Deadtime Stories (1986) — Triskaidekafiles

DEADTIME STORIES

WRITERS: Story by Jeffrey Delman
Screenplay by Jeffrey Delman, Charles F. Shelton, J. Edward Kiernan

DIRECTOR: Jeffrey Delman

STARRING: Scott Valentine as Peter
Nicole Picard as Rachel
Matt Mitler as Willie
Kathy Fleig as Miranda
Phyllis Craig as Hanagohl
Michael Mesmer as Uncle Mike
Brian DePersia as Little Brian
Kevin Hannon as Beresford "Papa" Baer
Timothy Rule as Wilmont "Baby" Baer
Cathryn de Prume as Goldi Lox
Melissa Leo as Judith "Mama" Baer

QUICK CUT: A kid just won’t go to sleep, so his uncle tries to get the job done with some twisted takes on classic fairy tales.

THE MORGUE

Peter - A young slave learning the ways of magic, and really not into murder. A bit naive, a bit sweet, and just trying to get by.

Rachel - A good granddaughter, wanting to help her grandmom, but also easily distracted by boys. Typical teenager.

Goldi Lox - A slightly mad woman with murder on her mind, and I mean that literally, since she has telepathic powers.

The Baers - A criminal family, who recently escaped from a mental institution, and just want to get back to the family business.

Brian - A kid who refuses to sleep, constantly screaming for stories.

Mike - Brian’s uncle, who would rather be watching the Miss Nude Bayonne competition, but in order to get the brat to sleep, he keeps telling stories.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! It's my favourite time of year, anthology time! When I get to watch four movies for the price of one! This year, it's time to tuck ourselves in and listen to some...Deadtime Stories!

The movie opens up with some creaking bedsprings and oooh, I know where this is goaaaw, no, it's just a kid jumping up and down. That's Brian, being watched over by his Uncle Mike, who does an amazing job of a stalker coming to stab the boy in the face. Which he sadly does not do.

Brian says he can't sleep, there's a monster, and insists to be told a bedtime story. The kid isn't picky though, and asks Mike to make one up.

He begins the tale of a fisherman's son, Peter, who loses his parents, has nothing, and is sold into slavery, in service of a pair of witches. They send him off to retrieve the local parson, have him drink a potion, and bring him back to their shack.

Peter does as he is told, and when the parson enters the hut, he finds two lovely ladies, in fine gowns and silks, instead of the usual hags who live there.

They chain him up, which he assumes is all part of their bondage games, and then use some goo on his wrist that quickly begins to burn. The flames cut through the wrist (Magic!) and the hand tries to Thing itself out of there.

Do you ever get that itchy, burning sensation?

With their hand of glory acquired, they pour a potion on it, and use it to locate their lost sister, Magoga.

They find her grave, which is more like an underground crypt, retrieve the heart and body, then return home.

But before they can bring her back, they need one last ingredient. And that's what they really need Peter for; so he can be used to lure a young woman to them so she can be used as a sacrifice.

They get their victim in short order, because we don't have a lot of time to tell a story here, and Peter is having second thoughts. He's fine with fetching a pail of water, but this whole 'murder' thing as not in his job description.

So he asks if he can be the one to sacrifice the girl, and while one of them says no, the other hands him the knife like a fool.

They bring the heart back to life, place it in the skeleton, and there's a really great effects sequence bringing her back to life, that would make uncle Frank from Hellraiser proud.

So the time finally comes to sacrifice Mallory, and Peter instead flings the knife into one of the witch's faces. He tries to untie the girl, but has to deal with the other one trying to hit him with a sword.

Fortunately, the unwilling victim got untied enough to do the rest herself, and conks the witch on the head to save Peter.

The pair scamper off, but before they can live happily ever after, they discover that the blood of the witch Peter through the knife at, who then landed on Magoga's body, was enough to bring the dead sister fully back. See, if you want something done right, do it yourself.

Peter quickly punches into the witch's chest, and rips her heart back out. Aww, she just got that back!

When the heart hits your eye like some big witch’s pie, that’s amore…

It jumps out and tries to attack his face, but again, he is fortunate the girl is there to remove it, and they head off to live their lives.

That is, until the little boy complains to uncle Mike that it had a happy ending, so he immediately retcons the story so the witch kills them instead.

Brian promised to go to sleep for the director's cut of the story, but he immediately gets scared by the dark, and calls for Uncle Mike to come back.

This time, Mike sits back to tell an updated version of Little Red Riding Hood, about a young woman called Rachel.

Rachel has some hot and steamy mirror fantasies to pad this movie out for a bit, before her mom sends her on an errand for granny, to keep this story on track.

Brian is getting impatient with the story however, he wants his wolf, so Mike cuts over to Willie, a skeevy guy heading into a pharmacy for some sedatives where Rachel comes in to pick up Gran's drugs.

I hate when mirror me gets more action than I do.

Unfortunately, the pharmacist messes up the orders, giving Willie the pills for granny, and vice versa. He heads back to the drug store and threatens the clerk to get the address.

Willie heads over the river and through the woods, but when he gets to grandma's house, Rachel has yet to arrive. She met her boyfriend, and they're busy screwing in a shed somewhere.

At least, that was the plan, but they keep getting delayed, making Rachel later and later to arrive. Meanwhile, Willie is becoming increasingly agitated as night falls, with no Rachel to show up.

If you haven't guessed the plot yet, Willie begins to change under the light of the moon into a wolf, and that's why he was so desperate to get the pills, to knock himself out.

The kids finally finish up having fun, and Rachel hurries along, as her grandmother is being stalked by the big bad Willie.

