Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

If your a fan of Tales From The Crypt or Creepshow then Tales From The Darkside: The Movie is a must see! All three stories are highly enjoyable the last story Lovers Vow is great a honor to the now late Michael McDowell. Lot 249 also features great performances from Christian Slater,Steve Buscemi,and Julianne Moore. The second story Cat from Hell is enjoyable and is one of William Hickey's last roles.A great horror movie to watch over and over one of the best ever made.

******SPOILERS****** Betty, Debbie Harry, a local witch has the newspaper delivery boy Timmy, Matthew Lawrence, locked up in her house and after giving him all the cookies that he can eat to fatten him up for her and her fellow witches, who are coming over later that evening, to have him as the main course for dinner.

Giving Timmy a book "Tales From The Darkside" to read as Betty makes the preparations for him to be cooked Timmy tells her if he can read her some stories from the book so it would take his mind off of whats going to happen to him. Betty agrees to listen to Timmy reading the stories from "Tales From The Darkside" because it's also her favorite book and would make the mundane task of getting everything ready for the meal go a lot faster.

Timmy starts with the story about a group of collage students entitled "Lot 249". Edward, Steve Buscemi, gets a parcel, Lot 249, delivered to his collage dorm room that has a 3,000 year old mummy in it. Edward's fellow students once tried to get him expelled from school by planting a rumor that he stole an Aztec artifact and he knows who they are Susan, Julianne Moore, and her boyfriend Lee, Robert Sedgwick, and Edward is planing to use the mummy to get more then even with them for what they did to him.

Finding a secret scroll hidden inside the mummy Edward interprets and recites whats on that scroll to bring the mummy back to life who ends up killing both students. Susan's brother Andy, Christian Slater, finds out about Edward's actions and after he knocks out and ties up Edward to a chair he dismembers the mummy with an electric carving knife. But instead of killing Edward for what he did to his sister and his best friend Andy runs Edward out of the campus. Andy feeling that he took care of Edward and his mummy for good didn't realize that the mummy wasn't the only thing that Edward brought back to life.

The next story "Cat From Hell" that Timmy reads is about a rich old man Drogan, William Hickey, who hires a top Mafia hit-man Halston, David Johansen. Drogan gives him $50,000.00 up front and will give him another $50,000.00 after he can prove that he killed a black cat that has been terrorizing the old man and that killed his two sisters and butler and is now targeting him for elimination. Halston at first thinks that Drogan is nuts but soon sees that this seemingly harmless kitty cat is an indestructible and ferocious monster that's far more dangerous then any of the scores of gangsters that he "hit" during his long and successful criminal career.

The cat came to avenge what Drogan's Pharmaceutical empire did to develop a very expensive and successful drug called Tri-Dorma-Phenobarbin-Compound G. The drug is for people with heart trouble like Drogan as well as a legal stimulant like the drugs sold on the street by the mob for whom Halston works for. Drogan took the lives of 5,000 cat's over four years to perfect that drug. This mysterious cat was somehow sent to make Drogan and his family pay for what they did in regard to all those cat's that were experimented and killed to make Drogan and Co. very rich because of it. In the end the little kitty not only took care of hit-man Halston but the scared and guilt-ridden employer Drogan as well in a really gut wrenching and stomach churning final.

The last story that Timmy reads "Lover's Vow" is about a struggling artiest Preston, James Remar, who one night in a dark alley sees his friend Gage, Mark Margolis, savagely killed by some demon. The demon makes Preston promise never to tell about what happened and anything that he saw that night for the rest of his life of else.

Later that evening Preston meets a strange and mysterious woman Carola, Rea Dawn Chong, who he falls in love with and marries. Later Preston's artistic luck begins to change with his art work starts to get noticed by the public with him becoming a rich and very successful artiest.

On the tenth anniversary of him meeting Carola Preston feels that he has to tell her this secret that he kept from her all these years and that by him not telling her that he thinks that he was somehow not being truthful with her. It turns out by him doing that Preston finds out that sometimes the truth is not the wises and healthiest thing to tell; even to someone that you love and feel should know about it.

With that Timmy both out of time and stories and everything ready for him to become the main course for dinner for Betty and her witches friends there's suddenly and unsuspectingly a slip in the plot and what's for dinner that evening turns out not to be what Betty was preparing.

Very good anthology of the TV show "Tales From The Darkside" that turns out to be much better the you would have expected on the big screen.

