I’ve been watching tubi.tv which has a lot of horror anthology movies, but most are not very good. Very low budget, terrible acting, bad writing, etc.
So what are some good anthology films out there that are worth watching?
I think creepshow 1 & 2 are kind of the gold standard of good horror anthology. Tales from the darkside (the unofficial creepshow 3) was good, and far better than the official creepshow 3.
Amicus productions did some good anthology films in the 70s. Tales from the crypt, vault of horror were both really good. They had other anthology films (dr terror, house that dripped blood, etc) but they weren’t as good.
Twilight zone the movie was good. Tales from the hood was good (part 2 wasn’t). Body bags was ok.
I liked Nightmare Cinema from 2018; of the five stories I’d say one was great, two were good and a couple were meh, which is a pretty good batting average for an anthology film.
Personally, I found Section 49 a little too close to Eraserhead; and Blood Of A Saint was a little too goofy for me. Footage Found, Arabi, Thing In The Shed, and The Cordyceps Principle (all by my friend) were very good.
These aren’t big-budget pictures/TV shows like the ones mentioned in the OP. They’re low-budget indie cinema. If you want to step away from the mainstream, this is a good little collection.
Cat’s Eye, with 67% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, is worth watching. If you’re unfamiliar with the title, it’s basically Stephen King in the Twilight Zone.
The stories are interwoven (very cleverly so) and it’s definitely Halloween themed so it might be better to wait a few months, but Trick 'r Treat (2008) has some really great stories and some fine acting (the cast includes Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin, and Brian Cox).
The two ABCs of Death average out to very enjoyable, although since each one is 26 different shorts by 26 different teams, they’re both very uneven. (2’s Q is one of the worst things I’ve ever watched.) But generally good.
Samuel Raimi accomplished a lot with a very limited budget. Bruce Campbell is very good. It’s easy to see why he’s become a reliable leading man in TV and film.
Combining horror & comedy isn’t easy. Raimi made it work.
Aw, that was the one I thought was great. The director has said (in so many words) that it takes place in the subconscious, so instead of the logic of a traditional story it follows that of a nightmare one might have in response to a traumatic event. I like surrealist films like Eraserhead and I’ve also had nightmares similar to this short film, so I responded to it quite strongly.
Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors was a 1965 horror anthology with Peter Cushing, Chrisopher Lee, Donald Sutherland, and Bernard Lee (“M” from the Bond movies). There were five segments. One was another “Disembodied Hand” story. Worth a watch
Spirits of the Dead was a 1968 trio of stories by Edgar Allan Poe, which proves that Roger Corman wasn’t the only one adapting him at the time. It’s considerably more stylish than Corman, and the stories are about as freely adapted. Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda, Brigette Bardot, and Terence Stamp are in it. The segments were directed by different directors. The “Toby Dammit” segment, directed by Fellini, is the best and weirdest.
Tales from the Past, AKA Gallery of Horror (1967) is easily the worst horror anthology movie I’ve ever seen. It stars John Carradine, but he’d appear in anything (see “The Astrozombies”, for instance). The photography is muddy, the sound is awful. The best scenes are – no joke – literally taken from Roger Corman movies (not merely copied – they literally spliced in scenes from “The Raven” and “The Terror”). The acting is abysmal and the twist endings are obvious long before the end.
I would suggest Southbound - a 2015 anthology horror movie - is worth a watch. Particularly since it is a modest 90 minutes long.
It has five stories which run into each other. The first and final parts are clearly connected while the middle three parts seem to share a common world with those two.