Review: Deadtime Stories (1986)

Deadtime Stories

Rating

Director

Jeffrey Delman

Screenplay

Jefffrey S. Delman, J. Edward Kiernan, Charles F. Shelton

Length

1h 33m

Starring

Scott Valentine, Nicole Picard, Matt Mitler, Cathryn DePrume, Melissa Leo, Kathy Fleig, Phyllis Craig, Michael Mesmer, Brian DePersia, Kevin Hannon, Timothy Rule, Anne Redfern, Casper Roos, Barbara Seldon, Leigh Kilton, Lesley Sank, Lisa Cain, Jeff Delman, Michael Berlinger, Fran Lopate, John Bachelder

MPAA Rating

Review

Fairy tales were intended to scare children into being good. Deadtime Stories might have scared the characters on screen but they wouldn’t likely have scared anyone in reality.

A three-part anthology, Deadtime Stories frames its narrative around a frustrated uncle (Michael Mesmer) wanting to enjoy his evening but being beholden to a sleepless boy (Brian DePersia) who wants bedtime stories like his parents tell. Attempting to tell a familiar fable, young Brian demands something original. Thus follows three progressively more gruesome horror stories that please neither child nor viewer.

The first story isn’t based on an existing fable but resembles it in its telling. Set in medieval times, a now-grown orphan (Scott Valentine) is raised by a pair of old crones (Anne Redfern, Phyllis Craig) who want to resurrect their long dead sister and encourage him to sucker a predatory vicar (Casper Roos) into their lair to use as a sacrifice. However, when they demand a nubile young woman (Kathy Fleig) as a victim, things get complicated. This one features the best effects in the film, frequently using a technique that reverses the image to reconstitute a body into its flesh-and-bone state. For this period, the effects are quite evocative even if they feel a bit dated by today’s standards.

Little Red Riding Hood is the foundation for the second narrative as another bosomy young woman (Nicole Picard) visits a pharmacy to pick up her grandmother’s (Fran Lopate) medicine but gets sidetracked by a sexual fling with a fellow high schooler (Michael Berlinger). Meanwhile the werewolf (Matt Miller) whose medication she received goes in search of her grandmother before it’s too late and he transforms. Makeup effects play a role in this chapter with the transformation to werewolf clearly inspired by the likes of American Werewolf in London but is perhaps a little less convincing.

Finally, we have an adaptation of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Cathryn de Prume is Goldi Lox, a telekinetic serial killer holed up in the house of the Baer bank-robbing family. There’s MaMa (Melissa Leo), PaPa (Kevin Hannon), and Baby (Timothy Rule). MaMa has just liberated PaPa and Baby from an insane asylum and are on their way back to their family home where they’ll encounter the dangerous Goldi Lox and will have to decide what to do with her. Apart from this being one of future Oscar winner Melissa Leo’s first film performances (it was her third feature film), there’s not much to the acting in this segment. It’s overly exaggerated as much as the prior two stories and the book-end but seems content in being over-the-top rather than trying for the semi-believability of the preview pair. The tonal shift from those chapters to this one is dramatic and while the outlandishness of it reminds one of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the absurdity is a bit too much.

That’s an apt description of the film entire. It’s a film that gets so outlandish at times that the audience must accept its absurdity or admit they were suckered. Paling in comparison to other ’80s anthologies like Creepshow and Tales from the Darkside the Movie, Deadtime Stories doesn’t seem to take itself seriously and the audience shouldn’t either. The most shocking fact about this film is it premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival. This may well be one of the worst and most surprising films ever to show at that celebrated cinematic event.

It’s not as likely modern audiences will trip across this film in the horror isle at their local video store like a lot of us who discovered their love for horror in the ’80s did in those vaunted venues. That will make its fade into obscurity more acute. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a film like Deadtime Stories, but for fans of that period’s crackpot horror offerings, it’s a bit of a shame that future generations might miss out on its abject lunacy.