Good ol’ Webster defines “cheap” as getting everything low in price or cost (at all costs), or charging low prices. If you read the fine print, it also means an uncle who will do anything to save a buckaroo (including giving you lottery tickets as presents, even though they already scratched them). Stingy, tightwad, cheapskate, thrifty, frugal, or just calling them plain ol’ cheap (their parents were never married), being cheap is often viewed negatively in most common structures of American society… except in one place: Hollyweird! That’s right! In Tinseltown, being a cheap-bummo will actually eventually lead you from Skid Row to the yellow brick road leading to the front gates of the studios! In most artistic endeavors, the idea is that the more you put into a piece of art, the more gold coins it should yield you. However, in Hollyweird it’s not about doing it great; it’s about doing it by Tuesday (Monday afternoon is preferred)! Since the Lumières filmed a train coming down the station (ensuing panic in the shoddy paved roads), producers have been trying to get the most bang for their pennies and nickels by producing films on a shoestring budget, hoping the rental fees will allow them to buy Santoni Alligator leather Oxford shoes for the minuscule cost of ten thousand dollars (talk about taking a bite out of your wallet)! The Sunset Boulevard of broken dreams is filled with countless filmmakers(?) who tried to make alchemy out of their minuscule budgets, and while Roger Corman and Jerry Warren showed countless ways this method rained dollar bills, some were not as financially savvy (or lucky). Take director David L. Hewitt and the producers at the American General Pictures Corporation, who, in their pursuit of being as cheap as possible to hire over-the-hill horror icons at wholesale, lived up to the tagline for their 1967 anthology horror magnum opus Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horror to be “the world’s weirdest movie!” Be careful what you wish (and pay) for!
Anthologies have always been a cheap, effective way to make a horror movie (or for most of them, two bits and some change), but there is being cheap, and there is being downright criminal with the budget. Within the film that has five horror stories within, the cheapness is literally written on the walls (I swear in one segment you can see a price tag on the furniture they borrowed from a thrift store to return). However, Hewitt and company not only stretch the budget, but they will stretch your patience with how many corners they cut. In fact, you would love to see a corner cut because it would be the most horrific thing to be shown on screen. Hoping to save a few Abraham Lincolns (the copper kind, not the green), they refuse to show any blood, instead choosing a cheapo-creepo approach of using a bloody cartoon transition when they are staking a vampire. In fact, they are so slim on the pocket change they don’t even have sharp teeth for the vampire (sink your teeth into that wild idea)! Yet, for all its (economic) flaws, you can’t resist the charm of the legendary (and himself infamously cheap) John Carradine. From working with John Ford to Joe Dante to Jerry Warren (we all make mistakes), there are not enough words to speak Carradine’s praises. One of the most prolific actors in the history of cinema, Carradine has over 330 film and television credits to his name, and worked nonstop in La-La-Land from the 1930s all the way till his last year of 1988, when he passed away. Although films like these were paychecks mostly for actors like him and Lon Chaney (Universal’s The Wolf Man), it’s is a double-edged sword sometimes. On one side, it’s like a vintage bottle of wine, aged for many years in a cellar, when we see these horror icons pop on screen, savoring the sweet taste of their performances. Say what you want, but the actors from Carradine’s and Chaney’s generations gave it their all, even if they were not given all in their bank accounts. On the other hand, most of these guys were paid for one or two days’ worth of work, yielding enough screen time to warrant their names to be top billed on the poster, yet their limited time on screen leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, as if the vintage wine (or “vine” as a toothless vampire would say) had been corked. The filmmakers are commended for their efforts, but from crew members getting concussions and being forced to still work, cinematography of mostly long shots on clearly flimsy-built sets, canned music from a film called The Hypnotic Eye, and too many shots chopped from the Corman/Poe pictures (way to earn another fifty cents, Roger), Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horror ends up being a film where the adage of “You get what you pay for” is splattered across every single frame, in glorious penny-pinching Pathe(tic) Color!
Consisting of five stories by Creepy Warren publishing author Russ Jones, John Carradine (presumed to be Dr. Terror, even though this moniker was added later on posters) introduces each segment in front of an old-fashioned (cheap) painting of a haunted castle by the sea. As he speaks in his most bravado Shakespearean-trained voice, we are given glimpses into stories such as “King Vampire,” “Monster Raid,” “The Witch’s Clock, “Spark of Life,” and “Count Alucard.” With such creatures as ghosts, witches, vampires, and zombies, the viewers are treated to little mini-tales that neither spook nor bore, but this film does have the right to brag as being one of the first movies to do a werewolf vs. vampire fight (even though you cannot see it with the low-key lighting throughout). If you manage to stay alive (and awake) through the first one segment, yadda, yadda, yadda…
Fivefolded your way at segmented eighty-two minutes, and directed with confidence (for some reason) by Dwight L. Hewitt (who went on to helm such yarns as The Girls from Thunder Strip and The Wizard of Mars also with Carradine), the film was famously repackaged over the years under such titles as Gallery of Horrors, Gallery of Horror, The Blood Suckers, Return from the Past, and even The Witch’s Clock based on the first segment in the film. Living up to the frugal legacy of this creature-feature, you can find the film on most streaming and physical media, falling in the economically sound files of the public domain. There is nothing wrong with saving a buck (or three), but if I can give you a fiscal tip when it comes to producing a horror movie, much like when you’re at a fancy restaurant, put your money where your mouth is, or it leaves a bad taste in everyone’s palate!
