Trapped Ashes (2006)

TRAPPED ASHES is a very low budget anthology horror made in the same style as DR TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS or CREEPSHOW. It has an admirably old-fashioned feel to it, but unfortunately the constraints of budget and general cheesiness of the execution means that it disappoints rather than innovates throughout.Unusually enough for a horror anthology, the best part of the film is the wraparound segment. This is directed by Joe Dante, who can't resist throwing in some old timers like his beloved Dick Miller and Henry Gibson (THE BURBS), who acts as a tour guide showing a group around an old haunted house. The stories that take place are as follows: The first, THE GIRL WITH GOLDEN BREASTS, is an awful bad taste joke about a woman whose breast enlargement operation goes awry. This one's directed by Ken Russell, who also cameos, and it's terrible from beginning to end. The second, JIBAKU, is directed by Friday THE 13TH's Sean S. Cunningham and is a Japanese-set ghost story. Sadly, the events that play out are entirely predictable, although Ryo Ishibashi (SUICIDE CLUB) bags a small role.The third story, STANLEY'S GIRLFRIEND, arouses some mild interest by tackling the weighty subject of Stanley Kubrick, but it turns out to be routine despite the welcome presence of old-timer John Saxon. The final story, MY TWIN, MY WORM, is another bad taste story and the title tells you everything you need to know about that. I only really enjoyed TRAPPED ASHES for seeing the three old-time actors on-screen but the young cast members are very poor here and the directors appear to be slumming it. It's a pity.

This film is terrible.As someone who once starts watching a film finishes it no matter what i have to say every minute seemed like an hour. The directors cannot be blamed each directing the best best they could considering.Neither can budget be blamed as it can with so so many bad horror films.What lets this film down is the truly bad writing.The acting is varied the guy from the burbs doing best the guy from the series the Dollhiouse the worst,once again again poor dialogue is to blame considering how good he was in Dollhouse.The best segment was Saxons which if shown as a Tales from the crypt episode would be considered poor.I now some people have rated this ten,my advice to them is watch more horror films like The Omen 1976,The Exorcist and The Sentinel. The Hammer and Amicus anthology films cannot be considered classics but usually had at least 2 good stories,and even the others were watchable.

Anthology shaped in spirit after the Amicus films from back in the day. Except, unlike those past anthologies where one director helmed the entire series of stories throughout the omnibus, "Trapped Ashes" features stories directed by a series of familiar names. Joe Dante(Gremlins;The Howling;Matinée)directs the wraparound story about various people(a screenwriter & his actress wife, a disgruntled married couple with issues, a down-on-his-luck writer whose now a relic, a weird employee at a theater who books films there(..perhaps modeled after Dennis Bartok himself who wrote "Trapped Ashes)and has a case of the munchies) who converge to ride a studios tour, guided by Henry Gibson. They plead in visiting the forbidden "Hysteria" mansion once operated by an effects maestro, known for his salacious sexual behavior and wicked parties, who was abandoned by Ultra Studios(..the setting for this film). Once inside the characters and their guide find themselves trapped in a room with seemingly no exits, this scenario perhaps modeled after the film Hysteria where the mansion was it's setting. The tour guide proposes that horrific stories shared by members of the trapped group might lead to their exit from the mansion and so the anthology begins.Ken Russell(Gothic;Lair of the White Worm)directs the first tale regarding a pretty actress, nearing 30(..which is 60 in dog years in Hollywood)who decides to try out a new breast implant procedure(..using flesh from cadavers)in the hopes that it'll assist her non-successful career. The procedure has a nasty side-effect..her breast implants need human blood and drain the bodies of victims! The second tale, directed by Sean Cunningham(The New Kids;Friday the 13th)concerns a married couple in Japan and the wife who is haunted by a monk who committed suicide, ravaging her body as a rotting corpse, kidnapping her soul with the husband having to enter a hole to hell in order to save her. The third tale, from Monte Hellman(Two-Lane Black Top;Silent Night, Deadly Night III), shows how a seductress, with a taste for human blood, comes between friends, a director named Stanley(*wink*)and a writer, both whose careers are on the rise. The fourth tale, from John Gaeta(a visual effects expert), focuses on a pregnancy where the baby must share her womb with a parasitic worm which was ingested as the mother ate undercooked meat, and the aftermath. Lots of nudity(..the Russell tale obviously displays breasts, because Rachel Veltri's are creatures which suck blood), necrophilia(..during Lara Harris' "assault", mostly consensual, she actually puts her fingers into his face and under a chest bone while riding him on top!), a parasite molesting a female victim(..she's the stepmother of Michèle-Barbara Pelletier's girl-child who beguiled her father away from her mother), animation mixed with live action(..while the husband searches for his possessed wife in hell, Cunningham's tale uses anime to enliven certain aspects the low budget couldn't compensate), and some minor computer graphics(..in Gaeta's tale, we see inside the womb how the baby is affected by her mother and father's broken marriage with all the shouting). VERY low-budget, and perhaps shows signs of an amateur screen-writer, Dennis Bartok(..who operates the American Cinematheque)because, disappointing to me at least, the tales aren't quite up to par. I didn't think the cast was as bad as others, but the talents involved in this film perhaps deserved better material and actors(..other than the reliable vets, Dick Miller, who barely has any lines, and, especially, Gibson)than were given to them. Most of the tales, other than the Hellman tale, Stanley's Girlfriend, which was pretty much memorable for who the director turned out to actually be, left me rather underwhelmed(..particularly Cunningham's, which I felt needed more exposition). I thought Russell's was sick and morbid enough, also containing a wicked sense of humor and playful performance from the adorable Veltri, but most of the tales really leave anything to be desired. It was great seeing John Saxon in a major role within the film, hitting on a married woman, so there are a few treats for horror buffs. Maybe not enough, though, to recommend to the average horror fan. There's a great deal of unpleasant violence(..the aforementioned necrophilia, finger nails scratching down a man's chest before the woman drinks his blood, and a torn throat of a victim whose blood is used to nourish Veltri's monster tits)which might bode well with gorehounds. Maybe, anticipating this as much as I was, the film couldn't live up to my expectations, but I was expecting so much more than the results provided.

Tales from the Crypt like anthology of a group of people on a studio tour who get trapped in a "psycho" like house and tell ghost stories to escape. Of interest mainly for the directors involved-Joe Dante, Ken Russel, Sean Cunningham, Monte Hellman the film itself is a mixed bag. One story has to do with an actress getting her breasts done, another has to do with a Stanley Kubrick like director and an actor friend, Another has to do with a couple who go to Japan and discover a hanged man and the last has to do with a young woman and her twin..or something. Three of the four stories aren't bad, if over long. One (the girl and her twin) is just fair. The problem is the films don't really add up to much, more so that the sting in each tale is left for the very end of the film where we are told what really happened. Its a weird way to do it, and it almost works, but not quite since any tension from the stories are long gone by the final revelations (There is also a couple of lapses of internal logic as a result of the breaking apart.) Worth a look on a slow Saturday on cable. I do have to say that the Ken Russell "Girl with the Golden Breasts" tale is very amusing and a vast improvement over his direct to video home movies. I especially loved his cameo.