Stitches (2001) — Triskaidekafiles

STITCHES

WRITER: Benjamin Carr

DIRECTOR: Neal Marshall Stevens

STARRING: Elizabeth Ince as Mrs. Albright

Debra Mayer as Ellen Delaney

Lindy Bryant as Mrs. Grove

Robert Donavan as Sam Gray

Alex Peabody as Robert Delaney

Kaycee Shank as Miss Lester

Maggie Rose Fleck as Kathryn

Marc Newburger as Will Reynolds

QUICK CUT: The devil goes down to a bed and breakfast for a quiet weekend of collecting souls in the country.

THE MORGUE

Sam Grey - An older gentlemen, righteous in his heart, and one of the smartest, well learned men in the house.

Mrs. Grove - The owner of the house, who is friendly, but stern.

The Delaneys - A married couple, who have their issues. She is madly in love with Robert, and he seems completely uninterested in her, which raises a few questions, but I digress.

Miss Lester - A quiet, unassuming teacher who prefers to keep to herself.

Lucy Albright - The newcomer to the house…and a demon.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! No big preamble this week, just gonna dive right into this Full Moon flick from the turn of the century, called Stitches!

After opening credits they nicked from Witchtrap, we arrive in Hell, and I vaguely wonder if they borrowed THAT somehow from Dark Angel.

We watch a demon at a sewing machine doing her best Buffalo Bill impression, and making a skinsuit to wear up on the surface world.

She heads up there to a boardinghouse, where they are discussing how no one REALLY believes in the devil, and just you wait!

Get used to this location, since this is essentially a bottle episode, and we are stuck with these characters for the entire film. The homeowner introduces the newcomer as Lucy and...REALLY?? A demon named Lucy?

And because this wouldn't be a Full Moon movie if someone didn't whip out some dolls, Lucy does just that. And man, you can really tell the budgets have dropped since the heyday of Puppet Masters, since all we can manage here is paper dolls.

The discussion goes on, and Lucy declares that if the devil is real, he has the power to persuade men and women to do what they secretly want to do.

Up in her room, Lucy takes out her things, and, I shit you not, a crumpled up piece of paper which is her stand in for a familiar.

She commands the 'imp' to go scurry around the inn so she can gather intel she can use on the tenants.

We spend some time with all the residents as the imp makes its rounds, and we get to know everyone together. Not the worst way to introduce everyone that isn’t quite so exposition heavy.

I always knew Angry Orange was an agent of Satan.

Lucy decides to start with Mr.Reynolds, and a pair of minions arrive at the door with more of her luggage. Luggage which she uses as an excuse to use such a Big Strong Man as Reynolds to carry up for her.

So Reynolds comes to her room, and she preys upon his desire to know if demons are real or not, and she asks what would he give if she can prove it to him?

And yes, if you guessed 'soul' you could be correct!

She asks him to undo her dress, and then the laces down her back and heeeey waitaminute! She removes her flesh, shows her true form, and that's that.

Lucy pricks his flesh with a needle, and it peels away like thread that she feeds into her sewing machine. It's a cool but dated effect.

The next day, Reynolds' absence is noted, but Lucy says she thought he said he was going to catch an early train.

Next, she begins to seduce Kathryn the maid, and niece of Miss Groves. She seduces her with knowledge, since like many women of her time and station, she can't read, and is treated as a poor dumb girl.

Later that night, Lucy dons the form of Miss Lester, and lures Mr. Delaney out. They have an encounter, and the False Lester seduces him to come meet her later

So Delaney goes to the real Lester's room, wakes up the real girl, and she freaks out thinking she is being assaulted. Hijinks ensue.

Lester's got a gun, and shoots Delaney in the gut. She rushes out, and OH GOSH runs into Miss Albright, who says she can help make everything go away, and so she does.

She sends Lester off to clean up, and makes a deal with Delaney to make the bullet hole go away, and give him a second chance to be a better husband.

I love the detail that she essentially uses 'magic' but it's all dressed up in the trappings of 'medicine' and 'tools' to make the foolish mortals feel better. It’s a fantastic detail.

Meanwhile, the missus shows up at the mistress's door to help her clean up, or at least that is how it seems, as it's later revealed to be Lucy seducing Lester.

