Treasure Chest of Horrors

"Treasure Chest Of Horrors" is directer's Doug Waugh and Shawn C. Phillip no budget horror anthology that features four unique tales both dark and funny. There is also a big bonus for this little anthology, the cult personality Lloyd Kaufman co-director for "The Toxic Avenger" and "Class Of Nuke 'Em High" stars.

Percival Pirate discovers a chest of four never before seen horror films while on a quest to find his grandpappy's gold treasure. Each of the stories are original frightening tales that range from the classic slasher to the vampire metamorphosis and the black comedy gorefest.

"Rotten Classmates" is a fun short that finds a group of school bullies getting some payback after one of their victims is pushed beyond the breaking point. This is a cool homemade special effects driven classic slasher origins tale. It is both creative and entertaining.

"Vampire's Lust" tells the story of Tobias who is bitten by a vampire bat then transforms into a creature of the night. This short reminds me of 80's horror comedies with a little John Waters insanity. It is a very funny throwback that completely entertains in true low budget style.

"Resident Emo" is about an Emo kid cursed who becomes a ghoulish creature of death and attacks his classmates. This could have been fun to watch it it wasn't so offensive and insensitive to the Emo culture. I didn't care for this short but it has some very entertaining moments. I only hope this was actually done by Emo's and gay outcast kids so my opinion will prove wrong.

"Mama, It's A Mannequin" is a funny and twisted black comedy about a maniacal mannequin that attacks a birthday celebration. This is a clever short bordering on deranged. It is both entertaining and original. My favorite of the set.

"Treasure Chest Of Horrors" has the goods to both entertain and shock. There are some moments of great visual vulgarity that brings the funny home with uncontrollable bowel release and gory wittiness. Percival Pirate is very appealing as Horror Host, (and I have to get gay here) very easy on the eyes. I personally did not care for the "AIDS" comment in reference to "Vampire's Lust" but everything else about this anthology is freshly entertaining filled with dark insanity.

Soooo,Shawn C Phillips is kind of an Icon in Indy Flix and he talked Lloyd (Troma boss) Kaufman into helping him with this effort.

This anthology has a host,That is no 'Johnny Depp' by a long shot.

ROTTEN CLASSMATES – was OK.

VAMPIRES LUST – Well, It does have a Giant Vampire Bat,That's cool.The parent actors are odd,with no flow of comedy.The character of TOBIAS,is a sad boy.He looks like 'Herman Munster' as a vampire.Shawn actually plays a amateur filmmaker,big stretch ,Sir ! RESIDENT EMO - Now,This segment has a wrist cutting scene,and with the Robin Williams suicide,It was probably too soon to review but,It ran in the middle of film and so review continues.Lloyd Kaufman inserts one of his crazy segments,But he did do a lot of FART & POOP jokes while in a public restrooms.What pulls you out of the moment( IF this flick has any moments) is multiple mentions of Myspace and not Facebook.There is even a stolen gag, Similar to RON FORD having a 'Arm Ripping Off ' to great effect.There was even a EDDIE DEEZEN lookalike to add some real comedy.Wow, There was Pee as Lemonade and Poop as Zombie Repellant… MOMMA,IT'S A MANNEQUIN - was OK,for an ending.

A pirate uncovers a treasure chest full of four VHS cassettes and plays them one at a time to give us the Treasure Chest of Horrors horror anthology. In "Rotten Classmates" a bullied teen gets revenge on his tormentors by dressing up in an orange jumpsuit and gas mask and killing them all, a 28-year-old loser is sent out by his mom for milk in "Vampire's Lust" before getting bitten by a stuffed bat and, you guessed it, slowly turning into a vampire, a bunch of loser emo teens turn into zombies in "Resident Emo", and a vengeful mannequin terrorizes a birthday party in "Mama it's a Mannequin". Meh!

I like to give horror anthologies a fair chance. Even the worst can have a small redeeming feature, such as one director being clearly better than the others (if not necessarily actually goof) or one story might be a bit more interesting (again, if not necessarily actually good.) And the prospect of seeing Lloyd Kaufman in what I assumed would be a brief cameo) kind of made me interested in watching.

I have no idea if Kaufman's role was just a cameo, or if there was some cheesy in-joke about it to enjoy because after watching the framing narrative, the first short, and about two minutes of the second one, I couldn't go on and uttered a sentence that has probably never been uttered before : This is too low-rent for even Lloyd Kaufman.

When the acting is so terrible that you legitimately assume these people had never acted before, that's bad. When the direction and cinematography are far worse than the acting, that's...just awful. Let me be clear -- this isn't classic Troma-level bad. It's easily the worst thing I've ever seen outside of the worst home movies. Trying to claim it's just a horror-comedy (it's not even remotely funny) misses the point -- the filming and acting are beyond home-movie terrible, and the one story I watched was about the level of fourth grade writing. And any hopes that a different director would offer something worth watching was dashed when the framing, the first short, and two minutes of the second short all appear to have the same director and cameraperson. There was no way to tell them apart in this sense, and I suspect that the extra names were just the names of friends of the one director and cameraperson (and I suspect the director did all his own camerawork too) thrown in there to make it sound like a legitimate anthology.

Seriously, people, don't watch it. The words "labor of love" seem far less apt than "labor of rage and loathing" here.