Michael Rennie & Jeanne Simmons in Sanitorium

 Anthology films certainly have their work cut out for them. Not only are the filmmakers tasked with presenting a selection of short cinematic stories to entice viewers, they also have to arrange them all into a singularly involving package. From my experience, though, most movies of this variety tend to suffer from a little inconsistency, and Trio is no exception.

All three tales emphasize ending on a particular note over being wholly absorbing anecdotes, more concerned with where it wants to go than the journey in getting there, but two of them still emerge as refreshingly entertaining watches. The Verger is a modest story about a modest man, a very sweet and likable 20-minute look at a simple man (congenially played by Hayter) who slowly stumbles onto success despite being shunned for his illiteracy. Mr. Know-All is a more amusing diversion, a "guest from Hell" tale not too different from something like The Man Who Came to Dinner. It's pretty predictable when all's said and done, but it comes together just fine thanks to a delightful performance from Patrick, one that rises up to the challenge of coming across as both irritating and likable.
 

Jeanne Simmons & Finlay Currie in Sanitorium

Sanitorium, on the other hand, is a dreadfully boring affair that amounts to being little more than a 40-minute soap opera. The longest of the three segments, Sanitorium ends the film on real downer of a note. This vignette comes packed to the gills with barely-developed and often unsympathetic characters who spend their time either whining or gossiping about one another. The story's focus keeps shifting all around, never giving you a particular figure to get to know or identify with, an aspect of the feature that comes across as more than a little maddening. As the young lovers, Rennie (so commanding as Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still) and Simmons (so striking in Spartacus) try their darndest, but not even their talents can overcome a sappy and scattershot script that saddles them with thin characterizations and a half-hearted illness subplot that's never really explained.
 
Maugham's impenetrable accent during the host segments isn't a big help, either.
 
A less gory and ghoulish precursor to the popular horror anthology movie, Trio isn't without its charming moments or solid performances. But thanks to one particularly uninvolving tale, Trio is only two-thirds of the classic it could've been.