'Tales From The Crypt' - 1970s British (Hammer) Horror Film.
 

Greetings Friends,
For some in explicable reson all of the cheesiest British films (mostly comedies and horror movies) seem to have been made in that golden year of 1972, when Ted Heath was on the throne, the lights turned off, and British Leyland was the music-hall joke, not to mention the odd IRA terrorist atrocity to punctuate the general grey-dom.
Be that as it may, how many of year recall that Hammer classic 'Tales from the crypt' (go on, you must do!), which starred Joan Collins, Ralph Richarson and Per Cushing amongst others in a series of nasty little vignettes including such gems as the 'Monkey's Paw' in which an embalmed man rises out of his coffin writhing in agony?, or Ralph Richarson as the sadistic boss of a home for the blind being fed to his Alsatian?
Well, my reason for writing this is that one of my strongest memories is of being allowed by mum to watch the film when it was broadcast on ITV way back in 1979 when I was 12, and I remember being horrified and oddly mesmerized by the film.I also strongly remember an incident that happened a few months later.You see at secondary school we used to have a coach taken us to a regular weekly football match at a playing field some miles from the school.Usually the conversation on the coach as the usual schoolboy light-hearted banter, guffs, jokes and general mickey-taking.
The someone mentioned watching Talles from the Crypt.He began a monologue reciting all the incidents from the film.Everyone listened in awe-struck silence - the only time in history the coach was silent.In turned out everyone had watched the film, and everyone was mesmerised and horrified by it.


Foxbark.

At the end they all get dropped into Hell(unconvincingly)? Is that the one ?

Yes, that's the kiddy.

Very good movie... I felt so sorry for that poor old man when they took his dogs away, and tormented him to the point of suicide. If anyone deserved to go to hell it was that greedy neighbor...

One of my favorite short stories! The old couple comes into possession of a magical monkey's paw that grants three wishes. They wish for cash, and they get it in the form of an insurance settlement when their son dies in an accident. They wish to have their son back, and he soon shows up, undead, on the doorstep. The last wish is to send their son back to the grave.

That's how the story went, how did it go in the movie?

I could have sworn this was by O. Henry (The Gift of the Magi, The Ransom of Red Chief) but the interwebs tells me it's W.W. Jacobs.

In the movie it was a chinese statue... but the wishes went horribly wrong and pretty much follow the monkey paw story.

Well it was actually made by Amicus not Hammer. I liked it anyway.

How about Vault of Horror? anyone see that one?

Yeah, I own most of the Hammer stuff. The movie does have a bevy of typical/recurring Hammer actors though.

Vault of Horror has recently been reissued on DVD - but beware, a scene where vampires put a keg tap in a man's throat (so as to have blood on tap) has been censored with a big black bar.