(dramatic music)
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- Guillermo del Toro once made this observation
that, you know, ever since humans gathered around a campfire
and could talk, we've been telling stories
about the dark and what lives inside it.
(ghostly whispering)
There's something about that human desire
to want to tell scary stories to each other.
- First of all, I love anthology horror films,
and there were a lot of them.
- I think the appeal of anthology horror
is that sometimes things are really scary
in shorter periods of time.
- [Jovanka Vuckovic] Short form horror,
it's just this enduring medium.
(woman screaming)
(eerie rock music)
(women screaming)
- We started this documentary about anthology horror
before the pandemic.
- We had spoken to a handful of experts.
David Del Valle, Bruce Hallenbeck, Mick Garris,
Jovanka Vuckovic, Amanda Reyes.
- About the whole history of anthology horror.
And then the pandemic happened.
- And we just thought, well, everybody's at home anyway,
we might as well contact people and ask them
what their favorite anthology film is,
what their favorite segment out of an anthology film is.
- Zoom actually afforded us the opportunity
to interview many more people
than we had originally intended.
Recording. So you go ahead when you're ready.
- It's so difficult to say favorites,
because it all depends on which mood I'm in.
- I have three, I just couldn't narrow it down to one.
My first one is "Spirits of the Dead."
- "Tales from the Darkside."
- "Kwaidan."
- "Tales That Witness Madness."
- "Tales From the Crypt."
- "Trick 'r Treat."
- "Tales of Terror."
- "Ghost Stories" from 2017.
- "Dead of Night."
- Probably "Black Sabbath."
- From 1983, it's "Twilight Zone."”
- Definitely "From Beyond the Grave."
It's the best by a country mile,
and I say that as someone who adores
every one of them. (chuckles)
- I suppose I've always been interested
in the anthology, or the portmanteau,
as we used to call it,
because in general, I prefer the short form,
i.e., the short story, a single, as opposed to the album.
- You could sort of create a desert island one
out of stories from different portmanteaus, couldn't you?
- It might be good to actually do a poll,
'cause a lot of people talk about
what's their favorite episode, what's their favorite film,
and there's always a lot of debate about it.
- We interviewed over 60 different people,
and now we're gonna look at what everybody said.
(mysterious music)
- The whole idea of a horror anthology,
it's just not an obvious way to make a movie.
But there were always books of short stories, or novellas,
or stories packaged together into single volumes.
So there had been precedents.
- [Jovanka Vuckovic] The early magazines, like "Graham's"
and "Weird Tales,"
and places that Poe was sending his short stories.
- Edgar Allan Poe is, I think,
for any public school kid in the United States,
he's one of the few authors of horror, mystery,
superstition, that you're introduced to at an early age.
I still love his stuff.
To me, he's the consummate stylist.
- Many of the greatest stories in the field
are short stories, some of the greatest would be
Lovecraft's "Colour Out of Space,"
Blackwood's "The Willows," Machen's "The White People,”
and you could very easily find those in anthologies.
- [Kim Newman] These books were floating around,
they were always old.
I'm of the generation that we had these paperbacks,
like "The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories"
or the "Pan Book of Horror Stories."
We grew up with the notion of bite-sized horror.
- There's "Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural”
from the mid-'40s, and that's pretty well
all the great series up to that point.
Not strictly horror, but a very splendid book indeed,
is "The Weird," which spreads its wings a little further,
and also in terms of internationalism,
translated work which sent you after writers
you'd never previously heard of.
- [Kim Newman] And it's partly because horror,
particularly ghost stories,
work really well as short stories,
arguably better than novel length,
which did actually feed into some kind of formal TV culture.
(mysterious horror music)
- The anthology film is a direct result
of the Germanic influence that came from the Black Forest,
where children would go to these puppet shows,
what they call puppetspiels.
They were told all of these dark,
mythic, legendary stories that children love
to be frightened by, "Hansel and Gretel,"
"The Tales of Hoffman," Grimm's fairytales.
And these puppetspiels traveled
in all the major cities, Berlin, Bremerhaven, Munich.
And some of those children grew up to be famous directors
that immigrated to Hollywood, like Paul Leni,
Fritz Lang, actors like Conrad Veidt, Paul Wegener,
and they lent themselves to stories of the grotesque
and the arabesque, as Edgar Allen Poe would say.
(ominous piano music)
- There were in fact, a couple of silent horror films
that were anthology films.
The first one was in 1919 in Germany,
and that was called "Eerie Tales."
(mysterious music)
That was at a time when film
was just basically becoming feature length,
and they already came up with the anthology
horror film format.
There were five different stories in it.
There was a framing story that took place in a bookshop.
It was basically the template
for all the ones that followed.
And then there was a movie called "Waxworks,"
which was also made in Germany,
which obviously took place in a wax works,
and had a Jack the Ripper character.
- [David Del Valle] You look at things like "Waxworks,"
where Conrad Veidt plays Ivan the Terrible.
Veidt played Cesare in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari."
He had a face that could lend itself
to almost any kind of makeup or character.
And he specialized in the bizarre before Lon Chaney, really.
So Conrad Veidt was the first bonafide movie star
who specialized in horror.
- Once we get into sound,
(mysterious clanging)
(rifles firing)
There was the 1932 remake of "Eerie Tales,"
also in Germany by the same director.
Movie which was known in this country as "The Living Dead."
(clock chiming)
And after that, there was a bit of a lag.
(ominous piano music)
- [David] Then Julien Duvivier did "Flesh and Fantasy."
"Flesh and Fantasy" was really the offshoot
of another anthology movie that was not fantastic,
called "Tales of Manhattan."
The success of "Tales of Manhattan"
greenlit "Flesh and Fantasy," which had three stories,
the first one involving a rather homely woman
who, on the eve of the Mardi Gras,
goes to this magic shop where she's given a mask,
and for the whole evening, she's somebody else.
And it's a beautifully done story.
Then there's one with Barbara Stanwyck
in a circus, involving a dream
that perhaps someone's going to fall to their death.
- Maybe it will come true.
- [David Del Valle] And then one with Edward G. Robinson,
where Thomas Mitchell is a clairvoyant who sees death
in Edward G. Robinson's hands.
- What is in my hand?
- [Septimus] Murder.
- In 1943, there was a movie
called "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors,"
which was actually a compilation film.
- [David Del Valle] What they did was basically take feature films
like "Return of Chandu,” which was a serial,
one of the four versions of "The Golem,"
starring Paul Wegener, Bela Lugosi's "White Zombie,"
and then they re-edited them, including actually filmed
for that movie, Robert Louis Stevenson's short story
called "The Suicide Club."
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] All tied together with some character
called Dr. Terror, who was investigating
these strange occurrences.
- [David Del Valle] I can only speculate
based on the photographs I've seen from it,
but it achieved a kind of legendary status
because of the posters and the stills.
It all looks rather fascinating.
- Anthology horror films go back a long way,
but the high point to me has always been
and probably will always be "Dead of Night."
(people laughing maniacally)
- Just room for one more inside, sir.
- Probably one of the best in anthologies.
I mean, they've never done the ventriloquist dummy story
better than that.
- That's a truly classic piece of horror cinema.
- You're sort of teamed up with him, aren't you?
- Him? My good man, think nothing of it.
I'm just about through with that cheap ham anyway.
(man slapping)
- [Partygoers] Ooh!
- It's creepy as hell,
with Michael Redgrave doing an amazing performance
as the ventriloquist,
and it's just a brilliant, brilliant piece of work.
- [Kim Newman] It's really tough to pick out the best segment,
but the segment I'm gonna go with
is "The Ventriloquist's Dummy.”
- I suppose everyone thinks of "Dead of Night,"
and then thinks of "The Ventriloquist's Dummy,”
but the linking material.
- Never this part of the world at all?
- No, I've never been here before.
- He meets a bunch of people and he starts to feel
this sense of deja vu.
- I can only tell you that when I came into this room,
I recognized you all, instantly.
- [Larry Fessenden] And then you go into each person's story.
- Just room for one inside, sir.
(ominous music)
- That has the best framing story,
and as a person who's worked on anthology movies
of varying quality, the framing story
is incredibly important.
- This is where Mervyn Johns is having a dream
that turns into a nightmare.
- Let's play another game!
- Yes! Hide and seek!
- Who's to hide?
- I'll hide, I'll hide!
- [Kim Newman] The nightmare sequence where the characters
from all the stories come back
is so astonishingly brilliant,
I'm surprised more anthology movies don't do it.
- [David McGillivray] Has some very weird
and disturbing images, indeed.
And this still holds up immensely well.
- Still there? So it isn't a dream this time.
- The wraparound is always the challenge with an anthology,
and they really seem to pull it off,
in the way that it's almost as creepy or memorable
as the stories themselves.
- [David Del Valle] "Dead of Night" had a different director
for each one.
Robert Hamer did the one with the mirror.
- [Kim Newman] "The Haunted Mirror” has a lot really going for it.
- [David Del Valle] I think that the reason "Dead of Night"
resonated so much with audiences
is it came at the right time and people wanted it.
- During the war, most horror films were banned in England.
So this was the first chance
the British got to make a horror film.
It did very well, it was very successful,
and the critics loved it.
- My my, Hugo, we've never played
to a murderer before, have we?
- That was pretty much the end of that horror cycle.
The cycle that had started in 1931 with "Dracula."
It didn't spawn another imitation immediately
because of the fact that horror
was kind of out.
- In the '40s, they did attempt them occasionally
with like "Histories Extraordinaire,"
that is very rare, and it involves two stories
by Edgar Allan Poe and one by Thomas de Quincey.
(ominous music)
(thunder crashing)
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] In 1955, there was an anthology film.
- A movie that almost no one has ever heard of
called "Three Cases of Murder."
- [David Del Valle] It has Orson Welles,
where he plays a barrister that has a recurring dream
that becomes a nightmare.
- It wasn't entirely horror,
but there was one story in it that is really scary,
about a man who is in a painting.
- [Mr. X] Have you ever taken a really good close look?
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] And he leaves the painting
(cane knocking)
(man gasping) and kills people.
- [Man] But what?
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] A really neat idea.
- Directed by a director named Wendy Toye,
who is currently not well known.
She used to be a ballet dancer, apparently.
She really had a remarkable style.
As a subject for further study,
as (indistinct) used to say, I would say
Wendy Toye is definitely worth looking into.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] So horror films that were anthology films
gradually came back in during the '50s.
It was really a matter of the cycles.
The new horror cycle started in 1957
with "Curse of Frankenstein.”
- [David Del Valle] What happened was a kind of renaissance,
first with Hammer Films coming out
with "The Curse of Frankenstein" in '57,
"Horror of Dracula" in '58,
then we had in Mexico, France, Italy,
and America, a kind of burst of horror.
(woman screaming)
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] In 1962, there was a movie called "Tales of Terror."
- [Announcer] Edgar Allan Poe unfolds his "Tales of Terror."
- When I was an adolescent, the movies that I really loved
were the- I loved- of course I loved all kinds of stuff,
but I really liked the Corman Poe stuff.
And so of course my favorite anthology is "Tales of Terror."”
