And to be fair, it's not exactly the same. It also has a framing narrative that seems tailor-made to instantly make all but the most naïve viewer ask if it isn't, like, exactly the same as the framing narrative from Tales from the Crypt, heading towards exactly the same twist ending.

And this gets us back to the issue at hand: this isn't really a 'sequel' to Tales from the Crypt, but it is more of the same thing, justified both because of the money the earlier film made, and because of Amicus Productions co-head Milton Subotsky's ongoing love for the comics (as he did with the 1972 film, he wrote the screenplay for The Vault of Horror). Of the film's five segments, one comes from the pages of the polyglot Shock SuspenStories, and four come from Tales from the Crypt - more than the latter magazine provided to the 1972 film Tales from the Crypt, ironically enough. Not, as it happens, stories published in the pages of The Vault of Horror, one of the company's three dedicated horror titles. Lord knows if 'sequel' is right word to describe The Vault of Horror, a 1973 anthology film based on horror stories published in the first half of the 1950s by EC Comics.

The vault of horror