'I Wasn't sure if you'd be coming.'
Welcome back to My Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘This creep’s got a camera’
The House of the Dead – also known as Alien Zone for reasons passing understanding –
is the first anthology film we’ve reviewed.
‘I don’t think you’d be interested really’
A film comprised of several stories, tied together by linking scenes.
‘Sometimes I feel sorry for your wife’
Adulterous salesman Talmudge gets lost in the rain, and is invited in by a creepy mortician.
'Embalming actually.'
Who shows him around.
‘My latest clients’
and every one tells a story.
‘Damn kids! Disgusting little litter bugs!’
Miss Sibiler doesn’t like kids and
‘Oh my God - children... just children.’
The story is a little longer than that, but in terms of theme, that’s it;
a woman who doesn’t like kids…
is killed by kids. How ironic.
‘Grotesque actually’
Although these aren’t normal kids.
No one talks about what vampire children go through when they’re teething.
Onto the next coffin.
‘He had a rather abnormal predilection for cameras’
and films his dates.
'Here's one of your cameras right now.'
What does that little red light mean?
‘It sounds like it’s buzzing or something. Whirring’
He’s not dating geniuses, which is good cos his chat up line is beyond optimistic.
‘I really need a silk stocking to do this trick, could I borrow one of yours?’
Embarrassingly it does work.
‘Do you promise you’re not going to look or anything’
but the man has a darker purpose,
'Abracadabra.'
Are they shrinking?
‘Voila! Your life is gone. It’s disappeared’
After three murders he’s captured and executed, but...
‘The state didn’t allow any pictures to be taken – Oh he begged them’
Didn’t allow pictures. Oh the irony.
Now we meet America’s greatest detective.
‘Mr Castalucci didn’t hang himself he was murdered.’
Impressive.
‘Inspector Wendell MacDowell, Scotland Yard’
‘England, right?’
Less impressive. Macdowell is England’s greatest detective and they briefly compete.
‘We’re supposed to be rivals aren’t we.’
to see who can be the most annoying.
‘This is going to take a bit of looking into’
Turns out they’re both equally painful as their story limps towards a conclusion
so obvious even Will Ferrell’s Sherlock Holmes would have seen it coming.
‘I am the victim. And you, my dear inspector are the murderer’
Think about the irony.
In box number 4 is this guy.
‘I don’t have any change, why don’t you get a job?’
A nasty business man who can’t stand beside a lift shaft without falling in for no reason.
But once he’s down there…
He is subjected to mental and physical torture…
with nothing to drink but wine.
Until…
and then…
'I told you I couldn't help you, why don't you get a job.'
Imagine the irony.
‘Nooo’
And that’s where bums come from, so don’t give them money, they’re all businessmen being punished,
but… he’s not dead so what’s he doing with the creepy embalmer.
‘Eventually he died’
Eventually everyone dies, you’re blunting the irony here.
‘Drunk with a rotted liver, sprawled in a gutter’
Why? Did he also lose his house keys and the addresses of everyone else he knew?
‘You don’t expect me to believe that story – it’s ridiculous.'
Now the Embalmer sums up.
‘All these people were the victims of their own frailties, their own petty foilbles’
Petty foibles like murdering 3 women.
And it goes without saying that Talmudge himself is now in the firing line.
'You stupid bastard, don't you know any better?'
Killed by the husband of the very woman he was sleeping with. How ironic.
Or, actually; pretty logical.
‘A very interesting – very bizarre - case’
The problem with this denouement is that in the final story, an unseen hand – we assume of the Embalmer -
is involved, torturing the man who shouts at the homeless.
‘You sound like you select these people’
For none of the other stories is this the case.
The stories were clearly written beforehand and then this vague linking device has been imposed on them.
‘I’m not stupid you know’
Which would be okay if the stories themselves weren’t so bad.
‘Maybe you will learn something’
So a reviewer of bad films watches a bad film and is angry over how bad it is.
‘His failing – he simply didn’t care’
He’s right. Think about the irony.
'Congratulations an excellent piece of work.'
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We've tended to steer clear of anthology films in the past, but this one worked
So are there more we should be considering let us know in the comments below. This is not very interesting
'This is all very interesting, everything...'
'But I must go n ow.'