Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
| Dr Terror's House of Horrors | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Freddie Francis |
| Produced by | Max Rosenberg Milton Subotsky |
| Written by | Milton Subotsky |
| Starring |
Peter Cushing Christopher Lee Max Adrian Ann Bell Peter Madden Donald Sutherland Roy Castle |
| Music by | Elisabeth Lutyens |
| Cinematography | Alan Hume |
| Edited by | Thelma Connell |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Regal Film Distributors (UK) Paramount Pictures (USA) |
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Release date
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23 February 1965 (UK) June 1965 (USA) |
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Running time
|
98 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £105,000 |
Dr Terror's House of Horrors is a 1965 British horror film from Amicus Productions, directed by veteran horror director Freddie Francis, written by Milton Subotsky, and starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
It was the first in a series of anthology films from Amicus and was followed by Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1970), Asylum (1972), Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973) and From Beyond the Grave (1974).
Five men enter a train carriage in London bound for Bradley, and are joined by a sixth, the mysterious Doctor Schreck (Peter Cushing) whose name, he mentions, is German for "terror". During the journey, the doctor opens his pack of Tarot cards (which he calls his "House of Horrors") and proceeds to reveal the destinies of each of the travellers. This provides the framework to tell five horror stories.
The first story concerns an architect, Jim Dawson (Neil McCallum), who travels to a Scottish island to his former house to make alterations requested by the new owner, Mrs Biddulph (Ursula Howells). Mrs Bidduplh is described as a widow who bought the house to seek solitude to recover from the death of her husband. Behind a fake wall in the cellar, he finds the coffin of Count Cosmo Valdemar, who had owned the house centuries ago. Valdemar was killed in a conflict with the Dawson family, and had vowed to exact revenge on the owner of the house and reclaim his former home. Dawson soon discovers that Valdemar is emerging to take the form of a werewolf in the night, and believes the housemaid (Katy Wild) was killed by him. Believing the owner Mrs. Biddulph's life to be in danger, he melts a cross made out of silver by his ancestors to protect the house from Valdemar's spirit, to make silver bullets, which, according to legend, are the only means of killing a werewolf. On the night he encounters the wolf as it is about to attack Mrs Biddulph and shoots, he is baffled that the bullets don't kill it. Mrs Biddulph then reveals that she has replaced the silver bullets with ordinary ones. She reveals to Dawson that the true legend was that Valdemar would exact revenge on the last descendants of the Dawson clan, and that the placing of Dawson's body in place of Valdemar's in the coffin, would bring Valdemar back to life in human form. She reveals she was Valdemar's wife who had deliberately lured Dawson to kill him, even after 200 years.
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