- [Announcer] You will witness fury
far worse than a woman scorned.
(woman screaming)
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] An American International film, directed by Roger Corman.
We had Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone, and Peter Lorre.
- We had done two complete films,
and I just thought it would be interesting
to do a three-part of some of his very short stories.
And I worked very well with Dick Matheson,
I have to give a great deal of credit.
Dick simply wrote the scripts
and I went out and we shot 'em.
(dramatic music) (flames crackling)
And we generally had 15 day schedules.
So it was very simple to say,
okay, five days for the first one,
five days for the second one,
five days for the third.
(cat yowling)
- To make one story of "The Black Cat"
and "The Cask of Amontillado” was just brill-
I mean, it was just, what a smart thing to do,
because they fit so well in Corman's movie.
- [Announcer] Every drop of blood
feels the freezing paralysis of fear.
- They had the really colorful credit sequence,
which then I made sure with "Re-Animator"
we had a colorful credit sequence.
And then they put the comedic tone to the horror,
which wasn't real common then.
- [Announcer] Then you'll enjoy
"The Black Cat's" sardonically humorous tale.
- What kind of a man are you, anyway?
Make love to my wife, and doesn't even talk to me!
- We were going to do three of 'em.
How would we differentiate?
Jointly, we said, well, let's do one with humor
and see what happens.
- You're insane!
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] I love Peter Lorre and Vincent Price.
A great team.
- Very clever.
- Vincent Price and Peter Lorre.
Peter Lorre, "The Beast With Five Fingers," you know,
and Vincent Price's face kind of melts.
"Tales of Terror" was just great.
- [David Del Valle] This movie made money,
not as much as "Pit and the Pendulum,”
but it made money. But it didn't catch on.
Roger never did another anthology movie.
- We did it once, I thought, okay, this breaks it up.
Now we can go back into the full length features.
- [Announcer] In this garden of evil,
unfolds the diabolic delineation
of the most fantastic horror conceived by a distorted mind.
- [David Del Valle] Vincent Price, who was under contract to AIP,
managed to make one for Allied Artists
called "Twice Told Tales."
- [Announcer] A trio of terrifying experiences,
brilliantly portrayed by that personification of all evil
on the screen, Vincent Price.
- [David Del Valle] Nathaniel Hawthorne was public domain.
So they decided that they might as well try and see
if they can strike gold, trying to elevate Hawthorne
into the next Poe.
This of course suffered, because they didn't have Roger Corman.
(sinister music)
- Do you believe in ghosts?
(dramatic music)
(woman screaming)
- [Announcer] This is the night when fear and horror
walk hand in hand.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] "Black Sabbath," a terrific anthology film,
one of the very best, directed by Mario Bava.
- One of my inspirations in my work,
a cinematographer turned director.
And it has a couple of the most chilling sequences
that still, when I watch it, to this day,
send chills down my spine.
- It's a co-production between an Italian company
and American International. It's an attempt
to make some hay out of-
- [Announcer] "Black Sunday."
- [Joe Dante] Mario Bava's breakthrough.
- [David Del Valle] And in "Black Sabbath,"
they adapted stories by Count Tolstoy
and Nikolai Gogol, you know,
Russian storytellers that lent themselves to fantasy and horror.
- It's one of the kings of all Italian horror movies,
and all three segments are so unique.
- I first saw that completely unprepared
on an afternoon matinee at a Liverpool cinema,
and I was absolutely terrified.
(dramatic music)
To have that extraordinary quality
that Bava brought to the horror film,
which is images that are simultaneously horrifying, even gruesome,
and beautiful. That level of visual beauty
was something new to me in the cinema.
- My favorite story in that is "The Wurdulak."
- [David Del Valle] Bringing Boris Karloff back,
and making him something he'd never played before,
which was a vampire.
- [Ernest Dickerson] An amazing piece about the vampiric aspects of family.
- That is probably Boris Karloff's most evil performance.
- I am hungry.
- That still is so haunting.
That little boy begging for his mother to let him in.
Such a masterful piece of fantastic cinema,
that Bava was a master of.
- [Announcer] An adventure into black magic
that goes beyond the boundaries of the supernatural.
(dramatic music)
(woman screaming)
- The one that is the thing that everyone remembers
from that movie, it's "The Drop of Water."
(water dripping)
- It's a very simple story. A woman dies,
and her servant steals her ring.
It's so gaudily photographed, the colors are so iridescent.
It might be my favorite segment.
- Whenever that wretched thing opened its eyes, yes, yes.
(woman gasps)
That was enough for me.
(woman speaking in foreign language)
- "Black Sabbath" is probably the scariest anthology.
- [David Del Valle] All the shock effects
of having the ghoulish image
pushed out at you, or floating.
- The most terrifying animated corpse in cinema history.
It's 20 minutes of sheer terror.
- No! (sobbing)
- "The Drop of Water" segment,
it's just so vivid in my memory,
as just being one of the most terrifying segments
of an anthology I've ever seen.
- I saw it really young,
and I returned to it, and I'm always surprised
at how much it holds up.
- And what's interesting is that the Italian edit
ended with that.
American international, when they decided
to release it in America,
thought this was too frightening a way to go out,
so they put it at the front,
presumably not realizing that some of the audience
might panic and rush out and never see
the other two episodes.
I didn't quite panic, but by gum,
I never forgot that first experience.
(woman crying out fearfully in foreign language)
(suspenseful music)
(ominous music)
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] And the year after that was "Kwaidan,"
another excellent anthology film
of very scary Japanese ghost stories.
- That incidentally stemmed from a series of short stories
written by a Greek gentleman,
went to Japan over 100 years ago,
married a Japanese lady,
and ended up writing these stories from what he had observed
of the culture of the supernatural in Japan.
- I recommend that to anybody
who's a fan of horror in general.
It's got some very, very creepy moments.
- When I was in college in the '70s,
I discovered this Japanese horror film
by Kobayashi Masaki, and it just blew me away.
It's just amazing what visually he was able to do,
how he was able to create these surreal landscapes
on sound stages.
Actually, it wasn't a sound stage.
It was a reconverted airplane hangar.
- And the segment that I think
is particularly outstanding is "The Woman of the Snow,"
where a woodcutter encounters a lethal female snow spirit.
- Probably the first time that anybody in the West
had seen the long hair of death women,
who are by and large the ghosts of women
who committed suicide, or died of grief
after their husbands left them for other women.
And it's one of my absolute favorite tropes
of this kind of film, and one that I think
a lot of people became familiar with after "Ringu."
That is an image that I adore,
and seeing where it comes from,
I think is absolutely fascinating.
(man screaming)
- I'd never heard a ghost story that way.
This kind of like demonic, evil thing, the snow,
which hums to the sky,
and then he ends up marrying the thing
and having children with her.
That idea of someone spending a huge portion of their life
with a demonic entity just haunted me.
And that was kind of a big influence
on the first movie I made, "The Pact."
- They're beautiful stories.
"Woman in the Snow" is a beautiful love story.
(man laughing crazily)
- [Brian Trenchard-Smith] It is truly artistic.
- [Ernest Dickerson] I understand that Kobayashi himself
painted the backdrops,
which are very surrealistic and expressionistic.
- This phantasmagorical netherworld,
frost covering everything, and huge eyes
staring down from strangely colored skies, it's a, ah!
- One of the most beautiful movies
I have ever seen, ravishingly gorgeous.
You could watch it without the sound,
having no idea what was going on,
and I think you would still be swept up
in the sheer beauty of it.
- I also like a couple of Japanese ones.
"Joys of Torture" I think is really great, Teruo Ishii.
And another one also called "Love and Crime."
It's about heinous crimes that women committed.
- Let us not forget, in my opinion,
one of the greatest anthology movies from the '60s,
(horse whinnying)
"Histoires Extraordinaires."
American international released it in the States
as "Spirits of the Dead,"
and they got Vincent Price to do what he did
in "The Conqueror Worm."
- [Vincent] Thy soul shall find itself alone
amid dark thoughts of the gray tombstones.
Not one of all the crowd to pry into thine hour of secrets.
- [David Del Valle] So they made it "Edgar Allan Poe's
Spirits of the Dead."
- [Announcer] Only the tortured genius of Edgar Allan Poe
could conceive this orgy of unspeakable horror.
- It was Fellini, Roger Vadim, and Louis Matte.
Each adapted an Edgar Allan Poe short story.
Very, very loosely, just basically took the premise.
- [David Del Valle] You have three stories,
where one is really exemplary,
then you have one that's not quite so great,
but it does have the wonderful Bridgette Bardot
in a black wig with Alain Delon.
Then you have for the one and only time,
Peter Fonda and Jane Fonda.
- [Announcer] She owned the world,
but found herself possessed by a love
stranger than madness.
- [David Del Valle] But the Fellini is world class cinema.
- Anthologies are very specific things,
but when it comes to an actual single one,
that's gonna be "Spirits of the Dead,"
"Toby Dammit."
- "Toby Dammit" is the only horror film Fellini ever did,
and it's an amazing piece of work.
I loved how he took a little-known Poe story,
"Never Bet the Devil Your Head,"
and transposed it to modern day, or 1968, Italy.
- There's so much going on,
and it says so much.
- It's one of those films
that when people see it, they just go, "Holy shit."
A lot of people are very snobbish about Fellini.
They're like, "Oh, I love Fellini.
I love '8 1/2,
I love 'Roma,' all this blah, blah, blah."
"Toby Dammit” is it.
The DP's the same DP who shot "Stendhal Syndrome,"
Tonino Rotunno, it's amazing, amazing photography.
And the music, Nino Rota did the score,
its a beautiful, haunting, creepy piano score.
- I just like everything about it.
It's my favorite Fellini movie.
I often find Fellini's full-length movies
drag somewhat, and the fact that this is short,
and it's Edgar Allan Poe, and has Terence Stamp as well.
- [Announcer] A man afraid of living,
and more afraid of dying.
- That is the most beautiful Terence Stamp you're gonna get
for your Terence Stamp dollar.
- I've watched that over and over again. Huge fan.
(ominous organ music)
- [Announcer] The terrifying horror of a dreaded man
called Dr. Terror, who with his deck of mystic cards,
could foretell destiny.
- "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors,"
still my sentimental favorite.
I was 12 years old when I saw it,
which is like the perfect age to see that movie.
I remember seeing the poster,
and it very prominently saying an Amicus Production.
And I thought, ooh, this must be a new company
that's gonna compete with Hammer.
And sure enough, it was.
- In the 1960s, I became very fond of Amicus,
as many of us did.
- I saw them as a youngster.
I had the good fortune to see the originals at the drive-in.
- They played nonstop on late night television
here in Australia.
Had me totally scared shitless when I was a kid.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky
were both New Yorkers.
They got together in the mid-'50s.
Subotsky was producing a show for kids
called "Junior Science."
- Milton was a delightful man.
He was really- And he gave me my break,
and he was a gentleman. There was not a mean stroke
in his body.
He was a very cultured man.
- He met up with Max J. Rosenberg.
They both wanted to get into filmmaking,
and so they made a movie
called "Rock, Rock, Rock!"
