Tales That Witness Madness ** (1973, Donald Pleasence, Jack Hawkins, Georgia Brown, Donald Houston, Russell Lewis, David Wood, Suzy Kendall, Peter McEnery, Joan Collins, Michael Jayston, Kim Novak) – Classic Movie Review 3113

‘It happens beyond madness – where your mind won’t believe what your eyes see.’

The follow-up to Vault of Horror (1973), director Freddie Francis’s 1973 all-star British horror movie is a shaky Amicus portmanteau film anthology of four ghost stories told by inmates of enigmatic psychiatrist Professor R C Tremayne (Donald Pleasence)’s doctor’s clinic. Tremayne explains his controversial theories to his visiting colleague Dr Nicholas (Jack Hawkins).

Written by actress and writer Jennifer Jayne (credited as Jay Fairbank), the tales of madness involve a murderous old dead tree, a boy’s ‘imaginary’ tiger friend, a time-travelling penny-farthing bicycle and cannibalism.

It is a weird collection of stories, varying from the convincingly creepy to the simply bizarre, that are atmospheric but not always convincing, and don’t quite hang together as a satisfying whole. Kim Novak as Auriol in Segment 4, Pleasence and Hawkins, in his last role before his death from throat cancer, lead a fascinating cast that includes intriguing work from Pleasence, Georgia Brown, Donald Houston, Russell Lewis, David Wood, Suzy Kendall, Peter McEnery, Joan Collins, Michael Jayston and Michael Petrovitch.

Hawkins’s voice was dubbed by Charles Gray.

Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), Tales from the Crypt (1972), Vault of Horror (1973) Tales That Witness Madness (1973) and From Beyond the Grave (1974) are among Amicus’s portmanteau films. Director Freddie Francis’s 1967 Torture Garden, The House That Dripped Blood (1971) and Asylum (1972) are the three Amicus portmanteau films written by Robert Bloch and based on his own stories.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3113

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