Dr. Shock's Tales of Terror

You can't expect a lot with these no-budget SOV movies. This one I found to be a rather pleasant surprise. The movie consists of four short horror stories hosted by a guy named Dr. Shock, each reviewed individually below:

Bullet For A Vampire - An old fortune teller summons a vampire named Drake Ula (Get it?) to exact revenge on a mafia boss and his men. Drake falls in love with the boss' daughter after he saves her life, and the boss hires Drake to work for him (even though he says later that he doesn't like him), but Drake has his own plans. This one was my least favorite of the bunch, kind of boring and not that interesting. At the beginning we saw a vampire skeleton, and I was hoping that the skeleton was going to go around killing people, but I was sorely disappointed. The whole thing with the mafia was cool, but other than that it's just another vampire story. 6 out of 10.

The Town That Loved Pizza - A very Texas Chainsaw Massacre-y short about two inbred brothers, Obediah and Jedediah, who move into a new town to start a pizzeria (meat pizza only), then one by one people start going missing. This one's just some goofy, silly fun. Not my favorite story but I really enjoyed it. 7 out of 10.

The Garden Tool Murders - A dork is picked on by some bullies at the park, and is then chased by a lunatic grounds keeper who is constantly taking crap from his boss. The dork is never seen or heard from in the movie again. The grounds keeper then goes around killing random people with various garden tools, while his boss is setting up a cherry festival. This leads to an... interesting climax. There is some nice gore in this one. Just don't expect anything but mindless gore. People basically show up on screen just to spill their guts. I liked it. 8 out of 10.

Demon's Day - A woman is being chased by a hooded figure and has her heart ripped out. She is then taken to a morgue where a doctor checks her out and finds samples of her killer's flesh under her fingernails, which he then clones, without knowing that he cloned Lucifer himself! Features some nice gore, a cute little devil baby, minions with hilarious voices and a climactic battle between the Lucifer clone and the real Lucifer. This one was undoubtedly the coolest of the bunch. 8 out of 10.

Now that I've covered the shorts themselves, let's talk about Dr. Shock himself. Frankly, he's annoying as hell. He's... energetic to say the least, and his jokes are just dumb, some times nonsensical. For example: "You know what the last thing on that guy's mind was when he got thrown into that meat grinder? His feet!" What?

Also, was it really necessary to have credits after all of the shorts? Couldn't they have just compiled it all together and saved it until the end of the movie? Well, at least most of the time they show a series of bloopers, which are entertaining to watch.

Bottom line: Save for Bullet for A Vampire and Dr. Shock himself, I actually enjoyed this movie a lot in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way.

For a lot of folks, this may be the worst movie they will ever watch. I envy those people. While it looks and sounds like every bit of it's (probably) $25 budget, it does have a zany humour and variety that almost lifts it up to a Grade C movie. Almost. Maybe because it's an anthology and I have lower standards for 30 minute shorts than a normal feature length movie, perhaps because it's 3am, or maybe because I just watched Fungicide...*shudder*.. but this movie almost pulls off being entertainment. It's not great. It's not even good. But as far as "almost home movie" bad movies go, it's not the worst you could do. The insane landscaping tool battle alone is almost worth popping it in, as long as you have something else to do to keep you occupied... I give it a 4/10 because of what it achieves despite budgetary/technical constraints.