Subotsky, who was a big horror fan,
wrote a treatment for a new adaptation of "Frankenstein,”
and he sent it to Hammer Films in England.
And it just so happened
that they were interested
in looking at something like that,
because they had just done "The Quatermass Experiment.”
It was a big hit, and they wanted to do something similar.
They weren't too crazy about the treatment itself,
but they liked the idea of doing a "Frankenstein” film.
So they basically paid off Rosenberg
as a kind of silent partner,
and they went and made the "Curse of Frankenstein,"
which was the first big Hammer horror film.
Subotsky, I think, felt a little envious
of how they took his idea and ran with it.
- Milton Subotsky was hugely responsible for what happened
to the horror anthology.
A lot of other companies tried to cash in on it as well,
but nobody did it like Subotsky did.
- He had written the stories
that became "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" years before
for a proposed television series
that never got off the ground.
So he adapted those stories into the screenplay,
which was quite similar to "Dead of Night,"
in that it had a framing story and an ending
that was unexpected.
He loved "Dead of Night."
That was one of his favorite films.
- [David Del Valle] Peter Cushing comes into the train compartment.
- I think there's room for one more in here, is there not?
- [David Del Valle] And he's a benevolent figure, that of course
morphs into something else.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] It had a vampire story.
- There are no such things as vampires.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] A werewolf story. It had a man-eating plant,
a voodoo story, and the crawling hand story,
which is the one most people remember, I think,
from that film.
- It's just so relentless.
The hand that keeps coming after Christopher Lee.
I love that episode because it's rare
when you see Christopher Lee genuinely terrified
in a movie.
(man gasping)
- [David Del Valle] It had a great cast.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] Photographed by Alan Hume,
who photographed Hammer's "Kiss of the Vampire."
Just a great lookin' film.
I met Freddy Francis shortly before he passed away.
He wasn't particularly proud of his horror films.
He didn't think he was that good at it.
I think he was very good,
I think next to Terence Fisher, he was probably
the most consistently good horror film director in Britain.
- My card.
Meet your fate at "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors."
- Kick off the Amicus brand, really.
- Once that movie hit,
(electricity sparking)
Amicus found a formula,
and they just continued to make them.
- [Announcer] What horror will you next reveal?
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] Next one was "Torture Garden" in 1968.
- [Announcer] The sinister world of Dr. Diabolo.
- Burgess Meredith, as a sort of carnival huckster,
invited people into his tent to see the torture garden.
This one is usually regarded
as maybe their weakest anthology film.
I think it's a little bit underrated.
They're all written by Robert Bloch, by the way.
- [David Del Valle] Robert Bloch, of course, was famous for "Psycho,"
but he was also famous for writing collections
of short stories.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] He started out working with H.P. Lovecraft
and "Weird Tales," and Bloch actually first got together
with Amicus for "The Skull,"
which was a feature length film, not an anthology film.
- Robert Bloch had a very authorial voice
in the Amicus films, based on his own short stories.
And in fact, I think he-
Bloch really, and Richard Matheson, were the people
that I most wanted to be when I was growing up
because they were active as novelists,
as well as screenwriters, at the same time.
And I thought, my God, how great could that be?
- There was a huge mother lode of stories
to choose from, as far as Robert Bloch was concerned.
Basically how they set things up
was Subotsky would write the framing stories,
and he would put Bloch's stories in them,
and then Bloch would write the scripts for his own stories.
- [Announcer] From the shock author of "Psycho,”
"Torture Garden."
- "The Man Who Collected Poe" segment
from "Torture Garden," just 'cause it unites Peter Cushing
and Jack Palance and Edgar Allan Poe
in the same segment, just makes me happy.
- Did you know that there are ways to raise the dead?
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] Palance plays this completely insane
Poe collector, and he discovers
that Peter Cushing has actually collected
Edgar Allan Poe himself in his basement.
- That's amazing. That's a mess of a film,
but that story is something else in there.
What a clever idea.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] One of the problems is those two stories
in the middle.
They're just not among Robert Bloch's best.
And Freddie Francis was a good director,
but if he was not that interested in the material,
it kind of showed.
(sinister organ music) (door creaking)
- [Announcer] This house is full of sounds.
The loudest is your heart pounding in the night.
- [David DeCoteau] The first anthology horror movie I saw
was "The House That Dripped Blood."
- [Announcer] Vampires, voodoo, vixens, and victims.
- I didn't know what an anthology movie was,
I was 10 years old, but I just remember
the first episode of that with the character Dominick,
I just remember being horrified by that crazy face
looking through the window.
- The way that they conveyed Dominick,
and just the way they started suggesting him,
I thought it was just really skillfully done.
- There's one point where Denholm Elliott says,
"He's there now,
he's hiding behind the clock.
Can't you see him?"
And he's just this creepy little...
- Didn't you see him move?
- That was the one
that just really scared the shit out of me,
directed by Peter Duff ell,
just an amazingly terrifying movie.
- [Announcer] "The House That Dripped Blood."
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] It sounds like a gruesome movie.
I remember Robert Bloch at the time
was kind of bemused at the title.
He didn't really like it,
but that was Max J. Rosenberg's idea.
He was always the guy who came up with the lurid titles.
- [Announcer] See "Asylum."
- I don't know what it was about that particular movie,
but I tend to want to go back to it over and over again.
(woman screaming)
- It represents the most sophisticated integration
of the frame story into the segments themselves.
- This is an asylum of the incurably insane.
- The gimmick about having to guess which inmate
in the asylum is the former superintendent doctor there,
I think really keeps the audience engaged,
because it's brought up after every segment,
and so that gives the audience the opportunity
to participate themselves.
- [Ant Timpson] "Asylum” was pretty extraordinary.
- The one episode where the guy cut his wife up into pieces
and then they were all wrapped in butcher paper,
and then they were put in the freezer,
that was the greatest.
(paper crinkling) (ominous music)
- And then the brown paper and the breathing
was nightmare fuel also,
'cause I was born with a caul on my head as well,
so I have this thing about being suffocated and drowning.
And you know what a caul is, right?
So a caul is like when the birth sac doesn't open,
and so there's a chance the baby's gonna suffocate
when they're born, 'cause it doesn't-
it normally just breaks and you just come out.
And so- but the myth is that if you're born
with a caul on you, it's still wrapped around your face,
that you can never drown, right?
And so I've survived two drownings in my life. (chuckles)
That imagery definitely lasted for a lifetime.
- To see that in a British horror film
in the early '70s,
when it was so tough
to get away with heavier types of content.
- Robert Bloch's final collaboration with Amicus,
this is like the apotheosis.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] Amicus, once they discovered EC Comics, of course,
that took them to a whole different level.
- Somehow, Milton Subotsky from Amicus
managed to get the rights
to the EC Comics from the very difficult William M. Gaines.
- The EC Comics all had multiple stories
that were unrelated, and so the whole idea
of doing that as a movie with "Tales From the Crypt"
and "Vault of Horror," trying to emulate those comic books,
that's where it really kicked off.
- I didn't even know what EC Comics was.
There was a newspaper called "The Monster Times,"
and it was- it focused not just on film, but on comics.
So when "Tales From the Crypt" came out,
they had a whole thing about EC Comics
and how they were banned.
They had reprints. I ordered a bunch,
and each issue was like an anthology with the host,
and you had the four different stories
and they all had that punchline.
- You know, back then it was considered verboten,
forbidden, because the Comics Code came into play,
and really put the boot to the backs of their necks
on a lot of those things. There were Senate hearings,
and it was just- it became that forbidden thing.
And of course, if you're a kid,
and you're told something's not good for you,
don't do that thing,
what's the one thing you're gonna want to do
more than anything else?
- Let's go back.
(door scraping and crashing)
- [Crypt Keeper] There's no way out there.
- Probably the first one I remember seeing
certainly in a theater was "Tales From the Crypt."
- [Announcer] Death lives.
(ominous music) (heart beating)
- [Mick Garris] Made a big impression on me.
- I was working at the British Film Institute.
I wrote for the monthly film bulletin,
and I reviewed it and I gave it a very good review, indeed.
- No, it's not the only one based on the EC Comics.
It's the core system for really capturing
the spirit of it.
- That summed up so much of that American comic ethos
of that era, that was kind of forbidden fruit
to us in the UK, 'cause we couldn't get those comics.
- "Tales From the Crypt" is just perfect.
I actually like their versions
of the EC stories than the ones they did in the '80s and '90s,
because there never was
a whole lot of sex and stuff in those,
but they kind of just took the exploitation aspects.
And the approach to "Tales From the Crypt"
was very somber, very serious.
The music, Ralph Richardson.
- I always knew that in the wraparound episodes,
they could get a really good actor,
'cause they'd only have to pay for him for two days.
So in "Tales From the Crypt,"
they've got Sir Ralph Richardson playing the Crypt Keeper.
- Why did you come in here?
- That's pretty classy.
- I just saw it recently,
and it still holds up.
I've got to say it's still pretty creepy,
although it's really cheesy in spots, too.
- Perhaps you'll remember Joan Collins
being killed by Santa Claus.
That's what most people remember.
(bell jingling)
- He's here, Mummy!
- The Joan Collins Santa Claus episode
still casts a long shadow.
- They're being trapped in the house,
and you've just got the Christmas carols
and the mad Santa outside.
You know, that's absolutely perfect.
- And I love the fact
that you get all of the information through, either the radio,
and they have the murderer on the loose,
and then everything just plays out
almost like a silent film,
and I think it's beautifully done.
- The Santa Claus, there's a guy reading the newspaper,
and there's this blood hits the paper
and starts seeping through.
An image indelible in cinema, in my opinion.
- I just think that is a perfect piece
of short filmmaking that- I watch it every Christmas,
because it also evokes Christmas very well.
- When I think of horror anthologies,
I do think of that, that "All Through the House"” segment
of "Tales From the Crypt" as a classic turn
in the history of horror anthologies.
- That's my favorite.
- It is good fun, but there are another couple
of very good stories.
- My favorite, and it's the one that really traumatized me,
because I never forgot this image,
there's a rich guy who loses his money
by making bad investments.
And he gets a call from his business manager.
- Hello?
- He says, "You gotta get in right now.
You've gotta come in."
So he drives.
When the guy looks in his rearview mirror, driving away,
guy in the motorcycle comes up and he looks up,
and you could see his face is a skull.
Really that one image- it's funny, when you think of horror,
we have these specific images
from horror films that stay with us forever.
- I think my favorite segment would have to be,
I think it's called "Poetic Justice."
I mean, all the stories in all these films
are poetic justice.
- I think that's why I love these anthologies.
It's really hard to spend an entire film
with characters that you don't like,
or don't care about, but in an anthology,
it's actually really easy, 'cause you know that A,
they're all gonna get their comeuppance.
Like there's a moral language to the EC comics
we're still really caught up in.
- It's just the enjoyment of them.
But I think the actual story is called "Poetic Justice."
And it's the one with Peter Cushing.
- "Poetic Justice."
That's probably one of Peter Cushing's best performances.
- He plays Grimsdyke, the bullied neighbor.
- Peter Cushing's wife died
the year before the film was made,
and he was still grieving,
and within the story, he's playing somebody who's grieving
for his dead wife.
