Tales From The Crypt 1972 / Freddie Francis Where does one start with examining arguably Amicus’ greatest portmanteau film? Well, for me, wiping away the tears first while trying to get over the emotionally draining aspect of perhaps its most famous segment is the way to go, but more about that later… Following several box office disappointments, which included I, Monster (UK, Stephen Weeks, 1971), Amicus’ head honchos, Milton Subotsky and Max J Rosenberg, decided to go back to their trusty anthology format, which had brought them so much success in the past. Subotsky was a long-stan ..read more

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THE VAULT OF HORROR 1973 / Roy Ward Baker As a kid, the dull and drawn-out limbo of a school summer holiday was punctuated by a week-long stay with my grandparents. An annual treat would be a trip to Cardiff where I had some pocket money ready to spend, always kindly boosted by Nan & Gramps. My most formative trip was spent in a comic shop, my poor Nan accommodating a good hour of me gaping at their enormous selection, unsure of how to whittle it down to just a few comics and an issue of Fangoria. Amongst other things, I came away with a reprint of EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt ..read more

Asylum 1972 / Roy Ward Baker Robert Powell races his sports car through the torrential rain of the English countryside, as the whirling, pounding sound of Mussorgsky’s Night On Bald Mountain fills the air. He pulls up to a gated country house just as the sturm und drang climaxes, and with that crescendo, the title bursts onto the screen: Asylum, an Amicus production. As the titles continue we see the writer is Robert Bloch. Like Bloch’s 1959 novel Psycho, Asylum (UK, Roy Ward Baker, 1972) is a pulpy treatment of the fear of insanity. Unlike Psy ..read more

WHAT BECAME OF JACK AND JILL? 1972 / Bill Bain By the time that the cameras rolled on What Became of Jack and Jill? (UK, Bill Bain, 1972) In 1970, Amicus had been a proud purveyor of horror for a full five years. In the space of that time, however, tastes had begun to change. The delights of Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (UK, Freddie Francis, 1965) would no longer cut it for horror’s most reliable market – the teen audiences in search of a few good scares in between snogs on the back row. Mindful of the ever-increasing risk of becoming staid, both Amicus and its biggest UK rival Hamme ..read more