The Vault of Horror by Jack Oleck - Review

The Vault of Horror was the second of two anthology films, produced by the Amicus Production company, adapting yarns from the (in)famous EC horror comics of the early 1950s - Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear.

While the first film, Tales from the Crypt, drew from all three comics, this second entry consists almost entirely of stories taken from the pages of Tales from the Crypt. The one exception being the second segment, The Neat Job, which is from Shock SuspenStories.

As much fun as I think it would be for me to do a page-to-screen-to-page review of The Vault of Horror, I cannot. Because, at time of writing, I do not have access to the comic book source material for the film. I only have access to the film and its novelization, which was written by Jack Oleck.

That name should be familiar to comic book aficionados, as Oleck wrote for EC Comics, back in the 1950s. He was one of the main writers for Crime SuspenStories, as well as contributing to The Vault of Horror and Weird Science-Fantasy.

After the Comics Code caused something of an industry collapse, Oleck took a decade long sabbatical from comic book script writing. During which he published and edited the magazine Interior Decorator News. He also wrote two evidently lurid and pulpy novels set in ancient Rome. Messalina, which appears to have been a bestseller, and Theodora.

Oleck returned to comic script writing in the late sixties, working for DC on a variety of horror lines. But he also continued to pen the occasional novel. Prior to writing the novelizations of Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, he wrote a novel about 1950s era beatniks titled The Villagers. Following the novelizations were two anthology books featuring prose adaptations of stories from DC’s The House of Mystery. To which Oleck just so happened to be a contributor.

In addition to The House of Mystery, Oleck supplied yarns to Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion, The House of Secrets, Tales of Ghost Castle, Weird War Tales, and Weird Mystery Tales. So there is a better than average chance I read something written by Jack Oleck during my childhood in the so-called Bronze Age of the comic book industry.

Oleck passed away in 1981, at the age of 67.

I have no idea how amused or apathetic Oleck might have been over being hired to write novelizations of film adaptations of stories from comic books he had toiled on twenty years ago. Since this was, no doubt, a work-for-hire project, it was, most likely, a mixture of both. Depending on the time of day and the idiosyncratic mood of the writer.

Oleck does what he can with what he was given, which was a thin, almost perfunctory, script. How much creative leeway on a work-for-hire project like this really depends on whoever, or whomever, the licenser has overseeing or supervising the project. Some will allow for artistic flourishes and storytelling liberties, while others want nothing more than an impersonal translation of the material into book form for marketing purposes. Because novelizations were nothing more than mass market press kits meant to sell a movie, or TV show.

While the film opens with a camera pan across the River Thames, on a bright, somewhat smoggy London day, before zooming in on the topmost floors of the Millbank Tower and cutting to an interior shot of Rogers (played by Daniel Massey) pressing a button, to summon an elevator. Oleck’s approach is a tad more ominous and atmospheric, with the character 'Rogers' walking down an empty corridor at night.

The shadows seemed, to Rogers, to be somehow threatening. There is a loneliness about a nearly deserted office building at night that is almost otherworldly, and he did not like it. He did not like it at all. It was as if the swarms of secretaries and executives and clerks who were the life blood of the building by day had, with their going, left it a corpse. His footsteps echoed eerily along the corridor and even the harsh glare of the overhead lights seemed unable to dispel the gloom that, here and there, made long fingers of darkness where a nook or a bend in the corridor wall cut off the brilliance.

Now that is a tad more unsettling than a simple daylight pan across the River Thames, right? I also liked the cryptic foreshadowing as to both his state of existence and the events of the story that brought that state about. How the absence of the “life blood” of the building makes it feel like a corpse.

An elevator arrives, but it offers no respite for Rogers. His descent to the ground floor is slowed by four separate men, who the enter the elevator on different floors, that Rogers observes with an ill-tempered contempt that is not at all present in the film.

Although each man pressed the Ground Floor button, the elevator does not stop there. It continues downward, into the depths of the building. Stopping and opening its doors at the sub-basement level.

There they find an elegantly furnished sitting area, which they enter, and the elevator door closes behind them. There is no call button to summon the elevator back, nor does there seem to be any other way out of the room. They seat themselves around the table, pour some drinks, and make small talk about how this entire situation feels like some kind of vivid dream…

Which, of course, is the conversational segue necessary for Rogers to describe a horrible dream that has been haunting him…

MIDNIGHT MESS [from Tales from the Crypt #35]

Rogers tracks down and dispatches his estranged sister, so he can claim the family inheritance. Said sister had taken to living as a recluse in an isolated village. One that shuts down and locks up tight just before nightfall. Because, “They come out at night.”

The differences between the film and the novelization here are both slight and marked. In the film Rogers arrives in the town of Waterville, right at the doorstep of his missing sister’s domicile, via a simple edit. Oleck has Rogers take a bus out to Waterville. Also, while the film is coy about the nature of what “they” are, the novelization is quite up front about it. Which, judging from the panel snippets I have seen from the comic, is also true to the film’s source material.

