Vault of Horror, The (1973)
Vault of Horror, The (1973), directed by Roy Ward Baker.
"There's no money in horror" -- man planning to get himself buried alive.
This entry in the Amicus series of horror anthologies seems more "comic book" than the others. Our entries:
Prologue: Five men descend in an office building elevator to a basement that shouldn't exist. They find a nice bar and for some reason decide to drink and relate their worst nightmares.
Midnight Mess: Your sister is a vampire living in a vampire village. Are you sure you want to murder her and go out for a meal after? (Featuring real-life siblings Daniel and Anna Massey. She was in other notable thrillers, including Peeping Tom (1960) and Frenzy (1972)).
The Neat Job: Fussy Terry-Thomas finally decides to get married so he will have a housekeeper to care for his many hobbies. You can easily push that scheme too far. His "young" wife is the great Glynis Johns, age 50 here.
This Trick’ll Kill You: Stage magician Curd Jürgens travels to India to find new tricks. When encountering real magic he really should leave it alone, and definitely not murder to acquire it.
Bargain in Death: When will people learn? These clever plans of "I'll pretend to be dead, be buried and then secretly dug up so we can collect the insurance" -- how often do that work out? Especially when medical students who need a body are in the house?
Drawn and Quartered: Tom Baker (Dr Who #3) is an artist who discovers he is being cheated. He buys some voodoo (the priest shaking his head sadly) and returns home to get revenge on his enemies.
Epilogue: The explanation for the setup doesn't make much sense.
The film has a censorship history you can find in the wikipedia. The home video editions are supposed to be uncut but the Blu-ray definitely has a blackout mask covering a scene of blood being drained from our victim.
The complete film series:
Available on Blu-ray from Shout Factory.
