Warner Bros.' Twisted Terror Collection

By: R. Burke

Sunday October 14, 2007

Chewing The Fat
Ever buy a steak and you find yourself trimming away the fat, and then all you're left with is a tiny piece of meat? Warner Bros.' Twisted Terror Collection is like that. Take the fat and stuff it in a DVD box set with a bunch of marketing buzz-words like "long-lost chiller," "cutting-edge," and "trend-setting," while endorsing the fact that it's John Carpenter's, Wes Craven, and Oliver Stone's fat and the steak might actually look a little plumper after all. NOT. But hey, the DVD market is changing, corporate greed has left some scraping the bottom of the barrel, and so it's going to be a last ditch effort by the majors to find the sordid scraps and wrap 'em in pretty cellophane, put them on the shelf, and call it a day.

The good news is that you do get a piece of meat: Oliver Stone's The Hand. It's pretty tastey. It's still baby steps from a director in the wrong genre, but hey, with a pretty cool cameo (watch Stone get bitch-slapped by the hand), and Michael Caine in the title role, it's a pretty decent horror-thriller after all.

A remake of The Hand, originally starring Peter Lori, utilizes a strong actor's presence to mask the failings of the script. In the end, you're left with a pretty creepy performance by Caine and a film worthy of any serious horror collection. This meat is what you bought the package. This is the prize in the Cracker Jacks.

Now the bloody fat: Let's see... Dr. Giggles. I have to admit I kind of liked it. It was funny as hell. Larry Drake as the giggling psycho doctor was a hoot and the flick was oozing with wonderful characters actors like Richard Bradford and Cliff De Young. The production values were pretty high, beginning with the cool opening credits. The FX and score followed suit and was equally campy. So okay, you get a little more meat for the money there.

Dr. Giggles was a real nifty homage to all the slasher flicks come before it, and was at least made in the late 1990's. Not like the other 70's polyester and shag rug affairs. Written and directed by Manny Coto (executive produce of TV's "24"), this I watched from beginning to end with a smile on my mug and a chuckle in my cold black heart. Okay, I was drinking a little, but then what do you do when you're watching vintage horror? Go at it sober? C'mon already.

Now the real chewy inedible stuff like From Beyond The Grave rated PG (that's not good). With cult actors like Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, and David Warner, you'd think this "Tales From the Crypt style dish would taste a little bit sweeter than the rest. Wrong. The sets are barely a step above Jackie Gleason's "The Honeymooners." You shut the door and the painted canvas walls wiggle. Appalling. And it's just not at all suspenseful or scary in the least. Nope. Nada. Just another ho-hum grimey terror flick you might chance to see on the tube after returning from a night of boozing. Good to spew and fall asleep to. But hey, you do get several short stories and Peter Cushing with his face painted to look all gaunt and shite – which is funny because IT IS GAUNT (sorta like putting eye-liner over Tammy Faye's permanent eyeliner). So at least that was fun to watch. Oh, and really shiny faces from over lighting the scenes makes one wonder if everyone in London sweats a lot. Or maybe that was flop-sweat dusting the brow of the cast seeing their careers dissolve before their very eyes, I dunno. Ever hear of Nyree Dawn Porter or Ian Ogilvy? Talented folks with lots of credits on IMDb, but you get the picture.

Wes Craven's Deadly Friend is a Short Circuit smashes head-on into The Bride of Frankenstein yuk fest, and would be creepy campy fun if it weren't so bloody awful. Awful acting, awful script, and awful special effects. Wait, I take that back, I did rewind and watch the Franken-robot throw a basket ball at this old women's face, which did a Scanner's exploding head trick. Then the headless torso complete with spitting juggler vain ran around the room until it fell on the floor, revealing the cheap prosthetics underneath – a real horror hoot-ta-roony.

Made-for-70's-TV, Someone's Watching Me! from Halloween creator John Carpenter is billed as his "lost" suspense classic. Lost? Thrown away. With a young Lauren Hutton learning her trade and Adrienne Barbeau out-acting her at every turn, this dry as moldy toast, long and dawn-out thriller is a very painful enema given by your grandmother. It goes on and on and on until you wanna kill Lauren Hutton's character yourself, just to end the misery of it all.

There is a mini doc included on the DVD entitled "John Carpenter: Director Rising." That's pretty neat. It out does the feature that's for sure. But too little too late...

Eyes Of A Stranger... do I have to? Okay, it has a pretty Jennifer Jason Leigh as a blind, but not too helpless, girl smearing her killer's blood all over her young and perky breasts (spoiler for the adolescents - sorry). That aside, this was the hardest pill of all to swallow. Love Boat's Lauren Tewes also stars and that's never good for creditability. The box copy says "...the final sequence will leave you breathless." Shame on you! For what does a man profit, if he should gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul? C'mon. Yeah - Breathless in disbelief, pounding your head on the floor screaming, "I want my 90 minutes back, I want my 90 minutes back."

Anyway, by the end of Warner Bros.' Twisted Terror Collection I was more than happy to relive Oliver Stone's The Hand and chuckle at Dr. Giggles, but for the love of gawd I never want to see another polyester jump suit or white dude's afro for sometime. Oh, right - Tarantino's Grind-house fare – doh!