Best Amicus Productions Film

Asylum is my vote, btw.

My parents once rented The Monster Club for me thinking it was The Monster Squad, so it's the only one I've seen, but since its housed in disappointment for me I can't very well vote for it.

Gonna abstain from voting, but I'm kinda in love with the title And Now The Screaming Starts!

*shrouded in disappointment. Though "housed in disappointment" is an unusually evocative autocorrect.

Ha, well, I'm not sure how many people will vote in this, so maybe I should allow for title-based votes too?

i voted for TALES FROM THE CRYPT - Patrick Magee's tremendously intense performance in the final segment just swung it for me (tho' yeah ASYLUM is fantastic too, esp the Donald and Angela Pleasence segment)

of the non-portmanteau movies, THE SKULL is prob Freddie Francis' best film as director

I've not seen The Skull, but any film about the possessed skull of the Marquis de Sade sounds good to me.

Also interested in seeing their version of The Birthday Party. Seems like a bit of an oddity for their stable.

yeah, was def. their bid for 'artistic credibility'. it didn't work, of course.

milton subotsky used to come into a comic shop that i worked in when i was a teenager - didn't really appreciate who he was, at the time (he used to buy comics for his son.) v. interesting guy - wrote the first Frankenstein screenplay for Hammer (who decided to go w/ a Jimmy Sangster effort, instead) and was also the first film producer to show any interest in Marvel Comics, just after Amicus had made the two Dalek/Who movies (subotsky's partner max rosenberg didn't want to buy the rights - talk about short-sighted!)

this issue of the Little Shoppe of Horrors fanzine has a fantastic, gossipy history of Amicus:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LAkU56n3VwE/USDlRQf__oI/AAAAAAAANNs/7ODV_m_bFbM/s1600/amicus+mag.jpg

Asylum is my favourite too but i'm not sure i could say why

The Monster Club is fully mental, absolutely ridiculous tacked in sections of New Wave chancers playing their songs, but the "village of the ghouls" story has stuck with me as quite an effectively grim chiller that sums up the British rural experience

"Midnight Mess" from Vault of Horror is probably my favourite individual section of the ones i've seen - fantastically horrible closing sequence

Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. - watched this with my kids on Saturday morning, we all agreed this is much better than the current Dr Who cos there's so many more Daleks getting blown up in this thing. Also all that sneaking around on the spaceship, pretending to be one of the brainwashed Robomen and stuff, we do like that.

The Beast Must Die - one of the first horror films I ever saw I think, don't remember all that much about it but iirc it's kind of a country house murder mystery with the added element of one of the party being a werewolf. Not really that scary but ultra-fascinating to me when I was 11 or whatever.

I haven't seen any of these in ages - need to bust out my Amicus box set I think.

Doctor Terror is the most fun but has one of the worst framing stories. I think it might be my pick though.

The House That Dripped Blood

The Denholm Elliott section in that is excellent.

The Beast Must Die isn't great - but it does have a 'Werewolf Break' where the viewer is invited to guess who the werewolf is! Also slightly unusual in having a black actor in the lead (i've heard that the film was also known as 'Black Werewolf', but never seen evidence of this...)

surely there's no point having a "guess who the werewolf is" break in a film called Black Werewolf?

LOL perhaps we better put SPOILERS on this thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCn2BLX66LE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCn2BLX66LE

hahaha

Peter Cushing otm

i made an error upthread, the donald and angela pleasence episode i mentioned is in FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. ASYLUM prob has the best framing story, yeah, tho it's funny to see Ralph Richardson as the Crypt-Keeper in TFTC. the last time i watched DR TERROR i thought it looked very cheap and cardboardy, tho anything w/ Lee & Cushing and Roy Castle and Alan Freeman and Tubby Hayes is not w/out interest, obv. the Christopher Lee segment is prob the best - surprisingly touching.

SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN - which is a really great SF/horror hybrid w/ Lee, Cushing and Vincent Price (tho' not in any scenes together) - is a Subotsky/Rosenberg production, tho i guess it's not on this (wiki) list cos it was actually released by American International in the US (i dunno abt britain)

In context of The Beast Must Die and SPOILERS, I offer this panel from a 1961 issue of Supergirl I read the other day:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8087/8574590046_d06aa73882.jpg

Spoiling a film, while you're watching it, was clearly OK In Those Days. Alternately, what a shitty thing to do on a date.

Even spoilers don't matter when there's important mansplainin' to do.

http://www.impawards.com/1974/posters/beast_must_die.jpg

Can't remember who gets munched, hoping it's the Elbow-looking dude in the middle.

The Beast Must Guy

Oh shit, where'd that picture go?

I see it.

spooky

aldo that supergirl panel is the best panel of supergirl i have ever seen!

i can't see NickB's picture :-(

wouldn't it be great to do a hammer horror poll #gothicalgeriangoalkeeper

Ward, please see my 'this is the best silver age panel I've ever seen' thread on ILC.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

torture garden was on LEGEND this afternoon. will probably be repeated shortly. noticed burgis meredith in the titles, not watched the entire thing yet