~Spoiler~ I couldn't help getting a little bit excited for Trapped Ashes. It was an anthology horror film bringing the likes of Joe Dante (The Howling), Ken Russell (Altered States), and Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th) together. But something told me not to get too excited because it would only lead to disappointment. Disappointment does not even cover the feeling. Trapped Ashes was a complete waste of time and talent. Really, is this the best they had to offer? Stories about vampire breasts, Asian sex demons, and a little girl that hordes food? The script is terrible and I can't understand what drew these once great directors to this project. Actually, the same can be said after watching Masters of Horror season 2 and Fear Itself. I know there are short stories out there begging to be filmed, but I think the horror anthology might be a hard sell in the future. I can't urge you enough not to see this film.

I don't know why but I used to be a huge fan of Creepshow and Tales from the crypt although the later series were rather lame. "Trapped Ashes" is very much in this tradition and features 4 horror shorts bound together in a surrounding plot of 2 couples and 2 solo people going on a sightseeing on a Hollywood movie site and getting stuck in an hold horror house with an old guy who leads them around. Turns out they can only leave if each tells their most frightening personal story... so here we go... Story 1 is about an actress who doesn't get any new jobs and decides to get a boob job. Now after her life turns around for the positive she soon realizes that her breast are vampire boobies feeding on human blood which doesn't go to well for her lovers. This story is pretty bizarre and trashy and captures the spirit of old "Tales from the crypt" stories best. Its totally idiotic but the end is so over the top its fun. Story 2 is a ghost-story about a couple moving to Japan where the woman is seduced by a monk who dies and takes her to hell where she turns into a succubus. Her husband soon learns he has to free her from there by feeding her a spell. The story is OK, but as frightening or thrilling as a Sesamestreet Episode. At least you get some naked shots and some nice animation sequences of old Japanese paintings which work pretty well. Story 3 is pretty much nothing leading nowhere. An actor and his best friend a scriptwriter regularly meet for chess until a girl appears. Soon the scriptwriter disappears and the actor begins a love affair to find out years later that the girl is some kind of ghost/witch/vampire... honestly I couldn't care less because the episode is boring and makes no sense. Story 4 is another strange one about a girl who grows up in her mothers womb along with a tapeworm and lives with a strange desire for collecting food for her "twin". When she is treated badly by her stepmother the "twin" takes revenge.What most of the stories suffer from is incredibly long passages of introducing of characters and that is way stretched and often even unnecessary for the plod. So when the action starts most of the time is up and there is not too much time for the horror to happen. Like most of those story collections there is some bad apples in there and I couldn't recommend this average movie just for the vampire boobies and the finale. This is just for real die hard fans of horror shorts... the slow ghost movies won't be too interesting for neither "Tales..." Fans nor others because they don't lead nowhere. Too bad...

I am so sick of low budget crap movies that try to propagandize with getting their "people" to come here and vote 10's to try and raise feces to a work of art. This is a horrible movie. Period. Lousy direction and acting, a story line that could have been oh, so much more. IMDb may use algorithms and secret formulas to try and limit "stuffing", but it is simply not working. To each their own, but, I think it is an awful movie. I watched part of the movie, but couldn't even bring myself to use bandwidth to pirate. Not "Sraight to Video", straight to coaster and into the garbage. I am reluctant to call this the "worst movie ever", (since there are too many doofae who do that, but ,IMHO, should be considered.

Okay so maybe I'm a wimp or maybe I had legitimate medical reasons for fainting, but the fact is I do watch tons of horror films, volunteer regularly for a horror magazine, and this has never happened before. I should have fainted to Ichi the Killer, or Brain Dead, or f*ck, even the cockroach sequence in Creepshow- but no, the segment to knock me out was "The girl with the golden breasts" which was a story about this gorgeous chick who's boob implant goes horribly wrong. Following the episode I went to the doctor, got a blood test, EKG, had my blood pressure taken, a full out exam- and was told that I was probably dehydrated, my body type is lean and more susceptible. I was working crazy hours, attending midnight screenings, the theater was stuffy, and blah blah blah. I'm a guy who writes horror scripts! I've become jaded as a writer because I've found it increasingly hard to scare myself. I'd like to think I'm tougher than that, but damn. The feeling came on like dimensional twist- like I was fighting to stay in my body- my perspective was pulsing, disorientation followed, then the unfightable desire to go and splash some water on my face. I should have stayed in my seat. Instead, I went out to the lobby, came crashing down- busted open my eyebrow...and have no memory of the fall. To preserve my dignity- and see if it really was an epileptic thing, I attended the second screening, and am happy to say I survived- didn't faint or feel feverish throughout all the five stories, and enjoyed it quite a bit. I am totally into exploitation horror movies, and this one has plenty of it-- Though I would have liked to have seen more gore- the squeamish parts could have been expanded, made more sadistic, especially in the tape worm story-- the film as a whole reminded me of those old pulp EC horror comics I used to read as a kid. The lighting had echoes of Argento's Suspiria... The main score was effectively creepy, the director's styles were pretty varied adding some interesting textures to the whole, and I hope the people at Tales from the Crypt scoop up this team for another go at it- this time adding takashi miike to the roster to go full out into the lactating boob horror.