The Vault of Horror (1973)

 "No money in horror..."

I've seen lots of Amicus portmanteau horror films by now and enjoyed them all to a greater or lesser extent. This is easily the best of the lot.

Partly it's that this time around the tales are all splendidly gleeful in their ghoulish bad taste as the five men who enter the lift each receive their magnificently grand guignol comeuppance. A greedy murderer ends up having blood dispensed from his neck like wine from a wine box. An obsessively nagging husband who insists on neatness has his organs neatly displayed in jars after driving his wife to murder. An insurance fraudster is buried alive and meets his death. And so on, all amongst the most '70s clothing and interior decor that has ever been immortalised in film. 

It helps that Roy Ward Baker imbues the film with some visually witty touches, such as our insurance fraudster reading a novelisation of Tales from the Crypt, to which this is a semi-sequel. The script, too, is wittier and more gleeful this time round.

Yet what really makes this film shine, well-made as it is, is a superb cast full of the sort of well-known character actors who (Terry-Thomas aside) were not quite stars at the time. Standout performances from Glynis Johns and a splendidly vengeful, bizarrely bearded and deeply charismatic Tom Baker are a huge part of the film's success- and a success it is: I care not for the views po-faced contemporary critics.

Island of Terror (1966)

“Some peculiar goings-on going on on this island...”

This is a surprisingly good little film, an average script elevated into something superior by the presence of Peter Cushing and the excellent direction of Terence Fisher, who turns what could have been a fairly by-the-numbest science fiction B movie with a science experiment gone wrong as the baddie into something strangely Cthulhuesque.

The whole thing feels curiously like a period Doctor Who story, with its “base under siege” plot and its slightly rubbish monsters- very rubber little bags with silly rubber tentacles- which nonetheless manage to somehow made to be an effective threat through good direction, music, sound effects and effective acting- not least from Edward Judd and the never less than convincing Cushing. Even the radiation suits looking like condoms can’t ruin this film, nor can the fact that the plot resolution consists of... making cows radioactive. And none of the farmers objecting.

I enjoyed this a lot- a science fiction film, strictly speaking a B movie, but that doesn’t so much feel like one as it has the visual grammar, story beats, structure and feel of a horror film. Highly recommended.

First Men in the Moon (1964)

"Not married?!! Kindly leave the room!"

It rather pleases my geek sensibilities to see that Ray Harryhausen worked on a film co-written by Nigel Kneale. Harryhausen isn't really called upon to do much in comparison with some of his other work, but this is still a damned fine adaptation of H.G. Wells' little parable on the evils of capitalism.

I note, of course, that the baddie is a Mr. Bedford- sounds a well dodgy type, although I have no idea why "Julius" was changed to "Arnold" for the film. Rather spoils the "Caesar in Gaul" subtext.

It's 1964. The late St John F. Kennedy of blessed memory has alteady vowed to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, and both superpowers are quite visibly and excitingly progressing towards that age. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, when the future was not yet passé. They would have been appalled to discover that, as of 2016, no one has set foot on the moon for a staggering 44 years. It was a very different age, but also a very different age from 1901 when the novel was published. So it's good to see the story bookended by modern day sections in which astronauts discover evidence of Cavor's exploits. It's rather utopian to propose a multinational UN mission, though. And rather fanciful to suggest that the Yank and the Russian would be joined by a Brit...!

Still, it frames the film nicely. It's surprisingly late on until our (anti-)heroes reach the Moon, but the design and effect is fantastic much they do. I'm reminded visually of The Daleks, a Doctor Who story of the same year: must have been something in the zeitgeist.

It's an excellent version of a much under-utilised novel, in spite of it's largely unknown cast. That ending, though? Shameless rip-off from The War of the Worlds. H.G. Wells should sue himself.