Once they start kissing, yes this time it is literal seducing, and much to Delucy's surprise, it becomes very very easy to claim Lester's soul, because she would do anything for love But she shouldn't have done that.

The next day dawns, Delaney lives, and his wife has no idea at all what happened last night. She is only happy to see her husband is back to being the loving man she married.

But in order for them to begin their life together, Robert tells his wife she must go downstairs, and steal Grove's stash of cash in one of the end tables.

Lucy doesn't know that yet though, just that she keeps her money SOMEwhere, and uses Grove's greed against her, to lure her, and find where that money is. And claim yet another soul.

So we're juggling a bunch of plots at this point, that all lead to Mrs. Delaney trying to steal the cash, being found by the fake Grove, slashing her throat, and becoming yet another person to barter away her soul.

That is certainly no stairway to heaven.

Grey wakes up Kathryn, tells her everyone is gone, there's blood everywhere, and they're the only ones left.

They try and leave, but find the door impossible to open, or even break through. Grey figures out this is the devil's work, and we get some exposition as Albright shows up. She explains her master gives her occasional tests, to try and capture every soul in a home.

Grey finds the little crumpled impling, and tears it to pieces. To retaliate, Lucy sends her acquired paper dolls after the surviving duo. Sigh, we have really fallen far when the threat is paper dolls.

We aren’t in Puppet Master territory anymore.

We barely even get proper attacks, just "Ahh! It's on my back! *turns to the camera and flails the paper around!!*" It's kinda depressing. Points for trying something different, to be sure, though.

Grey is hilariously held down by the paper dolls, as Kathryn gets strung up, and attacked until she agrees to give over her soul.

But in response, Grey offers up his soul, doing the usual jumping through loopholes to get Kathryn out of it.

It all seems good, the girl will get to go free until...oh no, her deal was different, with more loopholes, and she's now eeevil of her own free will, so the demon wins, completely, with a complete set of souls in her scrapbook. No one rides off into the sunset this time.

Gotta collect 'em all!

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It looks okay, but still has that early DVD stink to it, and I know it could have been better.

Audio: Honestly, fares better than the video, in this regard.

Sound Bite: "My husband left me...what's the word? Pillories! No that's not right, oh I know, stocks!" Okay, that’s…a clever bit of punnage by a demon not quite versed in human ways.

Body Count: I mean, aside from the baddie, this scores a 100% success rate.

1 - 22 minutes in, and Reynolds gets turned into thread.

2 - Mr. Delaney gets shot and it's all downhill from there.

3 - Lester's soul gets claimed

4 - Grove gets taken by Lucy off camera

5 - Mrs. Delaney is claimed

6 - Grey becomes the new crumpley boy.

Best Corpse: Can I give an honourable mention to when Mrs. Delaney tries to slit the false Groves’ throat? Because that was cool even if she was already dead/claimed at that point.

Blood Type - C: I give it an average grade, since there are a few moments, and some decent blood when we see it, but overall, a lot happens we don’t see, and that brings the score down. Also, a few points for the slit neck.

Sex Appeal: Not so much this week, I’m afraid.

Drink Up! Every time someone limps.

Movie Review: Okay, this is a situation of having a genuinely good story - I will absolutely defend the idea, the plot, and whatnot - but with sorely lacking execution. I didn’t get the period setting at first, so wondered why everyone was dressed like a community theatre group. But then I got it was a period piece…and still wondered why everyone looked like a community theatre group. The production values are lacking. The acting is not half bad. Lucy is charmingly polite, but the demon comes out when she needs it. Grey is good as her foil. Almost everyone gives a competent performance, at the very least. But it feels like the movie just needed a little more money, a little more time, a little more polish. ANd you know my feelings on the dolls. Those could’ve worked, but not like this. So, I give the movie an A for effort, and a good story to build off of, but reaching as far as it did and coming up short, it just barely scrapes by to a three out of five paper dolls for me. And a lot of that final inch is for some of the theological discussion at the very end.

Entertainment Value: The biggest entertainment comes from the silly paper dolls, and the ‘imp’. It’s ridiculous, to the nth degree. The movie doesn’t really have a lot of so bad it’s good stuff, and it could have used some more standout ridiculousness to lean into. If you’re gonna go this route, really really lean into the absurdity. Still, if you can get past the production values and such, I genuinely like this movie, just know it has some missed potential there. Three out of five stacks of cash from the end table.