This is the first "anthology" horror film from Amicus, a British company -- formed, curiously, by two American producers, Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky, who sought to compete with Hammer Films for a share of the horror market in England during the 1960s. Amicus never matched the glories of Hammer in their heyday, but this debut effort showed that the company was capable of putting together an amusing omnibus of horror stories that made the best of their meager resources while shamelessly aping the competition (even down to the hiring of Hammer horror stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, along with director Freddie Francis, who had helmed DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE and several other titles for Hammer).

Despite a misleading title that suggests a haunted house or a wax museum, DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS is set inside a train, where an old man who calls himself "Shrek" (German for "terror") uses a deck of Tarot cards (which he calls his "house of horrors") to tell the fortunes of five passengers. Each "fortune" forms one episode of the film. The stories, written by Subotsky, tend to be rather generic. The first is a muddled mixture of werewolf and vampire (with a dead lycanthrope that rises from its grave). This is followed by equally uninspired tales involving a killer plant and a swingin' pop musician has cause to regret stealing a tune overheard at a voodoo ceremony. The fourth episode stands out as the best, with Christopher Lee as a vicious-tongued critic bedeviled by the severed hand of an artist (Michael Gough), whom he drove to suicide. Also amusing is the final episode, a tongue-in-cheek tale with a young Donald Sutherland as a doctor who stakes his wife after his older colleague convinces him that she is a vampire; the older doctor then refuses to confirm this story to the police -- it turns out he is a vampire, too, and wanted to rid the town of competition, from a second doctor and a second vampire. The wraparound story then ends with a twist: the only way for the passengers to avoid their horrible fates is to meet their death first; when the train arrives, it turns out that they are in limbo, having died in a train wreck.

DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS falls well below the standard set by Roger Corman's TALES OF TERROR and by the 1945 classic DEAD OF NIGHT (the most obvious source of inspiration for HOUSE OF HORRORS, with its five tales, including one comic relief episode, tied together with a wraparound story). The stories may be frightening to younger viewers, but they lack imagination and invention, relying instead on twist endings to juice up the otherwise predictable proceedings. Fortunately, the wraparound story is intriguing enough to hold attention; the severed hand episode is reasonably effective; and the vampire story has the good sense to play itself for laughs.

Visually, the film is on slightly firmer territory. The low budget betrays itself in obvious ways, such as the use of studio-bound sets to convey outdoor scenes (there are virtually no exterior establishing shots). Yet director Freddie Francis uses the widescreen to good effect; his camera sets-ups and staging usually manage to convey some sense of atmosphere and suspense. His only serious failing lies in his aversion to the horror genre, which occasionally leads him to present the supernatural clichés in a flat, straightforward manner that invites laughter, instead of searching out some more imaginative way of luring the audience into believing the incredible elements.

Lee is great as the pompous critic, and Michael Gough manages to engender some sympathy for his briefly seen artist. Cushing handles the title role nicely; it's actually one of his few "scary" performances (although he performed in numerous horror films, he usually played sympathetic characters). The rest of the cast, including Bernard Lee ("M" in the James Bond films) delivers the usual professional performances that one expects from British performers, who usually do not play down to the material.

Amicus would make several more anthology horror films over the course of the next several years, many of them improvements upon DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS. The first of these was Torture Garden, which had the benefit of a screenplay by Robert Bloch, whose novel formed the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's horror classic PSYCHO.

TRIVIA