The Vault of Horror (1973) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by Tony the Terror ★★★★ 6

  These Amicus anthologies really are great medicine and I am starting to feel better! This one was the first one that didn’t have Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee and obviously I missed Queen Joan Collins, but it does have Glynis Johns who is absolutely relentlessly adorable. Her segment where she’s running around trying to make her house perfect for her husband is my favorite and I could have watched a whole movie of Glynis just being Glynis. The other segments were also good. The vampire segment was hysterical with those super long plastic vampire fangs. The budget for special effects in all of these films is basically whatever gets put in the communal swear jar on set, but it’s a…

• Review by Mario Melendez ★★★★

  For days I had been craving to watch a horror anthology and what better option than to see this film produced by Amicus and that after Tales from the Crypt came to this sort of sequel in 1973, which is also based on the stories of the EC Comics series. As in the previous film, here we meet five people who coincide in the elevator of an office building: the elevator takes them to the sub-basement, to a vault, where they all get locked in. As they wait for someone to come to help them, each of them recounts a dream that seems to haunt them night after night.

  Without further ado, I'll tell you what I think of each…

• Review by Slig001 ★★★★

  Another delightful anthology horror film from Amicus. The Vault of Horror is the follow up to Tales from the Crypt and runs very much along the same lines, with another five deserving victims retelling the stories of the evil things they did in life. This one really ramps up the comedy element - the film is clearly fully aware of how ludicrous it all is, and plays up to this brilliantly. The first story is rather simple but nicely sets the tone with its ghost town full of gourmet vampires. A glass full of blood is declared "quite a nice bouquet"! Terry-Thomas is perfectly cast as a neat freak in the subsequent story that sees the film reach its comedy…

• Review by threepenny ★★★½

  More adaptations from the classic William Gaines comics, as five men are let out of an elevator in the sub-basement to tell tales of their own demise. First up, Daniel Massey tracks down his sister (Anna Massey) and attempts to murder her in a town filled with vampires. Then Terry-Thomas and Gynis Johns show us the inevitable end to the Marie Kondo method of tidying. The third story, featuring Curd Jürgens and Dawn Addams adapts one of my favorite stories from the old comic books, about the Indian Rope Trick, but sadly the movie version tones down the conclusion of the comics (here, we see bloodstains. In the comic, body parts are flying everywhere. God bless EC Comics!). The fourth…

• Review by DBC ★★★½

  Hooptober Fest 5.0
  Film 3/46
  Six Decades (1/6)
  --
  Amicus Productions had a hit with their 1972 Horror anthology film Tales from the Crypt (based on stories from the EC Comics series of the same name), and so the next year saw the studio releasing this sequel of sorts with a name lifted from another EC Horror title: Vault of Horror.

  The film sticks very closely to the formula of the original. Too closely, I would say. It uses almost the exact same framing device for the stories (a similarity that is almost immediately apparent) and so if you remember the twist ending to that original wraparound, you basically know how this film is going to end too.

  The collection…

• Review by Blaze the Action Junkie ★★★½

  Another solid horror anthology based off early horror comics. Honestly I enjoyed each segment of "Tales From the Crypt (1972)" a touch more than these segments, but that's not to say these were bad. There wasn't a single segment here that failed entertain. They were good, they just didn't seem to meet the high bar that the anthology from the previous year set. Also the original Crypt Keeper's crypt was a bit more of a fun tie-in than the hotel basement in my opinion. I'm actually looking forward to diving into the Tales from the Crypt TV series more after these.

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• Review by Helen_S ★★★★ 2

  This one feels much more of a black comedy than Amicus' usual creepy horror anthology fare. It's not top tier for them but just a whole heap of fun from start to finish. That street shot in the first story is just divine. Wish I could blow that up and put it on my wall.

• Review by donthitpause ★★★½ 3

  The Vault of Horror aka Tales from the Crypt 2 from Amicus Productions is a 1973 sequel/ follow up to the hugely successful 1972 film Tales From The Crypt. Subotsky and Rosenberg hand the direction over to master craftsman, Roy Ward Baker, who tries his luck with another five chumps embarking on a supernatural lift that transports them to a octagonal room where they each share some recurring dream experience amongst the group. Unlike the preceding Tales from the Crypt, we get no Crypt Keeper guiding us this time, just the five shemps shooting the shit, as Britishy shemps do.

  Despite another A-List cast, including the world's most favourite Dr Who, Tom Baker, The Vault of Horror seems to plod…

• Review by Digital Press ★★★★

  For my umpteenth time watching Vault of Horror, I will RANK the tales in this vault, from “least best” to best:

  5) “Midnight Mess”: A murderer tracks his sister to a strange town where no one should be out after dark. Typical comeuppance stuff, right in line with the comic book stories and predictable even if you’re unfamiliar with the story. Good fun all the same.

  4) “This Trick’ll Kill You”: A skeptical magician eschews ethics to steal a trick that he cannot figure out only to find out that some magic is real. I’m always up for inanimate objects coming to life, and this segment also has my favorite “moment” of the whole film, an extra-dimensional portal!

  3) “The…

• Review by liz71 ★★★½

  🎃HalloScream 2023
  Day 26

  Anthology of five stories where five men are trapped in a basement together telling their recurring nightmarish dreams of dread.
  7.5/10

  🎃HalloScream 2023 Ranked
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• Review by maskull ★★★½

  --Birth Year Challenge: 1973

  --Horror X 52 Challenge: A Horror released in the year you were born.

  --Daily Horror Hunt #16 (October 2019) Day 1: Watch any movie featured in Mad Ron's Prevues from Hell.

  --It’s getting colder and I’m staying inside, watching horror movies in October (but I pretty much prefer to stay inside anyway) FEST 2019. Movie #2

  So yeah, this pretty much follows the formula from Tales From The Crypt with a group ending up trapped in a room and telling a story apiece. The stories in this movie aren't as good....perhaps more schlocky though, and therefore plenty entertaining. No one's acts in a way that is conceivably realistic and everything is over-the-top, but I had a…

• Review by AndrewC 🎃👻 ★★★½

  Like the 1972 Tales from the Crypt film, The Vault of Horror is another fun horror anthology from Amicus Productions that fits five shorts tales in just 86 minutes of screentime. The short length of the movie obviously means that each short is actually really short (most run 15 minutes or less) and it is a service to the quality of the film that none of them are bad or boring. Instead, they are all pretty fun and even a little lighthearted with some dry comedy thrown in, while also having a few nicely gruesome moments in them to up the horror aspect. Of course, none of the shorts are scary in the slightest, but they are a good deal…