Transparent in its efforts to be a Halloween viewing staple, The Penny Dreadful Picture Show pays homage to the horror anthology while attempting to revive it. Bearing a titular hostess who looks Raggedy Ann in rehab, the scrappy, all-hands-on-deck project exhibits a spirit as impressive as its production values.

In an old-fashioned movie theater — palatial and abandoned — the squeaky Penny Dreadful (Transmorphers’ Eliza Swenson, one of this Show’s writers, directors and producers, not to mention providing the Danny Elfman-esque score) invites a succession of Internet dates over to screen horror films (i.e. the three stories). Also in the sparse audience are Penny’s doll collection and her two co-hosts: a zombie named Ned (Collin Galyean, House of Bones) and a wolf boy named Wolfboy (Dillon Geyselaers).

Up first is “Slash in the Box,” woefully short, yet dead-on in recapturing that Tales from the Crypt feel. “The Morning After” finds Alice (Samantha Soule) unable to recall the previous night’s events, but certain that she’s not quite herself. Its Mad Men-retro look provides an interesting backdrop to a well-worn theme.

The final “feature” is “The Slaughter House,” which puts a twist on the ol’ plot of car trouble amid a cannibal family (albeit one addicted to Pepsi products). Lending star power are Sid Haig, in a character not too far removed from his in House of 1000 Corpses, and Re-Animator‘s Jeffrey Combs, at first unrecognizable in a party hat, cape and wheelchair. While hardly politically correct, his performance is an absolute riot.

A segment about Boy Scouts on a camping trip from hell was cut — and rightly so, as perusers of the DVD’s extras will find, because while its sense of humor is equal, its sense of pacing is not. Violent without being vile, The Penny Dreadful Picture Show ends before you want it to, but seems eager and open to sequelize itself, which I encourage. —Rod Lott

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Had Wes Craven cast Lyle Alzado as Freddy Krueger instead of Robert Englund, the result might look a lot like Destroyer, a slasher movie that gave the former NFL defensive lineman/shriveled-testicled steroid user his first leading role following such big-and-dumb turns in the comedies Tapeheads and Ernest Goes to Camp. I’m not sure whether anyone involved with the production had the heart to tell their star this wasn’t a comedy, because Alzado laughs his way through it.

In a premise that predates both The Horror Show and Craven’s own Shocker, Alzado’s Ivan Moser is a death-row inmate who spends his last minutes alive sweating buckets, squeezing a doll’s head like a stress ball and getting angry over a Wheel of Fortune-esque game show because, dammit, no contestant will pick the letter B! Anyway, Moser is electrocuted to a charred crisp, only to return to haunt the place several months later when its cells are used to shoot the women-in-prison pic Death House Dolls. That fictitious flick’s shoot-’em-and-move-’em director (Psycho-tic Anthony Perkins, quite amusing) would do Roger Corman proud.

On-set stuntwoman Susan (Valley Girl Deborah Foreman, adorable as always) is dating the screenwriter (Clayton Rohner, reteaming with Foreman after April Fool’s Day); the two become our heroes as Moser continues his murderous ways, from torching the cowboy-wannabe warden to jackhammering a cop. (Speaking of, Alzado rather phallically brandishing this “tool” became Destroyer‘s key art.)

You know the electric chair will come back into play, but I won’t spoil whose butt is introduced to its 3,000-volt jolt. However, I can reveal without guilt that when Moser corners Susan, he delights in cutting off her hair and then eating it. That gastronomic quirk very well could be the highlight of this serial-killer swiller — inane, but enjoyable in all its overt ’80s-ness, from lingo-laden lines of exposition (“The tungsten element must’ve been bogus!”) to Foreman’s close-cropped hairdo, seemingly modeled after Woody Woodpecker. —Rod Lott

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Parents, as tempting as it is, do not conduct an autopsy on your spouse in front of your 6-year-old boy. He’ll only grow up to be the kind of man who kills prostitutes just so he can slice off their faces and wear them over his own like dime-store Halloween masks. This probably goes double if your last name is Skinner.

In the sleaze-oozing Skinner, Dennis Skinner (Ted Raimi, Intruder) embarks on that low-in-demand career path. (Thanks, Pa!) Drifting into town, Skinner rents a room from a lonely housewife (Ricki Lake, Hairspray).

Meanwhile, almost simultaneously, a smack-addled mystery woman (played by former porn star Traci Lords) checks into a nearby hotel. She’s dressed like Carmen Sandiego at a funeral and her coat hides the fact that her left arm and leg are as veiny and shriveled as an octogenarian who forgot how to get out of the bathtub. She’s “hunting” Skinner to get her revenge for past transgressions, but is obviously terrible at it since she’s already spent five years doing so.

