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An anthology of horrors, Tales That Witness Madness is minor to the point of anemia with one-note, passive performances, predictable stories, and yet it’s still entertaining in its limited way. There’s a few moments of deadpan humor in here, but this strength is frustratingly underdeveloped, like so much of the film.
Telling four stories as flashbacks as the primary characters are stuck in a mental institution, Tales That Witness Madness gives them unhappy home and interior lives to explain their psychological and supernatural scarring. The first story is about a little boy with an imaginary friend named Mr. Tiger, who is maybe not so imaginary. The story culminates with Mr. Tiger, revealed as an actual tiger, killing the boy’s frigid mother and uninvolved father while he passively looks on playing his toy piano. The only strength of this section is its ending scene, which verges on a chilling/camp psycho-sexual payoff.
The second story, “Penny Farthing,” is the weakest of the lot with nothing distinguishing or memorable about it. An antique store owner is haunted by a portrait and a penny farthing bicycle, there’s some time travel, and a fiery climax. This is the most enthusiasm I can muster for it. Thankfully the final two sequences whip themselves into a hysterical frenzy.
The third story, and possibly the most bonkers of the four, “Mel,” is about a man who finds an oddly shaped dead tree, brings it into his house as a piece of “found art,” and becomes increasingly obsessed with it to the point where his wife (Joan Collins, the lone actor in the entire film to find the right tone of stuffy kitsch) ratchets up the jealousy and paranoia. It comes to a climax, quite literally, with the man replacing his wife with the dead tree, now shaved into a vaguely vaginal shaped face and a noticeable pair of breasts. Understated it is not, but the consistent tone of martial and filial jaundice throughout Tales That Witness Madness reaches an apex here, and “Mel” is reason enough to watch the entire thing.
The final segment, “Luau,” features the top-billed Kim Novak, replacing Rita Hayworth who was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. “Luau” features Novak’s most monotone performance to date, as she begins on the edge of neurotic, hysterical neediness and never leaves that tone. She plays a literary agent involved in sexual jealousy with her teenage daughter. Into this cold war comes a Hawaiian client of Novak’s who must sacrifice a virgin to appease his god, and you can guess exactly where the story goes. Why exactly this story brought Novak out of a four year exile is anyone’s guess, perhaps it was a fat paycheck and some easy work but it feels beneath her.
It’s stupid but watchable, but where else can you find a film containing human sacrifice, a tree with smoothly shaped breasts, and two sex sirens doing bizarre work? Tales That Witness Madness is an uneven affair like any other anthology collection, but there’s some mileage to get out of the more ludicrous moments. Kim Novak may get top billing, but it’s Joan Collins who steals the movie.
