Directed by John Harrison
Starring Deborah Harry, Christian Slater, David Johansen, William Hickey, James Remar and Rae Dawn Chong
I was a late bloomer to the charms of Tales from the Darkside, the 1980s TV series that spawned the movie in question today. Most of my childhood was taken up with the Crypt Keeper and the Midnight Society, and trying to get the few classmates unlucky enough to share a room with me that gathering in the middle of the goddamn forest and telling scary stories wasn't a losery thing to do on Saturday night. When I found it later in life, though, I made up for some lost time. Rest assurred, it's an awesome series, and this flick that serves as the de facto climax of it is a pretty damn good movie.
While it was a modest success in theaters, this is definitely one of those movies that qualifies as a cult classic. It has small pockets of fans, an those pockets run very deep. So deep. So deep, it could put her butt to sleep, but Ice Cube is putting it better than I ever could. It's also got one of the more ingenious framing devices of any anthology film I've seen, with a young kid played by Matthew Lawrence (yes, folks, the brother of Joey "Whoa" Lawrence) reading three stories to a witch who is about to eat him, Hansel and Gretel style. Remember, kids, if you're ever captured by a cannibal, reading stories is the ultimate weapon. It worked for Shawn Hunter's older brother and it can work for you.
With that, let's get to the stories. First up is "Lot 249," an adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle short story of the same name. This segment has some cast, with Steve Buscemi playing a vengeful graduate student who utilizes a mummy to exact revenge on two other students (Julianne Moore and Robert Sedgwick) who framed him out of a scholarship. The scares are few and far between in this segment, but the beauty of it is in the acting, with the name actors (plus Christian Slater in full Jack Nicholson mode as Moore's older brother) giving everything they've got to the proceedings and adding plenty of emotion to the admittedly pretty out there story. It's also got one hell of an ending twist that is right up there with anything we would get on Tales from the Crypt, and that's never a bad thing.
Next up is "Cat From Hell," based on the story from Stephen King's collection Skeleton Crew. Much like pretty much everything King wrote before...oh, 1991 or so, the whole story is filled with this amazing sense of foreboding. The story concerns a rich pharmaceutical magnate (William Hickey) who hires a hit man (David Johansen) to kill a black cat that he believes to be evil incarnate. The background of the hit is explained, and it is the stuff that campfire scary stories are made of with just the slightest bit of a modern touch. And folks, if you thought the last segment had a good ending twist, wait until you see how this one kicks you in the nuts in the final third. Both Hickey and Johansen are aces in their roles, and the material doesn't disappoint. A home run of a segment for sure.
Finally, we've got "Lover's Vow," a story that felt very familiar as I had already seen the classic J-horror epic Kwaidan. Lo and behold, the story is indeed based on the story of the Japanese yuki-onna ghost. Instead of a spirit in the woods, it's once again back to the mean city streets, as down-on-his-luck artist Preston (James Remar) witnesses a hideous helldemon committing a brutal murder. The monster agrees to let him live, just so long as he never speaks a word of what he saw to anyone. And I think you know where this is going. The segment may be predictable, but it doesn't matter, because this segment is all about the emotion. Once again, the actors are more than game, with both Remar and Rae Dawn Chong owning it as a seemingly happy couple before a telegraphed-yet-effective final twist.
There were some talented people associated with this flick (Doyle, King and George Romero, who wrote the screenplay for the "Cat From Hell" segment), and it shows. This is the kind of horror movie that we almost never get these days, one where the love of dark stuff, spectral boogeymen and all things paranormal is celebrated with no hint of cynicism. All the stuffy trappings aside, this is just a really, really fun movie that every horror fan should seek out at some point in their life.
*** 1/2 out of ****. The first segment might be a bit below the others, but the sum total of Tales from the Darkside can't be ignored. Check it out.
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