- That's all that matters.
- His performance is so credible and good.
- ""Cause your presence ruins it."
Oh...
- [Simon Barrett] It's genuinely a heartbreaking segment.
- Peter Cushing, I think, is one of the greatest actors
that ever lived.
(sinister music) (heart beating)
(man screaming)
- Peter Cushing with that makeup as a kid,
that was a seminal image.
- It's actually pretty remarkable
the amount of times you'll see
the Arthur Grimsdyke corpse makeup appropriated image,
I've witnessed in all of Italian horror comics.
- I mean, do I like "Tales From the Crypt," or what?
You know, this is my little
Arthur Grimsdyke Peter Cushing.
(dramatic music)
(fist pounding)
- The last story, "Blind Alley,”
I described as worthy of Poe.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] It takes place in the home for the blind.
- It's such a nasty story.
- I love it because it has Nigel Patrick in it.
I was a big fan of- I'm not sure many people admit
to being a huge fan of Nigel Patrick,
always playing stuffy ex-military men.
- Nigel Patrick's horrible, "Shane, Shane!"
- Shane! (dog barking)
- The beds are cold.
- I am the officer in charge.
- This isn't the bloody army!
- Reece Shearsmith from "The League of Gentlemen" and I,
we're always doing Patrick Magee.
The men are cold.
- This isn't the bloody army!
- This is not the bloody army!
- The men are cold. (chuckling)
- Do you know anything about blind people?
- [Mark Hartley] Beautifully directed by Freddie Francis.
- Every image in that is amazing.
The razor blade alleyway.
- [Mark Hartley] That still packs an absolute wallop.
- That was one of the most- (laughs)
That's something that never leaves you.
- That is just a masterpiece.
I mean, "Tales From the Crypt"
is the only anthology film where every episode is superb.
- I mean, there's no doubt about it.
I still, and I've seen the movie 1,000 times-
I'm still afraid of it.
When I putiton, I'm still genuinely creeped out
by "Tales From the Crypt."
It's got a certain dark magic about it
that gets me every single time.
- This film was such a huge success around the world.
I read some trivia that in the U.S.
it was second that year at the box office
only to "The Godfather."
People really were embracing these films
in the early '70s.
And Subotsky kept going with them,
and obviously this reinvigorated Amicus,
and he kept on making them.
(door scraping)
- [Announcer] Enter death's waiting room,
if you dare.
(woman screaming)
Below the crypt lies the "Vault of Horror."
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] I enjoy it. Terry Thomas and Glynis Johns,
that story, I think is a really good black comedy.
- Can't you do anything neatly?
Can't you do anything neatly?
(woman screaming)
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] But the "Vault of Horror" is not as successful,
and some people think
it's kind of a weaker Amicus anthology film.
- [Announcer] This is where the temptations begin.
Unlimited temptations.
- The final Amicus anthology film
is a movie called "From Beyond the Grave."
- It's beautifully made.
The cast, the stories,
rather well-directed, Kevin Connor.
- I was editing at the time, and it wasn't enough.
So I wanted to produce
or just to move on, do something more.
Not particularly to direct.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] Instead of Robert Bloch or EC comics,
all the stories came from a guy
named R. Chetwynd-Hayes.
- Optioned 12 short stories of Chetwynd-Hayes,
tried to sell them as a TV series,
but nobody wanted to know about it.
And thanks to my agent, they ended up
on Milton Subotsky's desk,
and he said, "I'm gonna take four of these stories,
write a connecting story,
and you can direct them."
I said, "Well, I've never directed."
He said, "Editors make good directors."
- Can I help you at all?
- I'll tell you what,
I'll give you 25 quid to get rid of it.
- It's a deal.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] Which again has Peter Cushing in the framing story,
as he was in "Dr. Terror."
I love this framing story.
It takes place in a curiosity shop.
- I love the idea of an antiques dealer,
who every time he gets shortchanged by a customer,
sells them something which is guaranteed
to make their soul rot in hell.
Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes was a horror writer,
but also furniture dealer,
and I think that's why
"From Beyond the Grave" has really got that great feeling
of mirrors and doors and objects.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] Cushing is great in it.
He's a little bit off the wall, but he's really fun.
- Quite a lovely piece is that, sir, quite lovely.
- He put the accent in,
he came up with ideas and the one-liners.
Talk about an English gentleman.
He really was polite and never questioned
my sort of stumbling around as a director.
And in the editing rooms, we used to wear cotton gloves,
and he, in between takes,
he would put on a cotton glove to have a cigarette,
because of the nicotine, which is very sweet.
But he also made a railway station for my son,
in his spare time, and presented it to me
before the end of the movie.
- I don't think the Amicus anthology movies
would have been as good or as popular
if it weren't for him, he literally elevated that material.
- I watched it again the other day,
and thought wow, this really looks like the lead up
to Thatcher's Britain.
It looks like Britain in the '70s.
It's got such an incredible feeling
of things being down that hill, kind of post-war bomb sites
and just everything gray and weird.
- It was 1973, and England was in the doldrums.
Three-day weeks, power cuts,
it was horrendous, and the film industry
was almost non-existent.
- Weirdly, the EC ones, which I'm very fond of, obviously,
there's a strange disconnect
between the American source material
and the Sheppertonness of their making.
Whereas with Chetwynd-Hayes' stories,
they are so properly British.
There's something very distinct
about "From Beyond the Grave."
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] There was a freshness to it,
especially the one with Donald Pleasence and his daughter,
which is a just bizarre tale.
- [David Del Valle] That is a fantastic segment.
- [Emily] One quick stab, just (indistinct).
- And lan Bannen is in an unhappy marriage to Diana Dors.
He ends up befriending Donald Pleasence.
Donald Pleasence takes him home for dinner
and introduces him to his daughter,
played by his real life daughter, Angela Pleasence.
- I'm surprised she didn't do more films.
She was really good.
- And actually plays the role
as if she's in some sort of trance, and lan Bannen
becomes entranced by her.
They concoct this plan to murder Diana Dors,
so that lan Bannen can actually become part
of this really weird family of Pleasences.
- I'll never forget that sequence,
which is such a creepy film.
- It was a good little story.
And it just- it was just creepy.
And I think, you know,
one of the things that really made it work,
now I think of it,
was putting Angela and Donald together. Their eyes,
they have the same eyes, just the pair of them.
You know, side by side, those eyes, staring at you.
- I think the actual quality
of the acting really elevate it to another level.
- All of these stories have one thing in common, don't they?
First rate British character actors, all of them.
They all take a minute out to work these.
Robert Morley, Joan Collins, Diana Dors,
Donald Pleasence, Sir Ralph Richardson,
Jack Hawkins, David Warner, lan Ogilvy.
- There was no snobbiness about it.
They didn't look down on the genre.
- [David Del Valle] The anthology horror movies
were always looked upon as trash by the critics of the day.
The actors didn't feel that way.
Some of these actors,
they do some of their best work in horror.
- You could get this wonderful cast for five days,
or whatever it was, for scale plus, or something.
It was the times.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] "From Beyond the Grave" was pretty well received
at the time, and I think it's actually one of their best.
- I think it's in a class apart.
It's very sad it's the last one.
'Cause it's like they really got somewhere
and then it stops.
- They were pleased with it,
so they offered me their next one,
"Land That Time Forgot," which was great.
But Milton, there was some funny business
went on between him and Max and so on.
So which I was on- I really didn't know about it
until obviously, there was a split.
It was a shame, really.
- [Bruce Hallenbeck] Most people think of Amicus
as anthology specialists because they made seven of them.
They only made about 35 films or so total.
- I know there are other anthology movies, aside from the Amicus.
But those are the ones I grew up watching.
And you know, I'm kinda hard put really to choose which one.
They all have their merits.
They all have individual stories which, I've just embedded
in my horror consciousness.
- The very first screenplay I wrote as a kid,
as a teenager, was an anthology film.
And I sent it off to a producer,
Milton Subotsky, of Amicus films.
And lo and behold, I came home one lunchtime
and there was a letter marked from Pinewood Studios,
and there was a letter inside.
I'll never forget it,
from Milton Subotsky, saying, "I've read your script.”
I was like 16.
"And I think there's something in it.
And here are some notes," like two pages of notes.
"If you can figure out how to do these things,
we might have a film."
And I was like, wow.
- [Announcer] The most terrifying creature of all
may be waiting for you round the next corner.
(man gasping)
- "The Uncanny” is a Milton Subotsky production.
It was after Amicus died.
- As a very young kid, staying up on Friday nights
on Shock Theater.
My sister would watch it every Friday.
I was too young, and I would hide under, like a table
in the living room, to watch.
And "The Uncanny" was one of these movies.
- Not a particularly popular one,
but it's the one when I thought about it,
I think "The Uncanny" is the one that I've seen
more than any other,
probably 100 times after I taped it off television.
- People used to believe a cat was the devil in disguise.
- And I like all three of the stories.
And I particularly loved the wraparound story
with Peter Cushing and Ray Milland.
- He won't bite you.
- I'm not so sure.
- I don't think I knew who Ray Milland was
when I first saw the film.
- How are you going to convince the people
that what you're writing about is true?
- [David Gregory] But him and Peter Cushing,
I mean, I could see
that they were definitely aging movie stars.
So I really got into the story from the wraparound.
- My favorite segment, it's the one
about a young girl whose parents die in a plane crash.
So she has to go stay with her aunt, the cat hater.
- Wellington?
- They treat this young little orphan girl so terribly,
it's almost shocking actually to sort of watch it now.
The young Lucy uses her mom's witchcraft amulet
and books to shrink her sister
so she can get her cat Wellington to torment her,
and eventually she stomps on her.
This one was my favorite 'cause I'm a cat lover.
- [Announcer] There are millions of them, everywhere.
Spying on us.
(woman crying out) (cats snarling)
2 Your answer 10 a curse J
- [David Gregory] "The Monster Club" is also
a Milton Subotsky production.
- One of the first film posters I ever designed
was for "Monster Club.”
I was about a year out of college.
We ended up doing two illustrations,
because the first one was considered too scary
because they were actually gonna pitch it at kids.
- [David Del Valle] Milton Subotsky wanted to entertain children.
"The Monster Club" is a total children's movie,
even down to having really ludicrous monster masks,
Vincent Price has to dance through.
- They're not very good. (laughing)
- [Announcer] Songs by B.A. Robertson.
- [David Del Valle] They tried to make it into a musical.
S I'm from Transylvania »
2 And I'm a pain in the neck >
- It was definitely a kids film,
but it has an atmosphere in it, particularly in the stories,
not necessarily in the wraparound.
- Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes,
who had written the book "The Monster Club"
that the movie is based on,
there's a character named after him
played by John Carradine,
and there's probably no better honor
if you're a horror writer.
At the beginning of the wraparound story,
John Carradine gets bitten by a vampire,
played by Vincent Price, who was a fan.
- You are, the great R. Chetwynd-Hayes.
You are my favorite author.
- And then brings him back to this monster club,
which is full of horror fans,
so just the idea of horror fandom is
kind of like woven through the whole framing story
of the film.
