Taking its basic concept and structure from TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972), this movie begins by showing a married man who, after consummating a tryst with someone else's wife while out of town, ends up stranded in the rain and then comes upon a mortician who invites him in to warm up and, as it turns out, much more.
This serves as a wrap-around tale for four stories-within-the-story, each introduced by the increasingly creepy mortician as he shows our hapless protagonist the coffins of his "clients", whom he later slips out to consider as his "acquisitions".
The stories are generally quite uneven, with the best of the lot involving a rivalry of sorts between two highly capable but vain criminologists. Unfortunately, I could predict the ending of most of these stories from a mile away, with the exception of the last in-story, and that only because it ended up giving a much less inspired account of the character's demise than expected.
As with CRYPT, there is some heavy-handed moralizing where characters are harshly punished for their ethical frailties by quasi-supernatural means. There is some attempt at humor, but nothing that will make you laugh out loud.
What saves this film somewhat is that it does have a bit of atmosphere (though less than CRYPT), which makes the movie at least watchable. Also, the director was willing to occasionally take chances on unusual cinematic devices which paid off, most notably at the end of the first in-story.
Finally, I think it is worth noting that the second in-story kind of anticipates the whole found-footage phenomenon even before the movie usually credited as being the granddaddy of this sub-genre, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980), which came out a couple years later. Both of these, however, were preceded in that regard by PEEPING TOM (1960) way earlier.
Overall, if you like 70s horror, or horror anthologies, you might like this, otherwise you should probably pass.
This serves as a wrap-around tale for four stories-within-the-story, each introduced by the increasingly creepy mortician as he shows our hapless protagonist the coffins of his "clients", whom he later slips out to consider as his "acquisitions".
The stories are generally quite uneven, with the best of the lot involving a rivalry of sorts between two highly capable but vain criminologists. Unfortunately, I could predict the ending of most of these stories from a mile away, with the exception of the last in-story, and that only because it ended up giving a much less inspired account of the character's demise than expected.
As with CRYPT, there is some heavy-handed moralizing where characters are harshly punished for their ethical frailties by quasi-supernatural means. There is some attempt at humor, but nothing that will make you laugh out loud.
What saves this film somewhat is that it does have a bit of atmosphere (though less than CRYPT), which makes the movie at least watchable. Also, the director was willing to occasionally take chances on unusual cinematic devices which paid off, most notably at the end of the first in-story.
Finally, I think it is worth noting that the second in-story kind of anticipates the whole found-footage phenomenon even before the movie usually credited as being the granddaddy of this sub-genre, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980), which came out a couple years later. Both of these, however, were preceded in that regard by PEEPING TOM (1960) way earlier.
Overall, if you like 70s horror, or horror anthologies, you might like this, otherwise you should probably pass.