Each story is weirder than the previous one in this memorable horror anthology. It has its peaks and valleys, as these things do, but it hits so many offbeat notes along the way that it ends up making its own strange kind of music, in which art and irony mingle with harsh splatter and lovingly gratuitous nudity. These aren’t bump-in-the-night scares. These are tales of crumbling relationships that end in blood baths and ghoulish punchlines. There’s also the scientist who goes to insane lengths to solve questions of the human soul and finds a very bleak answer (in Karim Hussain’s exciting “Vision Stains”). Then there’s writer/director Douglas Buck’s brief, but effective, slice-of-life piece about a child’s first encounter with mortality that, in a way, also functions as a loose metaphor for the lure of horror stories.
It’s a lively and often unpredictable film, hosted by a great Udo Keir holding court in a ramshackle theater reminiscent of David Lynch’s Club Silencio in Mulholland Dr. The best stories here deliberately drop us into confusing, borderline surreal situations at first and then carefully unveil what’s happening over the next fifteen minutes. Tom Savini’s segment (starring Debbie Rochon, sleazy cinema’s best actress) runs furthest with this idea, with its story of an unhappy couple who dream so much of maiming and killing each other that they have dreams-within-dreams-within dreams about it.
The best and most oddball segment though is the grand finale: “Sweets” by David Gregory. It barely seems to be set on planet Earth (or maybe it’s the same planet where the early John Waters films take place). It’s the touching tale of the sinister side of a campy underground cult who regard junk food like it’s the purest heroin ever made. They treat ice cream cones like cigarettes, they eat whipped cream though funnels, they live in homes with food all over the floor, and after they eat so much that they throw up, they, uh… well, you’ll just have to see for yourself. None of the head-chopping, eyeball-ripping, penis-tearing gore of the other stories bothered me, but I almost lost my lunch watching this one. It’s great, in other words.
This is the horror anthology film to beat for this decade.