TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972) - 40 years old and now on Blu-ray

TALES FROM THE CRYPT

(1972, UK)

Another look at the first EC horror comics movie

To mark the 40th year of Amicus Films' Tales From The Crypt, I watched the recently released Australian blu-ray, a very welcome HD upgrade. With so many darkly-lit horror films, there's sometimes 'picture lag' on DVD, where the shadows and darker areas freeze and shift, moving differently to the lighter foreground. Probably a combination of DVD compression and viewing it on an LCD screen, made even more noticeable by a larger screen-size. Blu-ray lessens the problems with its higher storage capacity.

Roy Ashton make-up study

There's a little grain, as expected, and the print seems to have been in good condition. It's a slightly lighter presentation than I'm used to, Peter Cushing's 'black eye' masks are even more noticeable now. Of course, it's easy enough to adjust the contrast and brightness at home to make the scene suitably murky. Grimsdyke's scenes are so brief, I wish they'd just painted his eyes black and guided Cushing into doing the scenes completely blind. Okay, I think about that scene too much... but it's still one of the greatest-looking zombie make-ups.

The dead walks!

Tales From The Crypt of course has other undead characters... Plus of course the glorious, restored, censor cut that appeared in all the DVD versions. It used to be a huge jumpy film splice when it screened on TV in the 70s and 80s.

Late 1970s TV Times clipping

The Joan Collins segment really grabbed me. My first taste of a yet-to-be-named 'home invasion' story. Almost a silent movie, the story unfolds as we share her character's thoughts, communicated through some great visual storytelling. She discovers there's a raving lunatic just outside the house (dressed as Santa Claus), and quickly has to secure the house, barring the windows as he stalks around looking for a way in. All this is conveyed through her eyes and reactions. There's no dialogue, just an ironic roster of jolly Christmas carols playing on the radio.

Publicity foldout, and the original paperback novelisation

It's not the only story with effective, lengthy, wordless scenes. Ian Hendry's Maitland stalks around after a car crash, but we only see the horror develop through his point-of-view. In the final story, Major Rogers runs a home for the blind by skimming the money for himself. He pays for his crimes, locked in a solitary cell, again with no-one to talk to. Along with him, we experience his punishment gradually and silently.

While the original EC Comics stories would have a cruelly witty captioned commentary from the Crypt Keeper, the film presents him as a character inside the action, rather than a TV host. He's presented as a marvellously mysterious and ambivalent figure. What's missing in this early visualisation of Tales From The Crypt is humour, but that's certainly a benefit. Without the release of laughter, each ghastly twisted ending remains more haunting.

What a knight for a Crypt Keeper...

While IMDB currently lists the UK release as "October 1972", the UK premiere was September 28th (according to a contemporary issue of Films & Filming). In London that month, Crypt was up against John Boorman's wilderness classic Deliverance, Michael Ritchie's brutal Prime Cut and Ken Russell's angrily artful Savage Messiah. Tough, grim competition, but Crypt continued the success of the many short story horror films from Amicus Productions.

Australian Blu-ray, but the title heading is from the TV series

I was initially reluctant to order this Australian blu-ray, released by Shock Entertainment, because of the mixture of right and wrong artwork on the sleeve. There are photos from both the 1972 film and the 1990s US TV series. On the front cover is the poster from the film, but the typeface and green gloopy art is from the TV series. The front cover gives 50/50 odds as to which movie it contains. Thankfully, it's the Amicus film, but these confusing errors must have lost them sales.

More lobby cards, more facts, more of a review about Tales From The Crypt in Black Hole Movies here

The 1964 Ballantine reprint

In other trivia, the Wikipedia piece on the movie reports that writer/producer Milton Subotsky based most of his script on this 1964 volume of reprints because the original comics weren't available. Explaining the coincidence of why this paperback (published in the UK and US) has four out of the five original comic strips. (The fifth story was picked from the 1965 Vault of Horror reprint).

More about Grimsdyke's simple but effective make-up on the Peter Cushing blogspot and Grimsdyke rises again (publicity photo)...

Tales from the Crypt is uncut on DVD in the US and UK

Tales From The Crypt on DVD in the UK, pictured at the top

Tales From the Crypt on DVD in the USA, double-bill with Vault of Horror

1972 Jack Oleck novelisation, back cover

4bia (2008) - patchy Thai horror anthology

4bia
(2008, Thailand, See Prang)

I'm quite reluctant to write this review. I want to encourage Thai movies internationally, especially since the country is so keen on the supernatural genre. But I'm duty bound to write an honest review, to compensate for the growing hype, from both the east and the west. 4bia may have been successful in Thailand, with a sequel in the works already, but most of the good reviews seem to be saying 'this is very good... for a Thai movie'. Yes, 4bia has elements that are rare in Thai cinema - car stunts and CGI characters, for instance. While this might be impressive in Thailand, I don't honestly think it'll be at all satisfying for regular horror fans. 4bia only has one story out of four that I can recommend.

It's made up of four short horror stories, all by different Thai directors. While the title is a twist on phobia, the common thread is ghosts, as is usual with Thai horror.


The first segment is called Loneliness (though the onscreen title on the Malay DVD was Happiness). I was disappointed that the story centred on a mobile phone, now a ragged Asian horror cliche. The pace also started quite slowly, as a young woman with her leg in a cast starts getting text messages from a mysterious admirer. Just as I was getting restless, the tale started to get successfully creepy. This was interesting considering the director's previous films included The Iron Ladies films, basically feelgood comedies. But the carefully built atmosphere was shattered by a clumsy shock moment from a shoddy video effect and a confusing sting in the tale.


Second up was Tit For Tat, an example of the more gruesome wave of Thai horror that aspires to ladle out bloody shock effects. A schoolboy is victimised by a nasty gang of bullies and takes revenge using black magic. But this is presented with fast-cutting, shaky camerawork, pumped-up colours and a barrage of computer-generated effects, some successful (a whirlwind of paper) and some definitely not (CGI characters). The uneven special effects distracted me from the already flimsy story.

Best of the lot is the third story, In The Middle. Directed with a sure hand, from a director of Alone and the superb Shutter, Banjong Pisanthanakun. This is well-paced, well-acted and largely original. Four boys are on a camping trip in the forest, scaring each other with ghost stories in the tent at night and teasing each other about which horror films they've seen, (cue some smart in-jokes). But next day they have a Deliverance-style accident and the trip turns into a nightmare. This was easily the best - well made, scary and didn't insult horror fans.


Lastly is Last Fright where a stewardess attends to royalty on a specially chartered flight. But the princess starts ill-treating the attendant and everything escalates rather alarmingly. In the story's mission to scare, logic goes completely out the window in order to create any scares. Like part two, the director cheats the viewer every whichway, in order to get the shocks. The premise of royalty of any country (in this case a fictitious one) hiring a huge passenger jet all for one person is far-fetched to begin with. An appalling CGI plane sabotaged the segment, while the interior set was just about convincing.

So, a mixed bag, above average horror for Thailand, just about good enough as a TV film, OK for DVD. It's an accurate overview of Thai approaches to horror, with some over-familiar subjects. I'd like to see the directors of Dorm and Victim invited to the next batch.

The Malay DVD from Golden Satellite (pictured at top) is non-anamorphic widescreen. The English subtitles were well-translated but non-removable. Any curse words were censored with a silly black blob over the offending words. This could indicate that the gore had also been cut down for Malaysia. Maybe the promised UK DVD release later this year will have more gore (in the second story?).

As I'm still feeling guilty, in the name of balance here's the gushy review that inspired me to write this, and a far more balanced and informative review from Wise Kwai.