"THE VAULT OF HORROR" (1973)

Starring

Tom Baker

Michael Craig

Curt Jürgens

Daniel Massey

Terry-Thomas

Directed by Roy Ward Baker

86 minutes

As we all know (and if you don’t know, then prepare to be amazed), Hammer was the top dog in the production of quality British horror films throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, producing such terrifying and blood curdling titles as "The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb", "Dracula", "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "Mutiny On the Buses". However, it must be said that by the 70s they were drying up, relying more on more on messy killings, and semi-naked lovelies parading about and rubbing each others breasts (though, for many, this would have been no bad thing, and really shouldn’t be for me either – damn my abnormalities). Around the time that Hammer was beginning to look a little shaky, various other studios arrived on the market to try, unsuccessfully, to take its place. One of these was Amicus films, a company that nowadays is remembered primarily for its series of horror anthologies, in which several short stories of thrills n’ spills were strung around a suspect central concept and put in the cinemas for the unwashed masses to watch. Some of these stand up as being every bit as entertaining as anything Hammer ever did, including the absolutely majestic "Asylum" and "The House that Dripped Blood", which manage to be both unnerving and absurdly camp. Yes, Amicus made its fair share of fantastically enjoyable films. "The Vault of Horror" is not such a film.

But how could a horror film starring the likes of Terry-Thomas and a pre-Doctor Who Tom Baker possibly go wrong? Well, for a start, it looks diabolically cheap, like something cobbled together by some BBC canteen workers during a spare half hour in their schedules (this is not meant to be a slight against the creative merits of BBC canteen workers, but merely an ironic comparison between the efforts of those paid for such duties compared to those who shouldn’t normally be required to do a spot of set-designing during their hard days work). As a friend of mine on a forum I frequent remarked recently when we were discussing the film, "it looks as though somebody’s stolen the budget the night before". Of course, looking cheap is hardly the death knell for a slice of visual entertainment – if that were so, there would be no fans for such series as "Doctor Who", "Blake’s 7" or "Bless this House" (I know you’re out there, both of you). Unfortunately, "Vault" is also depressingly boring, with stories that ramble and appear to have been made up as they go along, presented without inspiration, and linked by a central concept dubiously bereft of any form of imagination whatsoever. Some of the themes or original ideas of the individual stories strike you as being rather good (the "buried alive" one in particular), but that’s as far as it goes.

Our film opens with several middle aged men (if I’m being charitable) getting into a lift and standing about looking awkward, like a re-enactment of the "farting in a lift" scene from "Revenge of the Pink Panther". Eventually one of them notices that they’re not going to the floor that they asked for, whereupon the doors open upon a bright and tatty looking cellar (or basement, if you’d prefer…) with a fireplace and some terrible 70s décor. After wandering around, the lift doors close behind them, with no button their side with which they can regain access to it. Nobody seems particularly concerned – "Somebody’s bound to help us eventually," (erm, why?), and so they sit down at the mysteriously laid table, pour refreshments and begin to natter amongst themselves. "It’s almost like a dream." "Dreams are much scarier – at least, mine are!" Eh? Cue somebody burbling about a recurring dream they’ve had, and Terry-Thomas urging him to tell us all about it. Thank you, Terry. And so we launch into our first story, and it only took about four minutes to get there.

It’s easiest to review these segments separately, though of course the end review will resemble every other online review of this film that there is, and it’ll look like plagiarism. However, I shall attempt to wield knowledge of Terry-Thomas when the time comes to show that, yes miss, this is all my own work. Hurrah!

If I was the bitchy sort, I’d say that this is an extremely apt title. However, I’m not, so I shan’t. Daniel Massey, an actor with a constantly curling lip, plays a greasy, nasty piece of work who talks to some sort of investigator, kills him off, and is then seen walking the streets and approaching an ominous looking house. There’s an odd bit here when, having knocked on the door, our young "hero" waits for approximately three seconds before deciding to pop over to the restaurant across the road. Righto. Upon getting himself a table, which isn’t difficult considering that there’s nobody else about, Co-ordinator Elgin from "The Deadly Assassin" wanders in and warns him that "they come out at night!" Has Dan found himself in the midst of some sort of devilish nocturnal homosexual community? Realising that he’s not going to be served any time soon, Dan leaves the restaurant and goes back to knock on the door of the house he visited earlier, and this time waits around long enough to actually be let inside. Turns out he’s paying a call on his sister, in order to chat about some sort of family inheritance, whereupon he snarls, stabs her to death and even nicks one of her carnations as he leaves just to be a complete bastard. And then what better thing to do after a spot of violent killing than to dine at the restaurant across the road? Again. This time the place is full of patrons, and he’s more successful at getting served, but finds that things aren’t quite what they seem – which is just as well or the story would have been even duller than it already is. Man commits two murders and has a three-course meal before going home for a kip? Not here, son. "The soup tastes peculiar…"

