Vault of Horror

Amicus' sixth portmanteau film. Following up Tales from the Crypt with another selection from the William Gaines horror comics, it simply slaps down its Grand Guignol climaxes after hopefully buttressing them with dreary slabs of plot and chatter. The result is paralysingly pedestrian, despite the fact that each of the stories harbours an ingeniously ghoulish conceit (like the suburban wife driven to murder, and an impeccably tidy disposal of the corpse, by her house-proud husband's constant nagging about her housekeeping). As tedious as anything is the framing device whereby the five heroes (Massey, Terry-Thomas, Jürgens, Craig and Baker) confide their recurring nightmares in turn after delivery by lift to a no-exit room in the basement of a skyscraper.