A flawed but interesting horror anthology written by Dennis Bartok and boasting what seems like as many (Japanese) producers as cast members. The delightfully old-school Amicus-style wraparound is directed by Dante and is perhaps the most pleasurable part of the movie, though each of the four separate stories – while imperfect in their own separate ways – have points of interest.
At “Ultra Studios” in Hollywood, Henry Gibson works tirelessly as a studio tour guide, continuing his spiel even when no one is on his tour bus. Two couples, including a screenwriter and his actress-wife, plus former 60’s B pic director John Saxon and a lone Goth chick, persuade Gibson to let them look around the back lot’s spooky house of horror, guarded by a stern Dick Miller. The dialogue references Bava and the group wind up trapped on the set of an old movie called “Hysteria” (but not the William Castle one), made by an infamous director. Gibson suggests they should re-enact the movie and get out of their predicament by relating horror stories based on their own worst experiences. To wit…
In Ken Russell’s “The Girl With The Golden Breasts”, pretty Rachel Vetri is an actress who arrives in Hollywood yearning to be the next Heather Graham but finds the auditioning world a cruel, unforgiving one. She decides that bigger tits will ensure her big break and finds a clinic specializing in breast enhancement without risky plastics and silicon…this clinic uses dead human tissue! What could go wrong? Soon after the procedure she has a lovely pair of sizeable knockers, wins a role on a dodgy sci-fi flick…and finds that her new tits have a tendency to bite folks and suck their blood!
This obvious but deliciously fun satire of Hollywood vanity is shot through with typically campy and perverse Russell-esque humor and delivers plenty of sex, nudity and surgical gore. The most fun of the otherwise serious-minded quartet, it’s the closest the anthology comes to EC Comics while also delivering some splendidly bizarre imagery of an evil tit violently clamping itself to a hapless guy’s tongue, plus the sight of something alien sprouting from a nipple. Kudos for the line “I want the old me back without these bloodsucking tits!” and look out for Russell’s hilarious cameo as “Dr Lucy”, one of three deranged “female” scientists – he also has his own set of fake boobies!
Less fun, in fact totally devoid of humor, is a rare contemporary directorial effort from Sean S Cunningham, “Jibaku” in which a female tourist in Japan meets an enigmatic stranger in an art gallery who introduces her to the fantastical, weird world of Hentai painting, which begins to intrude disturbingly on her reality.
Like all the episodes, this one is erotically charged and places an emphasis on macabre sexual imagery, with a highlight being a notably queasy sex scene in which the protagonist has it away with a decayed cadaver, fingering assorted rotting parts as she rides him. Cunningham creates some striking moments, makes nice use of animation, but the plodding story peters out long before the end and boasts a high “So what?” factor.
“Stanley’s Girlfriend” by veteran director Monte Hellmann falls into the “interesting but not exciting” category and contains the least horror of the four stories – in fact, save for an evocative but brief Bava-inspired black and white finale, it barely qualifies as horror at all. (Though it does have more sex scenes).
John Saxon recalls his earlier life as a young screenwriter who befriended a rising director named Stanley Kubrick and ended up screwing his sexy brunette girlfriend – a “dedicated insomniac” who turns out to be an immortal, blood drinking witch. The prominence of Kubrick as a “character” in this particular story adds a strong curiosity vibe and there’s a certain slow-burning intrigue that builds, but ultimately it’s all tease and no pay off.
Finally Gaeta’s “My Twin The Worm” brings the anthology back to the weirdo icky body horror territory of Russell’s segment, sans the wacky humor. It boasts a genuinely unpleasant and grimly fascinating premise that could have made for a marvelous early Cronenberg feature – and, although the execution proves to be overly restrained considering the potential, it’s still a creepy foray into the bizarre.
Just as she falls pregnant, a young woman (the mother of the Goth chick who relates the tale) ingests a tapeworm from some under-cooked meat at dinner. To destroy it in the usual medical fashion would also result in a miscarriage, so her only choice is to let the worm grow alongside her baby. When the child is born, she develops an attachment to the worm, her twin, that grows over time. This story culminates with a discreet but suitably discomforting worm-rape scene.
Tonally and thematically, TRAPPED ASHES is all over the place : it feels like four separate movies shoehorned together to form one single piece, though this at least gives the film variety – and the one thing that all four stories share is that they are all quite distinctive and offbeat in their own individual ways. Parts of the film work a lot better than others, but all of the stories have at least something worth keeping at least one eye open for. Russell’s is the most enjoyable by a significant margin, though Gaeta’s is no slacker.
In Dante’s appealing wraparound, Gibson makes for a delightful host. The final portion of the movie provides an extra form of resolution to each individual story, including the memorable sight gag of episode one’s vicious tits each sucking blood from a cocktail straw. The Amicus-inspired final twist reveals all of the storytellers to have been dead all along, destined to spend an eternity reliving their doom via a low rent studio tour. It’s a pleasant homage to the British horror portmanteau tradition.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
