A cheerful coroner introduces three spine-chilling tales to tantalise us; a young woman is terrorised at a lonely gas station by a homicidal maniac, a vain man obsessed with his thinning hair unwisely agrees to a new miracle growth treatment, and a baseball player who receives an eye transplant starts to have disturbing visions of its former owner.
This is a way above average TV-movie made for the Showtime cable network by two great horror filmmakers, with a nicely crafted script by Billy Brown and Dan Angel. If it has a flaw, it's that the stories descend in quality as they go on; The Gas Station is a terrific heart-in-your-mouth suspenser, Hair is a hilariously silly satire of middle-aged male vanity, but Eye is a dogmatic and familiar variant of the old Les Mains D'Orlac tale, albeit with a clever visual/religious twist. Its main appeal is the cult movie fan's dream cast; they aren't exactly good (with the exception of Keach, who is outstanding) but boy are they weird ! Carpenter appears in his only real acting role (mercifully perhaps) as the gleeful, cackling Cryptkeeper of a coroner, Warner (with a fabulous rug) and Harry run a kooky clinic, Easton and Twiggy are thankless girlfriends, various iconic film directors appear - Wes Craven (as a creep), Sam Raimi (as a corpse), Roger Corman (as a doctor) - and Carpenter regulars Carradine, Flower and Jason all play ne'er-do-wells. It's a howl. It also has some cracking scenes, like Flower's sudden appearance, or the two-minute take of Keach admiring himself in the mirror, and Carpenter - who is made-up, but not much, he really does look that scary - is pretty irresistible, drinking formaldehyde, chatting to his newly-deceased clientele and generally hamming it up. This is a hard-to-find, minor TV classic, but well worth it for horror fans. Purists please note - the DVD print released by Artisan Home Entertainment runs about two minutes shorter than the original, taking out some gore and nudity, Craven's bit, a scene with Twiggy on the phone, various morgue gags and a great final shot of Carpenter. A neat little weird horror flick.
This is a way above average TV-movie made for the Showtime cable network by two great horror filmmakers, with a nicely crafted script by Billy Brown and Dan Angel. If it has a flaw, it's that the stories descend in quality as they go on; The Gas Station is a terrific heart-in-your-mouth suspenser, Hair is a hilariously silly satire of middle-aged male vanity, but Eye is a dogmatic and familiar variant of the old Les Mains D'Orlac tale, albeit with a clever visual/religious twist. Its main appeal is the cult movie fan's dream cast; they aren't exactly good (with the exception of Keach, who is outstanding) but boy are they weird ! Carpenter appears in his only real acting role (mercifully perhaps) as the gleeful, cackling Cryptkeeper of a coroner, Warner (with a fabulous rug) and Harry run a kooky clinic, Easton and Twiggy are thankless girlfriends, various iconic film directors appear - Wes Craven (as a creep), Sam Raimi (as a corpse), Roger Corman (as a doctor) - and Carpenter regulars Carradine, Flower and Jason all play ne'er-do-wells. It's a howl. It also has some cracking scenes, like Flower's sudden appearance, or the two-minute take of Keach admiring himself in the mirror, and Carpenter - who is made-up, but not much, he really does look that scary - is pretty irresistible, drinking formaldehyde, chatting to his newly-deceased clientele and generally hamming it up. This is a hard-to-find, minor TV classic, but well worth it for horror fans. Purists please note - the DVD print released by Artisan Home Entertainment runs about two minutes shorter than the original, taking out some gore and nudity, Craven's bit, a scene with Twiggy on the phone, various morgue gags and a great final shot of Carpenter. A neat little weird horror flick.