INTRODUCTION: AMICUS CALLED — IT WANTS ITS BONES BACK
There are bad anthology horror movies, and then there’s Grave Tales (2011) — a film so dusty and disjointed it feels like it was exhumed from a VHS bargain bin and cursed before release. Directed by Don Fearney (a name that sounds like he should’ve directed a 1970s Dracula spoof but instead wandered into Pinewood Studios with a fog machine and a dream), this low-budget British portmanteau horror is a loving homage to Amicus Productions. Unfortunately, it’s the cinematic equivalent of finding your grandma’s scrapbook — quaint, confusing, and full of things that don’t make sense anymore.
It premiered in 2010 at Cine Lumière (probably to an audience of three) and then at the Southend-on-Sea Film Festival in 2011 (to an audience of two who got lost on the way to the bar). By the time it hit DVD in 2012, any excitement had decomposed like the corpses it pretends to scare us with.
Oh, and Christopher Lee was supposed to be in it! He was — briefly — in the original cut. But by the DVD release, he was gone. And frankly, good for him.
THE FRAMING STORY: GRAVEYARD SHIFT FOR THE BORED AND THE UNDEAD
The film begins with a young genealogist (Heather Darcy) wandering through a graveyard looking for family records, because apparently ancestry.com was down. She runs into an elderly gravedigger (Brian Murphy), whose energy level hovers somewhere between “just woke up from a nap” and “should be napping again.”
He offers to tell her spooky stories about the graves around them, and since she’s apparently got no sense of self-preservation (or interest in leaving this movie), she agrees. Cue the sound of thunder, a few fake tombstones, and four tales of terror that feel more like mildly annoying inconveniences.
ONE MAN’S MEAT: THE BUTCHER, THE VAMPIRE, AND THE WASTE OF TIME
Our first story features a butcher (Frank Scantori) who accidentally kills a vampire. Instead of alerting anyone, he decides the best use for the corpse is to, uh, mince it. Yes, that’s right — he grinds up Nosferatu and sells him as sausage. If you think this sounds like Sweeney Todd, you’re wrong — Sweeney Todd had atmosphere, tension, and good songs. Grave Tales has Frank Scantori sweating in an apron that looks like it’s been through a community theater production of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Musical.
Eventually, the butcher’s customers come back, upset that their family members have been turned into bratwurst. There’s a confrontation, a “twist” ending, and not one single scare. The only horrifying thing is the sound design, which makes it unclear whether we’re hearing blood spatter or someone stirring spaghetti.
CALLISTRO’S MIRROR: A REFLECTION OF BAD DECISIONS
Next up, Callistro’s Mirror — or as I like to call it, Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who’s the Cheapest of Them All?
A greedy man (Damien Thomas) kills a junk shop owner (Edward de Souza) for his antique mirror. Why? Because it might be valuable. Spoiler: It’s not. The mirror is also a portal to “another world,” which looks suspiciously like the same set but with blue lighting and a fog machine on full blast.
There’s a murder, a ghost, some shouting, and a “gotcha” ending so limp you could use it as a bookmark. It’s supposed to be a morality tale — “greed leads to damnation” — but it plays out like a rejected Goosebumps episode performed by your uncle’s amateur dramatics club.
THE HAND: A TALE OF ESCAPED PRISONERS AND SEVERED BUDGETS
Then we get The Hand, a story about two escaped prisoners shackled together. They need to separate fast, so they try to find the quickest way to remove the handcuffs — and if you guessed “by sawing off one guy’s hand,” congratulations, you’ve seen a horror movie before.
The premise could’ve been darkly funny or grisly. Instead, it’s just two sweaty men in a field arguing about whose hand is less important. It’s like Of Mice and Men if Steinbeck had been replaced with a drunk guy holding a camcorder.
The acting is… creative. The blood effects look like someone spilled ketchup on a paper towel. And the ending? Let’s just say it’s meant to be “poetic justice,” but it’s really just poetic nonsense.
DEAD KITTENS: WHERE HORROR GOES TO DIE
Finally, we reach the pièce de résistance — Dead Kittens, a story about an all-girl rock band making a music video so realistic it involves real blood and guts. I’m not sure what’s worse — the fake gore or the fake music.
The band is called “Dead Kittens” because subtlety died somewhere around the second reel. Their new member gets invited to film a video for their latest single — something involving ritual sacrifice, animal blood, and possibly the career of everyone involved in this movie.
It’s supposed to be a satirical jab at the exploitative nature of fame, but it plays more like a confused anti-PETA commercial. The editing is so frantic that it’s hard to tell if you’re watching a horror sequence or a migraine.
Fun fact: Christopher Lee’s cameo was originally in this story, but it was cut from the DVD release — possibly because even his five seconds of presence would’ve made the rest of the film look worse by comparison.
THE PRODUCTION: SHOT AT PINEWOOD, LOOKS LIKE A GARAGE
You’d think filming at Pinewood Studios would lend the movie some prestige. You’d be wrong. Grave Tales looks like it was shot during someone’s lunch break between Carry On sequels. The lighting ranges from “too dark to see” to “nuclear overexposure,” and the sound mix is so uneven it feels like the ghosts were in charge of the boom mic.
The editing is another nightmare. Every transition between stories feels like a cutscene from a haunted screensaver. Even the graveyard wraparound — the glue that’s supposed to hold this corpse together — feels like it’s been chewed on by rats.
THE CAST: GOD BLESS THEM, THEY TRIED
Brian Murphy, best known for cozy sitcoms like George and Mildred, deserves a medal for keeping a straight face while delivering lines like, “The dead have stories, miss… terrible stories.” He’s not scary; he’s just endearingly confused, like he wandered onto the wrong set and decided to stay.
Heather Darcy as the genealogist spends most of her screen time nodding politely and pretending she’s not regretting her career choices. The rest of the cast — Damien Thomas, Frank Scantori, Marysia Kay — all oscillate between overacting and underacting, sometimes in the same scene.
And Christopher Lee? The man was smart enough to bail.
THE STYLE: A LOVE LETTER WRITTEN IN CRAYON
The film clearly wants to emulate classic Amicus anthologies like Tales from the Crypt or Asylum — campy, creepy morality plays with a macabre sense of humor. But those films had wit, pacing, and panache. Grave Tales has a fog machine, a fake tombstone, and a director shouting “that’ll do!”
The tone can’t decide whether it’s horror, parody, or public access Halloween special. It’s too stiff to be funny, too silly to be scary, and too earnest to be ironic.
Even the soundtrack feels haunted — by the ghost of better composers.
THE FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN: BURIED ALIVE BY ITS OWN AMBITION
Grave Tales is not scary, thrilling, or particularly memorable. It’s the cinematic equivalent of being trapped at a bus stop while a stranger tells you ghost stories he clearly made up five minutes ago.
It’s hard to hate it, though. There’s a certain charm in its low-budget enthusiasm — like a Halloween party thrown by your uncle who insists on using dry ice and cassette sound effects. But charm doesn’t make a horror film. It just makes the corpse smell faintly of vanilla.
FINAL VERDICT: A PORTMANTEAU OF PAIN
If you’re nostalgic for Amicus anthologies but secretly wish they were filmed with the production values of a local news segment, Grave Tales is for you. For everyone else, it’s a grave mistake.
Rating: 1 out of 5 Dead Kittens.
Because even the corpses looked bored. 🪦🎬💀
