The Vault of Horror

1973 "Everything that makes life worth Leaving!"
6.5| 1h23m| R| en| More Info
Released: 16 March 1973 Released
Producted By: Amicus Productions
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

The sequel to Tales from the Crypt. Five strangers trapped in a basement vault converse about their recurring nightmares. Their stories include vampires, bodily dismemberment, east Indian mysticism, an insurance scam, and an artist who kills by painting his victims' deaths.

Genre

Horror

Watch Online

The Vault of Horror (1973) is currently not available on any services.

Director

Roy Ward Baker

Production Companies

Amicus Productions

AD
AD

Watch Free for 30 Days

All Prime Video Movies and TV Shows. Cancel anytime.
Watch Now
The Vault of Horror Videos and Images
View All
  • Top Credited Cast
  • |
  • Crew

The Vault of Horror Audience Reviews

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!
filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Rainey Dawn This is the sequel to Tales from the Crypt (1972), another corny fun horror anthology.The frame work story is of 5 men that are in an elevator that ends up on the basement floor where the door opens and they all enter a room, sit down to tell us 5 different stories of their recurring nightmares.Story 1: Midnight Mess. A tale of vampires. This one is super corny - in particular the extra long fangs on the vamps. Not my favorite of the groups of tales.Story 2: The Neat Job. A tale of a neat freak and his new wife. This one I kinda liked for some reason. I found humor in him being very extreme with his neatness.Story 3: This Trick'll Kill You. A man and his assistant wife go to India to find a new magic trick for their show. It's an okay segment.Story 4: Bargain in Death. Death insurance scam that goes wrong - unexpected twist happens. It's a pretty good segment.Story 5: Drawn and Quartered. A poor painter goes to Haiti and learns voodoo. He gets back London to get revenge on those that scarfed at his artworks. A fun segment, not to bad at all.6/10
jimpayne1967 I had seen a few horror portmanteau movies over the years but I had never seen this film until recently. I had liked Tales From The Crypt to which this film is something of a sequel but this is mostly inferior to its predecessor.The premise of five apparently successful businessmen descending into the sub-basement of an office block where they find themselves locked into the well appointed room they have landed in with nothing better to do than drink whisky and tell each other their nightmares is not a particularly novel or strong one and the twist that they are all already dead would surprise nobody watching it. The framing story in this kind of film has to be strong and if it is like Dead of Night the twist in this part of tale has to be especially surprising but in both these aspects The Vault of Horror fails. The five segments are pretty variable in quality though one of them, the last, is pretty good. The opener 'Midnight Mess' has a neat twist in it and Daniel and Anna Massey as long lost siblings are pretty good but I thought it could have done with a few more minutes. One of the problems in the film is that it is littered with fairly big names who don't have to do much and in this story Mike Pratt- then a big name on British TV after the success of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)- gets about two lines before he is killed off. His character's back story seemed interesting but like so much of the film his part feels a bit underdeveloped.The Neat Job is part 2 and stars the great Terry-Thomas and Glynis Johns. Both are very watchable in what seems to be a light-hearted story about a fussy husband who drives his new wife to distraction because of his overwhelming neatness but the twist of having her to such distraction that she chops up him up and neatly labels his body parts in jars just does not work for me though the final shot is , well, neat.This Trick'll Kill You is better, telling as it does of a husband and wife magician team who spot a great trick on a holiday in India which they decide to steal by killing the trick's original magician only for the victim and her trick to exact spectacular revenge. The downside is that Curt Jurgens plays the thieving magician and he is, as he had a tendency to be, a touch hammy. Pass marks thoughWhich Bargain in Death does not earn. Owing something to a Ray Milland film based on an Edgar Allan Poe story about a man scared of being buried alive it is the most underdone of the stories presented and the music used at the point at which the film twists suggests farce. Michael Craig and Edward Judd were good actors and at the start of the piece there is a hint of a gay lovers plot that would have been daring for the early seventies but that is about it.Drawn and Quartered is the final story and stars Tom Baker just before he was reduced to working on building sites prior to being plucked to stardom as the fourth Doctor Who. In this story he plays an artist who, sick of rejection by the London Art Establishment, has decamped to Haiti. When there he discovers his paintings are actually selling well and that a trio of critics and art dealers who told him his work was rubbish have got rich on it.Being set partly in Haiti it is predictable that voodoo is on the menu as Baker seeks to gain his revenge and the closure of the story is predictable but the murders Baker dreams up are delightfully grizzly- the middle one is a genuine hand over your eyes moment- and it is curious to see a pre-Who Baker. He was of course very good in that latter role but everything he has done since has sounded like a slightly camp reprise of it. Here he is just a very good young actor.This film is disappointing for the most part but I have seen worse for sure.
