From Beyond the Grave (1973)

... aka: Creatures
... aka: Creatures from Beyond the Grave
... aka: Tales from Beyond the Grave
... aka: Tales from the Beyond
... aka: Undead, The

Directed by:
Kevin Connor

For my money, this is one of the best of the Amicus horror anthologies. Each of the four stories are based on the writings of R. Chetwynd-Hayes, whose work was also adapted in the later anthology THE MONSTER CLUB (1980). Quite well-produced, it's more imaginative than many others of its type and gets a lot of mileage from an outstanding cast. The framing device centers around an antiques store called Temptations Limited, where various customers show up to purchase - or in one case just steal - items from a mysterious and nameless proprietor played by a somewhat cadaverous-looking Peter Cushing. Every item somehow plays into each tale (usually actually causing the problem) and the customers usually do something to rub the proprietor the wrong way while at his shop. The set-up may have actually inspired Friday the 13th: The Series, which was unrelated to the slasher series and also centered around cursed antiques.

Our first customer is Edward Charlton (David Warner), who buys an ornate 400-year-old mirror that "looks like something that belongs in a medium's parlor." Because he's quite rude and attempts to get it for a price much cheaper than what it's actually worth, the proprietor - with a wily, knowing smirk on his face - allows him to take it home with him for peanuts. One evening, Edward has his friends over for a seance, where they manage to awaken a long-dormant spirit inside the mirror. The bearded, undead-looking man (Marcel Steiner) immediately takes possession of Edward, forces him to kill and demands "Feeeeeeed me... blooooood!" so he "can walk in the daylight." Edward lures a prostitute and then a girl from a nightclub back to his flat and murders them to appease the spirit; who starts looking more and more alive with each subsequent victim. Naturally, the man's spirit has been trapped inside the mirror for many years and Edward is now his ticket out. This has some good spooky imagery and the ghost man is pretty creepy, but it all leads up to a predictable resolution.

Our next story revolves around Christopher Lowe (Ian Bannen), an office manager trapped in a miserable marriage to a nasty little number named Mabel (Diana Dors). Mabel refuses to keep house or cook a decent meal, spends most of her time blowing through their money at a bingo parlor, constantly degrades Christopher over how much money he makes and gossips about him behind his back. Christopher has been buying matches and assorted small items from street vendor and war vet Jim Underwood (Donald Pleasance), who invites him back to home for dinner. There, Christopher meets Jim's homely and quiet, though polite, intelligent and oddly alluring daughter Emily (Donald's real-life daughter, Angela Pleasence) and becomes romantically interested in her. Hey, anything's better than the monster he's currently with, right? To impress Jim, Christopher steals a medal from the antique shop and pretends to have served in the military himself. The rest involves murder, witchcraft and a little voodoo. As far as I'm concerned, this is easily the best of these stories. The casting is great and the twist ending is a genuine surprise.

Tale #3 starts with Reginald Warren (Ian Carmichael) showing up at the antique store and switching prices on a small silver snuff box to get it for cheaper. Aboard a train, Reggie encounters loud, eccentric and very wired clairvoyant Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton), who claims she sees an "elemental" - an invisible evil creature of the air, Earth or water that lusts after the pleasures of the flesh - on the guy's shoulder. She gives him her business card in case he needs her services. When Reginald returns home, evidence of the creature is soon made obvious. His dog runs off, his shoulder starts slumping and every time he gets near his wife Susan (Nyree Dawn Porter), the beast scratches or hits her and even tries to strangle her in her sleep. Reginald is forced to contact Madame Orloff, who promptly swings by to exorcise the evil spirit before it can possessed its host... and ends up basically destroying their entire home in the process! The resolution is a little on the weak side, but a superb comedic performance from Leighton saves the day.

Finally, William Seaton (Ian Ogilvy) shows up at Temptations Limited to purchases a very old, hand-carved wooden door. He's unable to come up with the full asking price, but the proprietor settles for 10 pounds less. William brings the door home and puts it over a closet. As it turns out, the piece had been cursed by a warlock (Jack Watson) centuries earlier. Instead of always opening up to reveal the closet, the door sometimes opens up to reveal a huge blue room where a ghostly man lurks. The door turns out to be a portal to a "ghost room" which "must be fed" blood from time to time. Lesley Anne Down plays Rosemary, William's wife, whom the ghost wants to sacrifice. Will the fact William actually paid for his purchase and was honest with the proprietor actually change his fate?

Things wrap up back at the antique store where a burglar (Ben Howard) attempts to rob the place but ends up in a rather prickly situation instead. All four tales have something to offer, though my clear favorites were the second and third stories. Both seemed to flow better in their alloted time slots than the other two, while the first and fourth segments seem a little underbaked and rushed (though they're still interesting). Despite a cast full of male horror heavyweights, the most memorable contributions here actually come from Leighton and Angela Pleasence.

