“TRAPPED ASHES” (2006)

Starring: John Saxon, Rachel Veltri, Amelia Cooke, Michèle-Barbara Pelletier, Ryo Ishibashi, Henry Gibson, Tahmoh Penikett, Tygh Runyan, Jayce Bartok, Lara Harris, Scott Lowell, Barbara Pelletier, Luke MacFarlane & Scott Heindl
Written by Dennis Bartok
Directed by Sean Cunningham, John Gaeta, Monte Hellman, Ken Russell & Joe Dante

Special to Polly Staffle Rating: **

Toted as in the tradition of the anthology series “Tales from the Crypt,” “Trapped Ashes” is a strange movie. The wraparound narrative is directed by Joe Dante (“Gremlins,” “Looney Tunes: Back in Action”) with four stories within the movie directed by Sean Cunningham (producer of “The Last House on the Left” and “Friday the 13th”), John Gaeta (Oscar winner for visual effects on “The Matrix” Trilogy), Monte Hellman (“Beast from Haunted Cave” and “Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!”), and Ken Russell (“Altered States”). With cheesy plot points, gratuitous sex, and over-the-top gross-out special effects, “Trapped Ashes” could just as easily be called “The Red Shoe Diaries From Hell.”

The opening scene finds an old man in uniform driving around an empty VIP tour bus for Ultra Studios. I saw this movie at the the American Cinematheque’s 7th Annual Festival of Fantasy, Horror and Science-Fiction with a friend who nearly died laughing, as he pretty much oversees the VIP tours for a certain studio theme park in Studio City. The old man picks up the next round of VIP guests, all with the sense of entitlement that having a VIP ticket gets them. (My friend finds something to chuckle about every other minute through the entire tour bus sequence.) The tour guide shows them the outside of the scariest house on the studios, the set of the movie “Hysteria” where no guests are allowed in, except of course for our special guests. Freaky decorations abound, doors get opened, and quickly everyone gets trapped in a round room with no discernible way out. The tour guide explains they’re in the room that all the characters in “Hysteria” were trapped in and were not allowed to leave until they each told a horrifying story about themselves. While the guests are initially reluctant, each begins to tell their own horrifying tale in hopes it will allow them to leave the room.

The first tale, directed by Ken Russell, deals with a beautiful blond (Rachel Veltri from “American Pie: Band Camp”) trying to be an actress. She goes out for the Heather Graham type roles (looking like a dead-ringer for the “Boogie Nights” star), but isn’t getting booked, and blames it on her lack of breasts. She gets implants and immediately her career turns around. However something is wrong. Her new nipples develop teeth and begin feeding off the flesh of her boyfriend. She learns her surgeon placed these mutated breasts in her, with the intention that they would suck the flesh from others and be her own personal fountain of youth. This was an okay story which got strange but did a good job of setting the tone for the rest of the stories that follow. Also seeing a CGI nipple develop a mouth full of sharp teeth that sucked on human flesh is an image that will haunt me for a long long time.

The next story deals with a husband and wife who go to Japan due to the husband’s business. With her husband ignoring her, the wife (Lara Harris) goes off by herself and meets a Japanese man (Yoshinori Hiruma) who shows her a picture. The picture comes to life and depicts a woman being molested by a demon and sucked into a dark portal. Later on the husband and wife are in a outdoor temple and come across the same man hanging from a noose. Though he is dead, the rotting corpse makes love to the wife during the night, and she steals away to a cave on the temple grounds. The husband (Scott Lowell from “Queer as Folk”) discovers his wife has been seduced by a demon and the cave is a portal to hell. To save her, he goes into the cave, confronts his demonic wife, and shoves a prayer on paper down her throat. This story was directed by Sean Cunningham. It feels very much like a live action hentai, and actually featured several segments of a mix between live action and animation.

The third story is less outrageous, and deals with an old actor (John Saxon of “Falcon Crest”) who when he was younger met a young director who was his perfect equal. They become close friends until a drop dead gorgeous woman (Amelia Cooke from “Species III”) enters the director’s life and he cuts off all contact with his friend. The actor finally gets a call from the director months later however when he shows up at his friend’s house the director has moved off to a foreign country and only the drop dead gorgeous woman remains. She quickly seduces the actor who also withdraws from the world under her embrace. Then one day she leaves him, and he hears nothing from either of them until 40 years later when the director dies. He leaves behind a film that only the actor is allowed to see which reveals the drop dead gorgeous woman to be a witch who feeds off the blood of her lovers. Directed by Monte Hellman, this segment was a lot more down-to-earth. It featured decent performances from all involved and ended up being my favorite story of the four. This does however make three stories in a row about evil women attempting to devour the men in their lives.

The final story, directed by John Gaeta, is told by a goth chick (Michèle-Barbara Pelletier), who’s mother and father are both French. As luck would have it, at the same time the goth chick’s mother gets pregnant with her, she also gets a parasitic worm in her intestines because of undercooked meat. The doctors tell her that if she kills the worm the treatment will also kill the child so she must therefore... LET THE WORM GROW INSIDE OF HER! This story ends up being funny for all the wrong reasons. The plot is laughably bad, and you can’t help but cringe every time the girl talks about her “twin, the worm.” The mother gives birth, goes insane, and the girl ends up living with her father and her mother’s best friend whom the father left her for. The girl begins taking food and hiding it places. The step-mother doesn’t understand this and begins starving the girl as punishment. To get revenge, the goth girl tells the worm that she’s been leaving the food out for it to CRAWL UP THE STEP-MOTHER’S VAGINA AND BITE TINY LITTLE HOLES IN HER INTESTINES. Okay, I’m sorry, but if there’s one image I can do without it’s a vagina-invading tape worm.

If this was not the strangest film I’ve ever seen, it definitely ranks up there. I am still haunted by the image of flesh-eating nipples. The individual stories ranged in quality from intriguing and disturbing to corny and childish. It didn’t have too many truly scary moments, and I spent most of the film being either grossed out or laughing at parts that weren’t originally meant to be funny. The over-arching story was pretty predictable but it did its job in getting all the characters together to tell their tales. If you’re into horrible abominations and mutations of the female body, then this is the movie for you. If the idea of man-eating mammaries disturbs you, you should probably pass this one by.

- Derek Houck, August 2007

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