Scary Tales (1993)

 

Director: Doug Ulrich and Al Darago

Screenplay: Doug Ulrich and Al Darago

Cast: Al Darago as the Storyteller (segment "Storyteller") / Chuck (segment "Satan's Necklace") / John / Rapist (segment "Sliced in Coldblood") / Ron (segment "Level 21") (as Al Darago Jr.); Brad Storck as Dan (segment "Satan's Necklace") / the Gardner (segment "Sliced in Coldblood") / Mr. Dobson / Ballplayer 2 (segment "Level 21"); Ilene Zelechowski as Julie (segment "Satan's Necklace") / Beth (segment "Sliced in Coldblood"); Mark Shapiro as Tom (segment "Satan's Necklace"); Bill Emge as Big Rick (segment "Satan's Necklace"); Doug Ulrich as Fred (segment "Satan's Necklace"); Cindy Darago as Bar Patron (segment "Satan's Necklace") / Bernise (segment "Sliced in Coldblood")

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

 I deal with more assholes than a proctologist!

Directly beamed from Baltimore, “No budget productions present” a VHS haze dream, one of the rare titles to ever get a release in the United Kingdom (on September 2022 from 101 Films/American Genre Film Archives), and on Blu Ray no less, which is ironic knowing this title, preserved from the original S-VHS master tapes, is the anti-thesis to pristine 4K restorations in how it has the grain and damage from a videotape master which has felt the presence of time past distort it. This is, aptly for a shot-on-video title, an acquired taste which completely skirts all notions of what a film traditionally should do to tell a story, but is rewarding as a time piece, a snapshot of the period, if you believe cinema is historical artifacts, and as a shot-on-video fan, gleefully silly and made with love if you love the see a Grand Guignol event as restaged with the moxie of recreating a horror movie with the Halloween decorations found in a Poundland¹, or in this case, in their back yard.

A hooded figure, clearly an animatronics, presides over (real) kids telling them three stories, in a VHS fuzz haze, beginning with a story about Satan’s necklace. Whether the figure should be telling them the stories or not is to debate as, alongside their gory content, this is ripe full of dialogue even when tasteless (“Nice shot Stevie Wonder”) which is gleefully full of swearing or figuring out ways to insult people. The first five minutes of this segment, in its amateur desire to make the dialogue sparkle rather than being dull exposition, makes it even if profane memorable, all before it ever gets to a single detective and a guy finding a necklace with a metal detector. None of the tales, which lasts over seventy minutes, are properly told as anthology narratives, but it is funny that, even here, you see a SOV segment here which can be tied back to M.R. James’ Whistle and I’ll Come to You and A Warning to the Curious, both his original short stories and their multiple adaptations for the BBC, in how you should always be wary about digging up the past, especially when as here you just put a necklace on you find in the ground without checking it. Here, even in the middle of the territory of John Waters films, where these guys can easily find Yoohoo bottle caps, they had the unfortunate chance of finding some of the Devil’s bling, and it has an immediate effect on one of them, when worn, like the ring did to Gollum in the Lord of the Rings tale.

Only Gollum (to my knowledge) never had a dream of having sex with his wife, nor had a wife, where she suddenly turns demonic and pukes blood onto him, least unless J. R. R. Tolkien had excised passages from the books about this. This is where you either find charm in Scary Tales as no budget or do not, as these actors are locals from Baltimore, and they will play multiple roles over the three tales, and into the unofficial sequel Darkest Soul (1994) from the same creators, a labor of love between them all to get the production off the ground. Everyone is playing multiple figures throughout all three segments, and working behind the scenes. Here to have someone, when they see their demonic side breath fire, they have to have the actor to the side in front of the jet of flame to make this seem the case, which is crude but the closest to what they could do without getting someone burnt. They did however manage to get a practical effects creator who, impressively with no budget, could depict good demon ear and finger nail growing effects, even a heart ripping, the gore and effects something the second tale, Sliced in Cold Blood, is going to run with.