As a horror fan myself,
that's definitely something I respond to.
- Everybody knows about garlic and stakes through the heart.
- Yes, we all have our cross to bear.
- [David Gregory] Obviously they didn't have that much money,
but the stories themselves do actually look quite handsome.
- The first story is about a monster, the Shadmock,
which is basically the lowest form of monster.
He puts an ad in the paper and this woman responds
to it to help him organize his files,
and he falls in love with her.
And the thing is, as gentle and kind as he is,
he has this deadly gift.
- I must never whistle, no matter what happens.
- This whistle that can melt you instantly.
And so he tries not to use this gift.
The first story book I ever remember having
is a book called "The Lonely Monster.”
This character is kind of the personification of that.
- You could still love me.
- "The Shadmock," definitely my favorite
and the one that I can relate to the most,
I think, out of any horror anthology story.
- Humgoos? Evil, hell no.
- [David Gregory] "The Humgoo" episode
is one that I absolutely love.
Stuart Whitman goes to a small village.
They go through a cloud of mist
and everything becomes gray.
- As a youngster, "The Monster Club"
was one of the biggest anthology movies
I was very influenced by as a kid.
And certainly the "Humgoo" story
was a very big deal for me.
- And it ends with like a really cheeky
twist ending as well,
which I thought was absolutely terrifying
when my dad took me to see it when I was eight years old.
(eerie music)
- [David Del Valle] In America, we had "Thriller,"
which was a TV series Boris Karloff was the host of.
- Take my word for it, it's a thriller.
- As a kid I watched "The Outer Limits"
and "One Step Beyond."
Alfred Hitchcock had a wry sense of humor,
it wasn't so much a framing story as a host
with a sense of very dark humor.
- Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
- Which allowed the stories to be comedic sometimes,
or dark as hell.
(dramatic music)
- [Alfred Hitchcock] Good night.
- [Mick Garris] And "The Twilight Zone."
- [Announcer] Come with us into the middle ground
between light and shadow.
- [David Del Valle] You cannot get better than the writing,
directing, and acting of those shows.
- [Wayne Coe] "Night Gallery" was most memorable.
- Good evening, and welcome to "Night Gallery."
A potpourri of paintings slightly tilted left of center.
- There was one called "The Earwig,"
about this insect that's supposed to burrow
through your brain and Kill you.
And a guy pays a man to put it in a guy's bed at night.
He wakes up the next morning with blood coming from his ear
and realizes the guy's gotten him.
How do you like that?
(ominous music)
- Television had been very conservative
up to that time, and they realized
that it was time to change.
And so they decided to do "A Door into Darkness."
At that time, Italian television had one channel.
There were many, many protests against TV for airing that.
More than 30 million people watching it,
out of 50 million.
That's how Dario became famous,
because he was introducing the episodes.
(man speaking in foreign language)
The people connected him, his face, with the fear,
with the scare, you know?
I suggested him to do that,
like Alfred Hitchcock.
It was very important for him,
he became a kind of star.
- When I think of anthology horror movies,
I always think of TV movies.
- [Announcer] The movie of the week.
(easy '70s lounge music)
- TV movies came about because networks were showing
a lot of theatricals, but the studios were charging
a lot of money, and it was actually cheaper
for them to produce their own content.
They farmed out a lot of these movies
to independent companies.
- Dan Curtis, when he created "Dark Shadows"
in 1966, he opened the door for a revival
of anthology movies.
- Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson got together,
and they did "Trilogy of Terror."”
And William F. Nolan wrote some as well.
- Richard Matheson wrote for "The Twilight Zone"
and "Tales of Terror,"
and he wrote like Rod Serling's "Night Gallery,"
and the best segment of "Trilogy of Terror,"
and the guy is just a fucking titan.
- Dan Curtis tried to option a story
that Richard Matheson had wrote,
and he offered him very little money.
Richard Matheson thought it was a joke,
but he met with him, and they found out that they jelled
really well together.
And they were both interested in characters.
And they were both really into mood and atmosphere.
Matheson had already written a lot of short stories,
and so they adapted some of them for "Trilogy of Terror,"
including "The Prey," which would become the famous one
with the Zuni fetish doll.
Karen Black's in all the stories,
and she has to carry each one in a different way.
And it's a showcase for her really as an actress,
more than anything else.
- Do I make you nervous, doctor?
- [Announcer] Karen Black, a major star.
"Trilogy of Terror."”
- The average person could not describe to me
the first two segments of "Trilogy of Terror."
- The last segment was called "Amelia."”
- The Karen Black doll episode is just amazing.
- There's a little Zuni fetish doll
which is sent as an unsolicited gift,
and he becomes animated
and he runs around her apartment,
hides under the furniture.
He stabs her in the ankle.
- A primitive Zuni doll,
which is some kind of made up racist African totem,
like a little tribal antique.
In a way I define this as a sort of colonial horror,
which might be my personal favorite horror genre,
because it tells us so much more than it really wants to.
(Amelia gasping in fear) (doll snarling)
It's such a, sort of fetishistic
and such a weird segment.
Something about it was so dreamlike and disjointed.
(doll snarling)
- It's actually quite scary if you see it at the right age,
and even in the right mood as an adult.
- It is a 25 minute masterpiece.
Dan Curtis directed with his usual skill.
He just got it perfectly right.
All the doll sequences are just brilliant, really contrived.
- There's something so remarkable
about the way these shots are designed.
And the fact that this was made for TV
is even more kind of mind blowing, I think.
- [Brian Trenchard-Smith] Working with the puppet and knowing exactly
how much to show, when to show it in close up,
when to show it in long shot,
when to have it suddenly jump into frame.
- Boy, that little doll was so evil.
- It might be one of the creepiest props I've ever seen.
It's clearly influenced every horror doll
and every gremlin film ever made.
- That's the beginning of "Dolls"
and all the Charlie Band "Puppet Master" movies.
And I know it is, because Charlie used that as an example
when we were developing "Dolls."
And it's like, you see something like that
and you go wow, it's one character and man,
Karen Black was great.
(doll snarling)
- And Karen Black is sitting in that great makeup
with those teeth, with the knife between her legs
waiting for her mother to come through the door.
That's classic stuff.
- Supposing that had been made, you know,
as a key sequence in a feature film for 1975,
and instead of it going on ABC television
interrupted by commercial breaks,
you would have had that audience for "Jaws" in '75,
they'd be jumping out of their skin at "Trilogy of Terror."
- In the '90s, I saw its influence
when I was watching a collection of gay themed shorts.
There was a segment about a very neat gay man
who gets an unsolicited package
that contains a gigantic dildo,
which chases him around his apartment, terrorizing him.
(dildo screaming)
- [Amanda] And then Dan Curtis did "Dead of Night."
- [Announcer] This is the "Dead of Night."
It can happen in sunshine or in moonlight,
in the best of weather or the worst.
For the dead of night is a state of mind.
- [Amanda] There's so many movies called "Dead of Night,"
I'm not even sure that Dan Curtis was aware of that.
I mean, he must've been, he was very smart,
but I've never heard of a connection
directly between the two.
- [Announcer] The "Dead of Night" exists in all of us.
- Years ago, I was wanting to show 1945's "Dead of Night"
in a class.
I went into a video rental store here in L.A.,
Eddie Brandt, and said, "I want to rent "Dead of Night."
And they said, "We don't know if we have it,
but we do have this unlabeled VHS tape,"
that just had- all it had on it was a piece of masking tape
that said "Dead of Night."
- That awesome one in the '70s,
yeah, that's a great one.
- The segments are written by Richard Matheson,
and the final segment is so horrifying.
S Ha ha, Mommy, you gotta find me.
- [Rebekah McKendry] I watched this by myself, sitting on my bed.
S You gotta find me
- Bobby!
- [Rebekah McKendry] And up to that point, the segments are okay.
The first one's got Ed Begley Jr. in it,
it's about a time traveling car.
The second one's about vampires, and then comes "Bobby."
- It's quite a horrible story.
Richard Matheson, of course.
- [Woman] Return him to me now!
- There she is, having done this incantation
to get him back to life, and he returns,
or she thinks he does,
it's very sort of "Pet Semetary" like.
One of the best bits of creepy telephone acting
when she says, "You've got to help me."
"I've got to help you?"
- He insists on playing some game.
- [Voice on Phone] Insists on playing some game.
- Why are you repeating everything I say?
- Repeating everything you say. (chuckling)
- [Rebekah McKendry] The final moments of this.
- [Bobby] Ready or not, here I come!
- Still packs one of the biggest punches
of any anthology segment.
- It has a wonderful twist, just a wonderful last line.
It's really quite unnerving.
- And no one ever talks about that one.
So "Bobby" from 1977's "Dead of Night."
- [David Gregory] In the '70s and '80s, we had shows in England
like "Tales of the Unexpected,”
which was kind of a "Alfred Hitchcock Presents” style thing,
presented by Roald Dahl.
- "Tales of the Unexpected," oh my God.
The one that I never forget is "The Flypaper."
- This one that you're going to see at the moment
is so neat and nice and spooky.
I only wish I'd thought of it myself.
- Which is a piece I simply can't believe
that was ever broadcast, it's extraordinary.
Possibly the most disturbing thing ever conceived,
it's utterly terrifying.
It's about a pedophile who gets away with it.
- And then we had
the great "Hammer House of Horror" in 1980,
which was 13 episodes,
most of which were really good, like "Silent Scream,"
the one with Peter Cushing.
He's the owner of a pet shop,
but he's actually a Nazi war criminal
who's doing experiments on a very naive and young Brian Cox,
before he became Hannibal Lecter.
And "The House That Bled to Death,"
of course, is one of the memorable ones.
- [David Gregory] Mainly because there's a children's party in it
where kids are sprayed with blood.
(children screaming)
Caused a lot of complaints.
- The one I liked the best was "Rude Awakening."
'Cause it's weird.
It's quite distinctive to that series.
It was really kind of surreal episodes,
not just sort of pure horror.
- [David Gregory] That tradition of British anthology,
horror or weirdness continues to today
with shows like "Black Mirror,” "Inside Number Nine."
- I can explain.
- Definitely in the tradition, it's a homage.
There's been a long illustrious heritage
of great anthology series.
And if they're good stories, if you're hooked,
and you can grab an audience and tell a story
in an hour, 45 minutes,
or as with "Inside Number Nine," 30 minutes,
I think that's all you've got to do.
It's hard, especially when there's only two of us
when we write our "Number Nines,"
which we feel like we're-
sometimes we think, what haven't we done?
- The portmanteau's our favorite thing.
That's why "The League Christmas Special”
from 2000 is a tribute.
- It's a joy to do them because we've always loved them.
We're fans of that type of TV
and that kind of storytelling.
- I was fortunate enough when I was growing up
to have an embarrassment of riches
in terms of anthologies on television.
- [Mick Garris] "Freddie's Nightmares."
- Don't let me catch you sleeping!
- [Announcer] Coming to CBS.
- When we were asked to do shows like "Twilight Zone"
and those kind of things in the '80s,
it was a little bit similar
to making short films for Amicus.
