Writers: William Cooke, Paul Talbot
Composers: Kevin Green, Stan Lollis
Starring: Gunnar Hansen, Robin Roberts, Tres Holton, Courtney Ballard, Lora Podell, H. Ray York, Johnny Tamblyn, Jeff Jordan, David Avin, Kevin Draine, Michael R. Smith, William Cooke
More info: IMDb
Tagline: Once Upon a Time...You're Dead
Plot: A grizzled derelict tells a quartet of horror tales to a trio of young campers.
My rating: 4/10
Will I watch it again? No..
With horror anthologies, there's usually at least one good story in the bunch. That's all this one has. One out of four. The killer Santa Claus segment was my favorite because it was short (the shortest of all of them) and it got to the point quickly. It didn't overstay its welcome. It's the third in the lineup. The first two were OK but they lingered too long. Then there's the fourth and final tale, the pirate one. The fist three tales took up a combined 50 minutes. This last one was 35 and it felt like 90. There's a scene with the pirate captain and a former slave where A LOT of exposition is meted out. 8 minutes of exposition! Harold Odom, who plays the slave, does a pretty good job with what he's been handed to deliver but it's over the top in that cinematic way. But then you have Laurence E. Campbell that's taking it even further with the stereotypical pirate-y 'yarrrrrrr' dialogue and his accent is way too phony. It's already a loooooong story that could've been told in nearly half the time. Still, the zombie effects were good. This whole experience wasn't helped by the fact that the print I saw was a crappy fullscreen one. I don't know what kind of budget these guys were working from but it looks like a decent-ish effort from some first time feature filmmakers (which explains some of the film's shortcomings). It's better than I would've done and I know...I've never made a movie so I'm jealous from the start. They and some of the cast would return a few years later with another horror anthology, FREAKSHOW (1995). I'm not getting in line to see that one but I may give it a shot someday.
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