Sliced in Cold Blood is meant to be about adultery, but instead it is a sub-genre of no budget cinema which only appeals to those of a certain type, or if you can find humour in it, which is the excuse for a series of gory effects, not the same if cousins to the splatter genre Herschell Gordon Lewis innovated in that. Specifically with the lowest budget works, they seem like the spectacle of having managed to pull off the effect let alone the gore itself is part of the spectacle, whilst Lewis would have found organ meat or a cow tongue if need be. In another context, with the little story here being a jilted husband killing his wife, her lover, and in his loss of sanity frankly another in a close radius, this would be mean and gross, sleazy least in how many times the word “fuck” is used as both a curse word and for sex throughout Scary Tales, but this here is so naïve and over-the-top, it instead becomes absurd. Finding bow and arrow for the lover, and knowing this is a terrible pun giving him the point, the husband after his wife buys a farm goes kill crazy and there is no plot after this, not even punishment for him or an actual finale, only a string of practical effects. A poor guy gardening first and anyone he fancies afterwards cop it, even crushing a man’s head until his eyes pop out, even a woman nearly attacked by a wannabe rapist and the rapist himself.

Obviously aspects of Scary Tales have not aged well, but one of the things about the fan base of these weirdo titles, even if tinted with a little irony, is how it has become about how exaggerated and absurd they are, the irony in the modern day now streaked with affection from the underdogs least getting these films off the ground rather than ridiculing them for having tried, which is an empathy I find is one of the best changes to this type of psychotropic appreciation. The second segment is an antithesis, more than the other two, to what cinema is perceived as in mainstream advertising and Hollywood horror, this a piece entirely there to see the severed head effects and gore, which some will find prurient and gross, some absolutely amateurish. In context however, those who can enjoy it see this coming off more as a spectacle of normal people outside the film industry throwing together a ghoulish visual, even managing to pull off a bisecting of a rapist’s head with a machete that would have been a pain to put together.

Level 21, finishing Scary Tales, is an evil videogame segment which is not a strange premise at the time to have. Even before creepypasta, a phenomenon of fictional tales of cursed video games told straight-faced as real urban legends for the entertainment of being on the modern internet, there were stories about video games. There were the likes of Polybius, the urban myth of the arcade cabinet which was actually a US military experiment in the sinister vibes of an MK Ultra mind control project, or how, confirmed as actually having if unfortunately gruesome moments of bad coincidence, the 1980 arcade game Berzerk, with its evil smiling face creature Otto the main figure to run away from, has the first two cases of players having died whilst playing the cabinet due to heart attacks, due as much to how long they were playing the game, and existing heart conditions, but linked to its infamy as a real legend even if the truth is for scrutiny per case². Level 21 is the level our lead has been trying to reach but never could, the game in a snippet looking like an MS-DOS/Amiga Western role playing game like Might & Magic. The guy, a father, is so addicted to the game, getting past level 20, he neglects his son and plays the game even at work.

Level 21, however, upon reaching it, emits smoke out of the computer monitor and knocks you unconscious, sending you into a world of fantasy. The use of Maryland countryside is one thing, but for a medieval fantasy, this is where the film’s quirks and charm do get weird. You end up dressed as a roman centurion, in the middle of the countryside, and before you ask if you are in a dream, get kicked in the shin by the fantasy dwarf explaining all this to you. Then there is the random ninja, inexplicably in a world of a troll, (an actor with a bald cap, fake teeth and extra large baggy underwear), and a evil magician disguising himself as a damsel in distress, all because clearly some of the crew were learning martial arts. Somehow the horror anthology gets into the type of “loose” martial arts fighting which is a sub-genre in no budget cinema in itself and of its own charm, just because someone wanted to film a martial arts fight scene even if in a fantasy video game setting with no context.

Scary Tales will be appreciated if you enjoy the revelry of shot-on-video and no budget cinema. There is possible joy to have if you have never seen a film like this before, how it cannot hide the “aw shucks” silliness. There is potential delight in seeing the production try at elaborate effects from a made-in-a-garage way – here literally throwing a burning orb of material as a fireball at someone, in a moment where one false move could have burnt someone onscreen, or summoning swords from the ground by having an actor (or their arm) buried under a freshly dug up patch of the grass before the shot – and that is as much where the joy in these films exist from. Again, this is a subjective taste, and this type of cinema is as subjective as you can get. It does have the charm to appreciate however, and least for this person writing this review, I enjoyed every minute of this for these reasons.

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1) Aware this is a reference that will not make sense to non-British readers, or any without having visited the British Isles, this is a discount variety store chain which, whilst not everything is this cost, sells goods usually for one British pound coin. Halloween decorations, let alone toys and food, are cheap and cheerful to use the term, even if they expanded out into even having a fashion section over the years.

2) How Many People Has the Berzerk Arcade Game Killed?, written by Josh Wirtanen for Retrovolve for January 6th 2016.