Tales from the Crypt

Five strangers lost in catacombs are shown their fates by a crypt keeper played by Ralph Richardson, of all people.

And All Through the House, the Joan Collins segment, is the best: a woman who has just murdered her husband is trapped in her home on Christmas Eve by an escaped lunatic in a Santa suit while her daughter waits for the real one. It was later remade for the HBO series and this is the better version.

Poetic Justice, with Cushing as an old man hounded to death by snobbish neighbours, is truly moving before it turns to revenge, and Cushing plays it with his own recent widowhood visible.

Amicus made a run of these in the early 1970s and this is the strongest. Freddie Francis directs with real economy.