- "Amazing Stories," my first job as a writer
and second as a director,
was something where Spielberg encouraged each filmmaker
to do what they do.
- The great thing about "Amazing Stories"
was they had the entire Universal back lot.
There's all this stuff, you can just write to it.
People love anthology shows.
The problem with anthologies,
because they require different sets and different locations,
they are very difficult to produce
if you don't have a studio behind you.
- [Announcer] The dark side is always there, waiting.
- [Kevin Kolsch] Every week, my siblings used to watch
"Tales from the Darkside."
It came out during a time
when I was just kind of a budding horror fan.
- [Announcer] Sunday at 11:30.
- To me, the opening theme song
is the scariest thing to me ever.
You know, like I used to wait every week
just to see that opening theme.
Those shots of nature. The voiceover.
- [Announcer] A dark side.
- It just made me feel creeped out
by looking at photos of a countryside.
(Crypt Keeper giggling evilly)
- [David Del Valle] And of course the amazing popular TV series,
"Tales from the Crypt."
- "Tales from the Crypt" happened
in sort of the infancy of HBO.
- Their adaptation of the EC comics,
"Tales from the Crypt," of course was a huge thing
if you were a kid.
- [Mick Garris] The whole appeal was here's something
you can't get on television.
- Perfect! (giggling evilly)
- And then as I got older, Mick Garris made
"Masters of Horror."
- It's amazing to me that I've produced films
by Carpenter, and Hooper, and Dante, and Dario Argento,
giving them the opportunity to do what they do
with no interference.
(eerie rock music)
- In the '80s, anthologies were more fun.
They were like these gore-filled romps.
- We see them being much more light, much more comedic.
- Do you believe in fairies?
- Do I believe in fairies.
- [Jovanka Vuckovic] I really love
this '80s anthology movie called "Screamtime."
- [Announcer] It's always time for "Screamtime."
- "Screamtime," which pays tribute to "Dead of Night"
to some degree, directed by the person
who did "Primitive London."
But it also stars David Van Day from Dollar,
which I thought was quite wonderful.
- The interstitials are really fun,
'cause it's about these two guys who rob a video store,
stealing some VHS tapes,
and they take them home and they watch the movies,
and the movies are what we end up watching as the audience.
- [Announcer] Tales of the supernatural.
- [Amanda Reyes] It's so unique in what it does.
- [Announcer] And so terrifying.
- [Amanda] It's just really fun,
and I think it captures the video age really well.
- Being a kid of the '80s,
when I think anthology horror, like Stephen King,
that's just what anthology is to me, "Creepshow."
(thunder crashing)
- [Announcer] Stephen King and George Romero,
the masters of terror,
bring you a frightening tale that will grab you,
grow on you, and give you the creeps.
- [Announcer 2] "Creepshow," the most fun
you'll ever have being scared.
- Who could forget "Creepshow?"
- I love "Creepshow."
- "Creepshow" really set the bar.
- You can't talk about horror anthology
without talking about "Creepshow."
- It's hard to say anything bad about "Creepshow."
- It's the one that sort of defined
the '80s anthology, definitely.
- My favorite anthology,
it would be a toss up
between "Dead of Night" and "Creepshow."
And even though I worked on "Creepshow," it's my favorite.
I mean, you got corpses rising from the grave,
an Antarctic crate creature eating people,
shriveled-up drowned zombies walking in on Leslie Nielsen.
- I saw that when I was a teenager and just loved it.
John Harrison's great music sets the mood so well.
You have that wonderful animated title sequence.
It's so much fun, and Romero really ties it all together
with that EC comic style, which is so colorful
and striking and really makes the film unique.
- I've always been a big fan of Fluffy in the crate.
- I had never done an animatronic creature
like Fluffy before, that was a triumph on my part.
(beast roaring)
I went from the King of Gore, the Sultan of Splatter,
to finally doing what I wanted to do.
You know, creating characters and monsters and creatures.
- I don't even know what it was! (laughing crazily)
- Hal Holbrook and Adrienne Barbeau in "The Crate”
are next level good.
- What's wrong now?
(gun firing)
- Romero's actors are generally great.
Like I love Ken Foree, I love Ben Jones,
I love everybody, but he had never gotten to work
with an all star cast like that.
It had Ed Harris with hair, Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson.
- [David Del Valle] Fritz Weaver, E.G. Marshall.
- "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill"
is this tragic comedy starring Stephen King,
and it has no right to be as effective as it is.
(meteor whooshing)
- It's a very sweet story.
Jordy Verrill is not a bad guy
by any stretch of the imagination.
His sin is his ignorance.
That's what does him in.
- Stephen King's not an actor,
but he just slays in that role.
- Oh, the Stephen King one.
"I got meteor shit!" (laughs) Brilliant!
- It's so good.
- I just- that was embarrassing for me to even wa-
I feel like, Stephie, ugh.
- In his kind of overalls
in this weird hoarder's shack,
being overtaken by this weird kind of-
- "Meteor shit!" Ugh, God, go back to writing, Stephen.
(laughing) God forgive me for saying that.
- Meteor shit!
- These days I get a kick
out of "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill"
because of "Color out of Space."
- I had to go back
and look at what the other sections were in that film.
I was like, oh yeah, that was a good one too.
But that's like a really great short film.
I'm growin'
- If you pulled it out of "Creepshow,"
it would be fantastic.
- It is the perfect cinematic take on EC comics.
- It became a huge video.
- [Announcer] More selection, more-
- That's where most people really ended up seeing it.
- It was one of those VHS tapes
that if you had a hold of it,
you just knew you were in for a great night.
- Me and my sister would go to the video store.
This is like, way back when,
when you'd have to rent a VCR
'cause they were too expensive to own.
So we'd rent a VCR, and rent like a handful,
you know, five or six movies to go with it for the weekend.
"Creepshow" was always one on heavy rotate.
- My friends had a sleepover without me,
and all they were talking about was the cockroaches.
And the very concept of an anthology film,
I was really unfamiliar with it.
I knew who George Romero was,
I certainly knew who Stephen King was.
And even Tom Savini, I knew about Tom Savini
from reading "Fangoria,"
so the idea that the three of them were coming together.
- George Romero, Stephen King,
they collaborated on this because of their love
for EC comics back in the '50s.
I remember George talking about it
and being in terms of yeah, they were gross
and everything, but they were funny.
- I got my cake.
- [Michael Felsher] It wasn't just gross-out
for the sake of gross-out.
There was a moral to the story.
- I can hold my breath for a long time!
- Highly quotable, beautiful special effects.
- The whole wraparound is really fun.
- Stephen King's son is in that.
- I'm sorry.
- He went over to the guys like, "Don't fucking beat my kid too badly." (laughing)
- My favorite part of "Creepshow" is actually the creeper.
I love him very much.
- Every single segment in it is wonderful,
and I think that that's so rare in an anthology.
Usually there's always a weak link.
- The key to any anthology is always the batting average,
how many are good versus how many are bad,
and "Creepshow" I would argue is pretty solid.
- "Creepshow" was everything I wanted in a movie.
It was just monsters, it was gore,
it was fun, it was beautiful.
- Big anthology fan.
But I can't think of a singular horror anthology
that I love and legitimately think
is better than "Creepshow."
- I think my all time favorite
anthology horror movie has to be "Creepshow 2."
- [Announcer] "Creepshow 2."
- But I love "Creepshow 2."
I just think it's fabulous.
- I don't think those stories were as strong.
- I thought there was too much animation.
I didn't like the music at all,
compared to what John Harrison had done
in the first movie.
- I remember being really disappointed
there were only three stories,
and the first one's like 45 minutes,
and I was like, come on.
But "The Raft.”
- It's a splashy little ditty
about some people who are left stranded without a paddle.
- I have a deep fondness for the segment "The Raft,"
because we actually had one of those rafts.
We lived on the Shenandoah River,
my parents still do,
and they still have one of those little wooden floaty rafts
in the middle of the river.
- Growing up in Vermont, we had lakes,
we had the floating raft.
- [Rebekah McKendry] You would get out there
and then you would have to swim
the 20 feet back to shore.
Seeing this kind of monster come out of the water.
(creature squelching)
- I just was like, ah!
So that's the one that really stuck with me.
- Randy!
- It tormented me as a child,
but now as an adult, I just absolutely love it.
- Help!
- There's a sort of unrelenting force
that's there to kill them in nature,
and it's going to get you.
And that's kind of what the scariest horror is,
it's the unknown.
- The thing came. It'll go away.
- "Creepshow 2" is much more parsed down and spare.
And I kind of find it the more grislier one.
It's less elegant for sure.
It's much grittier.
(car crashing)
- The reason I love "Creepshow 2"
is because of its theme of get whitey.
And the sequence, I don't know what its name is,
but I always call it "Thanks for the Ride, Lady."
You know, where the rich lady runs over the black guy
and then just drives off like it didn't happen.
But then he keeps climbing
back onto her car and saying-
- Thanks for the ride, lady!
- It was one of the first revenge films I'd seen
from a person of color's perspective.
And there's also a Native American killer
in that anthology as well.
There's a theme going on.
- (speaking in foreign language) Chief Woodenhead.
- Because it was written by Romero,
unlike "Creepshow," which was written by King,
the "Creepshow 2," the Romero elements
that he loves to deal with are really prevalent.
Romero ends up dealing in that first episode
with issues of Native American tension,
and actually even has the bad guys-
- How!
- Openly talking about resentments inside
of dealing with a culture and self-hatred,
and that's where his violence and rage come from.
- There's nothing left for us to take.
There's nothing here we need.
- Maybe there's nothing else you need, rich boy,
but there's something else I need.
- The Native American statue that comes alive,
that looks really cool.
- Over time, I've really turned a lot on "Creepshow 2,"
and I really admire a lot for what they did,
especially considering they didn't have as much money.
- And now "Creepshow" is being rebooted.
- Shudder, we're looking to reboot "Creepshow.”
And I went, "Creepshow?"
I'm like, "My 'Creepshow' 'Creepshow'?"
Because I had visited the set when I was 19 or whatever.
And George and I have a long history.
Listen to me, I'm big fan of short horror fiction anyway,
I sort of love the idea that there's no real structure.
With short films and short horror fiction
and anthology stuff, you can really play by any rules that you want.
I share that sensibility with a lot of horror fans.
(dramatic music)
- [Announcer] Four acclaimed directors,
George Miller, John Landis, Joe Dante, and Steven Spielberg,
take you to another dimension.
- Each section has its own sort of tone and texture
that's really indicative of those directors.
And of course, like it has that horrible backstory
of Vic Morrow dying while they were shooting it.
- The accident left such a bad taste in my mouth somehow.
But I still like it.
- It freaked me out as a kid,
especially the Joe Dante segment, the third one,
"It's a Good Life." It leaves you
with a couple of images that just become part of your being in a way.
- I love the prologue with Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks.
It struck me as a kid, as it's uncomfortable and weird.
They seemed like a weird pairing.
- You want to see something really scary?
- You bet.
- Really? - Yeah.
- It's disturbing in a way that the rest of the movie, I think, isn't.
- George Miller's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"
with John Lithgow is incredible,
it's very scary.