It may appear to you readers that the plot of this little vignette is all over the place – the effect is amplified when you actually watch it. However, it looks so dingy and it’s played so straight that it can’t even be enjoyed for the slice of campy nonsense that it’s trying so desperately to be. This segment really needed a Geoffrey Bayldon cameo or a Christopher Lee central performance, but as it is comes across as poorly plotted and underwritten ten minutes of pure tosh, and doesn’t bode well for the rest of the film ahead.

Nobody else in the cellar seems fussed by his story either, and a moody Tom Baker starts on Terry-Thomas to spin them a yarn about his own nightmare, and Terry, bless him, obliges, moaning "It seems so real… so real…"

Terry-Thomas is sitting in a pub chatting over a pint with a friend. "I’m getting married!" says Terry. "At your age???" his friend exclaims, displaying an astonishing lack of tact bordering on the offensive, "Why on Earth should she marry you?" Good ol’ Terry merely smiles and takes the abuse, though I suspect he secretly did him in between scenes. Anyway, next we see Terry at his home, standing amidst absolutely horrid 70s décor and dodgy furniture. He looks so stunningly out of place that you instantly begin to feel sorry for the man that he’s even in this dreck. The plot that unfolds involves the missus coming to realise that her new husband has a nasty case of compulsive behaviour and pedantry – "A place for everything and everything in its place!" Everything she does meets with his disapproval, and her rearranging of furniture or clothes has him fuming and ranting away like nobody’s business.

Terry-Thomas, as you may know, is one of my favourite film actors (he’s the chap on the left in this website section’s banner) – yes, he basically plays the same character in every film, but, dammit, he plays it well. Every one of his upper-class toffs, cunning scoundrels and stiff-upper-lipped colonels is performed to the hilt with a superb blend of pomposity, bristling Britishness and a whole lot of something else that made him one of the most consistently funny men in cinema. He only needs to raise his eyebrows, flash that gap-toothed grin of his and growl another "Splendid!" for me to start smiling. Always good value for money, our Terry. Unfortunately, "Vault" isn’t one of his finer moments, and in fact is probably the most lifeless performance he ever gave. You can see he’s trying, but his heart really isn’t in it. Still, my girlfriend, who isn’t a Terry-Thomas connoisseur, thought he was rather good, so I’m probably spoilt by having seen him do far better – "How to Murder Your Wife", for instance, is just nowhere near as fun when Terry isn’t on screen, playing the classiest butler you ever did see. He even gets his own spot of straight-to-camera narration in that one. Marvellous. But, turning our attentions back to "Vault of Horror", a scene where Terry mistakenly puts on a pair of his wife’s knickers is surely the nadir of his entire career. It’s a horrid sight, one that I’ve lovingly preserved for you all in the accompanying screenshot, so that I can feel better in the fact that I’m not the only person here to have suffered having to see it.

What follows is some bizarre "Terry and June" style domestic shenanigans and somebody doing something rather violent with a hammer. And so ends Terry’s dream, the camera refocusing on his depressed visage and the words "It’s all so real…" drifting through the air once more. Onto story three.

This jeering berk that you see in the screenshot presented ponces about an Indian market and takes the piss out of a local magician during his act, walking up to him and ripping it apart to show the audience how it’s all achieved. This story lost my interest at this point, about one minute into the duration, due to my intense loathing of the main character, and I found myself simply wishing that it would hurry up and end so that I could see the idiot get his, hopefully painful, comeuppance. First, Curt Jürgens and his ladylove discuss how their holiday has been a waste owing to the lack of any decent magic tricks that they can rip off to wow the crowds back home in Blighty. However, they may have spoken too soon as the next day Curt finds a young girl who’s rather good at the Indian rope trick. Problem: she doesn’t want to sell the trick to him. Ah. Oh well. That won’t stop him, will it, boys and girls? Some sentient, otherworldly powers, a pool of mysterious blood on the ceiling of the hotel room, and an over-abundance of sitar music make up the rest of this little debacle, which only manages to raise the interest levels with some farcical slow motion action during the finale.

