Review: From Beyond the Grave

Peter Cushing plays an antique store proprietor, with this horror anthology revolving around a few of his customers who might just deserve to be taught a bit of a lesson through the cursed items they take home with them. David Warner buys a mirror, holds a séance, and becomes possessed by the ghostly figure housed inside the mirror. The ghost urges Warner to murder pretty young things to quench its thirst. In the second story, Ian Bannen plays a hen-pecked husband to shrill Diana Dors (having a high ‘ol time being a total cow). He meets an oddball street peddler (Donald Pleasence) and his peculiar daughter (Angela Pleasence), the latter of whom introduces Bannen to the notion of voodoo dolls. Thirdly we have Ian Carmichael plagued by an apparently disturbed spirit that takes over him and tries to force him into strangling his wife (Nyree Dawn Porter). Enter dotty spiritualist Margaret Leighton for answers. Finally, Ian Ogilvy buys an antique hand-carved door that contains an ancient evil entity looking to prey on Ogilvy’s poor wife (Lesley-Anne Down).

 

Every Amicus fan has a favourite among their patented horror anthology/omnibus films, and perhaps this 1974 film from debut director Kevin Connor (Amicus’ non-anthology non-horror “At the Earth’s Core”, the cult favourite “Motel Hell”) will be yours. It’s fairly solid, but it’s not among my favourites though they’re all fairly close in quality at the end of the day. Uniting all of the stories here is Peter Cushing, who has fun but he’s not quite as memorable as he was in Amicus’ “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors”, serving essentially the same function.

 

Things start well with a classic story of David Warner finding a ghostly entity in a mirror who needs blood to be ‘fulfilled’. Warner is absolutely terrific and it’s good, bloody fun even if the actor playing the ghost camps it up a little too much. Next up we have an oddball outing with Ian Bannen, Diana Dors, and father-and-daughter duo Donald and Angela Pleasence. Bannen is great as usual and Dors is perfectly cast as his unpleasant wife, but it’s the Pleasence family you’ll remember here. Donald is his usual terrific self while Angela proves effective stunt casting. She’s creepy, weird, and definitely takes after her father. How weird is she here? Above her bed reads the bible passage ‘The wages of sin is death’. Yeah. There’s lots of askew, in-your-face camera angles and although a slow-starter this one is interesting, odd, and effective. Probably better than the first story, and it’s got a funny ending. Our third story is seemingly everyone’s favourite, and the plot itself is probably the strongest. Unfortunately, it adopts a comic tone and it’s just not to my personal taste at all. Margaret Leighton is amusing at times as an eccentric medium, but also too much at other times. The tone and the performances probably pull this one back, and make it the weakest one…so far. Some of it is funny, don’t get me wrong, I just would’ve personally preferred to see the same story done in more serious fashion. The final story gives us Ian Ogilvy, and young and very pretty Lesley-Anne Down, and a door. Here’s the requisite dud segment, folks. Nearly every horror anthology has one, and this one is really quite tedious. As much as the previous segment wasn’t to my personal taste, this one’s just the pits and is also far too similar to the first story.

 

One dud segment pulls this horror anthology back from being one of Amicus Films’ best, I’m afraid. Still worth watching, and the film looks absolutely wonderful thanks to cinematographer Alan Hume (“Cleopatra Jones”, “Eye of the Needle”, “Return of the Jedi”). Based on short stories by Roland Chetwynd-Hayes (“The Monster Club”), the screenplay is by Raymond Christodoulou (whose only other screenwriting credit is the awful “Nutcracker” with Joan Collins) and Robin Clarke (a music editor in their one-and-done screenwriting effort).

 

Rating: B-