Best movie ever!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Five men in an office building take take an elevator to the ground floor, only to find themselves ending up in the sub basement with no way out. To pass the time, all five tell a tale about their dreams in this poor follow up to Amicus's Tales From The Crypt. None of the stories told in this anthology measure up to the ones in the afore mentioned "Tales", although there are a few that I enjoyed. The first story, in which a murderous brother goes to visit his sister, where he ends up meeting a fitting end,and the third in which a man and woman on vacation in India debunk a magician, and then murder a rope charmer,and must deal with the dire consequences. This story also has what will probably be the WEIRDEST fight scene ever recorded. The best parts of the fourth story are where they show a vintage "Vault Of Horror" comic book, and a scene in where the main character is reading a novilization of the "Tales From The Crypt" movie! As is in most British horror movies of the time, the gore here is at a bare minimum. So if you're a gore hound, you're probably gonna walk away disappointed. What little gore there is, is quite obviously red paint or tomato juice. And despite the title.of the movie, there really isn't much horror in this movie. "The Vault Of Weird" would have been a more appropriate title. Unlike the previous production of Tales From The Crypt, most of the storied presented here just don't work.

Although it has essentially the same plot as the earlier "Tales from the Crypt", "The Vault of Horror" still holds its own. A group of men get trapped in a room and tell each other their dreams, all of which seemed...so real. Probably the most interesting segment was the second one, in which Terry-Thomas (the Englishman in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World") and Glynis Johns (the mom in "Mary Poppins") play what turn out to be the opposite kinds of roles with which they're usually associated. It's just fun to see the twists that occur in each segment, and then the twist at the end of the movie. It's a good time the whole way through.So yes, there is no trick. AND DON'T TRY TO PROVE OTHERWISE!

An interesting horror anthology, with a more original approach than other similar movies."Midnight Mess" is a slightly odd story with a fun vampiric twist."The Neat Job" sticks out from all five for the simple reason that it doesn't have an evil protagonist who snuffs it, hence the only real flaw TVOH has. Terry-Thomas gets killed by his wife, his only "sin" having been that he occasionally lost his temper when she misplaced things around the house or wasn't neat enough. That's hardly a reason to throw him in the same egg-basket with the other four guys.An (un)intentionally amusing bit was when Terry-Thomas's "young wife" shows up. None other than Glynis Johns! Aged 50 anno 1973. Terry-Thomas was 62 years old, i.e. not exactly a large age difference (especially in movie la-la-land), thereby certainly not a case of a dirty-old-man plucking an innocent dyevochka straight from her crib. It's bizarre that we were set up for a young, trophy wife (or something of that nature, after all it's his friend's daughter he's married), but then we get this woman way past her youthful days. My question to the producers/writers: did you do this as a gag, or did you actually believe Johns, cute as she was even at that age, could possibly pass off as "young Eleanor"? Goofier yet, she is referred to as "young" by a man nearly half her age, and this is done without a speck of sarcasm."This Trick'll Kill You": Curt Jurgens, an evil magician, kills in order to get a magic Indian rope. Solid story, somewhat unusual."Bargain In Death" is a more straight-forward story of insurance fraud, with one predictable twist and one that is less predictable."Drawn & Quartered" is yet another voodoo tale, but fun. The inclusion of this story is somewhat puzzling. The artist does murder three people, but he does it out of revenge. No reasonably-minded intelligent down-to-Earth non-pacifist could possibly blame him for taking out those three guys, hence why the artist doesn't quite belong to the same "category of evil" as the narrators of the 1st, 3rd, and 4th stories.The "we're all dead and in Hell" end-twist isn't particularly original, as it's been done at least once, in a similar vein in "Dr.Terror's House of Horror" for one thing, but it neatly wraps up the movie. Well, "neatly" would be the word if it weren't for the obvious fact that the narrator of story 2, Terry-Thomas, wasn't a wicked murderer at all, and that narrator no.5 only acted out of (very justifiable) revenge, not greed. Don't three people who deliberately destroy the livelihood of one man (story 5) deserve to die? Not according to Christian and Marxist hypocrites they don't. Those left-wing film-makers and their twisted sense of morality, won't they ever stop with their claptrap.

***SPOILERS*** From the famous "Vault of Horror" 1950's horror magazines we have an anthology of five horror stories that have to do with persons who committed their crimes, with the exception of Arthur Critchit played by Terry-Thomas, and ended up paying for them. Arthur's only crime was being and wanting his abused wife Elenore, Glynis Jones, to be a little too neat for her and his own good. In trying to satisfy her very demanding husband Elenore ended up neatly pickling every organ,including his teeth, in his body. All five men, including Arthur, magician Sabastian, Curt Jurgens, insurance fraud shyster Maitland, Michael Criag, murderer for profit Harold Rogers, Daniel Massey, and frustrated artist and voodoo practitioner Moore, Tom Baker, end up not only paying for their crimes but reliving them over and over every day until the end of eternity!It's not a pretty sight in what happens to those who find themselves locked in the sub-basement, or Hell for short, in this London high-rise with them all getting everything that they deserved and getting it with interest compounded. But for what they did to their victims back in the world of the living it's the least that they could have expected which is about as extreme as it could be by them being punished 365 days a year until times or the calendar runs out! What's even worse is that every day of torture and suffering that they go through is a whole new day in that it's always a new experience for them! In that they forget what happened to them the day before!What the film "Vault of Horrors" shows is that crime doesn't pay not only here in the real world but the world hereafter for those who think that they got away with the crimes that they committed. Not by just getting away with their crimes in not getting caught and punished for them here on earth but what's to face them on the other side where they, unlike here in the world of the living, face final and eternal, with no time limit like a life sentence or final execution date, Justice!