I love anthology horror movies. I’ve seen almost of all of them, from excellent (Creepshow, Tales from the Darkside)to mediocre (Twists of Terror) to completely wretched, like this. I only saw one other anthology horror movie with only 2 stories, which was 2 Evil Eyes. From now on I’m going to steer clear of any that don’t have at least 3, though 2 Evil Eyes was like Goodfellas compared to this thing.

I knew I was in trouble when 1. the opening credits looked suspiciously like something someone did with some do-it-yourself home video kit they got from radio shack 2. when I saw it was shot on video and 3. when the ‘bookend’ story was so incredibly ridiculous and incoherent that I began to wonder if I had misunderstood the box and rented some…some…I don’t know. The project for some film class they taught at the Learning Annex “Make Your Own Movie On Videotape for the Beginner, using your friends and relatives as actors” maybe.

I don’t even know how to DESCRIBE the bookend story, but it has to do with some satanic witch-woman who is going to be put to death by these ninja-looking guys dressed in white. Then, Ginger Lynn Allen shows up and makes some bizarre speech to the devil-woman (who looks like an 80’s metalhead chick who is really into Ozzy) about (I think) being her sister. A painfully long amount of time later, we cut to Satan on his throne. His makeup looks like someone’s theatrical make-up school project, and these two, uh, minions or something come in, looking like they are wearing Halloween masks they ordered from Fangoria (to give them credit, they look like masks on the higher end of the cost scale). He orders them to do something along the lines of retrieving his bride, In the meantime some jester comes to entertain him by telling really, really bad stories. Please note that I am making the ‘storyline’ sound much more coherent than it is.

The first story is about some serial killer in his teens called ‘the Demon of Death’, who picks out his victims using the phone book. He picks a house with a mother and father their young metalhead/wicca daughter. You don’t really know whether you are supposed to hate her or if she is the heroine. He comes in and kills everyone except her, the police burst in at the last minute and wound him. Around this time I was still waiting for something interesting to happen so I would actually be drawn into the story, or there would be some sort of suspense. The kid killer confesses, then gets taken to the chair. The set the execution room is on was so amateurish I was cringing. Meanwhile the metalhead chick is either praying, casting a spell, or doing some kind of seance, it’s not really clear which. He gets executed and shows up at the chick’s house. THis is due to some spell she cast for revenge, though it’s never made clear what her ultimate goal was to the whole thing. He explains something to her, but unfortunately his voice is in that sort of synthesized, slowed-down standard satan/monster voice, to the point where I literally could not understand one word he said. So, I have no clue what in the hell (no pun intended) the payoff to that story was, or what the point was, if it even had one. Probably not.