The novelization breaks from the film’s continuity by having its next story be…

BARGAIN IN DEATH [from Tales from the Crypt #28]

A financially strapped writer attempts to cheat an insurance company via a fraudulent life insurance claim. Only his daring plan gets good and mucked up by a combination of greed and a pair of desperate, yet none-too-smart, medical students.

This is one of those stories that probably worked far better as a comic than it does as a cinematic narrative. Although I could see the campy and cartoonish Tales from the Crypt HBO series doing a decent job of it. This needed a lot more energy to it than was displayed.

THIS TRICK’LL KILL YOU [from Tales from the Crypt #33]

A husband-wife magic act visit India, specified as Calcutta in the novelization, to see if they can find something to liven up their moribund show. What they find is a rope trick that can be literally breath-taking.

Oleck, just as he had done with Rogers, presents Sebastian, this story’s viewpoint character, as a grumpy, uncomfortable, and very unpleasant character. Not that he, or his wife, are all that nice and pleasant in film. But Oleck amps up the palpable contempt Sebastian has for what he sees and experiences in India to an 11 on the Misanthropic Measuring Scale.

Of the five tales in the film, this one is probably the most straightforward one-to-one adaptation in the book. It’s a great story, with a great payoff, that, in the film, is marred only by the limitations of the rope effects. Otherwise, great stuff.

THE NEAT JOB [from Shock SuspenStories #1]

Critchit is a controlling neat freak that demands his young wife Eleanor do everything to his satisfaction, which means neat, tidy, and JUST AS HE AS ALWAYS HAS DONE IT! He has a place for everything and everything is in its place.

Of all the stories in this film, I think this one might have taken the most liberties with its source material. Judging from the comic panels from it that I have see, the source material is from the viewpoint of Eleanor and is a flashback as to how Critchit drove his poor wife to madness by his psychotic fastidiousness. Although the police officers that are questioning Eleanor, and to who she confesses via her story, are absent from the film, Oleck brings them back for the story’s conclusion in the novelization.

Oleck, once again, amps up the misanthropic cattiness to 11 in the story’s opening scene. In the film it is just a simple expository conversation so the viewer can understand that Critchit and Eleanor are newlyweds. But in the novelization it is a far more unpleasant experience for Critchit’s supposed friend and luncheon partner, who seems to have been summoned just so that Critchit can boast to somebody about his getting married. Which is really kind of sad, when you think about it.

Another interesting flourish, or liberty, taken by Oleck is having the desperate and eager to please Eleanor attempt to create a modern art sculpture for Critchit, as a gift. Something that he dismisses and demands she destroy it with peevish and abusive zeal.

The problem here is that The Neat Job is more Eleanor’s story than it is Critchit’s and could have worked far better if she had been the one to tell this tale.

Only one story remains to be told. A doozy called…

DRAWN AND QUARTERED [from Tales from the Crypt #26]

When an impoverished artist living in seclusion in Haiti learns that he has been cheated out of substantial profits from the sales of his work. He utilizes voodoo in order to get revenge.

Although Tom Baker, who was on the cusp of becoming the fourth Doctor, delivers an intense and engaging performance as the slighted artist Moore. His performance does not contain the amount of loathsome venom that Oleck saturates the character with in the novelization.

As was the case with Calcutta in This Trick’ll Kill You, Oleck brings the hot, humid, and heavy atmosphere of Haiti to a sensory life that the set bound film production was incapable of doing.

While this closing segment's narrative is just as tight and focused as This Trick’ll Kill You, it is Baker’s energetic performance coupled with the segment being the most atmospheric of the bunch that gets it my vote for best in show. It ends both the movie and the novelization on a strong note.

Having reached the end, a ringing chime alerts the five men that the elevator has returned…

The door opens and one final divergence from the film occurs. 

Although both the film and the novelization kicked off with Rogers entering the elevator and, I think I should note, the men board the elevator in the order of the stories as presented in the novelization. This has me suspecting this had been the original scripted order and was changed during post-production.

Yet, in the film, it is Sebastian, the magician from the centerpiece tale, This Trick’ll Kill You, that observes and narrates the film's curtain call.

But the novelization has the character of Critchit, from The Neat Job, doing the honors of the departing curtain call. Just another interesting deviation from the film that geek’s like me find intriguing and amusing.

Which is basically my end assessment of this novelization. While it may not be the most original or surprising collection of terror tales to grace bookshelves. It is an entertaining enough time-waster for what it is, a relic from a time when books helped market movies that would drifting from regional release to regional release. A pleasant enough reading palette cleanser to enjoy between courses of headier, or more complex, literary entertainments.