Scott LeBrun "The Vault of Horror" is not one of the best horror anthologies to come from Amicus. The main problem is that the stories just don't have that much kick to them. The execution is reasonable, and there are a few creepy moments as well as some very funny ones. The most valuable asset that the movie can boast is a sterling group of actors who make the most out of so-so material, taken from the old E.C. comics published by William M. Gaines.A quintet of men are taking the elevator in a big hotel ALL the way down. They end up in a sub basement that they weren't aware existed. With no way out of the place (which looks like a club of sorts), they decide to hang around. Soon, they're regaling each other with the nightmares that are plaguing them.In "Midnight Mess", Rogers (Daniel Massey) tracks down his sister Donna (Anna Massey) to a rather strange community where it's not advisable to be out and about after dark.Terry-Thomas plays Mr. Critchit in "The Neat Job". A fussy anal retentive, he drives his new bride Eleanor (Glynis Johns) right up the wall, until she can't take it any longer."This Trick'll Kill You" stars Curd Jurgens as Sebastian, a magician who finds a young woman performing a trick that fascinates him. In fact, he's willing to kill to be able to use this trick.In "Bargain in Death", author Maitland (Michael Craig) thinks he's arranged for the perfect insurance scam, only for his plans to be derailed by some desperate medical students.Appropriately enough, we end with the best segment, "Drawn and Quartered". Tom Baker plays a painter named Moore. Eager to get revenge on those who exploited him, he makes a deal with a voodoo master, and acquires the ability to destroy people and objects by painting pictures of them, then altering the pictures.Erik Chitty, Dawn Addams, Edward Judd, and Denholm Elliott are also among this superior British cast. There's a little bit of gore, including one ingenious image in "Midnight Mess". A hysterical comic gag involves Mr. Terry-Thomas. In-jokes add to the fun, with Craig seen reading the novelization for "Tales from the Crypt". In fact, Craig has the best line in the movie when he says, "There's no money in horror."We fans of the genre know differently. Overall, this is fun. Nothing great at all, but it has its pleasures.Seven out of 10.
Theo Robertson I first saw VAULT OF HORROR in the late 70's on television when I was a child and remembered it as being good horror fun , and decided to watch it when it was shown on Channel 4 very late last night .Oh dear me. What a disappointment it was *****SPOILERS AHEAD******* When you're a child there's things you don't notice in a film , things like a very sloppy script , they don't come much sloppier than VAULT OF HORROR. Imagine you were living in a town that was being infiltrated by vampires, would you hang around or would you move ? I think that's a rhetorical question but the townsfolk here don't want to even though people keep turning up dead and there's nothing stopping them leaving. This lack of logic drags down another of the stories: Man tries an insurance scam by faking his own death which has an interesting premise but is ruined by the unlikely coincidence of his accomplice driving past the wrong place at the wrong time!. There's umpteen other unlikely occurrences like a murderer popping into a restaurant just after he's killed someone. Come on , I know it's central to the plot but you wouldn't want to be seen near the scene of the crime would you ? Interesting too that he has no knowledge of a town where many people are turning up dead drained of blood . Corny or what ? There's another problem with VAULT, its lack of budget. Prepare for the least convincing locations ever seen in a film. We have studio exteriors of India and the Caribbean ! Yes folks it's as bad as it sounds. And where did those vampires get their teeth from ? A joke shop in Soho? This makes the cheapest DOCTOR WHO production looks like it's been given the budget for STAR WARS in comparison VAULT does have a couple of good points. Talking of DOCTOR WHO Tom Baker plays an artist given the power of voodoo , and it's good to see Baker play a baddie in a story that's memorable in it's own right and the story revolving around his character is very enjoyably as he gets his revenge against people who we know in real life as being unscrupulous selfish philistines But overall if you've been brought up on the post modernist witty horror of SCREAM you'll most certainly want to give this movie a miss due to its high corn content. And if you remember this as a good film from years back you'd be wise to do the same. It interesting that people who have seen the unedited version have a higher regard for it but no matter how much gore you put in a film ( Less would be more ) it doesn't hide the fact any story must have credibility and internal logic in order for it to work