Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: The Vault of Horror isn’t scary. It won’t haunt your dreams, unless your dreams already include mustachioed insurance agents being buried alive or mannequins with a thirst for blood. It won’t cause you to scream, except maybe in delight when Tom Baker appears with a beard and a death wish. But dammit, it’s fun. It’s the kind of movie that lights a pipe, curls up in a velvet armchair, and tells you five macabre bedtime stories just before smothering you with a throw pillow made of ’70s polyester.
Directed by Roy Ward Baker—an underrated workhorse of British genre cinema—this Amicus anthology leans into its EC Comics origins with the poise of a gentleman ghoul. It’s lurid, it’s mean, and it smells faintly of formaldehyde and brandy. And in 2024, it’s aged like a fine wine left open too long: a little vinegary, but with just enough punch to knock you on your ass.
Down the Elevator Shaft of Madness
The framing device is pure gothic nonsense, and that’s exactly the way we like it. Five British men—none of whom look like they’ve ever laughed sincerely—find themselves trapped in a posh subterranean lounge after stepping into an elevator that forgot to include a “lobby” button. It’s like Saw, if Jigsaw was a vaguely disappointed maître d’.
The men, each an archetype of buttoned-up British repression, start telling each other dreams they’ve had. But these aren’t dreams. These are confessions. Waking nightmares dressed up in Harris tweed. And one by one, we tumble headfirst into their respective moral collapses.
Segment One: “Midnight Mess”
Starring: Daniel Massey and Anna Massey
First up, a tale about vampires and the least subtle metaphor for gentrification this side of Frasier. Daniel Massey plays a man who murders his sister for inheritance money and then decides to celebrate in a quiet, unsettling town that seems to only come alive at night. Spoiler alert: it’s because they’re vampires. Even the maître d’ looks like he moonlights as Dracula’s accountant.
The punchline is pure EC Comics camp: Massey’s character gets strapped into a chair and bled like a human wine bottle. It’s not terrifying, but it is exquisitely tacky. Think fondue party from hell.
Dark Humor Meter: High. The scene where a bartender nonchalantly says, “We like our blood warm,” is the kind of absurdity that makes you want to slow clap into your own grave.
Segment Two: “The Neat Job”
Starring: Terry-Thomas and Glynis Johns
Terry-Thomas, a man who was born wearing a cravat and insulting the help, plays a neat freak who marries a sweet, messy woman (Glynis Johns). He belittles her relentlessly, delivering lines with all the smug venom of a tax auditor on speed. When she finally snaps, it’s less “women’s liberation” and more “industrial accident.”
She dismembers him and stores the pieces in clearly labeled jars. Yes, he dies as he lived—compartmentalized.
Dark Humor Meter: Off the charts. This is what happens when Marie Kondo joins a slasher film. It sparks joy. Blood-slicked, alphabetically arranged joy.
Segment Three: “This Trick’ll Kill You”
Starring: Curt Jurgens and Dawn Addams
A magician and his wife travel to India to steal a levitation trick from a young street performer. Instead of paying her or, you know, being a decent human, they decide murder’s a faster route. They kill the girl, steal the magic rope, and try it out on their own.
Naturally, the rope has its own ideas. It strangles the wife mid-levitation and then disappears, leaving her corpse hanging like the world’s worst stage prop. The husband tries to cut her down. The rope returns. Guess what happens.
Dark Humor Meter: Solid. It’s got colonialism, arrogance, and cosmic justice all tied up—literally—in one nasty little bow.
Segment Four: “Bargain in Death”
Starring: Michael Craig and Edward Judd
Here’s a fun little scam: you fake your own death for the insurance payout, only to get double-crossed by your sleazy partner who plans to leave you buried for real. What nobody counted on were a pair of med students who believe grave-robbing is a viable side hustle.
This one’s more farce than fright. The guy buried alive wakes up to find his grave being plundered by two idiots with the combined IQ of a Victorian wallpaper pattern. There’s panic. There’s screaming. There’s a wonderfully dumb karmic twist.
Dark Humor Meter: Medium-high. Feels like someone tried to rewrite Weekend at Bernie’s after watching Tales from the Crypt while drunk on cooking sherry.
Segment Five: “Drawn and Quartered”
Starring: Tom Baker
Yes, that Tom Baker, before he was Doctor Who, playing a painter who gains voodoo powers and starts painting portraits that allow him to inflict terrible fates on his enemies. Naturally, he paints a bunch of portraits of the sleazy art dealers and critics who wronged him.
The deaths come quick: one’s blinded, another shot, one gets crushed in a car wreck. It’s like Death Note for bohemian assholes.
The kicker, of course, is that he paints himself for safekeeping and then promptly forgets the cardinal rule of voodoo: don’t let the painting get shot. It does. So does he.
Dark Humor Meter: Immaculate. Tom Baker’s descent into voodoo-fueled madness is both hilarious and weirdly sympathetic—he’s basically just trying to run a Yelp for revenge.
The Wrap-Around Ending: The Big Twist That Wasn’t
Eventually, the men in the vault realize they’re not dreaming at all. They’re already dead. Cue pipe organ. Fade to black.
Yes, it’s predictable. But that’s part of the charm. You don’t go to a diner and complain that the coffee tastes like coffee. You don’t watch Vault of Horror for innovation—you watch it for the twisted morality tales, the British deadpan delivery, and the bloodless decapitations that somehow feel polite.
Final Thoughts: Camp, Corpses, and Cigars
The Vault of Horror isn’t trying to redefine horror. It’s here to entertain you with doom and irony, like a bedtime story told by your alcoholic uncle who used to be a mortician. Roy Ward Baker’s direction keeps it brisk, the production design is as charmingly cheap as a stage play performed in a coffin showroom, and the cast is full of actors who look like they just wandered in from a BBC detective series.
It’s the cinematic equivalent of reading macabre comics by candlelight while thunder rolls in the distance—and someone, somewhere, is laughing in a posh British accent.
Verdict:
Four corpses and a monocle out of five.
Perfect for a rainy night and a stiff drink.
