Rish Outfield's reviews
I don't have much to say about this film . . . maybe I should've watched it twice. Ka-ching! You've been great, folks, please tip your waitresses.
Three unrelated stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne are brought to life, each starring Vincent Price. The first two tales are not really Horror, more like fairy tales written for adults. There's even a bit of Sci-Fi to them. The third story, however, is Horror through and through. Skeletons figure into two of the tales, plus a skeleton is turning the pages of the book these stories appear in.
In the first tale, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," two aged friends, one a widower and one a life-long bachelor, discover a fountain of youth in the tomb where the wife is interred. They use it to make themselves young, and then proceed to use it to revive the dead woman. This tale was quite satisfying, even though it ended too abruptly. The second tale, "Rappaccini's Daughter," told the Poe-like story of a young man who falls in love with a girl cursed with a touch of death. Her overprotective father knows the secret of her condition, but of course, he is insane. In "The House of the Seven Gables," the third tale, a man brings his new bride back to his ancestral home to start a new life there. Unfortunately, the house is cursed . . . the perfect place to start a new death.
Of anthologies, this one was particularly weak. Nathaniel Hawthorne was not known for his horror stories, and I feel the filmmakers may have been reaching here. None of them was scary, and the film was very talky and almost intentionally slow. The runtime was EXACTLY two hours, which led me to believe that it was padded to achieve that length.
I'd Recommend It To: There's not much to recommend here, except for Price, of course. It's great to see him in anything and he's still more likable as two of the stories' villains than a thousand heroes.

Total Skulls: 6

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood hits camera
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?