Actually I can. After finally catching up with this opus all I can say is “move over Ed Wood, Al Adamson, and even William Beaudine for you’ve got company”. This is the only movie by David L. Hewitt that I have ever seen but judging by the reviews of some of his other films (JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME, THE WIZARD OF MARS, THE LUCIFER COMPLEX) and certainly from this one then he is the purveyor of some of the cheapest movies ever to grace the screen. Notice that I didn’t say bad for bad to me depends on how I felt about the film. I have seen countless films that I considered bad that have had much bigger budgets and have been liked by a majority of people.
From a technical standpoint there’s no denying that this film is awful. Threadbare sets with turn on the switch lights, wooden dialogue badly delivered, and stationary camerawork are just a few of the “highlights”. Then there’s John Carradine and Lon Chaney Jr for marquee value although the former fares much better than the latter (and has more screen time). Despite these shortcomings, I didn’t hate this movie but rather enjoyed it for all the wrong reasons.
DR TERROR’S GALLERY OF HORRORS (the film’s original title and an obvious ripoff of Amicus’ DR TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS from a few years earlier) is an anthology film of 5 stories interspersed with introductions by Carradine (who appears in the first story). The film was meant to copy the type of sanitized horror comics from the 1960s that you could buy at the corner drugstore. There are some comic book effects such as the screen going red like a Sherwin-Williams commercial during violent scenes and a TV BATMAN like bat to transition scenes in the Dracula segment but the cheapness of the production render them ineffective.
Once shown on TV (where most people saw it) as RETURN FROM THE PAST and now on DVD as GALLERY OF HORRORS, this is a film that everyone should see as an example of cut-rate, juvenile movie making. See a modern rotary phone in the 19th century London segment KING VAMPIRE or Lon Chaney Jr as a follower of Dr Frankenstein wearing a wristwatch in SPARK OF LIFE. See copious footage from Roger Corman’s Poe films THE RAVEN and THE HAUNTED PALACE. If you’re into really bad cinema then it doesn’t get any better than this but if you’re not then you’ve been warned..
The Capsule Critic 