CreepTales

After spending an afternoon surfing through a bunch a low budget horror flicks with lousy acting and effects, I finally found something good. On top of horror and suspense,I got a laugh from watching some goofy looking ghouls pitching their anthology of horror stories around a living room TV set with a bunch of ghoul friends.

Watching this gathering of nutty horror characters push their "Creep Tales" product was kind of extreme, but the makeup on the Ghoulish characters was good ,and the set of stories chosen for the film, made it worthwhile.

A few ghouls dig up their Uncle from the graveyard and we discover that he has a copy of the "Creep Tales" DVD in his arms. OK,whatever.

The ghouls take the DVD back to their house where other ghouls have been waiting to watch the movie.Popcorn,pizza,and refreshments are consumed in ghoul style and their eyes are peeled on the TV set as each story starts.

Between the stories of the film , we see the ghouls around the TV reacting to each story you and I had just seen. They grunt and moan with contentment and push each other with delight over the story. Handfuls of popcorn are shoved into their mouths while rats escape from inside the popcorn buckets.

Finding the Makeup effects interesting,I also found myself anticipating the breaks between stories and what the ghouls would do next. They could have added a little more levity,but when we find that the dead uncle has woken up in his open grave, and found his copy of Creep Tales gone,you know someone is going to die.

The stories were entertaining for suspense, and didn't go over board with cheap horror tricks or bad special effects. I was surprised that the writing wasn't cornier.

Compared to the other ridiculous and stupid low budget junk out there, I found the editing,sound ,and acting on level with the budget.

If this production team give it another go, they may have the makings of something really top notch. Some humor on top of horror and suspense always keeps me wanting more.

When people mix horror and comedy, or cobble together a bunch of smaller films, the results are not usually pleasant. This is why I was pleasantly surprised by this goofy little collection of stories, loosely knit together in the manner of Creepshow, Tales from the Crypt, etc.

It appears to me that the enterprising filmmakers took several short (or perhaps unfinished) scary flicks and put them together with a funny story to bind them together. This surrounding story is played with cheesy delight: hunchbacked ghouls want to watch a scary movie, so they have a party and steal a video tape from their uncle's tomb. The uncle then comes after them, with predictably gleeful results!

Some of the segments are very weird and eerie, ala Warped and Howling Nightmare (a segment that feels unfinished to me). On the other hand, most of the tales are very silly. Some, such as the Closet, Snatcher and Sucker (the only one where they really go for the gross-out) were very wacky, Tales From the Crypt fare. The segment entitled Groovy Ghoulie Garage, despite the exceptionally goofy title (and ending), is played very gamely and a great treat for those of us who loved the old horror comics (Eerie, House of Mystery) with the 'shock endings' (that you could see coming a mile away) to every story.

Overall, a really high-spirited little collection of B-grade horror. Perfect for a party of your own or viewing when you need a chuckle!

This film reminds me of another pretty obscure low budget eighties horror anthology that I like called Chillers, except this was a little better, they're both not quite great but they have a lot of heart to them and a certain kind of tacky shot on video retro charm that makes them quite enjoyable to sit through, least I thought so! Anyway in this flick some of the tales were poor but the ones that I did like made it worthwhile, I love the crazy taped-on wraparound segment that feels like it's from another movie entirely with the zombie Bill and Ted lookalikes digging up a VHS tape called "Creeptales" to show at their local monster bar to all their rowdy monster buddies! Except the zombie who's grave they stole the tape from eventually wakes up and isn't too happy! Very zany and bizarre, and so grainy you can barely make it out! So as to the tales themselves, I didn't enjoy the first one called Warped about a girl and her hillbilly aunt and a nasty old woman in a wheelchair who brays like a donkey, very strange amd confusing crap, I laughed my butt off when the enourmous overweight police officer charged straight through the door! I loved the following tale Snatcher, which was very brief but a lot more fun, being about a mean punk who likes to steal purses from little old ladies until he picks the wrong one and ends up stealing a little monster that happens to look exactly like a purse! It was absurd but I loved the effects of the purse, it was a lot like a mimic, a monster that disguises itself as a treasure chest you commonly find in a lot of fantasy video games! Third story called The Closet I didn't care for, it's so short and thin on content it feels practically pointless, and the closet monster suit looked terrible, very mediocre tiny tale.. Next there was Groovy Ghoulie Garage which was about two pals who like to amateur rap together pretty well, and who, while on a road trip, find themselves in a very weird little town that has a very spooky secret. Not the best but fun because the two guys are kind of funny together and I love their lame rap together! Next there one called Howling Nightmare which feels like a scene from Silver Bullet where some hunters on a werewolf hunt finds themselves become the prey! Pretty dull although the gore wasn't too bad, poor werewolf effects however.. It ended on another fun solid tale thankfully though, Sucker, about a bitter nasty woman who hates her husband and is given a magical minivacuum by a sinister salesman that he guarantees will suck up everything that's bad and vile that she points it at, including people!! I found this story interesting and the effects were nauseatingly effective as the woman becomes like a bloated gigantic monster as all the filth and badness she vacuums away seems to become a part of her, confusing use of male butt nudity near the end as she tries to hoover up her husband but only strips him off his clothes, as he's not really the bad one in this situation! Creeptales is far from perfect but it's certainly worth a look if you have an appreciation of low budget direct to video old school anthology movies, it's more fun than scary but it's very entertaining. This would make for a great little watch around Halloween, it's like Creepshow but cheaper and very schlocky indeed, very fun too though, I had myself a blast! Monsters get free pizza!!! X

CREEPTALES is a horror anthology film consisting of six short segments. They are:

WARPED- A woman seeks revenge for an incestual rape she suffered as a child. This one has some very nice, unexpected twists.

SNATCHER- A purse-snatching punk picks on the wrong old lady and her handbag from hell.

THE CLOSET- A boy who's afraid that there's a monster in his closet finds out that some nightmares are real.

GROOVY GHOULIE GARAGE- Two young men get stranded in a small town that seems to be frozen in time.

HOWLING NIGHTMARE- A weak, blessedly short film about werewolf hunters. It's gory, but lame.

SUCKER- The best of the bunch. A traveling vacuum cleaner salesman sells a strange and sinister product. This one is lots of fun!

All of these little movies are watched by a group of popcorn-munching monsters in their living room on Halloween night...

If this wasn't attached to another movie I bought, you could not have paid me to see this waste of time. A more stupid, uninteresting movie has never been made. The short stories are such that 7 year olds tell around a campfire - and they tell them better. Not only that but the felt they had to film most of it with a blue filter to give it a sort of "blue" look, don't know what else to call it. The saddest part was I felt the cast and crew were really trying to accomplish something. Hopefully they all have day jobs at a WalMart somewhere. I am really trying to think of something good to say, and the best I can think of is "at least that fat guy got his acting job before the coronary hit" Don't torture another brain cell with this - there are much more entertaining was to knock them off.