At least Michael Craig, back in the cellar, finds it all terribly interesting. He leans forward, whispering "I have a similar vision… but not quite…" He’s not kidding either – in fact, it’s completely different in every way, which was much to the shared delight of myself and the ladyfriend at the time (the fact that I was watching it with her was the one thing that made it really bearable; at least I had somebody to laugh at it with).

"A grave… a freshly dug grave… my grave!"

So speaks Michael Craig, an actor I’d known only for starring in "Doctor in Love" with Leslie Phillips. The segment opens with Mike buried deep underground in a coffin, with only a lighted match and a wonky 70s ‘tache to keep him comfortable. We learn by intermittent flashback sequences that this is all apparently part of some sort of insurance scam that he and his mate concocted earlier. Basically, Mike takes some pills that slow his pulse down and make it look like he’s dead, so that he can then get buried and his mate can claim the life insurance money and the two of them can get clean away and share the cash. "The perfect plan…" Well, yes, except of course that he’s rather counting on his friend, who now has several thousands pounds worth of money for himself, coming back to dig him out. Yes. Well.

Sigh.

Unsurprisingly, said friend does a runner, and so we’re left with two medical students trying to pass their biology course. "If only we had a body of our own!" You what? Before you can say "Of course it had to be students," they’re off to do a spot of grave robbing. And guess whose grave they decide to rob? The entire plotline of this vignette had the two of us scratching our heads in bored confusion, and indeed the only point that we could make at the end of it all was that, if the oxygen is running out in the coffin as Mike keeps telling us, why does he proceed to keep lighting matches? Cretin.

And so on to the last in this collection of stories, which also, despite being by far the longest, is also the best.

Yes, it has a terrible title, but it’s still the best story here. Trust me.

Tom Baker, sporting a swufty cream jacket and a goatee, is a struggling painter out in Haiti. Upon learning from his best friend, who just happens to be dropping by (in the middle of the rainforest), that his paintings have been systematically sold off for huge prices once he’d already sold them to art critics for a pittance, Tom decides to help himself to some Tom Bakery revenge. Yes, that’s right, he heads off to learn the power of voodoo.

Quite.

Thanks to an obliging tribesman, Tom gets the terrifying power of being able to make anything happen so long as he paints/draws it, an ability he tests by sketching a vase and screwing up the drawing, which low and behold shatters the vase. He also paints a scar on a self portrait of himself (!!!) and is surprised when, during the night, he cuts his cheek. Well done. Then it’s time for a return to good old London, where he paints the portraits of the three main critics and art dealers on his hit list so that he may despatch them at his leisure. The whole story is rather let down by the ludicrous notion that, having gained the dangerous power that he has, Tom actually finishes the self-portrait of himself that he’d begun earlier, so it doesn’t take too long to work out where the story’s going. Still, Denholm Elliot’s in it, which is always a good thing. And the ending is admittedly rather chilling. Almost makes watching the previous 85 minutes worthwhile.

And so we come to the end of the film, which closes on a "twist" ending and Jurgens telling the audience what it was all about in the first place. The impact is lessened by the fact that it’s a repeat of the ending of an earlier Amicus anthology made a few years before, and, considering the circumstances, it’s grossly unfair on poor Terry-Thomas, who didn’t actually commit any crimes beyond being a neat freak. I’m afraid "Vault" really isn’t very good. It seems like an Amicus anthology on auto-pilot, and borrows elements from its relatives so that it looks evermore substandard and limp - both the Haiti voodoo stuff and the violence towards art critics and artists were present in separate sections of "Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors", and even having a Doctor Who in it isn’t too unique, what with Jon Pertwee’s sparkling turn in "The House that Dripped Blood" upstaging it in almost every way. Wasting a superb comic actor like Terry-Thomas in a role that gives him precious few laughs doesn’t do it any favours either. No, I’m sorry, but "The Vault of Horror" suffers when compared to the anthology films of the period, and even when regarded on its own it still can’t be seen as anything other than a lot of wasted potential.

Score out of Ten