Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog Post. The opinions I share are my own.

To Read About The History Of Amicus Productions Go Here To A Retrospective Article From Fangoria #305.

If you’re aware of Hammer Films then by default you know about Amicus Productions. They’re output between 1962 and 1977 was small compared to Hammer, encompassing only twenty-eight films, but a lot of them were just as memorable as anything Hammer put out. I’m a fan of roughly eleven of their films. Amicus made six horror anthologies, of which I have seen five of them: Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1970), Asylum (1972), Tales from the Crypt (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973). It’s Asylum I’ve never seen. The movie that introduced me to their horror anthologies was their first, Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors, and for me the best one they did! Last night I finally saw the last one they ever made, From Beyond The Grave, and for some reason I had it confused with Tales From The Crypt. I even reviewed that movie and Vault Of Horror from Scream Factory’s double feature, but even though I enjoyed those two it was obvious they never really left an impression on me because I kept thinking the “Poetic Justice” segment of the Crypt movie was a segment from From Beyond The Grave. When I finally realized I had these two films mixed up I was delighted because that meant I have never seen From Beyond The Grave, and was looking forward to seeing how it measured up to the others Amicus made.

From Beyond The Grave’s wraparound tale, the jumping off point for the four segments the film consists of, is an antique shop called, Temptations, Ltd., run by a never named character played by Peter Cushing. The movie reminded me of Stephen King’s Needful Things in that every object in the shop appears to have some kind of “curse” connected to it, though Cushing never explicitly says anything’s even “wrong” with the objects, until the very end when he breaks the fourth wall and addresses the camera. The catch is, if you cheat him, which happens with three out of the four characters in this flick, the object you’ve “stolen” will lead to your demise.

All these segments are based on stories written by R. Chetwynd-Hayes. Personally, I’ve never heard of him until this movie and Googling him he’s a British writer known for his ghost and horror stories, and most of these segments are unique, making me somewhat curious now about his tales. The first segment stars David Warner as Edward Charlton, he tricks Cushing’s character into thinking this priceless mirror that has caught his eye is a cheap knock-off, and acquires it at a pittance. This mirror is possessed with a spirit (Marcel Steiner) that needs to feed on blood. He influences Eddie into bringing him victims, and the victims Ed chooses are random hot chicks he meets out on the town. He kills them bloodily in his apartment, then passes out, not sure of what he’s done. Over the course of the days his apartment gets worse and worse. He doesn’t even bother to clean up the spilled blood or to clean it off his own clothing.  At the end this spirit announces he’s fed enough and then materializes in the flesh in Ed’s apartment. This was the only tale I knew what was going to happen to Ed, and it did! The now flesh and blood spirit stabs Ed killing him and Ed takes his place in the mirror, becoming a similar entity that if he wants to return to the land of the living is going to have to feed on blood. This malevolent spirit was not a vampire, we never see him drink any of the victim’s blood, and only makes cryptic statements to Ed about what he is once he’s out of the mirror. Three out of the four stories are of “entities” with ambiguous natures, but not so ambiguous it destroyed the enjoyment of the tale for me.

The twists in the next tales I didn’t see coming, and the next one has got the best, because most of the story is a misdirection. From the start this next segment follows a father/husband who’s constantly at odds with his wife. It even appears their kid cannot stand him. He was in the armed forces and is interested in this medal Temptations Ltd is selling. This medal doesn’t even really play center stage in the tale, it’s just there to bring Christopher Lowe (Ian Bannen) together with this homeless vet, Jim Underwood (Donald Pleasence), he bumps into after outright stealing it from the shop.  By the way, Cushing’s character knows when he’s being cheated, he just never lets on to the person doing the cheating. Ian and Jim strike up a friendship due to their shared military experiences and Jim invites him over regularly to meet his very weird daughter and have supper.

