Did anyone watch the film The Vault of Horror (1973)?
Did any of you watch the film The Vault of Horror (1973)?
Side note: if you haven't watched it, I don't recommend looking up information on it before you watch it, because most places with any information on it post plot spoilers without any warning (including the main overview on the IMDB page, which google idiotically automatically displays during a web search).
It's a Creepshow-style anthology film based on EC comics. Many versions of this film exist and some of them are censored in various way. I'm discussing & rating the uncut/uncensored version.
I consider it to be a bona fide TFTC film. It differs from the tv series in that it doesn't have the Cryptkeeper and it plays as a straight horror with almost no comedic element (except for in the second tale, which has a comedic slant).
Here are basic plot overviews (no spoilers) and how I rate the tales as represented in this film:
Tale 1, Midnight Mess: A man ignores warnings to stay away from a certain town where bad things happen after dark: 10/10. If this was a tv episode, it would be one of the best. I especially would not recommend to watch the censored version of this tale, since the censored version totally ruins the most important scene with an idiotic freeze frame pause which is not supposed to be there.
Tale 2, The Neat Job: An obsessively neat man drives his wife nuts: 9/10.
Tale 3, This Trick'll Kill You: A magician and his wife try to acquire a new magic trick in India. 7/10.
Tale 4, Bargain in Death: An man attempts to fake his own death in order to collect insurance money: 6/10.
Tale 5, Drawn and Quartered: An artist tries to take revenge on his enemies with voodoo: 11/10! Not only is the plot rock-solid, it's also extremely creative as well! Even the title is amazing! This too would be one of the best tv show episodes if it were in the tv series.
Frame Story: 7/10. The concept behind the frame story is very good, but its execution drags it down by the characters lamely fading out of existence at the very end, instead of something exciting happening, like them being dragged into their graves by ghouls or demons and by the plot hole that they spend the whole movie not knowing what they are doing, but the final character somehow randomly becomes aware of what he is doing for no reason whatsoever, simply because they needed a way to tell the audience what is going on. This point needed more plot development before it might make any kind of sense.
Overall, I highly recommend this film to TFTC fans for the great tales in it, albeit a couple of the tales are lackluster.
What do you guys think of this film?