Tales from the Crypt
Tales from the Crypt is a 1972 film from the UK, the USA and Australia, directed by Freddie Francis, running 92 minutes. reelscum files it under slasher and occult & satanic panic.
- Year
- 1972 · 1970s films
- Runtime
- 92 min
- Director
- Freddie Francis
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (35/100)
- Also known as
- Tales from the Crypt · Tales From The Crypt The Movie · Tales from the Crypt 1
Defined in the glossary: Slasher, Occult & satanic panic
The best Amicus omnibus, and Joan Collins versus a killer Santa two years before Black Christmas.
Amicus made a career out of horror anthologies, and this adaptation of the EC Comics line is the one to see. Five strangers lost in the catacombs meet a robed Crypt Keeper who shows each of them how they are going to die, and the segments range from a monkey's-paw wish to Peter Cushing quietly breaking your heart as a widower hounded by his neighbours. The famous one is Joan Collins trapped in her house on Christmas Eve with a murderer in a Santa suit outside, filmed before the slasher existed to give it a name. Freddie Francis directs it all with a straight face and a lurid palette, and the poetic-justice endings land every time.
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Filed alongside
Hell Night
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The Blood on Satan's Claw
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StageFright
A killer in a giant owl mask, a locked theatre, and Soavi announcing himself.
Tourist Trap
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The Slumber Party Massacre
Written as satire, shot straight, and stranger than either choice on its own.
To the Devil a Daughter
Hammer's last gasp. Christopher Lee said it finished the studio off.
Pieces
Spanish, incoherent, and gleefully stupid. 'Bastard! Bastard!'
The Funhouse
Tobe Hooper does a carnival slasher. A deformed killer, a hall of mirrors, and real dread.
The Toolbox Murders
A proto-slasher that front-loads its nastiness, then becomes a different and stranger film.
Race with the Devil
Satanists chase a Winnebago across Texas. Better than that sounds.
God Told Me To
A detective investigates random killers who all say God ordered it. It goes somewhere insane.
Martin
Romero's vampire film. A boy who needs blood, and no fangs, cape or certainty that he is one.