- As someone who flies, used to fly a lot,
hasn't flown in a while, but I do a fair amount
of looking out the window to make sure
there's no monsters on the wing.
- [Announcer] Stephen King's "Cat's Eye."
- "Cat's Eye" is a film that I love.
I saw it when I was a little kid.
The three segments are good.
"Quitters Inc." specifically.
- "Quitters Inc."” with James Woods and Alan King
is pretty great.
- It's fantastically creepy and wonderful.
- When James Woods sees his wife dancing around in the box.
- [Announcer] Experience a series
of electrifying adventures.
- One of the weirdest things I'd ever seen,
like I'm never smoking.
- That was pretty disturbing.
I have a big love for that one.
And for that film in general.
I don't think that it has the love it deserves.
- I feel like I've seen most horror anthologies,
including some of the harder to track down ones.
- I'll open the gates of hell!
(heavy rock music)
(gun firing)
- Go ahead. Scare me.
(Vincent Price laughing)
(rifle cocking)
- I'll keep an eye out just for you.
(eerie music)
(man screaming)
- [Announcer] "The Offspring."
- It was actually the last movie I saw
before I came to California.
I saw it in Detroit at the Mercury Theater.
And it was actually the first movie I saw
when I arrived in LA,
I loved it so much I went back and saw it again.
It's now known on video as "From a Whisper to a Scream,”
which I think is kind of like too artsy.
It really was about retribution,
and had great twist endings.
Of all the newer anthology movies at that time,
I felt it was the one that most captured the feeling
of those Amicus movies.
- One mistake, or one of many mistakes we made
in that movie was not interconnecting the stories
as much as we could've or should've.
That's what makes a really good satisfying anthology,
the connecting devices.
- We didn't have a wraparound device until much later.
The stories were filmed like a year before.
- Vincent Price is the historian,
Susan Tyrrell is a journalist
coming from the execution of Vincent Price's niece.
And in her execution scene at the beginning of the film,
it's kind of funny because David Del Valle
is actually one of the journalists.
- When Jeff Burr came to Los Angeles from Georgia,
we got Vincent Price to act as the librarian.
- One is never too old for nightmares.
- For our first project, we wanted to do something
where we could get a lot of cast in it
with the very little money that we had been able to raise.
And so we were able to get, eventually, Vincent Price
and Susan Tyrrell, Clu Gulager, Cameron Mitchell.
No one forget Martine Beswick and Lawrence Tierney.
And now we were able to put 'em in a movie.
- [Kier-La Janisse] One of the things I liked about it
is how regional it feels.
You know, that all of the stories are taking place
in the South and dealing with very Southern issues.
You know, it's dealing heavily with Southern Gothic.
It's dealing with all the racial history of the South.
- [Announcer] Here in a small American town,
the horrors of the past have come alive in the present.
- It's very gratifying, or funny,
to hear everyone's different favorite episode.
- My favorite episode stars Clu Gulager,
one of these kind of like no holds barred performances,
where he plays a introverted bachelor
who lives this horrible life
taking care of his invalid sister.
He becomes infatuated with a woman he works with.
- His performance is the glue for this amazing segment.
- I think it's like probably his greatest performance.
- It was a joy and a challenge to do an anthology film.
We put our all into it.
- We're young guys.
We're just havin' a ball.
(creature screaming)
(ominous rock music)
- [Narrator] There is a grim menace in the West.
- "Star Wars" had been fabulously successful
mixing sci-fi and swashbuckling,
and I thought, well, what genres haven't been mixed,
or haven't been mixed much, that I could play with?
So I said, well, how about horror and Western?
(guns firing)
- [Announcer] Fear rides the range.
- [Wayne Coe] Westerns are the archetypal capitalist story.
The white male with a gun who protects the woman,
subdues the Native Americans or the blacks.
So something in me went, I went to do an anti-Western.
To do an anti-Western you invert the Western theme.
- [Announcer] "Grim Prairie Tales."
- Why is "Grim Prairie Tales”" an anthology?
It was pure economics.
- [Announcer] Starring Brad Dourif and James Earl Jones.
- You only need James Earl Jones for a week.
You don't need him for three months.
(ominous music)
- The first R-rated movie I got to see in theaters as a kid
was I think when I was, I'm gonna say like 10 or so,
my father took me at my like ceaseless demands,
because I'd become obsessed
with like the network TV spots for this film.
- [Announcer] Four tales of overwhelming terror.
- The kind of "Tales from the Crypt," EC comics plot twist
was something, you know, at that young age
I really hadn't seen before.
Also there's like a ton gore and adult content.
- You promised you'd never tell!
- No!
- This movie hit me at this perfect moment
of adolescence where I was not completely ready
to watch hardcore stuff yet,
but at the same time, I'd graduated from things
like "The Monster Squad”
and "Something Wicked This Way Comes."
- I still really think it's like a great film.
I know that's not like a totally common consensus
about that motion picture.
- [Announcer] Edgar Allan Poe,
the writer who first gave fear a face.
Dario Argento and George Romero,
(gun firing)
The most twisted minds in horror movies,
all three united to make a film
that will blow your peace of mind to pieces.
- I have always had a soft spot
for "Two Evil Eyes," and specifically, Argento's segment.
- [Karim Hussain] An incredible vortex into the mind
of Edgar Allan Poe,
made by a guy who's really obsessed with the material.
- What's the big hurry, Usher?
Stiff's not goin" nowhere.
- The George Romero episode is fine, it's okay.
- [Ernest] Where is she?
- I think Romero was a little bit bummed
he couldn't make the actual episode
that he did want to make,
which was "Masque of the Red Death,"
which would have been pretty amazing
and actually strangely timely in this time of COVID-19,
particularly what he wanted to do. So that didn't happen
and he had to choose
"The Facts of the Case of Mr. Valdemar,"
which obviously he wasn't that thrilled by.
- He's still alive.
(cat snarling)
- [Karim Hussain] Whereas "The Black Cat,"
Argento obviously was incredibly thrilled with his material.
- Do you see it?
S Look what I got in the forest.
2 Look what I, I have for you >.
- It's kind of bat shit bonkers.
It doesn't make sense.
It's kind of stream of conscious
and gets really surreal at points.
But I have just always loved this one.
- Nicola Pecorini was the Steadicam operator,
and then also second unit director,
and just did absolutely phenomenal work on it.
As usual, he's one of the greatest Steadicam operators
in the world, and as a camera person,
that's something that really spoke to me.
Also the music from Pino Donaggio
was absolutely phenomenal.
(woman groaning)
(eerie music)
You get a tremendous sense of madness in it.
(man screaming)
- [Announcer] From the very depths of hell.
- The 1993 film "Necronomicon"
went direct to video in the United States,
and I discovered it on VHS and I was just utterly floored.
I mean, it's Brian Yuzna, it's Christophe Gans,
and Shusuke Kaneko, writer-directors
who are coming at Lovecraft
with knowledge of who he was
and the like greater mythos.
- With "Necronomicon," I got to work Shusuke,
and with Christophe,
and the idea that we were trying to make,
within like a regular production,
but just bring- but we were overlapping.
We had to have two DPs and three ADs,
'cause everybody got to do whatever they wanted.
- They're all great directors,
but it was the first time Christophe Gans
had ever directed anything.
And he's so on point.
His segment's basically just dripping
with water and slime.
It's so beautifully done.
It embodies everything that is a Lovecraft story,
when people think of Lovecraft.
You know, the vast majority of Lovecraft's work
actually isn't about tentacle monsters,
but of all the movies about tentacle monsters
that are Lovecraft's, to me that one,
I think lands it stronger than any other film.
The movie itself is really wonderful,
but that one little piece,
"The Drowned" by Christophe Gans, is beautiful.
- Welcome!
(guns firing)
To hell!
- [Announcer] From executive producer Spike Lee.
- "Tales from the Hood."
That was awesome.
- [Announcer] In this neighborhood is a house
where souls never rest.
- You don't have a lot of urban anthology movies.
I mean, it's probably one of the only ones.
- I've been waiting for you, boys.
- It came about from a desire to tell
anthology horror stories from a black point of view.
We wanted to include social issues
that the country was dealing with at the time.
Police brutality, domestic violence, racist politicians.
We're really glad that in the 25 years since,
all of these problems have gone away. (laughs)
- One story that I think is very timely
for this day and age is the one starring Corbin Bernsen,
where he is like this David Duke type character
who has bought this house that, you know,
all these slave owners had, and horrible things happened.
With the little stop animation dolls.
- Dolls don't want you there!
They want reparations!
- Doing urban horror stories
was really ahead of its time.
- I just loved the format.
I've always loved the format.
The movie seems more relevant now than it ever did,
which wasn't something we were hoping for.
It's kind of why we're back doing sequels.
(stopwatch ticking)
(switch cracking)
- "Family Portraits,” directed by Doug Buck
really hit its mark, and I think
it's a beautiful anthology,
where the three films link together extremely well.
- I love anthologies.
I love working on them, I love doing short films.
If I had to choose between a career of features
and a career of short films,
not that I had either of those careers, but if I had one,
I would choose the short film,
like just endless short films.
- It's just a dazzling anthology,
and each of the individual segments could stand alone,
yet they honestly connect to one another.
(sinister music)
- Aside from perfectly capturing
the spirit of Halloween-
- I hate Halloween.
- What Mike Dougherty did with "Trick 'r Treat,"
in terms of being able to weave these stories together
in a really coherent way
and make it feel like one film-
- Forget your costume?
- [Graham Skipper] Was just totally masterful.
- I think Mike Dougherty's "Trick 'r Treat" is a standout,
because it allows the filmmaker to build one off the other.
And I think that it's wonderful when it's a cohesive piece.
- I feel like it is a bit underrated.
All of us horror fans kind of knew how great it was,
but it didn't go, you know, go on to have that big level
of success that it really deserved.
- I used to test movies for a living.
I did market research for film.
And so I remember testing this movie,
and loving it myself, and then this film never came out.
And I kept on telling friends,
Warner Brothers has this fucking awesome movie
that they're- I don't know what they're doing with it.
- I look at it as the "Pulp Fiction" of horror movies.
- I love "Three... Extremes."
- I was quite young when I saw that,
and I was so happy at that age
that there was an Asian horror anthology
that acknowledged that horror
from all different parts of Asia would be different.
- Who were the directors on there?
Park Chan-Wook.
I love "Oldboy," "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,"
it's gonna be amazing.
Takashi Miike. I mean, come on.
I made "Hostel" because of "Audition."
And then Fruit Chan.
Who is Fruit Chan?
Never heard of Fruit Chan.
Well, the movie you wind up talking about
at the end of that is Fruit Chan's movie "Dumplings."
- Wow, I still like, I still remember the imagery.
Blood, corpse oil, using the remains is a huge thing
in Asian black magic.
And the fact that they brought up something that obscure
and started using it was just like-
I guess it's not obscure to us,
but it's obscure to the rest of the world.
It was really fantastic.
- It is so shocking and so good.
I was blown away.
- What's been interesting looking at it over the years
is the way it transitioned from the films are usually made
by one director who kind of brought the same style
to each segment,
and then in the, I guess in the late '90s or 2000s,
you started to get into the films
where you had multiple directors approaching a common theme,
and you kind of got very different views
on the same subject.
