There are some convoluted plot devices to get to the title Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. Six men board a train somewhere in England and one of them (Peter Cushing) claims to have the power to see the future with his deck of tarot cards, which he calls his House of Horrors. The man's name is Dr. Shrek, which means Dr. Terror in German apparently. At any rate, he goes around telling each man's fate with the cards.
The first story is about an architect asked back to his old family home to see about renovations. Once there, he uncovers the grave of a werewolf that swore vengeance on the owner of the home. Not much happens but there is a nice little twist at the end.
The second story involves a family coming home from holiday and finding a new vine growing on their house. It resists all efforts to cut it down or dig it out. It is even willing to go so far as murdering the family dog. A plant expert comes in to get to the bottom of things and things go poorly.
The third story has lots of music and is about a jazz player traveling to the West Indies. Once there, he steals the melody of a voodoo ritual song and returns to England to play it. Lots of warnings go unheeded. I liked the music in this part a lot. It was also cool that it features a poster for this very movie.
The fourth story pits Christopher Lee as an art critic against Michael Gough as a painter whose work is bashed by Lee. Their rivalry builds until a severed hand is stalking Lee throughout London. This is a slight addition to the "disembodied hand" genre of horror.
The fifth story features Donald Sutherland as a newlywed who has brought home (unbeknownst to him) a vampire wife. When he and his colleague find a little boy is being slowly drained of blood, the action heats up. There is a nice twist at the end of this one, too.
The frame story just goes ahead and negates all the other stories by the end but, whatever. It would be a few years before Tales From the Crypt and Vault of Horror did an anthology like this right. Nothing is too scary and the performances are all good. An anthology for completists only, I'd say.
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