Tales That Witness Madness

Creepy British movie has four scary tales about an invisible man eating tiger, a picture that comes alive, a tree that is alive and the last and worst one is about voodoo. Joan Collins is great as a woman fighting for her husband's affection over a tree! The tiger and the picture episodes are good too. Altogether a good creepy movie .

A vintage horror film financed by World Film Services/Norman Priggen with a great British cast and formed by several episodes full of creepy events , chills, thrills , gore and guts . An anthology terror movie formed by four segments professional but uneven realized and ordinarily played by known actors . Dealing with a psychiatrist (Donald Pleasence) tells stories of four special cases to a colleague (Jack Hawkins) . In the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe......Is it just your imagination or your Sanity that's in question? An orgy of the damned! It happens beyond madness - where your mind won't believe what your eyes see. As they receive fantastic visions about their future . And now ...who is next....

It deals with 4 segments titled: "Mr. Tiger" , "Penny Farthing" , "Mel" , "Luau" , all of them are filled with mystery , suspense , terror , grisly killings , cannibalism, twisted events and horrible happenings . Most stories are inspired by American comic books as Tales of Crypt from EC comics . It includes the following ones : 1º : a young son of prominent but constantly bickering parents , befriends an imaginary tiger ; 2ª : A businessman innherits a penny-farthing bicycle which seems to have time travel capabilities ; 3ª : A man displays a human-shaped dead tree at home as a piece of found art , angering his jealous spouse ; 4ª : a wealthy literary agent hosts a new client who seems more interested in her beautiful daughter resulting in fateful consequences . The stories are really uneven, suffering from some weak incidents and of varying quality, packing nice as well as fleeble moments. Taking its cue from the popular portmanteau style of the classic "Dead of Night" made some years before , being "Dr Terror" the first Amicus -from producers Milton Subotsky, Max J Rosenberg- big hit series of terror story compendiums ; however , this one being financed from inferior production company : .World Film Services. The British star-studded results to be pretty good with a plethora of notorious actors such as : Jack Hawkins , Donald Pleasence, Joan Collins , Michael Jayston, Georgia Brown , Donald Houston, Suzy Kendall , Peter McEnery , Charles Gray , Kim Novak , and Mary Tamm's debut .

It packs colorful , adequate cinematograhy by Norman Warwick , shot on Locations in Binfield Manor, Forest Road, Binfield, Bracknell, Berkshire, and Burwood Park, Onslow Road, Hersham, Walton-on-Thamesat and at Shepperton studios , Surrey , England . It was compellingly accompanied by a thrilling and suspenseful musical score by Bernard Ebbinghouse .The motion picture was regular but professionally directed by Freddie Francis who had a long cinematic career . He was an expert cameraman who photographed prestigious films such as : ¨The straight story¨ , ¨Cape fear¨ , ¨Glory ¨, ¨Dune¨, ¨The elephant man¨ , ¨Night must fall¨ , The innocents¨, ¨Room at the top and ¨Hell in Korea¨ . He also directed some movies , many of them terror films, such as : ¨Dark tower¨ , ¨Doctor and the devils¨ , The ghoul¨ , Legend of werewolf¨ , ¨The creeping flesh¨ , Trog¨ , ¨Torture garden¨ ,¨The skull¨ , ¨House of horrors¨ , ¨The evil of Frankenstein¨ , ¨Nighmare¨ , ¨Paranoiac¨ , The brain¨ and directed ¨Tales of the Crypt¨ TV series , episode 2 season 7 , titled ¨Last respects¨. Rating : 5.5/10. Average , but passable and acceptable . The motion picture will appeal to terror movies fans .

Visited by colleague Dr. Nicholas (Jack Hawkins), Dr. Tremayne (Donald Pleasence) explains his amazing and controversial theories as to why each of his four patients went mad... cue four distinct tales each with a different set of characters!

I love anthologies and was therefore instantly interested in this one. My only disappointment was that there were four segments. At 90 minutes, there should probably only have been three. We just never have time to fully develop the stories... (Although, I have to say a decent job was done here.)

Hooray for director Freddie Francis, best known for his work with Hammer. And hooray for Kim Novak, perhaps best known for "Vertigo". The Encyclopedia of Horror says the film "avoids farce and develops a nicely deadpan style of humour which is ably sustained by the excellent cast in which only Novak appears unable to hit the right note." Not sure why they singled her out... I thought she did fine.

Interestingly, this was the last film of both Frank Forsyth and Jack Hawkins, and Kim Novak had been semi-retired when she replaced Rita Hayworth to take her role here.

Although lacking the genuine chills of other Amicus anthology pictures such as Tales From the Crypt, Asylum, and Vault of Horror, Tales That Witness Madness is still a rather enjoyable romp in the land of the macabre. Once again we have a framing story of some patients being observed by two doctors of sorts...Donald Pleasance and Jack Hawkins, in his last screen role. We are then entertained with four tales...each extraordinary and containing some element of the supernatural. The first story deals with a boy and an invisible tiger. Pretty decent little effort. The second story details how a picture has powers to empower the living to its bidding. I felt this story was set up very nicely and then just left flat, so much more could have been done with it. The third story was an entertaining one about a husband putting aside his wife(Joan Collins no less) for a hunk of a tree. The last story is easily the best. All I really can say is that dinner is served at the luau, voodoo style. The acting is decent throughout and the sets and cinematography is very good.

This is not one of those Amicus anthologies which present unexpected twists: three out of the four stories are utterly predictable from their initial set up. But then it's like one of those fairground rides - you see what you're going to get (eg a 25 foot vertical drop), but if you're into that sort of thing you can still get a thrill out of the ride (the last story in particular is quite unpleasant - watching it is like watching an unavoidable car accident in slow motion). While none of the acting is quite on the level that you get from Peter Cushing in particular in anthologies like 'The House that Dripped Blood' or 'Tales from the Crypt', it is consistently good (Joan Collins actually being more believable than in the silly story she appears in for 'Tales from the Crypt'), and Freddie Francis directs these with a good sense of atmosphere and character. One I wouldn't mind seeing again.