The Penny Dreadful Picture Show

This is quite the campy film. It is definitely the kind of movie to put on if there's nothing decent to watch or if you want a laugh. It's definitely not for everyone, especially if you're expecting intense horror films. My favorite story is The Morning After. I did not like, however, that the trailer for the film includes clips from a short film that isn't included in the anthology. I would love for them to revive this project with a bigger budget and to include the film in the trailer.

This movie basically has 4 plot lines running through it, the main plot (featuring Penny Dreadful) which acts as the showcase for the three other short movies.

The first movie is only minutes long and feels out of place in terms of length and quality against the other two.

The second and third movies are longer and the acting is solid, although both the premise and the level of horror/gore appear to be something aimed at a more teen audience, similar to the popular "Goosebumps" books.

It's probably a good ''family horror'', something you could watch with younger/more squeamish/easy to frighten viewers to introduce them to the genre. That being said, it's an enjoyable watch, what it is lacking in fright and gore it makes up for in production values and originality.

I thought the stories were pretty good at least you got some beautiful women acting. Penny looks the best. The first story was quick. The second was about a hottie vampire so I liked it. The third story is with Sid Haig which is the best one. These friends are driving and their car breaks down and some hillbilly offers to let them sleep at his house. Then all hell breaks loose. I give this hole movie 10 stars cause I really like it.

The penny dreadful picture show I am not a fan of anthology films I barely remember the Creepshow films(82/87/06) and I could barely stand Trick or Treat (07) and the one I loved was a Tales from the Crypt anthology which seemingly was presented as a movie in which a magician had nine lives due to a cat barely seen on HBO as far as I can remember. At first the origins of Penny Dreadful and her cohorts are mysterious and vague but later on in the movie they kind of grow more engulfed but never are fully laid out which is probably a good thing. The first story is a short having to do with a jack in o box and is short of stature but full in effect as it takes a seeming less toy from childhood and make it monstrous but doesn't fully give away where the story may go. The Second Story is of something we see quite often in our pop culture but it takes it back in time to the 70's and tries to present it in a whole new light. It's not revolutionary but a decent premise on how to go about such a topic. The Third story is the gem of the ball and it takes the classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Meets The Strangers and A House of 1,000 Corpses and turns it all on it's head. You think you know about all these stories but you don't know for sure. In the end I found myself pretty delighted for watching such a film but still not absolutely in love. It was something good and decent to watch but it didn't reinvent the genre but it was still fun and worth a watch. I commend these films cause they take actors like Sid Haig (House of 1,000 Corpses/The Devils Rejects/Halloween) and Jefferey Combs (Re-Animator 1&2/The Frighteners)and Barry Ratcliffe (Dorothy and the Witches of OZ and other films) A platform to keep performing their craft where as other productions companies would not have them. In the beginning of watching this film I was prematurely sure it was going to be a colossal waste of time but by the end I was delighted and thought it as a throwback to 70's/80's early horror at least and worth at least a view if any one was so inclined. Eliza Swenson's makeup is fantastic and if you'd like more of her she's fantastic in the mini-series The Witches of Oz which was shortened to the feature film Dorothy and the Witches of Oz and IMDb her and the other actors for more titles.

I love independent horror and I own a number of Rob Zombie's films, but this audaciously inept piece of crap was an incredible waste of two hours of my life. Whoever wrote the script to this rambling, confused mess should have ended up as one of the movie's victims. Now that video has become affordable for anyone, there are so many incredibly bad straight-to-DVD films to have to wade through to find anything worth watching; this is yet another one of those to skip. The most frustrating thing I encountered while viewing this - along with the rambling, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink plots - was the atrocious audio. This is another film that was mixed to continually drown out the dialog in favor of the film's music and sound effects. Half of the feature was unintelligible. Eliza Swenson, who plays Penny Dreadful, the "hostess" of the film's banal two features, is a good actress. She's way too good to be wasting her time on drivel like this. Horrible. The massive amount of straight-to-video productions are churned out as quickly as possible, show very little talent, and will do anything they can to pull in another buck. IMDb user's reviews on these films are full of "outstanding" reviews that were written by the directors' friends and family.