Gallery of Horror

I've had a ball with this film since WPIX started running it on Chiller Theatre. This film has more great gaffs and laugh lines than ANY Ed Wood picture. To begin, John Carradine in his rented tux with crooked tie really sets the proceedings - especially with him standing in front of a blue screen that is only one-half matted with a still frame from a Roger Corman castle! After Carradine babbles for about 5 minutes, we get to the first Tale - Starring J.C. Roger Gentry as the husband and Vic Magee as "Doctor Varnsely Finchley" give performances that can only be described as indescribable. Soon we get to Chaney's scene. He is a medical professor in Scotland in the 1880's. Unfortunately, the Westrex desk phone rings, Lon looks at his wristwatch, and he rushes off to classes while Ron Doyle and Joey Benson contemplate reviving Murderous Magee (Old Vic), an executed killer. Don't let this one get away. And have a bottle of port handy. And a couple of cheap cigars.

Gallery of Horror (1966)

BOMB (out of 4)

John Carradine hosts five different horror stories in this incredibly poor cash-in on Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. This here is another contender for one of the worst films ever made but thankfully it's so bad that you can laugh at it. Carradine stars in the first story, which is probably the best one. Lon Chaney, Jr., sadly showing signs of his alcoholism, turns in the worst performance of his career and it's rather hard not to laugh. All five stories end with dramatic music at their "shock endings", which are all stupid and lame.

I don't know how to rate this (see below). Certainly this is one of the all time bad movies. A the same time its also unintentionally funny (I least I think so, but I'm not sure since several actors seem to be laughing on screen). This is one of those movies thats so enjoyably bad as to make you wonder why Ed Wood is king of bad movies when there are others more deserving of the title.

This film is a collection of five short horror film introduced by John Carradine. Each one runs about the same amount of time and ends with a twist ending.

The first is The Witches Clock and concerns a clock left in a castle a young couple has just purchased. Carradine appears in this story as a traveler who shows up at the castle when the clock is restarted.

King Vampire is about a vampire on the loose in Victorian London thats hunted by the police.

Monster Raid concerns a man who was fed an immortality drug returning from the grave to get revenge.

Spark of Life has Lon Chaney as a doctor trying to return the dead to life.

Count Dracula is a fast retelling of the Dracula story with a twist ending.

They play as if EC comics Tales from the Crypt or Vault of Horror became bad TV shows. Worse are the twists that end every story since they come at point not where logic would dictate they should be, but rather where a strict running time demands they be.

The acting is uneven and bad, with only Carradine the only one turning in anything close to a performance. The sets are dreadful as is pretty much everything else. Best of all (?) the movie was recently released on DVD in full widescreen so that the film can now be seen in its full cinematic glory (and I use the term lightly).

If you like bad movies this is a film to search out. If you want an actual "good" movie then I suggest you look elsewhere.

For Bad Movie lovers: 8 out of 10 For those who need good movies: 1 out of 10

Look, I'll be brief. If you have ANY taste for the so-bad-they're-great classics (Plan 9, Robot Monster, Brain That Wouldn't Die), hunt down a copy of this, the most overlooked member of the club. Amazingly, this was put out in letterboxed form; but anyway you can find it, WATCH THIS MOVIE. It is fantastic

What first began life in Sept. 1966 as "Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horror" evolved over the years with new titles for cinema ("The Blood Suckers") and television ("Return from the Past"), easily available today under the shortened title "Gallery of Horror." John Carradine had earlier garnered the title role in "The Wizard of Mars" for director/special effects maven David L. Hewitt, who here managed to corral Lon Chaney and Rochelle Hudson to add greater marquee value to what arguably appears to be his masterwork. Rather than science fiction, truly impossible on such chintzy budgets, we have traditional, old fashioned horror, an anthology film inspired (as one can guess by the title) by the 1964 Amicus feature "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" (one character even named after Peter Cushing!). Conceived by CREEPY editor Russ Jones, an expert in short stories, Hewitt spent approximately $20,000 on a super fast 5 day schedule at Ray Dorn's Hollywood Stage that left the actors breathless, and audiences speechless (Al Adamson and John Carradine had just completed "Blood of Dracula's Castle" using the same studio facilities). Virtually all the stock footage is culled from AIP's Roger Corman Poe films (plus "The Terror"), its main musical theme cribbed from 1960's "The Hypnotic Eye." Carradine is the unnamed narrator, introducing on screen all five stories but only appearing in the opener, "The Witches Clock" (13 minutes), in which a young couple move into a New England castle that 300 years before housed a Salem witch, with an enchanted clock that revives the spirit of Carradine's Tristram Halbin (little characterization in just two scenes). Second, and perhaps weakest, is "King Vampire" (12 minutes), feebly depicting Scotland Yard's hunt for a vampire that supposedly has the face of a corpse, and how they've detained all suspects that fit that description! Next is another poorly executed story, "Monster Raid" (16 minutes), with Rochelle Hudson's adulterous wife getting her comeuppance from her dead husband, whose resurrection was made possible by his own curiously vague formula. Fourth, "Spark of Life" (15 minutes) casts top billed Lon Chaney as Dr. Mendell, the only mad scientist of his entire movie career, a colleague of Hamburg's Baron Erik Von Frankenstein, continuing experiments that involve bringing the dead back to life via electricity. His greatest mistake is in choosing the corpse of an executed murderer out for revenge, but Chaney really acts up a storm, running the gamut from elation to disappointment, deadly serious as he attempts to undo his success with predictable results. Last is "Count Dracula" (13 minutes), a seriously crippled rehash of "Dracula's Guest," featuring a woefully inadequate Mitch Evans in place of Carradine as Dracula. As bad as it undoubtedly is, this film remains ideal for younger audiences who favor harmless terror for late night viewing, which was how this monster kid saw it on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater on four occasions between 1972 and 1978.