Trapped Ashes (2006)

User Rating:

5.0/10   

Directors:

Sean S. Cunningham
Joe Dante

Writer (WGA):

Dennis Bartok (written by)

Genre:

Horror

Plot:

Seven strangers on a Hollywood movie studio tour are trapped inside an infamous House of Horror and forced to tell their most terrifying stories to get out alive. |

Plot Keywords:

Sex Scene | Cave | Doctor | Wraparound Story | Vampire

Cast

Jayce Bartok	...	Andy
Henry Gibson	...	Tour Guide
Lara Harris	...	Julia
Scott Lowell	...	Henry
Dick Miller	...	Max
Michèle-Barbara Pelletier	...	Nathalie / Martine (segment "My Twin - The Worm")
John Saxon	...	Leo
Rachel Veltri	...	Phoebe
Richard Ian Cox	...	Doug (segment "The Girl with Golden Breasts")
Glynis Davies	...	Nurse (segment "The Girl with Golden Breasts")
Scott Heindl	...	Zack (segment "The Girl with Golden Breasts")
Rob deLeeuw	...	Ben (segment "The Girl with Golden Breasts")
Mina E. Mina	...	Dr. Judith (segment "The Girl with Golden Breasts")
Winston Rekert	...	Dr. Larry (segment "The Girl with Golden Breasts")
Ken Russell	...	Dr. Lucy (segment "The Girl with Golden Breasts")

Also Known As:

Death Room (Japan: English title) (DVD title)

MPAA:

Rated R for sexual content, nudity, violence, disturbing images and language.

Runtime:

105 min

Country:

USA | Japan | Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR | Dolby Digital

Certification:

Argentina:16 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Company:

11:11 Mediaworks

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: In the first sequence, where the girl is about to have surgery, they hold the gas mask several inches from her face and never place it against her face.

Movie Connections:

References Crime Wave (1954)

Creepshow revisited

I don't know why but I used to be a huge fan of Creepshow and Tales from the crypt although the later series were rather lame. "Trapped Ashes" is very much in this tradition and features 4 horror shorts bound together in a surrounding plot of 2 couples and 2 solo people going on a sightseeing on a Hollywood movie site and getting stuck in an hold horror house with an old guy who leads them around. Turns out they can only leave if each tells their most frightening personal story... so here we go... Story 1 is about an actress who doesn't get any new jobs and decides to get a boob job. Now after her life turns around for the positive she soon realizes that her breast are vampire boobies feeding on human blood which doesn't go to well for her lovers. This story is pretty bizarre and trashy and captures the spirit of old "Tales from the crypt" stories best. Its totally idiotic but the end is so over the top its fun. Story 2 is a ghost-story about a couple moving to Japan where the woman is seduced by a monk who dies and takes her to hell where she turns into a succubus. Her husband soon learns he has to free her from there by feeding her a spell. The story is OK, but as frightening or thrilling as a Sesamestreet Episode. At least you get some naked shots and some nice animation sequences of old Japanese paintings which work pretty well. Story 3 is pretty much nothing leading nowhere. An actor and his best friend a scriptwriter regularly meet for chess until a girl appears. Soon the scriptwriter disappears and the actor begins a love affair to find out years later that the girl is some kind of ghost/witch/vampire... honestly I couldn't care less because the episode is boring and makes no sense. Story 4 is another strange one about a girl who grows up in her mothers womb along with a tapeworm and lives with a strange desire for collecting food for her "twin". When she is treated badly by her stepmother the "twin" takes revenge.

What most of the stories suffer from is incredibly long passages of introducing of characters and that is way stretched and often even unnecessary for the plod. So when the action starts most of the time is up and there is not too much time for the horror to happen. Like most of those story collections there is some bad apples in there and I couldn't recommend this average movie just for the vampire boobies and the finale. This is just for real die hard fans of horror shorts... the slow ghost movies won't be too interesting for neither "Tales..." Fans nor others because they don't lead nowhere. Too bad...