CreepTales

I would love to find a bigger and better picture of Creeptales, but there's really none to be had, so this will have to do. It seems like this isn't very widely known, but you can watch the trailer here!

Creeptales is a collection of short horror films, probably independently produced, and they are held together by a storyline about some creepy ghoulies who, on Halloween night, set out to find the Creeptales movie that exists in their reality. They can't get it from any sensible location, so they're forced to steal the film from their uncle's grave, who loved it so much he was buried with it. Then, their friends watch it and spill popcorn all over the place. Zombie Uncle comes back from the dead, who terrorizes the ghouls until they leave, so he can watch the video by himself.

But the little plot that holds the shorts together isn't important, since each time Creeptales switches from one of the short films to the ongoing narrative, the viewer's bound to get annoyed with the inanity of the monsters. So let's talk about the actual shorts.

The film starts off on a good note with "Warped." To me, this short was the best of the movie, since it felt the most put-together and finished. It steals a lot of its source material from films like Psycho, but it doesn't really detract that much, since there's not a lot of time to build the story in the 30 minutes it's allotted. "Warped" is about a girl who goes to live with her older cousin for a while after she has gotten out of an asylum, because of adjustment of her father's death. The main girl, Elizabeth, finds out that her cousin was the reason that her father was killed, but what she doesn't realize until it's too late is that her father raped her cousin and made her pregnant, where she has kept the dead baby in the attic to take care of for years. There's not much suspense, but the way in which the film starts - right in the middle of the crazed cousin's attack - puts the viewer in the mood, and really gets the juices pumping for the lead-up to this deranged attacker.

The next short is called "Snatcher," a quick story about a punk who loves snatching old ladies' purses. One old lady seems quite feeble, but after the punk snatches her purse, she makes it clear that he won't want that purse. Turns out the purse isn't your run-of-the-mill cotton/polyester blend, and instead of the punk taking things out of the purse, it's his turn to go into the purse. Since this film's quick, I didn't get bored with it, but it was pretty predictable after the beginning purse-snatching montage that the prick was going to get what was coming to him. There was a sweet punk song, though, and the guy did have a nice coif.

After that, we get "The Closet," which made sense to be included right after "Snatcher" because of its similar subject matter, but it was a disappointment because the story has been told dozens of times, and probably done better. I can remember a Tales from the Darkside episode that came years before this film was made that had the same storyline, only done better. Obviously, it's pretty easy to guess what happens in this quick short. A boy is scared that something's in his closet, his brother comes in and freaks him out, then the brother gets eaten by the closet. It's almost the same as "Snatcher," and it's too cliched to really hold up.

"Groovie Ghoulie Garage" is next up, about two guys going into a mysterious town on Halloween night to pick up one of the guy's sister after she's been expelled from her school. The dudes get some car trouble and are picked up by a clown-costumed cop, who brings them to the nearest gas station. While the car's being fixed, they venture to a Halloween party where everyone looks a bit too near their parts, especially the owner of the garage. After their car is fixed, the guys get the hell out of there because it's creepin' out their style, only to learn that the town has been a wasteland after everyone died there years ago. This is another less-than-stellar short, as the backstory about the expelled sister goes to the wayside real quick. Also, the film's not very spooky - the makeup for the rotting garage owner is kind of nice, but other than that, the film would be suitable for teens or anyone who likes Are You Afraid of the Dark? It's funny to see a punky dude with red hair and a dangling earing being really polite and nice, which is definitely not what I expected his character to be.

"Howling Nightmare" really broke my entertainment level. I was going along fine until I watched this short, which looks EXACTLY like the hunting scene from Silver Bullet. I'm telling you, it looks like it was stolen. You know the part where the hunting guys from the town all band together to catch the werewolf that's prowling the woods? And they get taken down and all that jazz? It looks just like that, and that's what happens. Finally they take the werewolf out as he gets back to his cabin and turns into his human form, but I'd already lost interest.

Luckily, I had to stop watching the movie here for the moment, as other problems (puppy) complicated the situation, so I rejoined it on a different day for "Sucker." This short pulled me back in, taking a creepy night-visiting salesman and an evil (or good?) killing vacuum. A woman seriously has some mental problems, wanting to kill her husband, who she thinks is evil, because of some problem she has with him. He is a little wimpy, but no reason to kill, I think. She's told to use the vacuum to get rid of evil, but only for 30 seconds at a time, but she breaks the rules and becomes a fat old hag coughing up shoes and crap. The plastic fat is really well-done, and her vomiting up a shoe is actually pretty disgusting. Things turn to bite her though, as the vacuum sucks her up instead, and the salesman laughs, saying, "There's a sucker born every minute." This was my second favorite, since it felt a lot like a deleted episode of Tales from the Darkside. It had a good, original story, and followed through with it in a timely manner.

I would recommend this movie, as long as you skip over the annoying filler scenes between films. I guess they had to have some way to put the films together, but I would have rather had just the films instead of unfunny scenes that I didn't want to watch. Overall, one of the better films in the Bite Night collection, yet it still contained no vampires. Sorry about the whole lack of vampires thing. Give Creeptales a watch, especially if you're a fan of those 80's horror show episodes like Tales from the Darkside or Tales from the Crypt.