Adam Gierasch – Tripping Through Gateways

Denise Crosby is Leslie, recently widowed, has moved her family cross-country to a small California town. She has bought a local mortuary (right next to a graveyard). The Mortuary has a past and there is a lot of legend regarding the land it is built on.

As the tale goes, the first owner was a farmer who found nothing would grow on the land. It was as if the ground was cursed. Eventually, they built the mortuary and cemetery. The last owners had a dark history and a handicapped son. They hid the son away, and then when he got older, as the story goes, he killed his parents and hid beneath the cemetery.

Of course, something evil lives in the mortuary and it possesses people, turning them in zombies. It is up to her son Jonathan (Cougertown’s Dan Byrd) to stop the evil (with the help of his girlfriend) and save his little sister from the sinister force.

The plot is kind of a mess. What exactly are the evil force’s goals? Why is salt a perfect weapon? Is it some sort of slug? Why is it a terrible look digital monster? The characters are the under-developed stock character type and the film lacks any scares. This is pretty much a failure on every level.

Tobe returns to the haunted house genre. Nell and Steven move into a dilapidated but historic Hollywood apartment complex. From the start, Nell feels there is something wrong with the building.

As people disappear, nobody believes her that murders are happening. Of course, this leads her to watch the red herring, only to discover secret passages below the basement. So, you know a sub-basement..with sub-basements.

She finally finds that the real killer is a disfigured man in a ski mask. Apparently, it never occurred to him to wear a human face mask, but hey…we can’t all be Leatherface. I should say, I do think the look is the villain is pretty effective. Sadly, the rest of the film is less effective.

The film has laughably inept cops. In one scene, they leave an apartment, never noticing the body nailed right above the door. There are several character who exist to be dispatched at the end in a massive bloodbath of a final reel. The film lacks both suspense and scares.

This is a remake of an exploitation slasher from 1978 that, frankly, I remember nothing about. Well, except for that VHS video box in the horror aisle at Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.

This is definitely not one of Hooper’s most memorable films.

The horror anthology format is one that can yield tremendous success (Trick’r Treat, Creepshow) or terrible results (Creepshow 3, V/H/S 3). It has a somewhat spotty history, but the tradition holds strong. Probably the most ambitious, but not entirely successful were the two ABC’s of Death films, which each contained 26 short films. Tales of Halloween keeps it to ten stories, which is probably the limit for getting a good yield of stories.

The film uses the framing device of a small town where every Halloween the dead walk, ghouls play and monsters eat. Guiding us through the tales is (in a pretty obvious homage to her role in the fog) radio host Adrienne Barbeau (Creepshow, Swamp Thing).

The stories are hit or miss, with an uneven tone, but when they hit? They are terrific fun. Standouts include The Night Billy Raised Hell, the Ransom of Rusty Rex, Bad Seed, and Friday the 31st. What makes all those stories work is their sense of humor. All are having more fun than trying to be scary.

This Means War starts out strong, but ends kind of weakly.

Friday the 31st starts out like a slasher story, complete with an obvious Jason type…but then takes a complete left turn. The Ransom of Rusty Rex tells a tale of ambitious kidnappers who grab a rich man’s (John Landis, director of American Werewolf in London) son while he is trick or treating. Except, the boy is a bit more of a hellion than anticipated.

On the other hand, Sweet Tooth goes more for the traditional monster/urban legend territory…and it ends exactly like you expect it to. The Weak and the Wicked lacks any real life in it’s narrative, and for being a short, fails to do much in it’s premise of revenge.

In the end, I found the film an enjoyable watch, with some good humor, fun cameos and even a few scares. It is not quite Trick’r Treat, but it is some good Halloween fun.

Tag: Adam Gierasch

New In Town (Mortuary, 2005)

Renovations (Toolbox Murders, 2004)

Many Tales To Tell (Tales of Halloween, 2015)