Also terrible: this movie, directed by Ivan Nagy, a large-looming figure in the Heidi Fleiss scandal of the 1990s and a man whose work has gone from an all-American superhero (1979’s made-for-TV Captain America II: Death Too Soon) to all-access porn, so Skinner‘s entirety is tainted with a coat of feculence.

Surprisingly, its most distasteful bit doesn’t even involve a female body part. Rather, it’s a blackface routine — well, so to speak — as an African-American man who upsets Skinner finds himself short one visage. Skinner doesn’t merely put it on — he also adopts a stereotypical shuffle and ebonics dialect! It’s the most racist thing I’ve seen since any email forwarded by my dad to his entire address book during either Obama campaign. Viewers might be able to forgive one line (“Yeah, baby!”), maybe two, but the shtick extends from one scene into another, with Raimi pouring his life into it as if auditioning for a Sanford and Son reboot.

As Al Jolson famously said, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” —Rod Lott

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Given the left-field phenomenon that was 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, anything director Tobe Hooper had chosen for a follow-up was bound to be met with disappointment. Eaten Alive was. That’s too bad, because it may be an even weirder work. It doesn’t stray too terribly far from Texas’ brand of rural terror, either, where the math is simple: redneck = scary.

Also inspired by a true story, the low-budget pic is almost confined to two locations: a two-bit brothel run by ol’ Miss Hattie (Carolyn Jones, the former Morticia of TV’s The Addams Family) and the fleabag Starlight Hotel run by the unwashed Judd (a super-skeevy Neville Brand, Killdozer). It’s a miracle the latter does any business, as it backs up to a swamp — plus, Judd has a nasty habit of killing practically everyone who crosses the lobby’s threshold, and feeding their bloodied bods to his pet crocodile. Like vermin to a Roach Motel, they check in, but don’t check out.

Among the Starlight’s guests are a runaway hooker (Roberta Collins, The Big Doll House), the father desperately searching for her (Mel Ferrer, Nightmare City), a henpecked husband (William Finley, Phantom of the Paradise), his wife (Marilyn Burns, following Hooper from Texas) and their young daughter (Kyle Richards, The Watcher in the Woods) who won’t stop screaming after her yappy little dog (Scuffy) becomes an evening snack for that backyard croc.

As unpolished as its predecessor, the better-acted but lower-powered Eaten Alive proves bothersome on its own strange frequency, from overpowering gels that run red (and accentuate the set’s artifice) to Hooper’s music score — if you can call it that — disturbing enough in purposefully agonizing discord. Add to that the pre-Freddy Krueger role of Robert Englund as a p-hound itchin’ for anal (“My name’s Buck and I’m ready to fuck,” he says in the movie’s opening line, as if to warn the particularly skittish), and you have a flick obsessed with poking at your scabs.

Slasher fans may enjoy Judd’s slicing shenanigans with his trusty scythe, but for me, it’s all about the instances of crocodile chomp (although not to Judd’s orgasmic extent). Eventually — the year 2000, to be exact — a career-nadir Hooper made a whole movie about that — Crocodile, to be exact — to far less hurrah. —Rod Lott

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Given its reputation as a superior Gothic shocker, The Uninvited struck me as disappointing. In fact, the spookiest thing about it is that the plot hinges on a brother and sister buying a house together. Asexual the Fitzgeralds may be, the act still smacks of incestuous undertones. Ick! Er, I mean, aaaaiiiiieeeee!

The residence in question is the seaside Windward House, a glorious mansion atop a cliff from which a previous owner fatally fell. The adult siblings are Rick (Ray Milland, Dial M for Murder), a music critic and would-be composer, and Pamela (Ruth Hussey, Another Thin Man), who doesn’t work because a woman’s place is in the home — a haunted home.
 
Soon after moving in, the Fitzgeralds experience strange phenomena, including but not limited to sobs at night, wilting roses, fluctuating temps, slamming doors, flickering candles and the overpowering smell of mimosa. A séance helps brings buried secrets to light, because the aghast neighbors sure don’t like to.

While competently staged by first-timer Lewis Allen (who later helmed Suddenly, a small gem of an assassination thriller starring Frank Sinatra), the parts of The Uninvited fail to merge in a way that brings about goose bumps. Switching tones from serious to silly aggravates the problem, and silly wins out; the film’s last line is a mother-in-law joke, which may as well say all. —Rod Lott

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