Amicus’ fourth anthology horror film (it was shot after Tales from the Crypt (1972) but was in cinema’s first, post-production rushed through in just 15 days after which it was paired with Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1971)) is sometimes overlooked and under-rated compared to the EC Comics adaptations that followed. While it’s not a patch on their final portmanteau film, the non-EC derived From Beyond the Grave (1974), it’s a solid enough addition to the Amicus oeuvre with four decent stories, none of them particularly outstanding, but none of them terrible either, and a wraparound story that’s a cut above the usual.

Said framing story features Robert Powell as Dr Martin, arriving at Dunsmoor, the eponymous asylum “for the incurably insane” to the bombastic accompaniment of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain – as well as his own cues, composer Douglas Gamley makes extensive use of Mussorgsky, later adding in snatches from his masterpiece Pictures at an Exhibition for good measure. Martin is here to be interviewed for a new job and is greeted by orderly Max Reynolds (Geoffrey Bayldon) who takes him not to Dr Starr as Martin had expected, but to the wheelchair-bound warden Lionel Rutherford (Patrick Magee). Rutherford runs the Asylum with an iron fist and has an unusual proposition for Martin – in lieu of a traditional interview, he will get the position if he interviews four of the patients and determines which one is actually Starr who has undergone a severe nervous breakdown and assumed a new personality. This gives Asylum an intriguing wraparound (loosely based on screen writer Robert Bloch’s story A Home Away from Home, previously adapted as an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1963) that actually ties in with all of the stories directly and serves to add an air of mystery as the audience tries to determine the real identity of Starr – though in the end it cheats…

In the first story, Frozen Fear, Martin is introduced to Bonnie (Barbara Parkins) who keeps her face hidden while recounting the tale of her affair with the married Walter (Richard Todd). Determined to be with Bonnie, Walter murders his wife Ruth (Sylvia Syms), dismembering her body, wrapping the parts neatly in brown paper and storing them in the new freezer that he’s bought for her. But Ruth has been studying voodoo and finds a way back, still in pieces (giving Amicus another chance to trot out their now ancient severed hand prop, albeit hidden from sight beneath that wrapping paper) to take her revenge by murdering Walter and disfiguring Bonnie with an axe. It’s a slight story that might have been better swapped with a more interesting story, but it chugs along quite nicely under Roy Ward Baker’s unobtrusive direction and there’s a dash of the EC gruesomeness that was about to become very familiar to Amicus followers.

Next up is tailor Bruno (Barry Morse) in The Weird Tailor, a more substantial and atmospheric piece that feels not dissimilar to Nikolai Gogol’s short story The Overcoat (filmed in 1956 by Jack Clayton as The Bespoke Overcoat) though in fact it’s based on another Bloch story, also previously adapted as an episode of the TV series Thriller in 1961. Bruno is down on his luck and up to his eyes in debt to his landlord (John Franklyn-Robbins) so when the mysterious Mr Smith (Peter Cushing) arrives with an unusual commission, it might be the way out of trouble for Bruno and his wife Anna (Ann Firbank). Smith wants Bruno to make a special suit for his son, cut from a strange, glowing cloth that can only be worked on at certain times of night. On finishing the suit, he delivers it to Smith only to find that his son is dead, and that the fabric had magical qualities that can restore him to life. But Bruno accidentally kills Smith when the latter reveals that he can’t pay him and back at the shop, Anna puts the suit on Otto (Daniel Johns), their shop dummy…

The Weird Tailor is the darkest and most satisfying of the four stories, again slight and with a vaguely familiar feel even if you haven’t seen the previous Thriller adaptation, but it’s a moody enough piece nonetheless. And it surely goes without saying that as soon as Cushing appears in Bruno’s shop doorway, the quality of the film steps up a notch or two just because he’s there. It’s a part he could have played in his sleep by now, but he still gives it 100% and the story is all the better for it.

Lucy Comes to Stay doesn’t appear to have been based on any particular Bloch story though its tale of a fractured personality might have some common ground with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) which was based on one of Bloch’s novels. Barbara (Charlotte Rampling) is the inmate that Martin talks to here, revealing that she’d been in a psychiatric institute before. After being released into the care of her brother George (James Villiers) and Nurse Higgins (Megs Jenkins), she’s visited by her friend Lucy (Britt Ekland) who, we come to realise, is a second personality that periodically possess Barbara. Lucy Comes to Stay is perhaps the least of the stories, a tad too predictable to really impress and with the last substance of any of the quartet of tales.

Better is the last story, in which Martin interviews Dr Byron (Herbert Lom) who has, he claims, perfected a way to will to life the tiny toy robots that he makes in his room. His latest creation is modelled on himself, with a tiny replica of his own head and stuffed with viscera that mimic his own internal organs. The story is loosely based on Bloch’s story Mannequins of Horror, later adapted again for the anthology series Monsters (1988-1991). The tale seems to end inconclusively as Martin returns to Rutherford, but Byron’s tiny automaton is on the loose and looking for revenge against Byron’s oppressor. The film ends with Martin finally learning who Starr is though it turns out not to be one of the patients at all… Which is something of a cheat for those armchair detectives trying to work out who it was when we were led to believe that it would be one of Martin’s interviewees.

All in all, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable film, not one that stands among the vey best of the portmanteau films, but one that’s smartly written, with a terrific cast and which Baker directs briskly with his usual no-nonsense, no-frills approach. There’s a loose theme of the inanimate, the dead, or the imaginary being brought to life that runs throughout the stories, but this isn’t really developed in any meaningful way so can probably be chalked up to coincidence rather than design. Bloch had been writing for Amicus since 1965’s The Skull, and had already written two of their anthologies, Torture Garden (1967) and The House That Dripped Blood (1970). Although Asylum would prove a hit with the filmgoing public (who saw it as House of Crazies in the States) and took home the Licorne d’or award at the first Festival international du film fantastique et de science-fiction de Paris, it would be his last work for the company.