'From Beyond The Grave's second story stars the always tightly wound Ian Bannen, Diana Dors and the deeply creepy father / daughter combo of Donald and Angela Pleasence.
Bannen plays Lowe, a dull middle manager with an awful home life (his wife hates him, his son thinks he's pathetic), who takes advantage of a chance meeting with ex-soldier Underwood (Donald Pleasence) to make up an alternate past where he was a war hero (he was actually a pay clerk) and was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. To further this claim, Bannen visits Temptations Ltd to purchase a secondhand DSM only to be told by Cushing that he can only sell it to him if he has proof that he was once awarded one. Desperate, Bannen steals the medal and seals his fate.
I don't wish to be ungallant, but Angela Pleasence looks like her Dad, and that makes her perfect for horror films. Here, as the daughter Underwood offers up to Lowe, she is perfect: odd, witchy, and, in contrast to Lowe's shrewish wife (Diana Dors at full pelt) docile and accommodating. When she offers Lowe a way out of his loveless marriage by occult means he eagerly takes it, little realising that the Underwoods are not working for him, they're working for his son, and his wife is not the only one on the hit list...
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