Director: Herbert L. Strock, Curt Siodmak (Uncredited director of the original TV show episodes)
Year: 1962
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
Arriving in Hell, the devil tries to make a deal with a woman to collect souls on Earth and wins over her reluctance by telling stories about his targets.
Review:
The Photograph-Setting out for a photoshoot, a photographer renowned for his ability to capture striking images finds his latest query is a special photograph detailing a woman and a strange farmhouse. As he tries to move past the accolades for it, the stress of the situation slowly starts to affect him and his career. Overall, this was a decent enough starting point for what's going on here. The setup comes off quite nicely with the early bits about his career and how it's all turned upside down after taking the fateful photograph, which offers a great starting point that goes quite hard into a psychological study on his obsession with the contents of the particular picture. This is a bit odd and slow-paced to start off a film like this with a slow-paced psychological character study that doesn't really explain anything, so its placement here is a weird one.
The Girl in the Glacier-After its discovery in an underground mine, a strange glacier is turned over to the local anthropology institute to discover what's going on. When it's found that a woman is buried in the middle of the glacier, a team member's growing infatuation with her starts to affect him emotionally. This was a rather decent enough segment that has a lot to like about it, but also some big flaws. The whole psychological downward spiral that he undergoes once the discovery is made and the woman is found in the ice means there's some fine work to be done here with how he grows in lust and infatuation the longer he's around her. With the actions he takes and the various outcomes that come about here being quite enjoyable, this one is a lot of fun once you get past the idea of his infatuation being so rushed and out of nowhere that it's hard to tell why he's even in that state to begin with. It's glossed over so quickly that it's hard to sympathize with him on the matter, making one of the most important features here seem quite inconsequential.
Condemned in the Crystal-Obsessed with a strange dream, a man goes through whatever means he can to understand his obsession with the contents of his imagination. When he starts to believe that a fortune teller might be able to help him, his efforts to have her lift everything from him turn his life into a nightmare. This is another fine enough segment, but it is a bit of a letdown as a way of ending things overall. The central premise is the best one yet, with the intrigue over what the dreams mean and the eventual connection once the involvement of the gypsy is revealed, as this turns into a rather fun setup involving how the pieces come together. Beyond those factors, though, there's not much to this one beyond seeing the two go back and forth about what his future entails, as it's mostly bland dialogue about the fate of someone being different from what the initial inquiry, which is just wholly underwhelming, without much going for it.
Overview: **.5/5
A generally watchable if problematic low-budget anthology effort, this one serves more as a curiosity piece than anything else, even though there’s nothing overtly wrong with it. Give it a shot if you’re a fan of this era of genre filmmaking, are a hardcore anthology fanatic, or are a fan of the creative crew, while most others out there should heed extreme caution here.
Comments
Post a Comment