Trapped Ashes

Anthology films rarely work for me. Most of them are as uneven as twenty miles of bad road. TRAPPED ASHES was yet another bumpy ride.

Six people are trapped in a room and must relate terrible things that they've had happen to them to their host (Henry Gibson). What follows are four segments directed by auteurs not necessarily known for their horror chops (with the possible exception of Sean S. Cunningham). Each segment prominently features the ties between sex and death so prevalent in horror films. One features a woman with vampiric breasts whose lamprey mouthed nipples sucks the blood of her lovers. Another woman falls for a corpse who whisks her away to hell while on Japanese holiday. A succubus falls for Stanley Kubrick. And the last, poor woman shares the insatiable hunger of her fraternal twin, a tapeworm.

The first segment sets up expectations that TRAPPED ASHES will be a much more lighthearted film. Surprisingly, this segment was directed by Ken Russell though it felt like something from Joe Dante or Paul Bartel (it was especially reminiscent of Irvin Kershner's "Hell Toupee" episode of "Amazing Stories"). The Sean S. Cunningham sequence felt like a pail gaijin aping of Hideo Nakata (THE RING) and John Gaeta's just didn't work at all. I enjoyed the Kubrick bit, courtesy of Monte Hellman - a perennial Cashiers du Cinemart fave - except that the horror element seemed like an afterthought.

Surprised that this wasn't called TALES FROM THE CRYPT: TRAPPED ASHES, this is one that can be missed by all except die hard John Saxon fans.

This film is terrible.As someone who once starts watching a film finishes it no matter what i have to say every minute seemed like an hour. The directors cannot be blamed each directing the best best they could considering.Neither can budget be blamed as it can with so so many bad horror films.What lets this film down is the truly bad writing.The acting is varied the guy from the burbs doing best the guy from the series the Dollhiouse the worst,once again again poor dialogue is to blame considering how good he was in Dollhouse.The best segment was Saxons which if shown as a Tales from the crypt episode would be considered poor.I now some people have rated this ten,my advice to them is watch more horror films like The Omen 1976,The Exorcist and The Sentinel. The Hammer and Amicus anthology films cannot be considered classics but usually had at least 2 good stories,and even the others were watchable.

A group gets trapped in a movie set and the tour guide (Henry Gibson) suggests they tell real-life horror stories and they may be let go.

In the first segment, Phoebe (Rachel Veltri) can't get any parts and figures she needs a boob job. She gets boob implants from a cadaver and gets sci-fi parts immediately. But, those boobs have a mind of their own. In a twist on Teeth, there are teeth in the nipples! In segment two, Julia (Lara Harris) goes on a trip to Japan with her husband Henry (Scott Lowell). Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th) directs this segment which combines art, animation and reality in a really creepy ghost story. Henry was hoping to put some spark back in their sex life, but it was Julia that got the spark in this tale of necrophilia.

Monte Hellman, who shot some of the footage seen in the US in A Fistful of Dollars, directed the third segment, which focused on movies. John Saxon (From Dusk Till Dawn, Beverly Hills Cop III) becomes friends with Stanley (Tygh Runyan), and things went well until Nina (Amelia Cooke) shows up. This story has an interesting twist, but that comes at the end.

Visual effects supervisor John Gaeta gets his first directing job in the fourth segment. It was really a grotesque tale about a girl (Michèle-Barbara Pelletier) who was born with a worm. They couldn't kill the tapeworm in her mother without killing her also, so they grew inside together. Thing is, the worm never died, and it helped her when she needed it most - it was her twin after all.

Really great stories, but the ending was weird.

I went to see this solely on the basis that it was an anthology horror film. The best I can say about it is that if you are looking for a movie that will make you writhe in discomfort for a couple hours (which is what I was hoping for), this will probably do the trick. The first two stories have the combined effect of making you never want to have sex again. The fourth attempts (less successfully) to put you off both sex and food. The third is a bit of breather in that it has none of the grisly horror of the others and feels like a decent, thoughtful movie that was mistakenly put in the reel. The central narrative, unfortunately, is pretty dull. All of the stories together, while varying in tone, can be boiled down to one basic message: women should be feared. The movie on the whole is an admirable effort and there are certain images that will stay with you for all time either for their grossness or coolness (the breast surgery and the womb-cam in particular), but it does feel like it could have achieved a lot more.

I give this 3 stars mostly because of the acting. I truly did think the acting was great in this movie. Making people forget those Vincent Price anthologies or Tales from the Crypt shows, is not going to happen. These stories were written by a horny drunkard or so it seems. They were absolutely ridiculous. No imagination went into this. This was basically one of those stupid late cable sex programs with a tinge of Freddy Krueger infused. I did manage to sit thru the whole thing , hoping for at least one good story. The best part of this movie was the interaction of the 'trapped' , before and in between the horror stories. Way too goth for me, but if thats your thing you may like this film. Articulate acting - Yes, good movie- No!