John Carradine narrates this quintet of horror stories. Well, stories anyway. Well actually, they’re more like extended scenes that cut off abruptly. Hell, even that’s being generous.

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‘Gallery of Horrors’ is a very, very, obscure film, and very, very, deservedly so. I myself only came across it as it was sitting on the sale rack at my local library. I’m a sucker for anthologies, and so, decided to shell out a whole $2.00 in order to check this movie out. Oh well, at least my scratch went to a good cause. Now, ‘Gallery’ has a few things going for it. It isn’t interminably ugly at least; the cheaper than Roger Corman sets do their job well enough. (Which is to say that the stories go by so quickly you never really have a chance to analyze the papier-mâché bricks.) John Carradine narrates the tales amidst a swirly, psychedelic opening. His commanding voice almost manages to make this whole silly matter seem interesting. Also... oh wait... those are the only two good things. The main and utterly fatal problem with this production is the writing. It’s no sin to not have a lot of money to throw around (or any, for that matter) as long as you have something fresh, intelligent, or at the very least interesting to say. The stories in this film are pointless, utterly and completely pointless.

In ‘The Witches Clock’ (a title which shows the general level of care and competence with which this production was approached) a young couple eschews civilization in order to move to “the rotting wilds of Massachusetts”. (Well, a young woman and the whiny, petulant little girly man she’s married to anyway.) She inherited the old place, and is doing her best to clean it up; her husband mills his bony ass around constantly negating everything she says or does. Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door. It’s Tristram Halbin (*Snicker*) a mysterious old man (played by Carradine) who offers to be an indentured servant in the house. Well, to make a long story short, he’s actually a ghost (like you didn’t know) who was resurrected when the titular witch’s clock was started up. (Yes, witch’s. It’s singular possessive, idiots!) Apparently Halbin was the witch’s consort, and the old clock carries her curse. He attempts to seduce the young misses, which can’t be that difficult seeing the ninny she picked as her husband. (Man, Whitney Houston had higher standards.) Then somebody touches the clock, and they all blow up or something. It’s an absurd, abrupt, non sequitur conclusion, and it don’t get no better from here folks.

In our second sojourn, ‘King Vampire’ has been terrorizing the squalid tenements of Victorian London. Scotland Yard would like to help, but the locals are openly combative to all outsiders, and demand to be left alone. (So who gives a damn?! Let them get attacked!) It’s hard to make judgments on these things, but I’d say this episode possesses the worst acting of the entire film. (Which is a bit like saying that Himmler was the craziest nazi, or Christina Aguilera the sluttiest popstar.) This is just about the only time the film’s visuals are hurting for a lack of funds. By necessity, every scene is lit very darkly so that we can’t tell that what’s supposed to be Whitechapel is actually just some park in Los Angeles. This segment also boasts the worst writing of the lot. (A crowd beats an innocent man to death, yet no attempts to aid him, or even follow-up arrests, are made by the Yard?) The ending seems like a punch line from a particularly lame SCTV sketch, and its nature would be obvious to a drunken four-year old- Pity, as I suspect that they would be this film’s most appreciative target audience.

In ‘Monster Raid’, the rotting corpse of a murdered doctor returns to avenge himself on his adulterous wife and her new squeeze. And, well, that’s it. It’s like what an EC comic story would be like if Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein just didn’t give a sh*t. (But the mood is still quite good. The dead doc is gruesome at least and rather chatty concerning his decrepitude.) It seems that this particular man o’ science had been working with the tainted blood of vampires and zombies, and thought that he had found a serum to induce reanimation. Unfortunately, while he had been preoccupied with his work, his lab assistant was putting the moves on his misses. He finds this out from his loyal servant, who spotted the two in flagrante delicto. Knowing this, the good doctor not only tests the serum on himself, but let’s his wife’s lover prepare the injection! So yes, in case there was any doubt, you can make it through at least seven years of college while remaining a complete moron. Mr. Boytoy isn’t any Mensa candidate himself, not foreseeing any unusual consequences stemming from a fatal overdose of zombie juice. In fact everybody in this segment is stupid, including the faithless wife who seems to have been seduced more out of boredom than passion, and the servant who’s still taking orders from his boss even after the old fool is dead. While it could be said of all the tales, this one in particular with its template non-characters reciting obvious lines reminds me of nothing so much as one of the films Brendon Small used to make on ‘Home Movies’.

In ‘Spark of Life’ Lon Chaney Jr. plays at being Dr. Frankenstein and attempts (with the encouragement of two dull medical students) to shock a corpse to life. Why? I don’t know. I guess they were all as bored as I was. Due to the budget, they must attempt this without the requisite mountain of strickfaden equipment. Plan B is pretty much just plugging the cadaver into the wall like an electric skillet. This of course is idiotic, and doesn’t work. Naw, I’m just kidding! The body comes to life as expected, and grateful to have been given a second chance, it endeavors to make the world a better place, simultaneously cementing the good doctor’s name alongside those of Pasture and Salk in the pantheon of medical brilliance. No, again, still pulling your leg! It’s actually the corpse of a convicted killer. (I don’t remember if they neglected to check his id, or if they knew and just didn’t care. Pick your preferred flavor of dumb.) As he’s going about talking of revenge killings and such, Chaney decides that the only humane thing to do is to return him to the land of the dead. This plan of course goes smoothly, and everything turns out fine. (Ok, at this point you must know I’m full of crap.)

Our final tale is that of Dracula, which surprisingly starts out rather faithful to the novel. Of course, since the film has no budget, no talent, and no ambition, this amounts to two bad actors standing in someone’s basement reciting lines of Stoker to one another. It gives one a fevered glimpse of what would have happened if instead of being remade by Werner Herzog, ‘Nosferatu’ had been directed by Uwe Boll. Ah but here’s the twist! (Dear God, an actual twist! Someone finally put a second’s worth of thought into something associated with this picture!) This Harker is actually a knowledgeable vampire hunter. After his failed seduction at the hands of a comely succubus, he helps the villagers chase her down through a rather impressive cardboard graveyard. The Count thinks this small sacrifice has thrown Harker off the track, and is eager to sink his teeth into the brash young fool. But wait, Harker wasn’t trying to save the villagers, just preserve them for himself! For you see this Harker is actually (cue shaky jump shot and fake fur) a werewolf! Which is basically how 'Van Helsing' ended, except that this movie’s not quite as silly. Oh, well, they’re both still better than the Coppola version.

And there you have it, a collection not so much of stories as things happening in no particular order. Wee little scraps that would need to be significantly polished in order to be trite. A film that seems to have been compiled not so much as an investment as a tax-dodge. Not bad to look at, but engaging your brain while doing so can bring about nothing good. While not entertaining, this film could be used to baby-sit very small children, or as white noise if you’re having trouble sleeping. It’s not offensive, just dumb.

Really, really, dumb.

Just a small note for all you sticklers out there, this film also goes by the title of ‘Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horrors’, though a better alternative would have been ‘Dr. Languid’s Showcase of “WTF was that supposed to be?”’

2.0