Nightmare (1981) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - May 7, 1982

Seeing this on a double-bill with Dead & Buried at the Alameda Southshore Twin provided yet another memorable movie going experience for me. Because it was unrated, and I could be something of a stickler for to-the-letter rule following, I was certain that I would be forbidden from buying a ticket. Seeing that no one under 17 would be admitted, "due to the violent nature of [the] film." And I would have been all of 14 at the time.

But nobody cared and I was allowed to join another raucous crowd (well, I remember it as being raucous) of hooting and hollering at the explosion of silliness and sleaze getting splattered across the screen. While I enjoyed the movie, the group I was with did not. So it goes. 
 

Fright Flicks - Trading Card #62

Aliens (1986)

 

Wizards (1977) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - May 6, 1977

"THEY KILLED FRITZ!"

That one scene, and the pacifist wizard strolling around making flowers bloom everywhere and anywhere, are my most vivid recollections of this fever dream oddity from Ralph Bakshi.

The only other Bakshi film I have seen, from beginning to end, is Fire & Ice, which was a creative collaboration with Frank Frazetta. Which is not the subject today's post.

My viewing of Wizards is so far in the past that, other than the aforementioned moments, I have zero memory of it. Perhaps the time has come to reacquaint myself with it. Thoughts?

Alien 3 (1992) - Trading Card #26

Datalog: Approx. 0:1800 Hours, Day 2

Dillon was my only chance to help me kill the Alien. Before long, the company would arrive to capture it and take it back. They would never kill it. But before we could decide on a plan, Morse interrupted us with some shocking news. Galic had released the Alien.

In Search of Dracula [Vem var Dracula (1974)] - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - May 5, 1976

I know this ad is supposed to invoke a Vampire Bat swooping down to attack, but to me it just looks a slightly doctored image of a hanging bat that was inverted. So it could look spooky and threatening. While I am somewhat certain it may have worked in 1976, today it only makes me think of those videos of inverted bat footage set to Bela Lugosi's Dead.

In Search of Dracula is one of a plethora of paranormal-themed documentaries that carpet bombed theaters and drive-ins throughout the 1970s. The big selling point here is Christopher Lee, who was quite vocal with his frustrations at being unable to perform Dracula as written and envisioned by Bram Stoker. This documentary gave him the chance to portray the historical figure, and Dracula inspiration, Vlad III (aka Vlad Țepeș, or Vlad the Impaler).
 

Fright Flicks - Trading Card #61

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

 

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - May 4, 1965

While Amicus would produce a great many more, and quite a few better, anthology films. Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, the company's first such offering, is a nostalgic favorite of mine. It is one of those movies I grew up watching. Back when the proliferation of English and European genre films on the various late, late shows, as well as any and all syndication stations, made it seem as if Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing had starred in every horror movie made between 1957 and 1977. This one even had Donald Sutherland in it! I also recognized character actor Michael Gough.

My childhood favorite segment was The Creeping Vine, because a monster plant just seemed weird and cool to me. That segment also featured Bernard Lee. An actor best known for playing M in every James Bond film from Dr. No (1962), the first, to his final appearance in 1979's Moonraker.

As an adult I think my favorite segment just might be Werewolf. Maybe. But I do reserve the right to change my mind at any time.

The distributor looks to have dusted off the 1959 Hammer offering The Man Who Could Cheat Death to keep Dr. Terror company, whilst touring with his diabolical deck of terrifying tarot cards. 

Alien 3 (1992) - Trading Card #25

Datalog: Approx. 0:1700 Hours, Day 2

I left Galic under guard by Morse. Galic was still bound in a straitjacket and was ranting about the dragon he had seen. I remember what he said when we were in the infirmary with the Alien, just after it had killed Clemens. He told it, "I want to be your friend."
 

Creepshow 2 (1987) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - May 1, 1987

Considering that Creepshow 2 was made by the same creatives that were grinding out weekly episodes of Tales from the Darkside, it comes as no surprise that this film feels more like a collection of Darkside episodes spliced together than it does a sequel to Romero's visually kinetic Creepshow.

While not an altogether bad film, it does lack the narrative and visual zest of the first film. Old Chief Wood'nhead, the opening tale, is the weakest of the three live-action segments. The Raft is my favorite segment, and even scared me the first time I saw it, because it is a faithful-to-decent adaptation of one of my all time favorite Stephen King short stories.

But the best segment of the film is its final live-action tale, The Hitch-hiker. You might be muttering, or wanting to say, "Thanks for the ride, lady," well after the film has ended. According to an article, or interview, I read in Fangoria, King had written The Hitch-hiker for Creepshow as a possible replacement for the "They're Creeping Up on You!" segment, should it be considered too difficult to film. This might explain why this segment seems to have a tad more energy to it than the segments that preceded it.

The wraparound, like the first film, is animated. But this time there is an actual story being told. One featuring Venus Fly Traps. "They eat meat." Heh.