Fabulous Films, out now

A mysterious stranger boards a train to tell fellow passengers their fortune with tarot cards.

Amicus’ first portmanteau horror movie, directed by Oscar-winner Freddie Francis, gets a Blu-ray makeover and a handful of extras

What’s not to like about a movie that features Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Donald Sutherland, Roy Castle and Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman in the same train carriage? Written by co-producer Milton Subotsky, this 1965 movie lacks the bite of the subsequent anthology films that benefited from being written by Robert Bloch, but still boasts a quintet of five straightforward horror tales.

We begin on a train as Peter Cushing’s Dr Schreck (this translates to Dr Terror) reads tarot cards for his captive audience. Each story then plays out, featuring a werewolf, carnivorous plant, voodoo, a disembodied hand and a vampire. The movie feels closer to Dead of Night than the EC Comics direction the series would later take, and it’s a lot of fun.

House of Cards is an hour-long ‘making of’ documentary with contributions from horror movie aficionados, looking at each segment in turn. There’s also an image gallery, theatrical trailer, booklet and a double-sided foldout poster by horror poster maestro Graham Humphreys.

Verdict: I suspect we all know what the ending is going to be, but this is a crisp new transfer of a solid British horror anthology with a recognisable bunch of stars. 8/10

Nick Joy