James Copeland

Torture Garden -- Anthology film consisting of four stories bookended by Burgess Meredith as Dr. Diabolo, a carnival barker, who provides four patrons with glimpses into their future.

Torture Garden -- Anthology film consisting of four stories ('Enoch,' 'Terror over Hollywood', 'Mr. Steinway', and 'The Man who Collected Poe') bookended by Burgess Meredith as Dr. Diabolo, a carnival barker, who provides four patrons with glimpses into their future. The final episode in which Poe's spirit is conjured up from the great beyond is especially effective.

A special sideshow torture exhibit has the power, according to showman Dr. Diablo, to warn people of evil in their futures. As skeptical customers are shown the greed and violence they're hiding, one of them snaps and kills Diablo. When they run off, we see the murder to be staged as part of the show. One of the customers has hung around to see this, and wants to make a deal with Diablo, aka the Devil.

British stage luminary Robert Stephens plays Holmes, and Colin Blakely plays his friend and chronicler Dr. Watson in Billy Wilder's cinematic homage to the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This self-described "hitherto suppressed and thoroughly fascinating" tale entails Holmes' search for a missing mining engineer — a case that may significantly effect England’s national security. While solving the mystery, Holmes finds his first love, an enigmatic foreign beauty named Gabrielle Valladon (Genevieve Page). Wilder emphasizes current topics of the ‘70s such as drug addiction and homosexuality.