Segment one stars Adrienne Barbeau as Jessica, who is married to an aging, dying Valdemor. Valdemor is being put under hypnosis by Barbeau's secret boyfriend doctor Hoffman. Under hypnosis, they're changing Valdemor's will to give Barbeau money and possessions, and the plan is working, as we see her going to the bank and extracting loads of cash. Pretty soon, however, Valdemor dies while hypnotized, and they have to cover up the death. Since he was hypnotized and "between worlds" his soul cannot escape to heaven or whatever, so now they can talk to him from the grave, and he is warning them of others he sees in the middle space.
Segment two stars Harvey Keitel as a photographer and publisher, living with his girlfriend Annabel. She finds a black cat and brings it home, and immediately the cat and Keitel don't get along. This relationship escalates as eventually Keitel takes pictures of the cat as he tortures it in front of a backdrop, and then apparently uses those photographs to publish a book? A book of tortured cat pictures? Anywho, soon enough Keitel murders the girl and arouses suspicion, and things escape his control.
These are both ok. They're both based on writings by Edgar Allen Poe, so we actually have three horror icons at work here. The pacing can be slow or ok, and the atmosphere especially in segment one is pretty cool at times. There's sort of too many ideas present in segment two, including an homage to Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum.
I can't dump on it too much, but let's be fair and say this idea doesn't exactly work. It feels a bit too slow for one, and at 1990 it's not especially ahead of it's time. It feels like a cool idea that didn't quite achieve what it wanted to. It's fine as a soft intro into October, a month where I routinely watch a lot of horror films. This is a average 3, a movie which won't completely bore but also won't blow you away. Good effects in both too, but so scant it's disappointing.
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