From Beyond The Grave (1974)

My rating - 7.5/10

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A British anthology movie made up of four stories each concerning an item brought from a little antique store. Peter Cushing is wonderful, as always, as the shop owner and story one "The Gate Crasher" features David Warner who buys an old mirror for his flat. When he and his friends hold a seance they unleash an evil entity that possesses Warner and causes him to kill people to help bring the entity back into the real world. A good story with Warner doing a great job. It's quite creepy in places and while not graphic the stabbings come across as quite brutal.

Story two "An Act Of Kindness" features a downtrodden man who befriends an old war vet selling matches a laces on the street. He pretends to be a vet himself but when he can't provide the official papers to buy a medal from the antique shop he steals it instead. When the vet introduces him to his creepy daughter his life takes a tragic turn. Featuring the real life father and daughter combo of Donald and Angela Pleasence this is a pretty creepy tale with a good twist ending and is my personal favourite of the stories.

Story three "The Elemental" is about a man who pops into the antique shop to look for a silver snuff box. He switches the price tags on two of them to get a good one cheap, but on his way home on the train he's warned by psychic Madame Orloff that there's an invisible elemental on his shoulder. After returning home strange things begin to happen to his wife so he calls Orloff to take care of the problem. More of a comedic story, it's still entertaining enough thanks to Margaret Leighton's wonderful, over the top peerformance as Madame Orloff. It's my least favourite of the stories though.

Story four "The Door" features a young man who comes into the shop and buys a large antique door. Once installed at home he discovers it leads to an old, large room with something creepy and dangerous inside. Another decent story with Ian Ogilvy doing a fine job and the stunning Lesley-Ann Down as his wife backing him up. The set design of the old room is excellent and seeing Down weilding an axe is fun too. It has a pretty exciting climax and is a fun way to finish the stories.

The movie ends back at the antiques shop where a man, who's been keeping an eye on the shop throughout the movie, enters with the intent to rob it. Of course our lovable owner has a little surprise in store for him too. This is one of my favourite anthology movies from this era and one I often go back to quite often. Highly recommended if you've not seen it before.

SCREEN SHOTS

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