It’s clear from the start something’s off with this girl, Emily (Donald Pleasence’s real life daughter, Angela), but then again there’s something off about Jim too, but we won’t know how off these two are until the very end. Like Ed from the previous tale Chris is going to die, and I’m on the fence on whether I want to spoil the twist here . . . hmm, maybe, I won’t.

The third segment is more comical than horrific, and is my least favorite. The object Reggie Warren (Ian Carmichael) wants in Temptations Ltd., is a snuff box, but it’s just too damn expensive, so he switches the price tag with one from a cheaper box. Now, the box has nothing more to do with this story. From here on out Reggie is besieged by an invisible Elemental spirit he got attached to him by passing through the Underground. He calls in a medium (Margaret Leighton) who exorcises it from his home, but destroys the room in doing so. The twist here is it wasn’t totally exorcised. It possesses his wife, his wife kills him, and the possessed woman goes out into the world to wreak havoc.

I did enjoy this flick in general, even the comical segment, despite its lackluster sheen, but there were only two stories I found genuinely creepy, the first one with the mirror and this one I’m about to talk about. Of the two it’s actually the creepiest! It concerns a door William Seaton (Ian Ogilvy) comes across in Temptations, Ltd, and shock among shocks the amount he says he can give Cushing’s character for it is the exact amount he hands over, and when he leaves the room, and leaves the register open, his money right there to be taken back, Seaton leaves it, but the segment cuts away to make you think he may have taken some of it back. Cushing’s counting of it, to make sure he wasn’t cheated, doesn’t play out fully until the segment is over. But there was a clue Seaton was an honest guy, he lived through his story, even his girlfriend did too!

Seaton loves this ancient ornate door, with a fairly ugly looking head right in the middle of it. He makes it the door to his stationary cupboard, but it’s also a door to another dimension, a blue tinged room to be exact. Looks like it’s a room from the 17th century, and there’s a painting hanging it with a man dressed in garb that fits that century too, and the room is all covered in cobwebs and dust; it’s not only creepy (on an impressive level), but strikingly appealing too. There’s a diary in it Seaton reads, and the man it belongs to, Sir Michael Sinclair (Jack Watson), dabbled in the occult. Of course he did. His objective seems to be trapping souls and being immortal, and he needs Seaton to stay in it. And something about his wife (Lesley-Anne Down . . . my God she was so young I didn’t even recognize her) he needs too, once he leaves it. By the end Seaton and Rosemary are about to be stuck in the room, until Seaton takes a gamble, retrieves an ax and hacks away at the face on the door, and horror of horrors it bleeds! So does Sinclair’s face! Knocking the door off its hinges seems to do the trick, killing Sinclair dead on the floor!

This really was the best segment! I found it similar to the best segment in Torture Garden (1967) (I reviewed the Australian blu here), and that one is also positioned as the last in the movie. And it too was uber creepy!

Between these tales there’s a subplot of this guy (Ben Howard) who clearly has criminal designs on the shop. He wants to rob it, but every time he gets ready to enter a new character enters the alley it’s situated in, giving him pause, and off he goes back to the shadows. Just after the final segment he finally does get his chance and quietly enters the shop, but Cushing’s character is not what he seems. He may not even be of this realm. Anyway, the would-have-been burglar ends up stumbling into a coffin/Iron Maiden and ends up spiked to death.

Warner put out From Beyond The Grave (1974) in 2007 on DVD, when it went out of print they released it as a MOD on their MOD sub-label, Warner Archive Collection, in 2011! It’s high definition debut also comes courtesy of the Warner Archive Collection (their DVDs are manufacture-on-demand, but their blues are not). You can buy it on Amazon.

VIDEO/AUDIO/SUBTITLES: 1080p 1.85:1 High Definition Widescreen—2.0 English DTS-HD Master Audio (Mono)—English SDH Subs

I know I’m probably sounding like a broken record at this point when I review a Warner Brothers title, but the transfer on this release was gorgeous!

EXTRAS INCLUDED . . .

  • Theatrical Trailer