Deadtime Stories - 1986

At work, over the thrill of playing video games and also of researching Japanese musicians, I was hard up for something to do today.  So I opened up the ol' Amazon and dialed in a movie, Deadtime Stories.  Deadtime is another one of these anthology films I know, and that I love.  I just cannot get over it, it's so brilliant to have one movie with three different stories in it.  Why wouldn't you do this?  It's awesome!  To add to the why, why aren't movies like this made any more?  Quite sad.

Segment one - Some weird witch reincarnation story.  This one was the sure sign I'd chosen right, though in retrospect it's perhaps the most incomplete story.  Two witches have a young boy that works for them.  One day, it seems the witches just randomly decide to bring their old friend back to life, and they have the boy lure a priest to their house.  They kill the priest and use his heart to help bring their friend back to life.  Turns out they also need another sacrifice, and they ask the boy to bring them a girl.  The boy and girl hit it off and he decides to betray the witches to rescue her.

This segment was cool because it easily had the most effects and was the quickest paced of the segments.  The creature they bring back to life was an awesome mix of practical effects and heavy makeup:

Okay, maybe it doesn't look to great here, but you get the picture.  There was tiny bit of nudity, and the ending was cool.

Segment two - Little Red Riding Hood, changed up.  I haven't mentioned yet these stories are being introduced and told by a horny dude who wants to watch the nude miss america pageant (or something like that) and he injects his stories with the teenage lust and deadbeat tinge we'd all expect.  Red in this story is a virgin living with her grandma.  She goes to pick up her grandma's medication at the same time as a werewolf (werewolf in his human form).  The medication gets switched, and the werewolf gets the wrong pills, so he goes to the grandma's house to get his correct pills.  Meanwhile, Red and her bf get it on in a funny sequence, and the full moon starts to rise before the wolf's gotten his pills.

Segment three - Goldi Lox.  In this attempt at funny, Goldi Lox is a psychically powered teenage girl, the three bears are a criminal family, and they all run into each other at the same house.  The cops are imagined as inept and completely ridiculous, and well....yeah this one was pretty dumb.  It felt like the Troma level of humor, and yet I did laugh at it maybe twice.  It's a dividing segment, as I'm sure some would hate it and other might love it.  It's very self aware, and really over the top for the sake of being over the top.  I mean, why does Goldi Lox have psychic powers?  What the fuck?

So 2/3 of the segments were pretty cool, and the overarching story, the guy telling the story to the kid, that was okay too.  The movie has some decent as well as some not so decent attempts at comedy, three or so nude scenes, and is very light on the gore effects until the very end.  All in all though, I was solidly entertained.  The movie is barely 80 minutes, and it flew right on by.  Also, it felt good to watch something on Amazon again, not a Sci Fi one, and to review it.  In the end, I give this an optimistic 3.5 stars.

Oh I almost forgot, one thing I did love was the music.  Weird but really cool and fun original music in the beginning of this practically sold me on the film in the first 5 minutes.  They also borrowed the Monty Python page turning scene for the credits, though you might have to watch it and know Monty Python to see what I mean.