation, this. Almost like a dream,” says one. For some reason, they decide to share their recurring nightmares. Yes, it’s an anthology.
Midnight Mess
The first tale begins. Rogers hires a private investigator to track down his sister and then when the PI reports back, Rogers kills him and takes his money back. He goes to the town where his sister lives, runs into a man on the street who warns him to get inside before it gets dark. He goes to a restaurant, but they close before dark; “They come out after dark,” says the waiter.
He goes to his sister Donna’s house. She says there have been seventeen cases of bodies drained of blood. Rogers came for her because their father died and left her everything… for as long as she lives, which turns out to be just a few more seconds.
He chuckles to himself as he leaves her body and goes outside. He goes back to the restaurant that was closing earlier, and now it’s packed with people. The food all tastes strange. He realizes all the entrees are blood. Once the other patrons realize that he’s not a vampire, they all come after him, including his undead sister…
The Neat Job
Critchit tells his dream next. He’s planning to get married soon to Eleanor. He gets annoyed that she’s moved the furniture. It really bothers his OCD; everything must be precise in its place. He flips out when she switches his underwear drawer to make some room for her own things; “We’re living chaos!” he whines. He lectures her on the value of neatness.
She complains to her friend that she only married him for his money. He goes to cook dinner, and then he freaks out when she forgot to replace the spaghetti sauce. The next morning, she has everything in perfect order, and he’s completely pleased with her. She tiptoes around the house all day, terrified of doing anything that will set him off again.
She has a little comedy of errors and accidentally destroys his workshop. He flips out again, and she puts a hammer through a skull. She cuts him up and puts all his body parts in jars on a shelf, carefully labeled. She did that neatly!
This Trick’ll Kill You
Sebastian tells his nightmare next. He and his wife were vacationing in India, and they watched one of the mystics doing a magic trick. Sebastian ruins the trick and shows how it’s done; he’s a magician himself.
Later, Sebastian watches the girl make a rope rise out of a basket by playing a horn. She then climbs the rope. Sebastian can’t explain that one and wants to know how it’s done. She swears there is no trick; the magic is in the rope. He offers to buy the rope, but she turns him down.
He lures the girl to their hotel room and has his wife pretend to be sick. The girl starts playing her horn, and the rope rises as before. Sebastian stabs her in the back and stuffs her corpse in the closet. The evil duo checks out the rope and horn. He plays the horn, and the rope rises. His wife climbs the rope just like the girl did. It works! She goes up– and vanishes! With a scream.
Then the rope whips and strangles Sebastian. The next day, the old magician, and the not-dead girl do their act in the square…
Bargain in Death
Maitland’s story begins in a graveyard. He’s been buried alive. We flashback to him taking pills and a drug to slow his heart; he plans to fake his own death for insurance money. His friend, Alex, will dig him up within twenty hours of his burial, and they’ll split the money. He plans to kill Alex after that. But Alex has his own plan; not digging up Maitland. What great friends.
A pair of medical students lament that they never have enough cadavers to examine. They sneak out to the cemetery to dig up Maitland, who ought to still be good and fresh. Meanwhile, Maitland’s oxygen is running low.
Alex on the other hand is driving through town, right past the cemetery; he had no intention of rescuing Maitland.
Maitland sits up, scaring the medical students who run out into the road, causing Alex to crash and die. Meanwhile, the gravedigger has beaten Maitland to death with his shovel. “Sorry about the head,” he laments. He just wanted to make sure the medical students got their money’s worth.
Drawn and Quartered
Mr. Moore says that his dream happens on the island of Haiti. He’s a starving artist. His friend Bob comes around and reveals that others have been selling Moore’s paintings for a small fortune, but he had no idea.
Moore goes to see the local witch doctor. He wants revenge on those who wronged him. The witch doctor tells Moore to put his hands in the building pot. Moore now has magic hands; everything he paints becomes real.
He packs up the painting he did of himself and flies back to London to encounter his agent, who has been stealing from him. Knowing the value and danger of having a self-portrait, he locks it in a safe for protection. The agent, the critic, and the gallery owner who cheated him meet and gloat about what they did to Moore. They laugh when he says he’ll have revenge.
He goes home and starts painting. He does really accurate portraits of the three men. He cuts out the eyes on the art critic’s painting. Across town, the man’s wife throws acid in his face. The art dealer’s painting loses his arms. He goes to see the third man, the agent, in person the next morning. He draws a bullet hole on the man’s painting and the agent kills himself.
Moore suddenly has trouble breathing. He remembers that his painting is locked in an airtight safe. He opens it, just in time. He then goes back to the agent’s office to retrieve his wristwatch. Meanwhile, a billboard painter above Moore’s studio drops a can of paint thinner through the skylight, right onto Moore’s self-portrait. Across town, Moore’s head gets run over by a truck.
All five men come to the conclusion that these nightmares they all had are memories of their own actual deaths. The elevator door opens, and they see the cemetery beyond…
Commentary
This was the sequel to “Tales from the Crypt” from the previous year, and it’s a very similar style. It’s a little harder to find today, so it must not have been as popular. Still, I really like it.
The segments are all fairly short, and none drag out at all. They have their little stories, and they all work pretty well. These were stories adapted from comic books, and they have a similar feel, with some establishing stuff, something happens, and then usually they end with a twist.