FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1973)
Article 2189 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-14-2007
Posting Date: 8-10-2007
Directed by Kevin Connor
Featuring Peter Cushing, Ian Bannen, Ian Carmichael

Several customers visit an antique shop, and those that try to cheat the proprietor find themselves suffering strange and horrible fates.

I quite like this anthology from Amicus. I like all the stories at least a little, with my favorite being the second (“An Act of Kindness”), in which a man in a bad marriage strikes up a friendship with a poor veteran and his rather strange daughter (played to wonderful perfection by real life father and daughter Donald and Angela Pleasance). The last story (about a room behind an ominous door) is fairly straightforward, but colorful and entertaining. The first story (about a haunted mirror) is the most obvious tale of the bunch, but it is hauntingly moody and makes wonderful use of smoke. The third story (about a man haunted by an elemental) is amusing enough at first, but I found the ending a little weak. It’s all tied together by the framing story of the visits to the antique shop, and Peter Cushing is wonderful as the soft-spoken proprietor who you really don’t want to cheat, no matter what sort of temptation comes your way. All in all, this was a fairly solid horror anthology.