Deadtime Stories is a very, very low-budget horror/comedy anthology where every segment is a story a beleaguered uncle tells his nephew to try to get him to sleep.
The first segment is the best of the bunch; Two witches are trying to resurrect their sister, but their slave gets a crisis of conscience when he develops feelings for the girl they want to sacrifice. The old abductor getting second thoughts deal. The story is, frankly, kind of terrible, but it's got some amusing bits: there's a part where a hallucinating priest, seeing the witches as comely young women, starts undoing one of their bodices. Cut to the hag proudly showing off her desiccated horrorshow of a prosthetic breast.
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| Hag boob! |
Not funny enough to make me laugh, but it did place me in the vicinity of a chuckle. The same goes for a tacked-on unhappy ending that the uncle adds when the kid complains his story wasn't scary enough. It's not a funny movie, but it's not unfunny, either.
This first tale is the one where most of the budget in the movie went, at least judging by the production design. It doesn't quite manage to look good, but it at least makes an effort; that's more than I can say for the rest of the movie.
Oh, and it's got a really good fleshless-skeleton-to-gory-zombie-thing resurrection scene, I always like those, and this one's a keeper.
This first tale is the one where most of the budget in the movie went, at least judging by the production design. It doesn't quite manage to look good, but it at least makes an effort; that's more than I can say for the rest of the movie.
Oh, and it's got a really good fleshless-skeleton-to-gory-zombie-thing resurrection scene, I always like those, and this one's a keeper.
The second story is a retelling of Little Red Riding hood, but because Uncle Mike was trying to watch naked girls on cablevision, Red Riding hood is a buxom cheerleader who's introduced lustily rubbing herself in front of a mirror.
She gets her grandmother's prescriptions mixed with Billy's, a dodgy junkie-looking fella at the pharmacy (the dude looked pretty normal to me, but he does get a hilarious synth-rockabilly theme). Unfortunately for everyone involved, Billy is a werewolf (there's a respectable low-budget knock-off The Howling transformation involved, though the final product is pretty lame) and he needed the meds to keep himself from turning.
This one drags a lot more and introduces some Porky's style teen sex comedy elements. There's some good gore, though the editing doesn't allow more than a glimpse, and it shows grandma using a silver cleaning product on her kitchenware. Chekhov's spatula!
The final, fairy-tale-inspired line is a groaner, but in a good way.
She gets her grandmother's prescriptions mixed with Billy's, a dodgy junkie-looking fella at the pharmacy (the dude looked pretty normal to me, but he does get a hilarious synth-rockabilly theme). Unfortunately for everyone involved, Billy is a werewolf (there's a respectable low-budget knock-off The Howling transformation involved, though the final product is pretty lame) and he needed the meds to keep himself from turning.
This one drags a lot more and introduces some Porky's style teen sex comedy elements. There's some good gore, though the editing doesn't allow more than a glimpse, and it shows grandma using a silver cleaning product on her kitchenware. Chekhov's spatula!
The final, fairy-tale-inspired line is a groaner, but in a good way.
And on the last story, they just give up with the horror aspects for a retelling of Goldie Locks and the Three Bears that can only be described with the words 'zany' and 'wacky' and 'kind of painful to watch'.
The three bears here are escaped convicts from a lunatic asylum, Goldie Locks is a young psychopath who murders people with telekinetic powers, and... and... it's fucking terrible.
Credit it for fully committing to the bit, but now we have people shamelessly mugging to the camera (there's a lot of mugging in the other stories, but here it's intentional), cartoony, boioioing-style sound effects, dad jokes, 70's-bad-variety-show-level jokes. Weirdly, while it's not the sleaziest short, it shows quite a bit of skin, which feels at odds with the material. Not that this movie - especially this part of the movie - is at all concerned with tone.
Melissa Leo, the only actor I recognized in the whole movie, plays mama bear. Apparently the hunky slave in the first short was in Family Ties.
Director/co-writer Jeffrey Delmar worked as a PA for the first two Friday the 13ths, so I suppose he's entitled to a few horror references in here besides the Howling one. Most notably a first-person prologue that riffs on Halloween, with a side of Jason (you can hear a squeaking bed, which seems to be luring the prowler and ends up being the kid jumping in his bed, not teens enjoying pre-marital sex). I suspect they're there more Airplane!-style-spoofs rather than homages, though. At least they have punchlines.
If you love 80's cheese, you'll... maybe enjoy the AOR soundtrack (provided by the band Taj, written for the movie) which we first hear in the title credits doing a song that namechecks Romero and Hitchcock. I like to think that it's not tongue-in-cheek, it's much funnier that way.
There are some good practical effects throughout, a lot of terrible acting and cut corners, and the writing is always at least a little off. But at least two thirds of it come by their shittiness honestly -and even the other third makes an effort - so I can say I don't regret watching it. Just about.
There are some good practical effects throughout, a lot of terrible acting and cut corners, and the writing is always at least a little off. But at least two thirds of it come by their shittiness honestly -and even the other third makes an effort - so I can say I don't regret watching it. Just about.
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