Sep 08 2008
Tales from the Grave
TALES FROM THE GRAVE
Three horror vignettes in the Tales from the Darkside vein…
THE PLOT
The first story, Beyond Death is about a group of filmmakers who venture into an abandoned building to work on their latest project. Once there they uncover a hidden coffin with a body inside it and decide to make it part of their zombie movie. Only they don’t realize until it’s too late that something inside that coffin is still alive.
The second story, Brides of the Dead takes a page from reality shows. A group of young women are sent into a supposedly haunted house and forced to do different “scary” things with the winner getting a million dollars. The women quickly learn that someone is playing a game with them and killing them off one by one.
The Rotten Dead is the third and thankfully last segment of Tales from the Grave. Three drunk buddies venture into the woods to see the “witch’s house”, but are chased off by a half-naked boy. Somehow their work accidentally kills a cat that turns out to be a male witch in disguise. Later they’re confronted by an old woman (mother of the boy) who curses them and things start to go wrong. The same woman uses her powers to change herself into a young, good looking woman and really starts to play with them.
THE GOOD
The first story I enjoyed, up to a point. Towards the end it got a little silly, but it wasn’t too bad. The makeup in the first story was really good, a lot better than some I’ve seen, especially the guy missing a nose.
The third had one thing I loved: a James Dean look alike. This guy had the hair down pat, not to mention the white tee and blue jeans. Then again this movie is from the 1990s so he was probably just trying to look like one of the guys from “Beverly Hills 90210”. Random note: they actually used the same Coca-Cola mug that I and 7 million other people own. There was also a moderately disgusting scene in which the young witch gave “birth” in the middle of a kitchen.
THE BAD
Whoever cast the first story obviously had Rob Zombie on the brain since the lead zombie looked exactly like the singer/director.
The second vignette was pretty terrible, from the acting and sets to props and camera work. They tried to do the “reality” show angles with different actresses wearing handheld cameras and it gave the segment a very pedestrian feel. I also hated that every single woman was wearing as little clothing as possible. If I had to run around on national television in over the knee boots, a bra and boy shorts, I’d probably shoot myself. Doing it for a significant other though? Well, that’s a whole different ball game…
THE BOTTOM LINE
I definitely enjoyed parts of this or at least parts of the first one, but things went downhill from there. Unlike other movies that have some kind of wraparound to connect the different stories, this just leapt from story to story without any continuity. There should have been at least one thread to draw together the different stories. I’m not going to recommend Tales from the Grave though I can think of several hundred movies that are far worse.
