The Vault of Horror Movie Review 449

The Vault of Horror is a 1973 horror movie directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring Denholm Elliott, Tom Baker and Daniel Massey.

Five men enter a lift and they are taken down to a basement where a table is laid for them with plenty to drink. Once the lift closes, they can't get back up again. They decide to sit down and relax. They decide to chat and they each describe a nightmare that they have had...

Midnight Mess:
Harold Rodgers(Massey) is a man who has hired a private detective(Mike Pratt) to track down his sister, Donna. He goes to the village where she lives and waits until the evening time to call on her. He goes to a restaurant, but they are closing before it gets dark. He wonders what is going on. He finds his sister and she lets him into her house. He kills her to get her inheritance. He is happy with himself and he finds that the restaurant is open again. He goes in and orders a meal. There is something wrong with the food and the place. He realises that this a den of vampires and he is the main course. His sister is one of them and she leads the vampires in killing him.

The Neat Job:
Arthur(Terry-Thomas) is a bit of a neat freak and he decides that he wants a wife as he has everything else that he wants. He marries Eleanor(Glynis Johns) who is younger and he tells her the way that he likes his house kept. He keeps after her about this and that and he cannot let her do anything herself.
He doesn't like anything moved and his house must be perfect. One day, she makes an awful mess and she can't clean it up. He comes home from work and freaks out. She has enough of him and she kills him and cuts him up into pieces which she stores in jars in the basement very neatly!

This Trick'll Kill You:
Sebastian(Curd Jurgens) is a magician who is on his holidays in India with his wife. He sees a local man performing a trick with a basket and snake. He has a girl with him and she plays a flute and makes a rope come out of the basket. Sebastian wants to know how it is done. He offers the girl money for her rope but she refuses.They lure her to their hotel room and take the rope by force and kill the girl. The rope has a mind of its own and when his wife climbs up the rope, she disappears.
Then it attacks Sebastian and strangles him. It ends with the girl seemingly alive again with her rope.

Bargain In Death:
Maitland(Michael Craig) has come up with a plan to get an insurance payout by Maitland pretending to be dead and buried and his pal Alex who will dig him up and they will share the cash. The plan seems to be working but Alex decides to double cross Maitland and leave him to die. Two medical students want a body to practice on and they decide to dig up Maitland who is still alive. The two students panic and run off into the road and cause Alex to crash his car and he dies. The gravedigger doesn't realise that Maitland is still alive and he kills him while trying to dig him out of the grave.

Drawn and Quartered:
Moore(Baker) is a painter who is living in Haiti. He is down and out. He is mad when he finds out that his art dealer Diltant(Elliott) and two pals are making money from his art after telling him that his paintings were no good. He decides to dabble in voodoo and manages to get a priest to give him powers to destroy with his hand. He decides to get rid of Diltant and his pals and he does so in gruesome fashion. He has painted himself too and this backfires on him when he ruins his portrait and he dies too.

The movie ends with the five men wandering out of the room and into the graveyard where they turn into ghosts. They are all dead and they are forced to wander the graveyard and tell their stories forever. This was very enjoyable with a wonderful cast. It is pretty tame for these days, but I liked the stories and I have to say that I thought that this was great old fashioned fun. I do enjoy anthologies and this is a great way to pass a couple of hours. I recommend this and I will give it a 7/10.