GALLERY OF HORROR-1967–Man, if bad movies could hit home runs this Z budget anthology would be Babe Ruth! Everything connected with it is sub-par. The photography, the direction, the sets, SFX, the script and the acting!
But it wasn’t bad enough that the producers assembled a bunch of rank amateurs to play multiple roles in the 5 stories…Oh no! They had to include three “name stars” from the past too!
John Carradine (in ill fitting tux) is our narrator who introduces each tale and talks about vampires, werewolves, etc. He does this to the background of the rough sea crashing against breakers. Since Carradine could read the phone book backwards and hold our interest these scenes by default are the best-filmed parts!
John was a busy actor in films & TV at the time (in fact I would have to say that before in died in 1988 he was always a busy actor) but still he finds time to star in the first episode, “The Witches’ Clock” as a Warlock who uses an old clock to terrorize a newlywed couple. This is the only segment that is not a period piece.
The second tale involves a police hunt in foggy old England for the killer known as “King Vampire”. Lon Chaney shows up in the third installment “Spark Of Life” as a cheerfully crazy Dr. Frankenstein, doing experiments at a local college where two students decide to help him bring a corpse back to life. The fourth and longest episode (well it seems like the longest anyway!) is called “Monster Raid”. It’s about a doctor’s revenge on his unfaithful wife and her lover, also his ex-colleague who killed him. Fortunately a loyal assistant brings him back to life. Much of it is POV shots and flashbacks. Former 30’s Hollywood film star Rochelle Hudson plays the wife. I hope she wasn’t using this role as springboard for a comeback. Maybe she just lived next door and needed beer money.
And finally there’s the intriguing “Count Alucard” (yeah… right!) a tale of vampirism featuring someone named Mitch Evans in the title role and possibly giving the worst performance as the legendary vampire this side of Zandor Varkoff. This story has the funniest ending. And like all the others once the “surprise ending” is revealed the screen turns red (much like the faces of the theater owners who charged unsuspecting patrons to see this in 1967…).
The story goes that GOH was originally suppose to be an adaptation of the black & white horror comic CREEPY published by Warren (they also printed FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND) but eccentric owner Jim Warren pulled out at the last minute. The producers bravely (insert your own word here if you want) forged ahead and made their own humble opus. Many of the actors play several different roles and are all pretty bad.
Director David Hewitt would work with Carradine again in THE WIZARD OF MARS and make a few other films like the incoherent THE LUCIFER COMPLEX (where Robert Vaughn fought clones of himself, Keenan Wynn and Hitler while some guy watches it all on a TV in a cave!).
GOH is also known as “Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horrors” perhaps to draw on the Hammer made anthology DR. HORROR’S GALLERY OF TERRORS which may have been playing in US theaters around this time. It also showed up on very very late night TV as RETURN TO THE PAST occasionally missing the “Monster Raid” sequence. For some reason known only to a chosen few it also played under the title “Blood Suckers”.
Grab a six-pack and enjoy!
Thanks for reading!
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