Alien Zone - 1978

 Also known as The House of the Dead

Continuing the boxset, I was thrilled when the plot of this movie sounded like an anthology.  A wandering businessman meets a crypt-keeper, who summons him in, and tells him stories about the bodies stored there?  How did these macabre deaths happen?  Stories told are:

1. a dead schoolteacher whose dislike for children amounts to them getting revenge.

2. a photographer and serial killer who likes to film his murders.

3. an American crime detective ala Sherlock Holmes who meets his British counterpart.

4. a busines man who dislikes a homeless person, and then through a series of completely insane torturous circumstances, becomes one himself.

These range from pretty straight forward (the first two) to incredibly weird (the last one).  The longest is the Sherlock Holmes inspired one, and that one is pretty tame all the way around.  The best is by far the last one, where they just go for it in the crazy shenanigans that happen to this businessman, and everyone's favorite torture device a spike wall in it!!

The audio and video quality on this movie is aggressively bad.  I'll say that straightup.  I thought of it as I watched it as it was in the language of Muffle and should have had English subtitles.  Similarly, the shots are awful, and there's some awfully lit shots and shots where you completely cannot tell what's happening because of the cameras being misused by inadequate idiots.

Overall an anthology makes for easy viewing, especially when there's essentially 5 stories it tells and the entire movie is only 75 minutes long.  This one was a breeze.  3.5 stars.