Rachel arrives, finding streaks of blood, and signs of a struggle. She finds grams in the kitchen, and as she calls 911, her boyfriend gets mauled by the werewill.

Willie returns to the house to harass Rachel, and in the struggle she happens upon gran's silver cake server, and stabs it right into Will's neck. That'll do the trick, I guess.

Back in the kitchen, Grams is coming to, and the ambulances arrive, taking her to the hospital. It's a miracle she's alive!

Rachel waits by her grandmother's side until she wakes up, and we find out...WEREGRAMS! and she attacks her granddaughter. We only know she dies thanks to Uncle Mike, and FINALLY the kid seems to be asleep!

You can’t push Willie ‘round, Willie won’t go!

But AGAIN that pesky kid wakes up, screaming about monsters, and a frustrated Mike returns to show him just how many monsters there are. And to top it off, Brian begs for just ONE more story, about Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

This is not your father's tale of Goldilocks though, as the Bears of this story are actually the Baer family, a trio of criminals, and Papa and Baby Baer are escaping from a local mental asylum.

Mama shows up in her car so they can make good their escape, and head back to their old home that they think is abandoned.

They think wrong, however, as Goldi Lox has taken up residence, and is busily murdering potential boyfriends with her mind powers. ...Yeah, this one takes some liberties with the source material, I guess.

Carrie Lox mentally hauls her latest boyfriend inside to hang out with the rest of her corpses, and catches the news about the Baer breakout. They also do a short feature on Goldi's wave of murder, and she seems pleased to make the 6 o'clock news.

She somehow is able to zap the news reporters with her brain - who knows how far away they are, and through the tv. That's impressive.

Meanwhile, the Baers are still driving around, and Mamma Baer has some snacks for everyone...and it's porridge! Nice silly way to sneak it in, and Papa Baer is none to pleased, since that's all she ever makes!

Soda is an important part of having strong, healthy bones.

As the Baers rob a bank, the news continues to talk about all these criminals, and oh my gods, the police chiefs are Nimble and Quick. I should be angry but that's just the sort of silly reference I enjoy.

The Baers finally arrive home, and I am pleased to report we DO get a few, "Someone's been sleeping in my bed!" shout outs.

Papa finds Goldi in the shower, but she pleads to stick around, and they seem pleased with her body count. Talk about a match made in hell.

While the cops plot to raid the house, Baby and Goldi hit it off, and they start making out. Goldi is...oh so very squirmy. Things escalate though and when Baby doesn’t quite get “no means no”, she instinctively attacks with her brain powers, konking him with a tree.

Baby is unfazed though, since he is one of this big but not too bright lugs, and he keeps trying to kiss the girl, eventually leading to a loud scream that causes a veritable earthquake. ...Did the ground shake for you to, babe?

As the cops get ready to bust in guns blazing, the Baers sit down for lunch, of MORE porridge. Papa is fed up with this, and he throws his hands in the air, saying let's just go get a pizza.

Which is good, since that gets them out of the house when the cops finally start firing, the house is empty when they hit some dynamite and everything goes boom.

And in the carnage, the Baers and Lox are believed killed, so they drive off to live happily ever after, and Brian FINALLY goes to sleep.

Until an actual monster does pop up and eat him and oh thank god.

X-Men line editor Jordan White should totally sneak this guy onto Krakoa.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: As I come to expect from Shout Factory, a solid job with the transfer, and it all looks more than fine.

Audio: A good mix with no complaints.

Sound Bite: “She'll be like the daughter we never had!” “And you'll be like the parents I really slaughtered!”

Body Count: I almost always end up with a good pile of bodies in an anthology, at least!

1 - Village priest gets killed by the crones.
2 - "Hannibal" gets a knife in the face.
3 - Second witch gets conked on the head hard enough to die, I guess.
4 - Peter removes the third witch's heart.
5 - Edited version of the story has Peter get choked
6 - As well as the girl
7 - Grams gets offed by the big bad woof.
8 - And then Rachel's boyfriend
9 - Willie the Wolf gets a silver cake slicer in the neck.
10 - And then weregrams eats Rachel.
11 - Guard gets run down by Momma Bear.
12 - Goldie offs her boyfriend with her mind power.
13 - Waitress totally accidentally chokes
14 - Mailman gets run over
15 - Brian gets eaten by a grue.

Best Corpse: …Can I give the award to Magoga’s body reanimating? That’s technically a NON corpse, but holy potatoes was that a cool sequence.

Blood Type - B+: Some really good effects in each story. Lots of dead bodies around Goldi, the aforementioned Magoga reanimation…the weakest part is the werewill mask, but the rest of the movie makes up for it. The blood itself is light at times, but on balance, very well done.

Sex Appeal: Some brief hints of nudity, like the barest moments where Goldi is showering. Nothing to write home about.

Drink Up! every time Brian whines about monsters

Movie Review: I really enjoy this anthology. The stories are all well made, well written, and well crafted. The acting isn’t the best, but I have seen so much worse, it’s about average here. But the stories are fun, with enough scares and kills, that this is just a very solid movie. The worst part is the tone is ALL over the place. Fortunately, the tone of each story is more or less contained, aside from the sudden wackiness of the new ending of the Peter story being suddenly silly. But to go from a decent, tense werewolf story, to the very slapsticky and goody Three Baers is a bit jarring. But since they have their own tone and don’e bleed over, it mostly works. Four out of five Magoga hearts.

Entertainment Value: The effects work is top notch, the stories may get silly, but remain amusing, and there’s some good chuckles to be had. It’s nothing in the ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of entertainment, just a good, solid workman like movie. Three out of five dead boyfriends.