Directed by:
Freddie FrancisScreenplay:
Milton SubotskyCinematography:
Alan HumeComposer:
Elisabeth LutyensCast:
Christopher Lee, Ann Bell, Michael Gough, Bernard Lee, Peter Cushing, Donald Sutherland, Al Mulock, Walter Sparrow, Judy Cornwell, Katy Wild, Thomas Baptiste (more)Plots(1)
Dr. Terror (Peter Cushing) is a mysterious fortune teller who boards a train to tell fellow passengers (Christopher Lee, Roy Castle and Donald Sutherland) their fortune with tarot cards. Five possible futures unfold: an architect returns to his ancestral home to find a werewolf out for revenge; a huge flesh-eating vine takes over a house; a musician gets involved with voodoo; an art critic is pursued by a disembodied hand and a doctor discovers his new wife is a vampire. But they all end in the same result... Death! A fascinating and fast paced example of portmanteau filmmaking with a deadly twist in the tale. (Fabulous Films)
(more)Reviews (2)
The opening scene, in which Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Donald Sutherland and three other passengers successively enter the train compartment, exchanging glances and examining each other’s reactions to define their social commonality, is a treat. It is thus unfortunate that the future life events that Cushing begins to divine from his cards make for six rather ridiculous “horror” stories. Only one of them has any thought to it (Lee) and one has a surprising point (Sutherland). That, coincidentally, is the last one, which is followed by the overall point of the story. And taken together, these offer a nice conclusion.
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Dr. Terror's House of Horrors is a rather nice example of classic 1960s horror that still tries to capture the dark atmosphere of gothic horror, but it falls a bit short in various aspects, and it can be quite boring. The stories don't have the necessary drive and in the end, the atmosphere doesn't really hold up. Well, not always, which is the main problem. Some of the short stories would work great on their own.
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