6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 2.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 2.9 |
Mysterious man boards a train and offers to tell his five fellow passengers their fortunes with his tarot cards.
Starring: Christopher Lee, Max Adrian, Ann Bell, Michael Gough, Jennifer Jayne (I)Horror | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Amicus may be Latin for friend, but considering the sort of company that can show up in certain Amicus Films, some cynics might be trotting out that old adage, “with friends like these, who needs enemies?” While a lot of film fans tend to automatically think of Hammer when asked to define the British horror film, Amicus was its own quite distinctive contributor as well, offering a number of portmanteau entries that typically presented several stories nested within an overarching plot conceit which (ostensibly at least) knitted everything together. (It should be noted that while Amicus did business in England, it was actually the brainchild of expat Americans.) Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors was the first Amicus portmanteau, and in some ways it’s one of the more effective ones, offering a quintet of Twilight Zone-esque tales, each with a twist (of course), which then fold over into a coda which itself offers a (none too surprising) “sting”. The framing device utilized here is a simple train trip, where a bunch of strangers are holed up together in one car. A mysterious man named Dr. Schreck (Peter Cushing) is the last to arrive, and he seems strangely knowledgeable about the other passengers. That knowledge is perhaps of the occult variety, as the good (?) doctor is soon proffering his Tarot deck, getting each of his fellow passengers to tap the deck three times, which is the first step toward Schreck giving each man a “fortune telling” reading of sorts, though considering the upshot of each of these tales, it might be more accurate to call them a misfortune telling.
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. A lot of this transfer looks rather good, with a generally healthy palette, well resolved grain structure and very good detail levels, if an at times just slightly soft appearance. There are some anomalies, however, including a kind of odd looking "voodoo" sequence that is noticeably softer and grainier than the rest of the presentation, and which also suffers from fringing as well as registration and alignment issues (see screenshots 13-15 for some examples). This is a rather handsomely mounted film, and the first vignette especially benefits from a nicely gothic ambience that is drenched in shadow, an approach which is certainly appropriately moody, but which can diminish detail levels at times.
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors features a fine sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track, one which more than adequately supports what is in essence a dialogue driven film. There are surprisingly few startle effects in the film, and so dynamic range is a bit more restrained than in more hyperbolic horror outings, but dialogue comes through cleanly and clearly at all times and Elisabeth Lutyens' evocative score also sounds clear and precise. The voodoo sequence also includes some crisp sounding jazz courtesy of the then popular Tubby Hayes group.
There are no supplements of any kind on this Blu-ray disc.
That joke above about the "house" actually being a "train" ignores the fact that Schreck refers to his Tarot deck as his horrific domicile, but the conceit of a gaggle of guys in a train car suffices as well as anything to establish the baseline for a hit and miss aggregation of vignettes. The first and fourth entries are probably the standouts here, while the other three are not quite as well realized and tend at times to lapse into pure silliness. The film is briskly paced by genre stalwart Freddie Francis, and there's a nice mood of uneasiness that wafts through the entire enterprise. Recommended.
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