Starring Lon Chaney Jr., Karen Kadler, Michael Hinn, Ralph Brown, John Crawford
Directed by Herbert L. Strock
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
As Satan admits new arrivals through the gates of hell, he makes an offer to a suicide victim to spare her punishment by delivering items that will lead new souls down a dark path.
Although there's no mention of this in the film's credits, the movie is a repackaging of episodes from 13 Demon Street, a TV series writer/director Curt Siodmak created and produced, which was filmed in Sweden, and hosted by Chaney. Siodmak's name in fact is nowhere to be found, although IMDB indicates he directed and/or wrote some of the installments included. Three stories from the TV series are included, featuring a photographer who kills a woman and is then haunted by her image, a scientist who falls in love with an ancient woman found frozen in ice, and a man informed by a fortune teller he is fated to die at midnight. I can't say any of the tales are particularly memorable, and there's no notable names in their casts. Among them, the photographer's tale probably comes off best and has the most visually satisfying conclusion. I found the wrap around story filmed with Chaney and Kadler to be extremely low budget and it doesn't mesh well with the episodes, but as a whole, the film engaged my interest and has a similar feel to the later (if more superior) horror anthologies put out by Amicus in the 1960s and 1970s.
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