All language subtitles for Tales.Of.The.Uncanny.2020.1080p.BluRay.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

(dramatic music)

- 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?

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)