★★★

Streghe (1989)

... aka: Pesadilla (Nightmare)
... aka: Streghe - Witch Story
... aka: Superstition 2
... aka: Witch Story

Directed by:
Alessandro Capone

Thanks to the huge success of Kevin Tenney's Witchboard (1986) and George Miller's The Witches of Eastwick (1987), there was a brief boom in witch-themed (and titled) movies during the later part of the decade that lasted well into the 90s. There was the TV movie Bay Coven (1987), the Filmirage production WITCHERY (1988) starring the amusing duo of Linda Blair and David Hasselhoff, as well as WITCHCRAFT (1988), WITCHCRAFT II: THE TEMPTRESS (1989) and eleven more in that particular series, Spellbinder (1988), Teen Witch (1989), WITCHTRAP (1989) and others. Most of these movies seemed to do well on video and cable simply by having the word 'witch' in their title. A few others weren't so lucky. Case in point is the obscure Witch Story. Never officially released in America, this Italian / U.S. co-production (filmed in both Florida and Rome) is actually somewhat better than many of the above-listed, widely-distributed 'witch' films. It's certainly much better than any of those wretched Witchcraft movies, for instance. Not to say this is good by any means because it's not. The film is saddled with a muddled, confusing plot, several flagrantly annoying characters and abysmal acting from most of the cast. However, the film has fair production values, decent camerawork and at least some sense of visual style.

Things begin in 1932 in Micanopy, Florida. Helena Hayes (Deanna Lund), a witch, is hunted down by a torch-carrying posse. She's called "Satan's whore," has a cross thrust in her face, is stabbed through the leg with a pitchfork, gets branded on the chest and is chained to a tree, covered in gasoline and set on fire... and all in front of her young daughter Rachel (Suzanne Law). A priest, Father Matthew, tries to intervene in her killing, but is pushed away before he can do anything. Before dying, Helena curses her attackers and their children. Not long after, little Rachel decides to leap to her death through a window. Having been the daughter of a witch, she could never find anyone to play with her, but she'll try to make up for this later.

Now we jump ahead to 1989. Newly orphaned siblings Carol (Michelle Vannucchi) and Ed (Gary Kerr) - whose parents were mysteriously murdered - find a deed to a property their father owned in Florida. The two, along with six of their friends, take a bus from their home state of New York down South to check the place out. Before reaching their destination, a few of them encounter a weird priest, whose eyes bleed simply by looking at a picture of their inherited home. He warns them to turn around before it's too late, they decide to just brush it off ("He must have seen too many reruns of The Exorcist!") and go about their plans. Arriving in Florida, the gang meet up with Carol and Ed's distant cousin Simona (Nancie Sanderson), and she leads them to the secluded and run-down home, which hasn't been occupied for fifty years. Naturally, the place is the same home where Helena was torched and Rachel committed suicide. Predictable supernatural carnage ensues as a couple of them are possessed and everyone else is killed off. The two who manage to survive decide to go locate now-elderly Father Matthew (Ian Bannen) in hopes that he can somehow help them.

Special mention certainly must be made of the idiotic characters. Gloria (Charon Butler) - the black female in the group - proclaims "I'm 21 years old and I'm black!" when asked to describe herself and is naturally extremely sassy. But that gross stereotype is nothing compared to the depiction of the 'comic relief fat guy,' Paul (Jason M. Lefkowitz). Not only is he incredibly obnoxious, but there are constant jokes centered around what a disgusting slob he is. He burps, farts, eats with his mouth open, screams for no reason, constantly stuffs junk food into his mouth, pukes up KFC coleslaw, eats jelly out of a jar with his fingers and sleeps with a bag of potato chips under his arm. His "friends" lovingly refer to him as "Fatso." Funny it is not. The other victims falls into the expected 80s archetypes; geek, blonde slut (who strips down to her bra and panties and dances on the dinner table), jock and bland nice guy love interest for our heroine.

Sure, most of these people are just fodder (and not a one of them can act), but did they really have to make them so irritating? ... Or so stupid? Despite the frequency of strange occurrences in the home, including windows busting out on their own, strange gusts of wind that seem to come from nowhere, tarot card readings that spell their doom, bloody nightmares and frequent sightings of the ghostly little girl, these dunderheads don't even really contemplate leaving. They stay there until they're killed. Or as Gloria puts it "What the fuck kind of vacation is this?"

The film contains numerous horror references, including direct nods to Psycho, The Exorcist, "The Addams Family," "The Twilight Zone" and Stephen King. Not only that, but it blatantly borrows ideas from numerous other films. The girl ghost dressed in a white nightgown is clearly swiped from Bava's Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966), right down to her rolling a ball at people she wants to "play" with. Climactic scenes utilize fire and shattering glass in a way that brings to mind Argento's Inferno (1980), and scenes inside a run-down old building steal ideas (and sometimes even identical camera shots) from several then-recent genre hits, including NIGHT OF THE DEMONS (1987) and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 (1987).

Our two name stars - Bannen (a frequent presence in British horror of the 70s) and Lund (a former TV star who tried to reinvent herself as a Scream Queen in the late 80s) seem to be enjoying themselves, though their big confrontation at the end, with each of them trying to shout religious diatribes over one another while a shrill little girl shrieks over and over again, is annoying to put it mildly. Regardless, both actors are clearly the only two pros in this particular cast and are definite assets to the film. Thankfully, it also has some nicely-done visual effects (especially toward the end), very stylized lighting choices, excellent art direction and enough blood (fx are by Rick Gonzales) to keep one reasonably entertained.

The version I saw (unfortunately an extremely dark print) was taken from the Japanese VHS.

★★