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Terror Tales (2016)
A wretched, incompetent mess.
"Terror Tales" is not a "film," or a "movie" in any sense of the word; it's just a pile of badly shot grainy video footage that looks like it was shot with an obsolete camcorder and stitched together on iMovie in a seemingly random order. I'd say that this abomination is on par with "Birdemic," but that would be like spitting in James Nguyen's face.
The auteur behind this jumbled mess is a dilettante named Jimmy Lee Combs, of whom we will probably never hear again thanks to this magnum opus. He is credited as writer/director/cinematographer/producer/editor of the film, but it appears he is not quite aware of how to do any of those tasks.
I wish I could summarize the plot of this glorified home movie project, but I got almost nothing. Ostensibly a horror omnibus film, this was just an excuse to showcase some washed up D-list actors and cheesy regional haunted house level gore effects (though some of them are at least a bit serviceable.) The wraparound segment probably has the most coherent storyline (until the ending); it follows a family kidnapped by a psycho (played by Christopher Showerman, who we all know from...uhh...something) that proceeds to revel one of his hostages with three whimsical tales of terror...at least I THINK there are three, it's really hard to tell since none of the scenes or stories really connect or make any sense; it's all just one incomprehensible cavalcade of randomly assembled footage.
The first segment concerns a woman who may or may not have done something bad to her son. The whole thing is told out of chronological order with a strange demon creature showing the woman her past sins or whatever, it was hard to follow or honestly care. The woman is played by Lynn Lowry of Radley Metzeger's "Score" fame, now way past her glory days. Even though this particular tale made little sense, I must admit that the featured demon itself looked very good, almost too good for a movie like this, so my hat is off to whoever designed it.
The next segment is even less coherent. There is a video store facing closure and a serial killer played by "Sleepaway Camp" alumni Jonathan Tiersten. Or at least I think he was a serial killer, it could've been another character. Or not. Could anyone who watched this flick even tell? Not sure what the video store had to do with the serial killer, but it sort of looked like he had a torture chair somewhere in the store's cellar where he bludgeons his victims.
After this mess mercifully drags to close, we are forced to endure the absolute worst of all the entries and a terrifying one indeed, though not for the reasons Mr. Combs had hoped for. The third story is the apex of this flick's incompetence and overall shoddiness. This is where the viewer really starts getting confused at just how many stories this anthology contains. The final segment is another vague mess of random video footage that tries in vain to tell the story of a worldwide demonic possession epidemic, but it goes off on about twenty different tangents and non sequitors. I was barely able to construct the following approximation of a storyline based around these arbitrary scenes; a heavily made up 17th century witch dressed in 21st century lingerie (another "Sleepaway Camp" alumni Felissa Rose, looking even more gender-challenged than she did in her feature length debut 35 years ago) is burned at the stake by a group of community theatre thanksgiving play pilgrims and makes some nonspecific curse that causes a bunch of people to get possessed by demons 400 years years later. Back in modern era, a plucky nun helps some sad looking man fight the possessions for one reason or other. We then see several awkward scenes of people behaving like sinister idiots (including the most insipid and insulting geisha scene ever filmed) which apparently is meant to illustrate how demons are possessing people across the world, but none of them ever really connect with the story at hand. We also catch a glimpse of the Devil himself, complete with a pair of giant breasts on his head in lieu of horns. Apparently, Ari Lehman, the original Jason from the first "Friday the 13th" film is featured in this story, but he didn't really stand out and I honestly did not care enough to decipher which character he played.
We then return to the framing story which abruptly ends in a gush of badly copy-and-pasted GIF blood (shades of "Birdemic.") After disposing of his victims, the psycho killer goes to a cheap motel room, where he engages in "relations" with a fully clothed prostitute while director Jimmy Lee Combs lingers and glides his camera lovingly across Christopher Showerman's erect nipples, six pack abs, and speedo bulge. The slain family then come back as zombies and rip out his red dyed rags---I mean "guts." Finis. Cue 20 minute end credits interspersed with scraps of outtakes and unused footage.
I wish I could say that this random assemblage of bad ideas caught on tape was "so bad it's good," bit it's not. Nor is it intentionally campy or a "throwback" as the other reviewers claim. It's just bad. Abysmal. Unwatchable. There is absolutely no redeeming quality or real cinematography; it looks like a home video that was shot on someone's iPhone 6. Production values are nonexistent and the special effects are too shoddy and cheap to have any kind of impact, save for a few small exceptions.
I would criticize the editing, but none of the footage seems to have actually been edited, into a film or otherwise. The movie just drags unforgivably for its entire two hour gauntlet due to Mr. Combs' insistence on putting every single shot into the final cut. I was shocked that there were any outtakes remaining to be put into the end credits. The audio mix fares little better. The in-camera recorded sound is often drowned out by hissing, generic stock music and library sound effects, which, in hindsight, is all for the better since it spares the viewer the cringe worthy and prosaic dialogue.
To be fair, most of the cast do appear to be doing their best, but the sheer incompetence and ineptitude of the production, script, and direction (or lack thereof) torpedo the entire endeavor. The majority of the actors are unknown, aside from a handful of half-forgotten cult horror actors who seem to be only doing this for food and gas money.
I sincerely hope that any potential viewers who read this review will skip this painful mess of badly shot raw footage masquerading as a finished film. There are much better anthology horror films out there, almost by default, seeing how low "Terror Tales" has set the bar.