(intense music)
- Having had a dry spell, the anthology movie is back
in our midst again.
(ominous music)
- I don't know if I can blow the trumpet
for "Theatre Bizarre," because I do enjoy "Theatre Bizarre."
- "Theatre Bizarre," which has the ubiquitous Udo Kier,
and Udo Kier should have been in anthology movies
way before this.
He's Klaus Kinski meets Peter Cushing.
- I love where each one's
a different genre type of storytelling.
- They're unrelated and stylistically vastly different,
but it was done with a philosophy
from beginning to end,
and not just saying, hey, that's a good movie,
hey, there's a good movie over there,
and just cram them together.
That's not a movie.
That's a collection of shorts.
- Even though the filmmakers were very disparate-
- Don't forget to feed it.
- [Jeremy Kasten] Stylistically and otherwise,
there's like some DNA that's shared.
And I also was in the cool position
of finding the fabric that would cinch it tight.
When those stories are brought together
under one movie it works really well.
- "Theatre Bizarre," you got a bunch of great filmmakers
putting together stories.
They are technically shorts, but they are bound together.
They're made under the same auspices.
- A super hard form to actually make work, that's for sure.
- The other thing about the anthology side,
you don't make any money,
but you get this total, total control.
On "The Theatre Bizarre," we had total final cut,
we had casting, we had total freedom.
"Theatre Bizarre" is in some ways my best film,
favorite film, because it is totally completely
what I wanted it to be.
- You're working in a spirit of mutual love
for the art form and mutual respect for each other.
I think that plays a big part in it as well.
(person screaming)
- [Man] What's so special about this tape?
- Did you erase it?
- I liked the "V/H/S" films, especially the first.
- [Simon Barrett] When we first started talking about "V/H/S,"
which is right around the time
"Theatre Bizarre" was happening-
- I like you.
(woman screaming)
- The "Theatre Bizarre" approach ended up
being also the "V/H/S" and "ABCs" approach,
which was just like give a bunch of filmmakers
a small amount of money and have them go make a short film
and hope that there's some kind of stylistic coherency,
or at least hope
that they're all like in the same aspect ratio.
- [Man] Which one is it?
- I don't know, man.
- "V/H/S/2," Gareth Evans' "Safe Haven"
was obviously impressive.
- That movie feels more like a nightmare
than any movie I've ever seen.
You're seeing it literally this guy's point of view,
through this camera, running through this environment,
everything around there trying to kill him.
He can't escape.
There's no way to get out,
and it just captures that feeling you have
when you have a bad dream
and something's after you and you can't get away from it
no matter what you do.
That little segment of "V/H/S/2"
is one of the most terrifying films I've ever seen.
- Timo's one, a crew comes in and unleashes a demon,
and there's so many exploding heads.
That's the one that goes for broke.
(guns firing)
- I actually think all the "V/H/Ses" are good
in the same way that anthologies have that charming quality
of one of them or two of them aren't that good.
I would often try to pitch anthology films
back in the '90s or the early 2000s,
and everyone always said, "That's not gonna fly,
people don't like anthology,"
and actually it's patently not true.
- I think people who make movies like them.
I think people who make movies love the idea
of making an anthology.
- Basically, a feature film is two to five years
of your life.
I mean, you know, to do like an indie film.
To do an anthology, you shoot in a week,
and it's done.
- You don't get to make a lot of stories.
And you know, there are so many
that you have to, you know, just forget about
through your career, and I think
that making anthology is your chance to give-
to make something shorter and maybe be able
to try a little bit of different approaches
and different universes.
- Directors like to do it
because generally they're left alone.
I mean, the entirety of the movie is not riding
on your stories.
- "ABCs of Death," which I got involved in,
was one of the first new wave of anthologies.
It wasn't a traditional anthology in the sense
of a kind of a "Dead of Night,"
or a "Tales from the Crypt" or "Dr. Terror's,"
it didn't have a wraparound story.
Certainly, they had a concept,
but nothing really linked together
other than the idea of the alphabet.
- When we were doing "ABCs,"
I was trying to look at the research of the history
of the "ABC" punishment books,
so I was trying to find some strong literary background.
I came up with this ridiculous idea,
just to give it some sort of grounding,
and then debased it completely
in a really hopefully subversive way,
aiming for the lowest common denominator,
which I always think is kind of funny.
- It was almost like a way to get a lot
of interesting directors' voices.
- [Jovanka Vuckovic] Films like the "V/H/S" movies,
then the "ABCs of Death" films.
- I'm here every night!
- Those were the more recent independently made anthologies
that have kind of led this new wave.
They're not really comparable
to the old British Amicus anthologies,
because those movies had a lot of money behind them,
and these ones are much more
kind of scrappy, independent anthologies.
And I think that's what people really like about them.
- My favorite is "Southbound," I really love it.
I love the world of the desert.
They capture what it feels like to be lost
and in the middle of nowhere really well.
- I thought the Radio Silence section
was really, really good.
- I wrote a novel, "Night Driver,"
about a woman who drives at night,
and this tale of the deserted highway,
which may be a gateway to hell,
or maybe purgatory itself, is too tempting to resist.
- [The D.J.] We're all just trying to find our way home.
- It's a bunch of different filmmakers,
and they each have a different segment,
but they do a really good job
of making the whole world feel really unified.
It has the same tone and style.
- There was a film called "Holidays."
(man pounding on glass)
- I'm sorry, we're closed.
- Oh, no, no, no. I called, about the-
- Sorry, pal. Holidays are hell.
- [Eli Roth] Where everybody picked a different holiday.
And there was one that was actually called "Father's Day,"
with Jocelin Donahue from "The House of the Devil"
that Anthony Scott Burns directed,
I thought was really, really good.
- Kevin and I, you know, we both made a lot of short films
in film school, as you do.
But then ironically, we came out of that
and we were like, "Let's go right to features."
You know, and so when "Starry Eyes" came out,
we were approached to work on the "Holidays" anthology.
It instantly appealed to us because we could take
all that knowledge we have
from all those short films we made
and fit it into the mold
of what this anthology was gonna be.
Even now after "Pet Semetary,"
we get approached a lot to work on other anthologies.
- Yeah, we've been itching to do it again,
because it's just really a lot of fun.
- They bring a lot of filmmakers together,
so it's a celebration of a lot of different talents
and a lot of different voices coming together
to make one solid project.
- [Mike Mendez] You know, well, I could spend
a million dollars on one movie, or-
- Every year on Halloween.
- I could give six filmmakers $50,000
and see what they come up with.
You know, as much as I love that,
and we did that with "Tales of Halloween,"
you do lose something, having the singular director
and the singular writer working together.
- Some of 'em are pretty interesting
in terms of using different directors.
I mean, I've seen lots of them,
but the first one that popped into my head was "XX."
- What's in the box? Can I see?
- Stop being so nosy.
- [The Man] It's okay.
(haunting music)
- It's a great way in for an emerging filmmaker,
but you know, like asking people to make a movie
for like $5,000, it literally means no one is getting paid.
Like, no one.
In fact, probably everybody is going in the hole.
That's something we were trying to avoid
when we put together "XX."
We wanted to make sure that women were being given
healthy budgets so that they could actually make something
that showcases their abilities.
- Your son tore my daughter's fingernails off.
- Four emerging women directors.
None of 'em really had a track record at the time.
It was really interesting watching how they approached it.
- There's this director problem that women have,
just 4% of all working directors are women.
Over the last 100 years, 90% of all films
have been made by men.
We felt like it was time
for the women to get a chance to tell their stories.
- If you don't eat, eventually you'll die.
- So?
- Another one I really like is "Nightmare Cinema."
- In the case of "Nightmare Cinema,"
"Masters of Horror" as a series,
they're established filmmakers who want to tell
a certain story and are excited about the opportunity
to tell something that's personal to them.
- Find the damn devil.
- It's very difficult to get a theatrical release
on an anthology movie.
They are not known to be great box office.
They do good VOD business, Netflix and Amazon and streaming
and all that, if they're good movies,
but it's incredibly difficult to do it.
- I just wonder what the future of anthology films
is gonna be, based on the fact
that most of our content is gonna be coming to us
over these little boxes here, you know.
- When I attempted to make my own anthology, "Worst Fears,"
I learned that it really is harder than you think.
- Worst fears.
- "Worst Fears" really wasn't very popular at all.
And in fact, it was so unsuccessful
that I'll probably never make another horror film
as long as I live.
- Danny Boyle, the director went on record as saying
that he didn't really like portmanteau films
because you couldn't identify with characters long enough
to get involved with them.
I'm not sure I really agree with that,
because I think with an anthology,
the person you identify with, weirdly,
is kind of the filmmaker, the storyteller.
- My favorite horror anthologies in general
are the ones that were made by a single filmmaker.
When you have the singularity of vision
coming from one filmmaker, be it a Roy Ward Baker
or Freddie Francis, Mario Bava, George Romero.
I mean, I think those films are so much fun to watch.
- So from our panel of experts of 61 people, the results.
(ominous music)
- [Announcer] At number five from Japan,
1965, Masaki Kobayashi's haunting "Kwaidan."
In fourth place, 1974 brought the final Amicus anthology,
"From Beyond the Grave."
At number three, Amicus again,
and their 1972 adaptation of "Tales from the Crypt."
The runner up, also hailing from Britain,
Eating Studios' 1945 classic, "Dead of Night."
And the film our expert panel voted
the number one horror anthology movie ever.
- [Announcer] Jolting tales of horror.
- The most fun you'll ever have being scared.
George Romero's "Creepshow."
- Anyone that tells you they like anthology movies,
you name one, whether it's "Dead of Night,"
"From Beyond the Grave," "Tales from the Crypt,"
they're gonna come up with one story.
- Anthologies, you're always kind of cherry picking
which segment you like best,
and I'm sure the ultimate goal
for a lot of us is to create the mothership,
the master anthology horror film
that has all our favorites in them.
- According to our panel of experts,
the desert island horror anthology film
would contain the following top five films.
There's actually six, because number three is a tie.
- [Announcer] In fifth place,
the terrifying "A Drop of Water”
from Mario Bava's "Black Sabbath," 1963.
At number four, Dan Curtis's 1977 TV movie,
"Dead of Night's” climactic episode, "Bobby."
At number three we have a tie.
Both from 1972's "Tales from the Crypt."
Peter Cushing rises from the tomb in "Poetic Justice,"
and the razor-sharp finale "Blind Alleys."
In second place, Federico Fellini takes on Edgar Allan Poe.
"Toby Dammit" from 1968's "Spirits of the Dead."
And in the number one spot,
Dan Curtis again.
Karen Black goes head to head with a Zuni fetish doll
in "Amelia" from 1975's "Trilogy of Terror."”
- So many anthology films have a framing story
where it is someone telling or reading stories,
sort of passing on these histories.
And it's so connected to people
sitting around a campfire, telling ghost stories and things.
Part of why people like the anthology structure so much
is because it is so tied to these older ways
of sharing horror stories.
- All right, we got it.
(eerie electronic music)