Prologue
Five people visit a carnival fairground, drawn to a sideshow led by Burgess Meredith as Dr. Diabolo. Behind a curtain, a handful of haunted-house-style attractions promise real fear, and the show offers an extra thrill if they’re willing to pay more. Their curiosity overwhelms caution as they follow the illusionist to a dim back room, where each person watches a glimpse of their fate unfold through the shears of an effigy of the female deity Atropos.
Enoch
Colin Williams, Michael Bryant, is a greedy playboy who exploits his dying uncle Roger, Maurice Denham. As the story twists, Colin becomes entranced by a man-eating cat, a merciless force that mirrors his own hunger for wealth and control and pulls him toward a reckoning that he cannot escape.
Terror Over Hollywood
Carla Hayes, Beverly Adams, a rising Hollywood starlet, begins to sense something deeply unsettling about her fellow performers: they are androids. The glamorous realm of cinema starts to feel eerier and more fragile as the truth about the impostors threatens to upend everything she has built. The tension is sharpened by Dr. Heim, Bernard Kay, whose clinical presence deepens the eerie mystery surrounding the artificial co-stars and the strange forces at play behind the glossy façade.
Mr. Steinway
Leo Winston, John Standing, owns a Bechstein grand piano named Euterpe that appears to be more than a mere instrument. The Bechstein becomes jealous of its owner’s new lover, Dorothy Endicott, Barbara Ewing, and the two human beings must contend with a creeping, sentient wrath. As melodies turn to menace, the piano’s spite escalates into a calculated, supernatural vendetta that blurs the line between music and malice.
The Man Who Collected Poe
Ronald Wyatt, Jack Palance, a devoted Poe collector, murders Lancelot Canning, Peter Cushing, over a coveted piece that Wyatt refuses to reveal. The act is chilling not just for the crime itself but for the eerie revelation that the Poe himself may be the object of Wyatt’s fixation, turning the pursuit of a rare artifact into a confrontation with literature’s most haunting figure.
Epilogue
Gordon Roberts, Michael Ripper, the fifth patron, descends into a frenzy and uses the shears of Atropos to “kill” Dr. Diabolo before the others, triggering panic and a frantic retreat. The group soon discovers that the entire sequence may have been a staged performance, as it’s revealed that Ronald Wyatt had not fled with the others and even participates in the moment, sharing a brief, knowing exchange and lighting a cigarette for Diabolo before departing (the lighter being the same one he borrowed in his vision, hinting that the events may have had real consequences). Diabolo then reclaims the shears as part of the illusion’s mystique, and, with a final, chilling flourish, breaks the fourth wall by speaking three words to the audience, revealing himself to be the devil.
