Tag Archives: anthology

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

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It’s been weeks. I don’t even a little bit remember what the podcast random dice were. Probably one of them was anthology, maybe? Regardless, the movie they watched four years ago and therefore I am watching today is the movie version of Tales from the Darkside, a show I never really watched back in the day. I hope it was better than this movie was, though? Someone called it (the movie I mean) a secret version of Creepshow 3, which never got made for whatever reason, but wow are the Creepshows better.

So, there are four stories. In the first one, a kid gets kidnapped by a witch and has to Scheherazade his way out of getting cooked for a dinner party, but for some reason using the witch’s own book of scary stories, all of which she should have read before? Did not make a lick of sense. This story, via the book, provides the frame for the other three.

Then in the second one, Christian Slater and Steve Buscemi have a Re-Animator relationship sort of, only it’s a mummy and a sister thing instead of dead bodies and a girlfriend thing. It was fine as far as it went, but the twist at the end did not make the slightest bit of sense to me.

In the third, someone adapted a Stephen King story about a hitman assassinating a cat, which truly did have a Creepshow vibe, but without the comic book stills and the crypt keeper, it felt cheesy instead of delightfully over the top. Which is too bad, as it might otherwise have been the best of the bunch.

Finally, in the actual best of the bunch, James Remar plays a starving artist with a dark secret who unexpectedly finds love and success, except for, you know, “dark secret”. The sad thing was when the witch from the connective story even knew it was the best story they told the whole time. Like, you should not admit which child is your favorite, yo. It’s not kosher!

I’m not mad I saw the movie, exactly, but I’m mad it took me this long to see it, as by rights I should have moved on to better stuff long since.

Southbound

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The most recent [new] podcast movie was Southbound, a mix of anthology and psycho killer… which tracks, yeah. There’s this DJ being creepy on the radio while five stories play out along the same highway, in sequential, minimally overlapping order. I liked this conceit exactly once, as that was the time the interaction was direct, instead of incredibly indirect, nay, practically forced.

So anyway, the stories are as follows:

  1. Two blood- and regret-covered men are forced to face their demons, literal and metaphorical alike.
  2. A lady rock band on tour breaks down, and gets the wrong kind of help.
  3. A dude hits and tries to save a pedestrian, more or less in Silent Hill.
  4. A dude tries to rescue his sister from monstertown.
  5. A family is attacked by strangers.

Aside from the tenuous linear timeline that connects these stories, an even more disappointing facet of the movie is that the latter two stories don’t really involve anyone driving down a highway. If you cannot maintain the theme of your anthology for more than three-fifths of the movie, that is a pretty bad compromise someone made along the way.

…okay, I’m going to stop now, because I have some regrets about what just happened. Anyway, the first and last stories did not make a lick of sense, I think mostly by virtue of not being written as though someone would ever need them to, but the other three ranged from decent to pretty darn good. It’s just the wrapper that is annoying me here.

The Mortuary Collection

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Sometimes movies are extremely basic, but in a good way, so you have fun, which in turn makes it almost a bad way after all, because at least if it weren’t fun you’d have something negative to say instead of practically nothing at all. Enter The Mortuary Collection, in which Clancy Brown runs a, you know, mortuary, while wearing what seemed to me to be an unnecessary amount of old guy makeup. He looked 60 when he was 20, and if he still only looks 60 now, how old does a mortician need to look?

Anyway, this blonde girl shows up in response to the help wanted sign right after a child’s funeral, and they discuss her qualifications for the job, which for some reason means he starts telling implausible morality plays about the ways denizens of the town of Raven’s Hollow (where the mortuary resides) have died. Which is to say: anthology movie! …if the title didn’t give that away already, I mean.

The stories themselves were decent if mostly predictable, and the wrapper story was pretty good as well, even if the ending was a bit inexplicable. Also, exploding penis, which is not a thing you see every day.

Hood of Horror

I have such a headache right now. I’m going to assume that it’s from reviewing too much too fast, and wrap this up as quick as I can. Assisting me in that task is our final movie of the festival, Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror. Because, well, it really wasn’t that good. Ironically, the framing device was the best part of the picture. Well, that and the rapping. When I think about, um, Snoop’s production acumen and choice of projects, I keep coming to the same conclusion: he’s a pretty good rapper. (And okay, like a lot of rappers, a pretty good actor too.)

So yeah, framing device good. Unfortunately, what it framed was several substandard streets-themed short stories you might find in Tales from the Cryzypt. In the first, a local girl learns an important lesson about the applications of power as they relate to tagging. Despite some topless hos, it was godawful. Most noteworthy, the terrible acting from the young version of Posie. In the second, a spoiled heir takes over the tenement where his father’s army buddies lived, and starts trying to drive them out. Eventually, they get fed up and turn the tables on him. This one wasn’t so bad, but it was also a ripoff of one of those old Tales from the Darkside or Amazing Stories or some such. In the third, a rap artist promises to be a good guy if God will only give him a big break. Predictably, he fails to fulfill his end of the bargain. I wonder if he’ll get some kind of comeuppance?

Oh, well. At least it had buckets of blood and gore to make up for a small fraction of the rest of the badness. Oh, and Billy Dee Williams. He makes everything better.