From Beyond The Grave Review (1974)

The shop door creaks open, and we stumble headfirst into a maze of shadows, dust, and destiny. From Beyond the Grave is no ordinary Horror Anthology, it’s a cursed series of wicked fables stitched together with cobwebs and candle wax, and its guardian is none other than Peter Cushing. Cushing manifests like a phantom given flesh, a figure draped in tweed and quiet menace. He doesn’t sell antiques; he deals in judgment.

Every tale unfurls from his shop like smoke from a dying fire. Greedy hands snatch, liars connive, and the self-righteous barter with their very souls, all under the pale, watchful eyes of Cushing’s. He isn’t loud, he isn’t cruel in any obvious way, no, his brand of terror is the kind that slides into your marrow. A raised brow, a soft tilt of the head, the slightest curl of his lips, and you feel it, the sense that these people are already marked for death. He is less a man than a tether between worlds, a skeletal tollkeeper waiting for the inevitable crash of fate.

The imagery claws at your brain: a mirror that swallows men whole, a medal tied to the restless dead, suburban wallpaper blistering under unseen corruption. These are not just stories; they’re punishments, each one unfolding ever so slowly. And when the smoke clears, we are returned to that same shop, where Cushing lingers behind the counter like a spider tending the web.

What makes the film intoxicating is that Cushing never needs to lift a finger in malice. The sinners damn themselves; he is simply their proprietor of doom. The way his fingers brush over an object, the hush of his voice, the deliberate stillness in his movements, it all builds to a realization that he is less shopkeeper and more of an executioner. His shop isn’t a business, it’s a velvet-draped mausoleum where every trinket has teeth.

From Beyond the Grave is a nightmare masquerading as a morality play, where every object is bait and every soul is prey. But it’s Cushing’s elegance that transforms it from a handful of eerie stories into a full-blown descent into the grave. He’s not just in the film; he is the film. Every gesture is a hex, every smile a coffin lid closing slowly.