Torture Garden *** (1967, Burgess Meredith, Peter Cushing, Beverly Adams, Jack Palance, Michael Bryant, John Standing) – Classic Movie Review 3097

Director Freddie Francis’s 1967 Amicus chiller is the first of Robert (Psycho) Bloch’s three compendium films of four horror tales. It stars Burgess Meredith, Peter Cushing, Beverly Adams, Jack Palance, Michael Bryant and John Standing.

It is linked cleverly by a story about patrons attending a fairground haunted-house attraction show, where the barker Dr Diabolo (Burgess Meredith) gives them a preview of their lives-to-come.

The highspots include Michael Bryant faced with a man-eating cat, John Standing with a murderous piano, and Jack Palance turning himself into a character from Edgar Allan Poe.

Genre stalwart Francis directs a little obviously but capably and efficiently with an eagle eye to atmosphere and shocks. It is well produced by Amicus’s Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg and tremendously acted by an upmarket cast, with lovely Technicolor images from cinematographer Norman Warwick.

Also in the cast are Barbara Ewing, Maurice Denham, Robert Hutton, Michael Ripper, Bernard Kay, Ursula Howells, Niall MacGinnis, John Phillips, Catherine Finn, David Bauer, Nicole Shelby, Roy Stevens, Norman Claridge, Geoffrey Wallace, Clytie Jessop, Timothy Bateson, Roy Godfrey, James Copeland, Barry Low, Michael Hawkins and Hedger Wallace.

The tales are: segment 1 “Enoch”, segment 2 “Terror Over Hollywood”, segment 3 “Mr Steinway” and segment 4 “The Man Who Collected Poe”.

Torture Garden (1967), 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. Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), Tales from the Crypt (1972), Vault of Horror (1973) and From Beyond the Grave (1974) are among Amicus’s other portmanteau films.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3097

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