The Vault of Amicus Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.0

The Vault of Amicus Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 8, 2018

Note: This film is available as part of the box set The Amicus Collection.

The recently reviewed Hammer Horror: The Warner Bros. Years makes an interesting point in passing that, as iconic as Hammer Films’ horror outings undeniably were, there were other studios pumping out product whose features were at least occasionally mistaken for being Hammer productions, when in fact they weren’t. Probably prime among these examples would be Amicus Productions, a British institution that was nonetheless founded by two Americans, Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky. Rosenberg and Subotsky themselves had a somewhat infamous Hammer Films connection, having (according to Rosenberg, anyway) come up with the project that ultimately became The Curse of Frankenstein, a 1957 opus that was Hammer’s first horror outing in color, Hammer’s first “reboot” of a venerable horror character, and arguably the film that set the tone for what became a decade or more of Hammer’s preeminence in the horror genre. Subotsky and Rosenberg were kind of pushed to the sidelines on the project, receiving no credit, and (again according to Rosenberg) even handing over their meager $5000 payday to Ray Stark in exchange for a promised partnership which never manifested. There was obviously some kind of discord associated with this film, at least from the perspective of Rosenberg (who’s on hand in some archival interviews in this set, disparaging both Hammer in general and Eliot Hyman in particular), something that may have led to Rosenberg and Subotsky deciding to set out on their own when they could hopefully be captains of their own fate.

Kind of interestingly, then, while Subotsky and Rosenberg had gotten into the horror game before the creation of Amicus with the 1960 film The City of the Dead (note that the link points to a British release), their first two outings in their guise as Amicus Productions were quasi-musicals designed to appeal to the teen set, It's Trad, Dad! (directed by none other than Richard Lester) and Just for Fun. While Amicus occasionally varied outside of its largely self imposed horror limits, including with a couple of Doctor Who related feature films, Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks — Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., the studio is arguably best remembered today for its so-called portmanteau features, films which typically included four or five at least tangentially linked stories into one film. The first of these portmanteau efforts was 1965’s Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (note that the link points to a German release, though it’s region free and I personally found the technical merits better than the domestic release from Olive). That film set the portmanteau template for Amicus, where typically some kind of framing story would link the “episodes” contained within the film, and that’s pretty much exactly what one of the films in this new Amicus set (Asylum) does. Kind of interestingly, though, the two other feature films in the Amicus Collection are the somewhat rarer outings from Amicus that offer only one narrative thread for the entire film. Of those other features, one (And Now the Screaming Starts) is the really rare Amicus offering that traffics in what had been Hammer's stock in trade, Gothic horror.

Watching a series of trailers may not sound like "entertainment", but as anyone who has watched Kung Fu Trailers of Fury or its follow up Return of Kung Fu Trailers of Fury will probably tell you, it can be fun to watch marketing efforts for films. This series of Amicus trailers offers a number of interesting tidbits, including the fact that Amicus could at least occasionally go pretty far afield from the horror anthologies it was best known for, including in films like 1969's A Touch of Love starring Sandy Dennis.

While the trailers are fun to watch, this disc's main allure may be the audio interviews as well as the optional commentary that underpins the trailers.

The Vault of Amicus Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Vault of Amicus is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in a wide variety of aspect ratios. The opening snippets from The City of the Dead (which frankly are not really a trailer) are in 1.78:1, but as can be seen from some of the screenshots accompanying this review, things vary from "widescreen" like 2.35:1 to "full frame" like 1.33:1. As with the aspect ratios, video quality is at least somewhat variant with some (especially the widescreen offerings) looking rather good most of the time, while some of Academy Ratio offerings seem more generally damaged, with more apparent scratches and often less saturation or accurate looking palettes. There's nothing horrible here by any stretch, but those who have sat through other compilations of trailers may be better prepared for some of the variances that are on display.

The Vault of Amicus Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Vault of Amicus offers only a lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 mono mix for the trailers, something that may disappoint some audiophiles, especially since some of the trailers tend to emphasize goofy sound effects and sonically hyperbolic moments from the films in question. There is a bit of variability in fidelity across the board here, but nothing that I'd term overly problematic.

The Vault of Amicus Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Philip Nutman Audio Interview With Milton Subotsky (480i; 3:01:16) is an exhaustive set of interviews Nutman undertook for a proposed but never realized book about Amicus, being touted here as the most complete interview Subotsky probably ever gave. This plays to archival stills.


• Jonathan Sothcott Audio Interview with Max Rosenberg (480i; 47:26) does much the same service for the other Amicus partner, though this time a book based on the interviews was published. This also plays to archival stills.


• Audio Commentary with British Horror Film Writers Kim Newman and David Flint

The Vault of Amicus Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Vault of Amicus does a nice job offering a quick, breezy overview of the many films Amicus produced through the years. While the horror portmanteau offerings may always be this studio's best remembered features, this compilation proves quite capably that the studio regularly tried to dip its foot into other waters, however fleetingly. Technical merits are a bit variable, as might be expected, but the two supplementary interviews are fascinating and will be captivating for most Amicus aficionados.