Tales from the Darkside mixes together three individual stories, all "narrated" by a kid in a "wraparound" story he's telling to a woman (Deborah Harry) preparing to cook him. As with Arabian Nights, Timmy is trying to stay alive by telling stories. The first story is the best of the three: "Lot 249" features Christian Slater as well as pre-fame Steve Buscemi and Julianne Moore in a mummy story. The pacing is good, the story works, and the acting is well above what one expects in a cheap horror story. The second story, "Cat From Hell" is an adaptation of a Stephen King short story about a cat that has killed its way through most of a family. An old man (William Hickey) hires a hit man (David Johansen) to kill his cat and the story goes from there. This is yet another example of a Stephen King story that works very well on paper but has gotten mangled horribly in translation to screen. Part of the problem is the special effects involving the cat look dreadful now - but I don't think they were even state of the art in 1990. Regardless, I don't quite know how you could film a fight between a man and a cat and not have the result end up looking ridiculous. "Cat From Hell" didn't really try very hard. The third story, "Lover's Vow", concerns a man who witnesses a friend murdered by some kind of gargoyle-type creature. The gargoyle promises to spare him his life in return for the man's pledge to never tell anybody about the encounter. It's an interesting premise that is tested when the man later hooks up with a young woman played by Rae Dawn Chong. Ultimately the story doesn't make all that much sense, and again the story is hurt by relatively weak special effects. The wraparound story works very well, as does "Lot 249", but ultimately that doesn't feel like enough to redeem the weakness of the other two segments. "Cat From Hell" in particular is a failure. But I would recommend watching the movie if only to see early-career work from Buscemi and Moore in "Lot 249".

Preparing for a dinner party, a witch starts to cook a young boy for the party, and when is told what will happen to him, decides to stall for time by telling her three stories while a local priest searches for a way to stop the whole thing.

The Good Stor(ies): Lot 249-Receiving a special package, a professor enlists several friends to open his newest prize, lot 249 from a special auction that contains the remains of an ancient Egyptian mummy, and becomes obsessed with trying to bring it to life using the magical scrolls sent along with it. Went a string of murders around their college campus appears to have them befuddled, they learn the secret of why the lot was bid on and try to get away from it. This is a light and breezy tale, mostly centered around the mummy's antics, as the few killings are quite eerie and creepy. The attack in the dorm, which includes the graphic killing where it removes the brain with a wire hanger through the nose, and a later one inside a living room is really great. The special effects on the mummy are great, making it look effectively rotten and crumbling, and it's destruction scene is great, playing that off as well. It ends predictably, but that's a minor after-thought here.

The Bad Stor(ies): Cat from Hell-Summoned to a giant mansion, a hit-man finds that his charge wants him to kill a cat. Surprising and a little befuddled over the request, he explains that the creature has had a long-standing habit of killing those in its path, including the former inhabitants of the house. Left alone to deal with it, he finds that killing the cat isn't the easiest assignment of his career. This here had a lot of potential, with an intriguing story and some really inspired ideas, notably the idea of the cat's motive for coming back. The flashback scenes are good fun, and the fact that a major attack sequence is shot through the cat's POV is really great. The main thing that stops this one is that it's way too long. The majority of the segment consists of the two talking about what the cats' done to deserve the punishment, taking a lot of drama out of the chase. The conclusion is also foretold from the beginning, which all of the stories consists of and makes it feel really uninspired.

Lover's Vow-Trying to create new artwork, a struggling artist is told by his agent that his work can no longer be represented through his agency. Walking through an alley, he runs into a strange woman out alone in the night and offers help. Becoming obsessed with a strange creature he saw that spared his life for the secrecy of its existence, he allows it to become his sole desire to his own detriment. What really hurts this one is the inordinate amount of cheese on display. The design of the gargoyle, with the large eyes, big mouth and intricate designs on the side of his head, make it more cute than fearsome. The easily determinable rubber used for the creation makes it another strike. There's also the fact that it takes way too long to get to its really good parts, concentrating on the romance angle way too much, and the way they get together also is a little unbelievable. As with the others, the ending is way too predictable and doesn't really get the chance to become the possible shock it could've had.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Brief Nudity and children-in-jeopardy.

This is really three shorter movies, bound together by a fourth tale in which the other three stories are read. The first segment features an animated mummy stalking selected student victims; the second tale tells the story of a "cat from hell" who cannot be killed and leaves a trail of victims behind it; the third story is about a man who witnesses a bizarre killing and promises never to tell what he saw and the "in-between" bit is the story of a woman preparing to cook her newspaper boy for supper. Not the best king adaption, but hey, it ain't bad either. A good cast and some nice special effects. The Gargoyle was nasty! Plenty of gore here, but used in just enough moderation to be effective. A couple of tense moments, some god scares (Especially in the story about involving an elusive, seemingly immortal cat.) and pretty good music. Pretty good movie, just nothing really spectacular or life-changing. My rating for "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie"--6/10.