TWICE TOLD TALES (1963)

  This was MGM studios answer to American International Pictures TALES OF TERROR which had come out the year before. Instead of Edgar Allen Poe the source material here is Nathaniel Hawthorne. Just like the earlier TALES though this is an anthology of three short stories featuring Vincent Price.  I'm way more of a fan of the AIP film since this one tends to drag for a bunch of time. The first story deals with bringing the dead back to life and restoring youth with some magical rainwater, the second tells about a dad(Price) who wants to protect his daughter from the world so much that he makes her touch poisonous to others and the third is about a family curse. Pacing is the main issue here and it's also missing the elemnt of humour that Peter Lorre brought to the other anthology. Without the excellent acting abilities of Vincent Price this might be a tough one to get through.  

DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965)

 

 This Amicus anthology features Peter Cushing on a train with five other passengers including Christopher Lee and a young Donald Sutherland. He ends up telling them all their futures using a deck of tarot cards. Spoiler alert: none of them has a very bright future since this is a horror film with "horror" right there in the title. The 5 tales include a werewolf one, a vampire one, a killer plant one( which is sort-of a short version of DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, which had come out 2 years prior), a voodoo curse one featuring a jazz band and lots of music and what's probably my fav, a killer disembodied hand(yes just like Thing from THE ADDAMS FAMILY) that stalks snobby art critic Christopher Lee. Pretty simple yarns but they're all effective enough and the acting is top-notch throughout. AKA THE BLOOD SEEKERS and THE HOUSE OF HORRORS

Played, for some reason, with a western in the U.K.!: 

This old 1940s spook show had a very influential name!:

THE WILLIES (1990)

 This horror anthology reminds me a bit of one of those 90's Nickelodeon shows like ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? but I guess since this came out first that wasn't the actual inspiration. Just like those stupid shows though, this is a really dumb movie that seems like it was made for kids. It's PG-13 so there is at least a little bit of blood and gore. You get a dog exploding in a microwave, a monster that hangs out in a boys room at school, and a disgusting fat kid. The great thing about this movie is that they're not afraid to murder little kids in it and one kid even gets his arms ripped off by some giant angry flies. James Karen and Clu Gulager, both from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, show up, so that's something. There's an in-joke about THE GOONIES since one of the kids, Sean Astin, was in that. Ultimately though you should only watch this if you're interested in seeing a semi-retarded version of CREEPSHOW.

TRICK R' TREAT (2007)

 It's hard to believe in the cinematic-apocalyptic decade of the zeroes they produced a horror anthology film that wasn't a complete waste of time but somehow they did.  It's also hard to believe that it took filmmakers this long to remake CREEPSHOW and do it halfway decently.  It must have all been a big mistake.
  You get four spooky stories that wrap around each other, ala Quentin Tarantino, which include some werewolf women(including that chick from those X-MEN movies), Halloween-masked retards getting their retarded bus driven off a cliff and then getting retarded revenge, a fat candy-obsessed kid(aren't they all?) who knocks on the wrong door and an old guy who hates Halloween and winds up getting abused by some living potato-sack boy with a sharp lollypop.  While it's not the most intelligent thing you will ever see, and it will never top the original HALLOWEEN as the ultimate movie to watch on October 31st, it's still a fun holiday-themed flick and compared to just about everything else that came out in 2007 you could do a lot worse.

TALES OF TERROR (1962)

 The main draw here, of course, is seeing Vincent Price in three tales based on Edgar Allen Poe short stories acting up a storm as always.
 Directed by Roger Corman(his 4th Poe adaptation) the stories themselves don't always make much sense and stuff seems to happen very willy-nilly, especially in the first and last parts, but it's great seeing Price in pretty much anything. You also get Basil Rathbone and Peter Lorre in there with Lorre even managing to outdo Price in the second chapter as a drunk who gets revenge on his cheating wife and that whole segment(THE BLACK CAT) is definitely the highlight for me since you get two horror icons together playing off each other. Worth checking out even if just for that part.