Trapped Ashes (2006)Since this is one of those anthology movies where four different stories are depicted, when I say it's a ripoff I'm not talking about the stories themselves, but the format that is used. This has been done countless times, from back in the 60's (with much better actors) through anthologies done by Tales From The Crypt... it's the overall type of comeuppance movie that has been, pardon the expression, done to death. But it had a couple of neat actors (if you don't recognize the names I can't blame you), Henry Gibson, John Saxon and a brief appearance by Dick Miller.
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| You could tell me stories or we could sing songs.... |
The 'wraparound' story as these things go is a group of six people get VIP tickets to tour a movie studio. None seem to remember exactly how they got the tickets. They are given a short tour by a man simply known as the 'Tour Guide' (Henry Gibson) who we get the idea is a little off his nut. He takes them to a famous set known as the House Of Horror, used in a movie called Hysteria by an out-of-his-mind director named Desmond. The six want to see the inside very badly, so he reluctantly (or so it seems) lets them in. Of course the house is an endless maze of doors that go nowhere, rooms that have impossible proportions, etc. Typical setup if you're used to this kind of anthology movie. And the punchline is not much different - to get out of the house, just as in the movie Hysteria, the only way out is for the group to come up with four extremely scary stories. Aaaaaand of course our group has them:
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| Two all beef patties... oh no, wait... |
1. The Girl With The Golden Breasts: Male chauvinism at its finest. An actress, beautiful but seemingly unable to get any work, decides that the problem must be her small breasts (they weren't that small). So she goes to a clinic for help. The doctor tells her he's glad she hasn't listened to the 'negative hype' of plastic surgery. This is not a cautionary tale - in fact it's just downright silly. She is told that silicone and other types of implants are 'terrible' and they use 'natural' ones generated from cadaver tissue. He claims it's better and besides, organ transplants are taken that way. She's scared but desperate and does it anyway. Sure enough her breasts are large and beautiful (they don't look any better to me and there's no scars.. but I'm a woman so maybe I'm just prejudiced).
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| Where to cut, where to cut... |
One day while showering and soaping up her new 'goodies' she cuts her finger. She's puzzled. Oh well, she's getting work now right and left and she knows it's just 'cause of her boobs. Nice lesson for the kiddies... but wait. One night while with a young man he's, uh, paying attention to her new acquisitions when he screams - his tongue is stuck to her breast and he's bleeding. He grabs a pair of scissors and actually cuts the tip of his tongue off. Ewww. She then discovers the 'awful truth' as all these stories go - her breasts actually are vampiric, the nipples have teeth and actually 'feed' on whoever she's with. Her current boyfriend presently with her says he's never seen them, she always keeps them covered up. Right.
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| I just love a man who's well rotted... |
2. Jibaku (Japanese for suicide): A couple travels to Japan to try to rekindle their marriage. After being ignored at a dinner party while her husband tries to drum up business she sees a painting that seems to come alive. A young Japanese man pays unusual attention to her - and both him and the painting freak her out. Later, they couple are touring a monastery that happens to be adjacent to a cemetery. They separate and to her horror, she discovers the same young man hanging dead from a tree. He apparently attended the monastery (didn't do him much good apparently) and the monk there apologizes for her distress. Still in Japan, she starts having dreams (or he does, they're not really clear) about this same young man coming to her and they have sex.
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| Why couldn't they do the whole movie this way? |
Each time he shows up he's, uh, rotting pretty fast. In fact, she seems to like putting her hands into the corpse. I didn't say this was good. Suddenly she disappears - the husband looks frantically around and ends back at the monastery. The monk looks at pictures she drew and concludes she has gone to 'hell' with the one who committed suicide. Ooookay. This is a good example of 'when you run out of money, go with animation' because as the husband tries to retrieve her, all the 'complicated' scenes are cartoons, which I actually preferred but that's just me. He saves her and they leave.
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| Stanley who? |
3. Stanley's Girlfriend: This one you could guess at the start if you've ever seen these kind of movies. Leo (John Saxon) tells of the time when he was young - he met a brilliant director named Stanley. Soon they were the best of friends - and played chess three times a week as well as talked about everything. One day Stanley had a girl over and Leo is struck by how wonderful she is (this is the story, she didn't look special to me but...) and she flirts outrageously with him. Soon he doesn't ever see Stanley, he's too wrapped up in his girlfriend. Finally after a month or so he gets a call from Stanley asking him over - but when he shows up, only the girl is there. They quickly become lovers (nice friend) and she tells him not only is Stanley not home, but he's gone to Europe, never to return. She's insatiable, even drawing blood and licking it off him. One day, he doesn't know why or when, she leaves. Much later he learns of his friend's death. He is shown a film and given something to explain why Stanley left. It's an apology, because Stanley knew what would happen, he wanted it to because he was trying to get away from her. He had found very old portraits and some type of film used for the first moving pictures - showing the girl, the same age as when he met her, feeding off some guy. They don't make it clear if they're going for vampire or succubus... but the story ends there.
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| I warn you my story is really, REALLY boring... |
4. My Twin, The Worm: This story truly sucked. Sorry, it just did. It was dumb, uninteresting and you felt no sympathy for any of the characters. Basically the girl telling it says when her mother got pregnant with her, she also developed a tapeworm, which the doctor said he couldn't remove without hurting the baby. So the tapeworm was her 'twin' - but she was always hungry because it 'ate' all her food. Uh, okay. She's born, the tapeworm... I dunno. Her father leaves her mother for her best friend when she's two, and her mom goes nuts when she's about five. She lived with her father and stepmother and because of always being 'hungry' she constantly hides food - doesn't eat it, just hides it. The stepmother has enough and tells her no more. She asks plaintively 'Are you going to let her starve me?' to... nothing. But out of the wall comes this huge (we're talking Boa sized) worm that crawls into her stepmother's body. After that, the stepmother doesn't want to eat and becomes an invalid. Her father, however is devoted and takes care of her for twenty five years. Yawn. Sorry about that.
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| Thirty seconds on screen and I get a paycheck - score! |
So they're done and they get to go, right? Nah, you've seen these before and you probably already guessed the ending. See, their stories didn't quite end the way they said, as the Tour Guide points out, having known all along what their stories were (same old, same old) and he tells the true endings:
1. The girl's boyfriend is actually dead - she ripped his throat out to feed her 'thirsty' breasts - kind of a disturbing image but by no means nightmare inducing. She was executed for murder.
2. The husband did get his wife out of 'hell' but the next time they're in bed she reveals that she was never really 'rescued' but is a demon - and now they're both in 'hell'. I guess.
3. When Leo watches the movie and realizes what he lost and what she was he becomes despondent and shoots himself.
4. Instead of leaving her home and her father being devoted (blah blah blah) she had actually poisoned her parents and when the police discover them she's on the floor eating like crazy - they let her knowing that she's going to get the chair for this - which she does.
So now they know (they already knew but deluded themselves as these always go) and despite trying to find their way out of the house they simply see themselves on the other side of a doorway and realize that the house is where they'll be - forever.
The Tour Guide leaves with a smile on his face - another job well done. He pats his pockets realizing his badge is not on - he finds it and it says 'Desmond' (You know, the maker of Hysteria?) and drives the now empty tour vehicle through an empty lot, continuing to tell stories of the ones he just left behind to... nobody. Until he slowly fades out because after all, he was never really there, was he?
Okay okay a bit lame but hey, if this had been made say 20 or 30 years earlier people would have eaten it up, those who loved Tales From The Crypt, Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors, The Vault Of Horror or any of their copies. We're just a bit too jaded for this kind of stuff anymore I guess.
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