Rish Outfield's reviews
This was an anthology film with campy introductions by Carpenter himself as a Crypt Keeper-like character who made bad puns and poked fun and people in the morgue.
The stories (two directed by Carpenter and one by Hooper) were nothing I haven't seen before, but they were interesting and well-paced. Setting these apart from the Tales From the Crypt series was the fact that the main characters were always innocent, decent people, to which horrible things happen. In the old comics and the television show, the main characters were always despicable and deserved what they got. These seemed a lot more tragic and less fun because of it. The silly Carpenter intros were totally over the top and irreverent, but it didn't really fit with the seriousness of the stories they accompanied. The first story is really pretty scary, and there are moments in the other two, but the real reason to watch this is for the cameos. It is amazing, but every part, with the rarest of exceptions, was filled by a familiar face, most of them within the horror community. I jotted down some names as I watched, and found old favourites like David Warner, Mark Hamill, Wes Craven, Roger Corman, David Naughton, Buck Flower, Robert Carradine, Stacey Keach, Sheena Easton, Sam Raimi, Twiggy, Debbie Harry, Tom Arnold, Tobe Hooper, and even Kato Kaelen! That added a lot of fun to the movie and made up for the rest of its shortcomings.
Best Scare: Probably a bit of graffiti in a restroom that is evil beyond belief.
I'd Recommend It To: Anthology fans and fans of familiar faces.

The tyranist's thoughts
Maybe I just don't get these anthology shows. Apparently, somewhere out there, there is a network that exclusively shows horror anthology movies. I think that this is the fifth one we have reviewed. All of them are made for TV and all of them seem to lack something fundamental. Don't get me wrong. There are individual stories that I like (the first story in Necronomicon really got me) and there are even entire anthologies that I think are pretty cool (someday we will have to review Quicksilver Highway for you), but over all there just seems to be something not quite there in these.
The framing story in this one was kind of pathetic, but not the worst I've ever seen. And actually now that I think about it I much prefer having a framing story to having none. Still, I'm glad John Carpenter is usually behind the camera.
The first entry didn't really grab me. It seemed to be pretty standard slasher fare. There were a couple of moments and naturally I didn't expect the killer to be who he was. I just didn't find it that great.
The second entry was something kind of cool and the sort of horror/sci-fi show I would expect from a TV effort. It had the standard twist (which wasn't that hard to guess given the facts), and story was entertaining especially since I think balding men who are obsessed with their appearance have problems anyway. My one complaint was Stacy Keach's girlfriend (played by Scottish siren Sheena Easton). One accent, not two. Was she trying to play and American or a Scot?
Lastly came the Mark Hamill episode. I haven't seen many good horror movies with Mark in them. In fact I haven't seen one. There were moments in this one that were creepy and he was really over the top on his portrayal of the psychopath, but I just don't think horror and baseball mix.
On the whole, you could do much worse for a night's entertainment, but remember going in, this is a made for TV anthology. It just isn't going to be what you might get out of a standard horror film.