My review was written in May 1986 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.
"Dead Time Stories", originally titled "Freaky Fairy Tales", is an unsatisfactory horror comedy in three segments. Only audienced is diehard fans for special makeup effects.
Structure closely resembles that of "Creepshow", with a little boy demanding that his uncle recite scary bedtime stories to help him go to sleep.
Only the first tale is effective: a low-budget but interesting to look at medieval story of Peter (Scott Valentine), a fisherman's son sold into slavery to two witches. He saves a girl they intend to sacrifice in order to conjure back to life their warlock brother (using remains of his heart fetched from his grave). Makeup effects are very impressive here as the heart gradually recreates the whole body by spouting blood vessels, sinews and red creeping flesh in an amazing set piece. Half-hour story also features a funny trick ending.
The following two segments of "Dead Time Stories" are truly terrible and a test of any audience's endurance. Part Two has the story of Red Riding Hood updated to the present with Rachel (Nicole Picard) as a sey girl in red jogging togs who goes to the drugstore to fetch Maalox for her granny. The Maalox is accidentally mixed up with a drug fix for wolf Willie, who is a sleazebag as well as a werewolf. He bites, and kills granny when he goes to her house to exchange the drugstore parcels and is in turn done in by resourceful Rachel. Guess what Granny turns into?
Idiiotic finale revamps the "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" tale into sophomoric slapstick. Goldie (Cathryn De Prume) is a blonde with a big chest who killed her parents at age eight, followed by other killing sprees. She's just escaped from an insane asylum as have Mr. Baer and his lame-brained son, sprung from stir by Ma Ma Baer (Melissa Leo). The four of them team up and fight it out with the local cops. Oddest element of this amateurish segment is the casting of Melissa Leo, a talented young actres, with black wig and some makeup as the matriarch with an adult son.
Technical credits and acting are weak throughout.
