Amicus Productions was a British film production company active in the 1960s and 1970s. It is best known for its genre pictures, particularly in the genres of horror and science fiction.
The science fiction films included two movies based on the then-new hit series Doctor Who: Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.. They also made three films based on the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, specifically The Land That Time Forgot and its sequel, The People That Time Forgot, and At the Earth's Core.
The horror films are often Wrongfully Attributed to the older and more famous Hammer Studios, with which they share some directors and stars (including Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing). Two points of distinction are that Amicus tended to set its films in the present day (as opposed to Hammer's Gothic historicals) and many of Amicus' horror films are Anthology Films, with a Framing Device binding together three or four shorter stories. Two anthology films were adaptions of stories from the American horror comics published by EC Comics. Writer Robert Bloch wrote many screenplays for Amicus, often adapting his own short stories, and joshed in his autobiography that "Amicus was Latin for 'no budget'."note
Producer Milton Subotsky would later relocate to Canada and produce two more films in the Amicus anthology style with Amicus director Roy Ward Baker: The Uncanny (1977) and The Monster Club (1980).
Amicus Productions with their own trope pages include:
- And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973)
- Asylum (1972)
- The Beast Must Die (1974)
- Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966)
- The Deadly Bees (1966)
- Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)
- Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)
- From Beyond the Grave (1974)
- The House That Dripped Blood (1971)
- I, Monster (1971)
- The Land That Time Forgot (1975)
- Madhouse (1974)
- The People That Time Forgot (1977)
- Scream and Scream Again (1970)
- Tales from the Crypt (1972)
- Torture Garden (1968)
- Vault of Horror (1973)
Other Amicus Productions provide examples of:
- Cake Toppers: A wedding cake topper is used for Sympathetic Magic in From Beyond the Grave (1973).
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Several of the anthology films end with the narrator character addressing the audience directly.
- The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: In the anthology film From Beyond the Grave, the linking premise is that each of the stories involves an object bought from a mysterious shop owned by Peter Cushing.
- Man-Eating Plant: In the adaptation of At the Earth's Core, a man-eating plant makes a brief appearance, interrupting a fight scene between the hero and an adversary. Needless to say, even though the two men had been trying to kill each other only minutes before, the hero saves his opponent from the clutches of the carnivorous creeping vine, and the two become fast friends, joining forces to defeat the evil Mahars that rule the underground world.
- Soul Jar: The titular door of From Beyond The Grave, used by an evil, ghostly sorcerer to collect souls. His latest victims, however, manage to destroy the door, ending his life.
