Torture Garden

• Torture Garden wasn't Amicus's first anthology film — Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) holds that title. Torture Garden, released in November 1967, was the studio's second portmanteau outing, adapting four short stories by Psycho author Robert Bloch.
• The film was originally envisioned as a reunion for Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, but financier Columbia Pictures insisted on two American names to headline, so Jack Palance and Burgess Meredith were cast instead — bumping Cushing down to a smaller role.
• Burgess Meredith plays the framing story's carnival barker, Dr. Diabolo. The man who gets pulled into a killing spree by a demonic, fortune-telling cat in the 'Enoch' segment is actually a different character, Colin Williams, played by Michael Bryant.
• In the segment 'Terror Over Hollywood,' the ambitious actress doesn't fall victim to a killer plant — she discovers the industry's biggest stars stay eternally young by having their aging bodies swapped for android duplicates.
• Peter Cushing and Jack Palance share the film's final segment, 'The Man Who Collected Poe,' playing rival collectors whose obsession with the author turns murderous.

Dr. Diabolo is not a demon but a manifestation of collective guilt, meaning the carnival only appears to those who have already mentally snapped, making the entire film a hallucination occurring in the split second before each victim's death.

The four stories are not separate entities but fragmented memories of a single serial killer trying to rationalize their crimes, with the 'audience' representing the jury in their own mind attempting to convict them.

The cat in 'Enoch' and the android conspiracy in 'Terror Over Hollywood' are manifestations of the same ancient evil exploiting specific human vices, suggesting a connected universe where evil adapts its form to the sinner's greatest weakness.

Dr. Diabolo's traveling carnival promises nightmares for a price, luring five curious strangers into his tent of horrors. The macabre showman unveils four tales of greed, vanity, and supernatural retribution — from a broke nephew who falls under the spell of his dead uncle's demonic, fortune-telling cat, to a pair of obsessive Edgar Allan Poe collectors whose rivalry ends in murder and an impossible discovery — and the crowd starts to realize their own sins are on trial right alongside the ones on stage. The final unveiling saves the worst twist for last: Dr. Diabolo isn't just a carnival barker peddling cheap scares. He's the devil himself, and the show was never fiction.