Torture Garden (film)

Infobox Film | name = Torture Garden


caption =
director = Freddie Francis
producer = Max Rosenberg,
Milton Subotsky
writer = Robert Bloch
starring = Burgess Meredith,
Jack Palance
Peter Cushing
music = Don Banks,
James Bernard
cinematography = Norman Warwick
editing =
distributor =
released =
runtime =
language = English
budget =
imdb_id = 0062384

"Torture Garden" is a 1967 horror film made in the UK by Amicus Productions. It was directed by Freddie Francis and scripted by Robert Bloch. It stars Burgess Meredith, Jack Palance, Michael Ripper, Beverly Adams, Peter Cushing, Maurice Denham, Ursula Howells, Michael Bryant and Barbara Ewing. The score was a collaboration between Hammer horror regulars James Bernard and Don Banks.

It is one of producer Milton Subotsky's trademark "portmanteau" films, an omnibus of short stories linked by a single narrative.

Plot

Five people visit a fairground sideshow run by the sinister Dr. Diabolo (Meredith). Having shown them a handful of haunted-house-style attractions, he promises them a genuinely scary experience if they will pay extra. Their curiosity gets the better of them, and the small crowd follows him behind a curtain, where they each view their fate through the shears of the female deity Atropos (Clytie Jessop).

In "Enoch", a greedy playboy (Bryant) takes advantage of his dying uncle (Denham), and falls under the spell of a man-eating cat. In "Terror Over Hollywood", a Hollywood starlet (Adams) discovers her co-stars are androids. In "Mr. Steinway", a grand piano by the name of Euterpe becomes jealous of its owner's new lover (Ewing) and takes revenge. And in "The Man Who Collected Poe", a Poe-collector (Palance) murders another collector (Cushing) over a valuable Poe manuscript - only to be avenged by Edgar Allan Poe himself.

External links

*imdb title|id=0062384|title=Torture Garden
* [http://hollywoodgothique.com/torturegarden1967.html Film Review]