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Storyline
Five strangers board a descending lift, one by one, in a modern office block in London. They reach the sub-basement, though none of them have pressed for that destination. There they find a large, elaborately furnished room that appears to be a gentlemen's club. The lift door has closed; there are no buttons to bring it back, nor any other exit. Resigned to waiting for help, they settle down with drinks and talk. The conversation turns to dreams, and each man tells of a recurring nightmare.
Plot Summary
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Plot Synopsis
Taglines:
Everything that makes life worth leaving!
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Did You Know?
Goofs
Denholm Elliot is pointing a gun at Tom Baker but under voodoo influence turns the gun on himself so that it's pointing at the middle of his head. An impossible move . The camera then looks down the barrel and the position of the hands have changed allowing for the gun position which wouldn't have been possible under the influence.
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Quotes
Waiter (segment 1 "Midnight Mess"):
Good evening. The table d'hôte is rather nice, sir. Juice, soup, roast, sweet, coffee.
Rogers (segment 1 "Midnight Mess"):
That'll be fine!
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Alternate Versions
August 2008, Film Four showed a BFI National Archive restored print which included the uncut versions of the
Daniel Massey,
Terry-Thomas and
Tom Baker stories ('Midnight Mess,' 'The Neat Job' and 'Drawn and Quartered' respectively). This restored print was broadcast in an open-matte 1.33:1 format, showing more picture information at the top and bottom of the screen in comparison to the wide-screen 1.85:1 of the Fox Midnight Movies DVD.
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Connections
Follows
Torture Garden (1967)
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Since I first saw photos of it when I was a little kid, I wanted to see this early 1970s horror movie from the same British who brought us TALES OF THE CRYPT. When I was like 7 or 8 years old, I was a little chilled by the photo of the man hanging upside-down and a vampire has connected a tap-fawcet to the unfortunate bloke's neck! Sadly, this scene happens in VAULT OF HORROR (1973) exactly as it did in magazine oldies like FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and THE MONSTER TIMES: It's a still shot! That's right, a single photo of the fanged villain and his victim! It's done this way for dramatic effect and seems to work, but I had already seen the exact same thing in printed form!
However, this is not to say I was disapointed. This series of stories is very interesting, with intriguing characters throughout. The ending is predictable to anybody who's already seen TALES OF THE CRYPT, but there's a nifty gore seen earlier in the film where a guy's hands get chopped off. As is often the case with British horror, the emphasis is more on drama than sheer terror-- but it's all pretty entertaining.