Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) - film review

During a rail journey, five men who have never met before share a railway compartment with a strange mystic who introduces himself as Dr Schreck (which, as luck would have it, is the German word for Terror).  The latter proceeds to tell the five men their fortunes with his tarot cards, his house of horrors.  The first man, an architect, is on his way to Scotland, to make alterations to an old ancestral seat.  In the cellar, he will find the coffin of a werewolf who is far from dead.  The second man will be the victim of a plant that has made an evolutionary leap and has learned how to kill human beings.  The third will come to a nasty end when he attempts to steal the sacred music of a voodoo ceremony.  The fourth man, an art critic, will be pursued to his doom by the severed hand of an artist whom he drove to suicide.  The fifth will discover that his wife is a vampire who must be destroyed to stop her preying on young boys.  Dr Schreck tells the five men that they can all avoid these terrible destinies if they each draw one more card.  The card they draw represents Death...

The first and arguably the best of the horror anthologies to be made by the British film company Amicus, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors offers few genuine thrills but is great entertainment in spite of that.  Producer Milton Subotsky was a great fan of the earlier horror anthology Dead of Night (1945), which he regarded as one of the greatest horror films of all time.  Subotsky employed the same device here and in several subsequent films – including Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1970) and Tales from the Crypt (1972) – a formula that proved to be immensely popular with cinema audiences.

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors was directed (in much the same tongue-in-cheek manner in which Subotsky wrote the script) by Freddie Francis, a stalwart of the horror genre, best known for his work for Amcius’ nearest rival, Hammer. Whilst the special effects and modest production values date the film somewhat, the bravura performances from a great cast make this one of Amicus’ more enjoyable horror offerings.  Particularly memorable is Christopher Lee playing a nasty art critic who ends up being harassed by a severed hand, although Roy Castle’s laugh-a-minute encounter with voodooism comes a close second.   Ultimately, it is left to Peter Cushing to deliver the chills, which he does with his inimitable flair, and a very dodgy German accent.

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