Torture Garden

Torture Garden...1967...93 minutes...starring Jack Palance, Burgess Meredith, Beverly Adams, and Peter Cushing...written by Robert Bloch...directed by Freddie Francis

Be careful if you go to the sideshow...you may end up finding Dr. Diablo's Torture Garden. It's not the regular show displaying horrible ways to die that you have to be careful about...no, it's the special show he holds afterwards for a select few. If you've got the nerve, you may end up learning some hard truths that could save your life. But to do so, you must be willing to look in the Shears of Atropos and learn what fate has waiting.

After "Mary's Shelly's Frankenstein", I was set up to go into "Bram Stoker's Dracula" but FearNet is showing some older films that I couldn't bear to miss. The first of these selections is "Torture Garden", which is a segmented film following the stories that Diablo...played by Burgess Meredith...reveals to the people he attracts to the "special show". Each person's fate is, of course, a setup for a tale ending in supernatural  nastiness: stories involving a witch in the form of a cat, a haunted piano, the faces behind Hollywood immortality, and a man who has collected Poe.

The stories are a bit cheesy and certainly dated, but still enjoyable as they're written by the man who gave us that classic of the screen, "Psycho". I think the Poe story at the end is the best segment, and that's partially due to the presence of Hammer horror veteran Peter Cushing. The movie is a wonderful exemplar of the segmented films that I was talking about in the review of "Creepshow", and while it certainly has its flaws, such as its obviously limited budget, I have to admit that I found "Torture Garden" amusing and enjoyable. I have a fondness for movies like this, so I may be a bit skewed: you've been warned.

I give "Torture Garden" 2.5 threads out of 5.