SCARY TALES (2001) Can nudity save the day? Man, this is getting weird. People are actually sending me screeners now. And there's a comment in my guestbook saying "Miss your old reviewing style" - what am I, the Metallica of movie reviewers? I went from a fan who couldn't stop writing to an "established" critic to over-the-hill in an astonishingly short period of time. One such screener, I haven't yet had the heart to print my preview of. I never felt guilty about exposing truly awful movies for what they are...until now. It's not just that that movie was awful; it was awful, but it wasn't an easy-to-hate studio conglomerate creation like, say, another Freddy Krueger movie. Somebody'd worked on this movie harder than I've ever worked on anything in my life. And it hadn't even seen real distribution yet; that these screeners are sent out at all is largely in hopes of good reviews to show to potential distributors, I understand. I'm all for bashing the crap out of, say, Patch Adams, but man, this brings me to some sort of weird ethical dilemma. I feel guilty about this shit. (I'm easily guilted.) I've been told by one dear friend that experiences like this have ruined her enjoyment for bad movies. I hope that this doesn't happen to me. Sigh... But this isn't that movie, this movie's better. Oh, it's shot on video (no pyro, phew!), starts rather poorly, has very little gore, and was actually re-edited during my first attempt to review it. I wondered if the added nudity would be enough to push my "high yellow" thoughts on the film into the green zone, and after a second viewing, I guess it really isn't. Directed and co-written by one Michael Hoffman, Scary Tales is produced by Tim Ritter, who made the film Truth Or Dare: A Critical Madness. Truth Or Dare was interesting in that it made me laugh my ass off, but I couldn't really tell whether or not that was its intent. This one seems like it's made largely in that tradition, though I think it's a little more up-front with its comic intentions. The title is not, as I'd first suspected, a play on "fairytales". No, Scary Tales is an anthology of sorts, starring Bill Cassinelli as Dennis Frye, a none-too-bright gen-X slacker-type who goes to an employment agency to look for some work. Joel D. Wynkoop plays the agent, who considers his agency quite different from the rest; he wants to give prospective employees a good description of what they're in for at their possible jobs - no matter how far-fetched or irrelevant their fates might be. It's actually this "wraparound" story which is easily the most entertaining in the film, with Wynkoop unceasingly funny as the intense, strange agent. The first story is by far the least successful. Written by Cassinelli, it's the story of how he gets a job at a catering service...only to run over a little girl on the way home (hilarious scene where, as if trying to formulate a diabolical plan to cover up the crime, he nervously smokes an entire cigarette in the car mere meters from the accident...and ultimately just drives off). Then her doll comes back to haunt him. It's hard to tell if this story is ever going anywhere; the doll keeps whispering things, but you can't tell what it's saying. Then a bunch of other dolls show up (including a Cabbage Patch doll and what appears to be Punky Brewster, Hoffman betraying a disturbingly thorough understanding of dolls he should be too young to recall firsthand), and they're whispering too. Dennis first finds that doll sitting in his kitchen, and disposes of it with surprising nonchalance, considering that he's a single male living alone and isn't likely to find little girls' dolls in his house. Later discoveries of the doll re-appearing (like when one turns up in his car) are met with something resembling Nicholas Cage's viewing of the snuff film in 8mm. This is the most straight-ahead horror of the bunch, with very little dialogue...but it's not very good horror. By the time one figures out that this story really ISN'T going anywhere (we don't even see this guy at work, we just see him going home from it!), it reaches its abrupt, if long overdue conclusion, and I for one was happy to get back to the wraparound story. The next story (written by Hoffman and Cassinelli) is more enjoyable, but still feels a little bit off, mostly due to the self-flagellating behavior of Dennis. Here, he gets a job at a used bookstore, where he's regularly abused by the customers, except for one nice old lady who hits on him. But no, the object of his affection is Jamie (Lindsay Horgan), a chesty brunette who, to put it mildly, treats him like shit. Undaunted, he still thinks she's the girl of his dreams. Desperate to find SOME way to make her love him, he finds a book on astral projection ("Hey, I've seen that book around!" said my roommate) and decides that maybe that's his ticket. Now, this is going to sound like I'm kidding, but I'm not - that the character of Dennis turns out to be heterosexual came as a bit of a surprise. He's got a rainbow pillowcase (nothing says gay like a too-prominent rainbow out of nowhere), and early in this episode is seen reading a book called "Man's Body", which he later lovingly clutches to his chest like a long-absent...uh...never mind. I mean, I'd thought I was being hinted at, so I just put two and two together. Nope, Dennis is straight. He's just kind of at a junior-high kind of level, where nothing's more attractive than the girl who treats him like shit. (even when she inevitably changes her mind, she still parks ON HIS LAWN.) There are any number of weird things in this story, like how the girl's back door to her house leads straight to her bedroom, and how the nudity in the shower is clearly a body double (one Chesty Lamour, apparently). I think this story misses a significant opportunity by not having the old lady turn up at the end, possibly having tried to do the same thing to him and ending up in similar circumstances. For that matter, the conclusion of this story focuses too much on the girl when it should be focusing on Dennis. But it is reasonably entertaining, and its conclusion is, if not unpredictable, then at least satisfying and commented on with amusing understatement by Dennis. This story's definitely a step up from the first (hey, it's got a big poster with bunnies hung prominently in the background, what's not to like?). Aside from the wraparound stuff, the third story (written by Hoffman) is the most fun, with Dennis trying to shop his screenplay ("The Cannibal Carpenter"...later, "Night Of The Drinking Dead") around, getting violently rejected every time, until one night, having downed enough booze and pills to drop Motley Crue, he meets his idol, Edgar Allen Poe. I'm not sure why he's staying in a motel for this episode, or why suddenly he has this hottie girlfriend (Thorin Taylor Hannah) who ALSO has her breasts doubled by Ms. Lamour. But I didn't really care, because she was appealing, the story was fun, and the parade of merciless agents (including one who sports the worst Brit accent I've ever heard) is very amusing. The "twist" ending is over-explained, but hey...more Thorin Taylor Hannah. I'm not complaining. (extra points for the Friday The 13th shirt on Dennis in one scene - that that I particularly like that movie, but that's some gorgeous poster art, ain't it?) The wraparound story ultimately wraps up too abruptly (suddenly, Wynkoop gets less to do than I'd hoped), but at least it doesn't drag itself out like, say, that first story. Overall, I'm left with an impression of Hoffman's contributions to this collaboration (he and Cassinelli share producer credits too) being quite a bit more interesting than Cassinelli's. Music is by Orange Nightmare (think about it...THERE ya go), which sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, and sometimes even piles completely different horror themes on top of each other. Lots of songs by a band called Midwife Crisis. Not really my bag, but that's a cool name, isn't it? Scary Tales does leave quite a bit to be desired (particularly in its first half), and I really cannot go so far as to actually recommend it to just anybody (big fans of that Truth Or Dare movie? Sure.), but it's a good first effort for Hoffman, who gives us a lot of loving, lingering shots on cleavage, hip-hugging skirts, and in one suspiciously-framed scene, high heels. Movies that go for the exploitation angle need to go further than this, though. Here's hoping Hoffman's next pulls out the stops. BACK TO THE S's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE