Deadtime Stories (1986)

JULY 17, 2007

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY, COMEDIC
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK!!!)

I had really strong déjá vu when watching Deadtime Stories. I must have seen it as a kid. But it seems I would have remembered a movie where a kid named Brian (a name eerily similar to my own) is terrorized by his demented uncle and then killed by the goofiest looking closet monster in cinematic history.

What WOULDN’T have impressed me as a young lad was the amazing opening credits song. Holy shit! This song is almost on a Shocker soundtrack level of amazingness. A sample lyric: “Both buckets of gore, were spilled ages before, George Romero, Hitchcock or De Palma!”. Now, being a normal human being (of sorts), I cannot begin to tell you what the fuck sense that makes (since when did Hitchcock have more than a drop or two of blood? And who the hell compares Romero to those two?), but it’s amazing either way. I simply must obtain a copy. Or copy it off the DVD somehow. That is a song I would like to blast out the window as I drive around the rough streets of Sherman Oaks.

Sadly, the song ends, and the movie begins proper. And what a doozy it is. Starring an inordinate amount of men with perms, it starts off as simply bad and slowly becomes more and more hilarious until it becomes a full blown farce in the 3rd story.

This sets the tone perfectly for this story.

Like the other stories, it is a modern take on an old fairy tale, in this case Goldilocks and the Three Bears. But here, the Bears are a family of robbers (two of whom are in the aforepictured institution) and Goldilocks is a murdering whore with telekinesis. There are also a couple of dueling cops, a Laraine Newman-ish reporter, and a whole lot of random and silly sound effects (personal favorite, the two cops are punching each other and we hear what sounds like a gym class rubber ball bouncing off the bleachers). It also has what is strangely becoming a Budget Pack staple: a retarded man being seduced by a hot chick (though at least here he knows what’s going on). Where the first two stories(poorly) attempted to be somewhat scary, with just a few fleeting odd bits (like the ‘alternate ending’ of the first story), this one is just off the map ridiculous. And great.

The 2nd story is actually kind of good, in a budget pack sort of way anyway. A werewolf who gets sleeping pills from the pharmacy (while in human form) to keep himself from going nuts is pretty cool. Beats running around a wax museum and giving Christina Ricci the finger anyway. And he knows obscure Bible characters!

Back to the uncle though: What the fuck is wrong with this guy? He tells a little kid stories about whores, drug dealers, robbers, himbo priests… what kind of asshole uncle is this? Can't he just diddle the kid like a normal uncle? He doesn’t even get his comeuppance at the end, as the filmmakers choose to murder the little kid instead of him. Nice.

I think I love this movie.

What say you?