29 July 2008

TTT: Chillers (1987)

I love horror anthology films. They're the closest thing film has to sittin' 'round the campfire swapping ghost stories. In this one, five random people get stuck in a bus station late at night after missing a connection. To pass the time, they all describe the horrible nightmares they had the night before: a coed on the swim team meets everyone who's ever died in the school's pool, a young scout discovers his geeky scoutmaster is a bit psycho, a man discovers he can wish the dead back to life, a woman's news anchor crush turns out to be a vampire, and a college professor battles the resurrected spirit of an Aztec god.

Most of the stories aren't particularly great; they're all about ghosts / evil scoutmasters / accidentally-resurrected serial killers / god-possessed college students chasing people around. The only one that really piqued my interest was the vampire newscaster tale. It features a middle-aged woman who is so lonely that she calls up the 11 o'clock news anchor when she hears his voice in her head telling her to do so. Miraculously, despite hanging up on him due to embarrassment, the anchor tracks her down and shows up at her door. One thing leads to another, he moves in with her, she finds out he's a blood-sucker and he turns her into a 3- or 4-day guaranteed meal ticket. I dunno. It had some potential for pathos that the other stories did not.



d. Daniel Boyd