Armadilha do Terror

Maybe it's too much of an assumption, or a generalization, but horror fans love anthologies! "Waxworks" (1924) and "Dead of Night" (1945) were the pioneers, and during the 70s in Britain, the Amicus Studios even specialized in them with a couple of classics as results, like "The House that Dripped Blood" and "Asylum". The ultimately popular omnibus came in the 80s, with George A. Romero's "Creepshow". Starting from the 90s, it became somewhat of a gimmick to have the separate segments directed by different - and preferably prestigious - directors. The variety of names usually makes it even more attractive for fans, but the participation of famous directors doesn't necessarily guarantee a brilliant anthology.

The names of the directors involved in "Trapped Ashes" is impressive, to say the least. Joe Dante ("The Howling", "Piranha") signed for the wraparound story, which gathers a group of seven people on a guided tour in an abandoned Hollywood movie studio. Dante, always his jolly self, takes the opportunity to give small roles to his buddies (like Dick Miller and Henry Gibson) but he's not given much material to work with otherwise.

The actual segments vary from extremely disappointing to surprisingly shocking. Sean S. Cunningham, horror-immortal thanks to the original "Friday the 13th", delivers the weakest contribution with a confusing and quite pretentious tale set in mystical Japan. The best story - or, better said, my own personal favorite - is a tie between Ken Russell's "The Girl with the Golden Breast" and John Gaeta's "My Twin, the Worm". The first is tacky but pleasantly deranged variation on the "I'll do whatever it takes to make it in Hollywood" theme, and I particularly love the second because of its rather disturbed premise of a fetus and a parasite developing in the womb together. Monte Hellman's tale is mediocre at best, in spite of the presence of the almighty John Saxon and the ingenious references towards Stanley Kubrick.

Undeniably, the main theme in every short story is sex. In fact, almost the entire film qualifies as pure body-horror, which also means that the sex and nudity is never arousing or even pleasant to look at. All the individual segments may look unfinished, since they all end rather abruptly, but even the lesser experienced horror fanatics can guess the real denouement comes at the end of the wraparound story. "Trapped Ashes" is a decent effort and an atypical anthology. I'm glad that I saw it, but I can't label it as a classic, nor a favorite.

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.

All I can say is THANK GOD FOR NETFLIX!!! I'm the type of cinephile who will buy a movie sight unseen if the filmmakers interest me or if it's a horror film that sounds interesting. In that sense "Trapped Ashes" fulfilled the criteria perfectly....

I realized recently though that I really am wasting money buying movies unseen so I signed up with Netflix figuring that I could rent new releases that appealed to me & if I liked em' I would purchase em'. "Trapped Ashes" was a movie I was dying to see. How could it go wrong?? Russell, Cunninngham, Dante, Hellman & Gaeta (The rookie of the 5) each directing a segment of a horror film?? It's gotta rock...Doesn't it?? It doesn't rock. It's actually pretty much a complete failure. It plays like one of those softcore "Horror" movies that used to play on Showtime in the late 80's thru the mid 90's. Aside from some so-so effects in the first segment there is nothing to recommend this disaster at all.

I returned it to Netflix on the same day I received it, Thankful for the money I saved by not purchasing it. Be warned...It sucks!!

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!

I don't know why but I used to be a huge fan of Creepshow and Tales from the crypt although the later series were rather lame. "Trapped Ashes" is very much in this tradition and features 4 horror shorts bound together in a surrounding plot of 2 couples and 2 solo people going on a sightseeing on a Hollywood movie site and getting stuck in an hold horror house with an old guy who leads them around. Turns out they can only leave if each tells their most frightening personal story... so here we go... Story 1 is about an actress who doesn't get any new jobs and decides to get a boob job. Now after her life turns around for the positive she soon realizes that her breast are vampire boobies feeding on human blood which doesn't go to well for her lovers. This story is pretty bizarre and trashy and captures the spirit of old "Tales from the crypt" stories best. Its totally idiotic but the end is so over the top its fun. Story 2 is a ghost-story about a couple moving to Japan where the woman is seduced by a monk who dies and takes her to hell where she turns into a succubus. Her husband soon learns he has to free her from there by feeding her a spell. The story is OK, but as frightening or thrilling as a Sesamestreet Episode. At least you get some naked shots and some nice animation sequences of old Japanese paintings which work pretty well. Story 3 is pretty much nothing leading nowhere. An actor and his best friend a scriptwriter regularly meet for chess until a girl appears. Soon the scriptwriter disappears and the actor begins a love affair to find out years later that the girl is some kind of ghost/witch/vampire... honestly I couldn't care less because the episode is boring and makes no sense. Story 4 is another strange one about a girl who grows up in her mothers womb along with a tapeworm and lives with a strange desire for collecting food for her "twin". When she is treated badly by her stepmother the "twin" takes revenge.

What most of the stories suffer from is incredibly long passages of introducing of characters and that is way stretched and often even unnecessary for the plod. So when the action starts most of the time is up and there is not too much time for the horror to happen. Like most of those story collections there is some bad apples in there and I couldn't recommend this average movie just for the vampire boobies and the finale. This is just for real die hard fans of horror shorts... the slow ghost movies won't be too interesting for neither "Tales..." Fans nor others because they don't lead nowhere. Too bad...