The Veil [DVD]

WOW! I bought a copy of this and it has to be one of the most rewarding purchases Ive made in a long time. As a huge fan of Karloffs theres not much of his work I havent seen but this tv series from the late 50s certainly wetted my appetite. It was made by Hal Roach studios and is strangely reminiscent of the TWILIGHT ZONE but of course this series came first, 10 episodes...and the most bizarre thing is that it was NEVER broadcast! It hasnt been until recent years that us fans have been able to view these lost treasures.

Out of the 10 short storys (25 mins each) Boris bookends each one with an introduction and an outro but best of all he appears in 9 of them in parts of varying size, all of them enjoyable to watch, especially the early role he has of a slightly inept and self-important cockney copper...a role he seems to have enjoyed!

The storys range in quality but are enjoyable and theres some familiar faces to spot along the way such as Robert Hardy and Patrick MacNee. If you look at the product description you'll see that it says this is a 3 disk item (despite the piccy saying 2 disk), the piccy relates to the series itself which is on 2 disks, there is indeed a third disk (and informative booklet) which features 4 ultra-rare episodes of a similar swedish show called 13 DEMON STREET featuring Lon Chaney Jnr, a GREAT bonus.

Add to this the fact that the picture quality is amazing, remastered from 35mm fine grain prints, and its a MUST for fans of spooky tv series and of course Boris Karloff....first rate product!

Made in 1958, and predating "The Twilight Zone" and "One Step Beyond", this ten-episode collection of 25-minute short stories was strangely never broadcast.
The stories are a mix of the supernatural and the unexplained, apparently based on "true and authenticated stories", hosted by that geneel master of horror Boris Karloff, who appears in all but one of the ten episodes, he greets us with the backdrop of a large roaring fire burning in the hearth.
This is a nice collection of stories, and I agree with reviewer "Paul G" when he says the stories range in quality, but this is well worth a look. The remastered black and white picture quality is excellent, there are no subtitles.

Next we have a bonus, "13 Demon Street', a collection of four short black and white stories, which also was never broadcast, and is presented by and stars a rather unwell looking Lon Chaney Jnr, who sadly looks like a different man compared to his earlier Universal Film Studio days.
The prologue to the series is that a man (played by Lon Chaney Jnr) is condemned to live at 13 Demon Street, and suffer on this earth eternally because his sins are considered to be the the worst known, if he can find a crime worse than his own the punishment will end, and so the search begins with the stories.
The included booklet states that the series lies somewhere between the "Veil" and "One Step Beyond", which is probably a fair assessment. Made in Sweden, the series features Swedish subtitles, picture and sound quality are not as good as the "Veil" but are still acceptable.
The included 10-page booklet features brief notes about both series, and full episode lists with synopsis.

Many thanks to Odeon Entertainment for releasing this enjoyable 3-disc collection.

Falling somewhere between The Twilight Zone and the 60s Thriller anthology series, it's not too difficult to see why the Hal Roach-produced, Boris Karloff-hosted The Veil never managed to sell to TV in 1959 after production was curtailed due to the money running out. It may pre-empt some elements of the more successful shows that would follow, but the ten produced `true and authenticated' tales of mystery and imagination dealing with ghosts, precognition, reincarnation, Jack the Ripper and the other usual suspects aren't terribly mysterious or imaginative (Tales of the Very Much As We Expected would be a better title) and despite, or perhaps because of being directed by old genre hands like George Waggner (curiously billed as george waGGner) and Herbert L. Strock, they look more like TV from the beginning of the 50s and would have had a tough time holding their own in a then-increasingly sophisticated marketplace. But seen from a distance they're rather cosy if undemanding fireside tales, helped along by the odd decent guest star - Patrick MacNee, Robert Hardy, Niall MacGinnis and George Hamilton among them - with Karloff doubling duties as host and character actor in nine of them, and having a ball as a pompous but none-too-smart copper in the first. You won't be surprised, but if you've a penchant for vintage television and aren't expecting a lost classic you won't be too disappointed either.

The UK DVD set released by Odeon includes ten episodes, nine filmed for the series and the tenth, Jack the Ripper, a short film acquired from a British studio to make up the numbers and consequently boasting both the best production values and an excellent lead performance from MacGinnis. Unfortunately it doesn't include the two additional episodes, The Vestris (part of a different anthology series Telephone Time but serving as a pilot for The Veil) and Peggy. They can be found on Timeless Media Group's US DVD Tales of the Unexplained. However, Odeon's DVD does include four episodes of another ill-fated anthology series that never sold, 13 Demon Street. Created by The Wolf Man's Curt Siodmak, it's a bit of a mess, each episode introduced by Lon Chaney Jr. as a man whose sins are so great he's condemned to spend eternity in 13 Demon Street until he can find someone whose sins are worse than his own.

Not that the sins of the four episodes here are particularly horrendous, though some of the acting is. Shot in Stockholm, the opening show about a surgeon who sews on a serial killer's hand to replace his own with the usual consequences seems to have been cast more on the actors ability to speak English (albeit with heavy accents) rather than to give a convincing performance. It's a problem that recurs in the miscasting of another story about a killer vine growing from a dead man's body to take revenge on his murderer, though the other two stories boast better performances. The most intriguing features Alf Kjellin as a fever-ridden doctor who starts seeing a drunken artist's model as she was decades ago, but the script is confused and most of the potential wasted. The best is a spin on M.R. James' The Mezzotint that stars John Crawford as a photographer who rapes and murders a girl only to find her appearing in a photograph and coming ever closer. None are particularly outstanding, more a curio than anything else, although the extensive and unfamiliar location photography gives it some novelty as long as it's not trying to be New York (taking down the Swedish shop signs might have been a good idea). The presentation is nothing to write home about either: most of Chaney's footage has been edited out - only one features a proper introduction - giving him only a few seconds of screen time each episode, while the episodes not only boast a TV channel watermark but Swedish subtitles as well!