Somewhat interesting anthology of tales, interlinked by showman Dr Diabolo (played by the wonderful Burgess Meredith, aka the Penguin from the Batman series), and featuring a host of big names such as Jack Palance and Peter Cushing.

Promising to show select visitors to a carnival of torture and execution their own darkest sides, Burgess Meredith makes a wonderfully grinning, diabolical figure in Dr Diabolo, making a great central focal point to proceedings.

The stories themselves, which each see one of the carnival goers shown a vision of themselves in some supernatural or surreal series of events in which their darkest, most evil sides get a chance to manifest, are actually rather fun for once, there isn't really a duffer amongst them.

Not that the stories are great by any means, they tend to vary between the average, and the good, with at least a couple - the first and last most definitely - bringing to mind images of being condensed episodes of the series "Hammer House of Horror". They'll not really scare or shock, but they will, for the most part, at least entertain.

If I had to pick from the series of tales, I guess I'd plump my money down on the first, "Enoch", which concerns a greedy man and a devilish cat, and the murders that result from this unholy alliance. And the final tale, "The Man Who Collected Poe", for its wonderful pairing of Cushing and Palance in a tale of greed, avarice, and penmanship from beyond the grave.

There really isn't much in the way of shocks or gore, reliance is instead given to story and plotting to drive the way, and it does this pretty well. Of course it isn't really believable; much in the vein of many of the 60s horror flicks it mixes together a hokum of sci-fi, witchcraft, superstition, and all kinds of general devilry to create an entertaining mishmash with a pleasant taste.

Mostly suitably moral as movies of the time tended to be, with people getting their just deserts and evil generally turning upon the evildoer in the end, it's an entertaining little slice of anthology horror from yesteryear, with a satisfying twist at the end of the tale.

Well worth a look if you get chance to catch it on TV, or can pick it up cheap on dvd, it has that quaint charm and watchable quality possessed by many movies from this era.

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