Rating: C
Dir: Brian Peck
Star: Sean Astin, Michael Bower, Ian Fried, James Karen
I didn’t realize when I started watching this, the director is pretty notorious. Let’s just say, it’s never a good thing when your Wikipedia article, before getting to a resume, includes the term “convicted sex offender”. For Peck was arrested in 2003 following his sexual assault of a 14-year-old boy. The Quiet on Set documentary series goes into a lot more of the disturbing details. After discovering this, the whole atmosphere of this horror-comedy anthology takes on a far darker tone. The sheer number of pubescent boys in this, makes it feel more like a buffet for the director than a film production. Nor should we dwell on the multiple times they’re shown peeing themselves.
In fact, the title along is enough to make me go, “Hmm…” Did Peck indeed give his young stars the willies, if you know what I mean, and I think you do? Trying – and, admittedly, largely failing – to put all that to one side, this is an odd, even by horror terms, selection of stories. The wraparound has three kids in a tent, including Astin, telling each other scary stories and urban legends – the deep-fried rat gets a quick reenactment. It’s interesting to note Astin’s character is called Michael, the same as in The Goonies, and a line mentions “The time you and your friends found that pirate ship in an old cave.” The film also reunites Peck with two of his co-stars from The Return of the Living Dead, in Karen and Clu Gulager.
There’s only two chapters here. In the first, Danny (Fried) is tormented by bullies at school, left dangling from the ceiling in a way that recalls a kinbaku video. [I told you it’s difficult to let go…] His only ally is the school’s janitor (Karen). However, in the school toiliets, he discovers one of the cubicles is occupied by a monstrous creature. Danny barely manages to escape with his life, and decides to lure his tormentors into the bathroom so they can become its next victims. It’s pretty mean-spirited when you think of it, possessing an EC Comics tone at odds with the wraparound. However, I’m a sucker for a stop-motion monster, and appreciated seeing one here.
Compared to the protagonist of the other segment though, Danny is positively normal (in another thing to make you go “Hmm…”, actor Fried changed his/her sex, and is now known as “Ina”). Gordy (Bower, who had some odd experiences on set with Peck) seems a serial killer in the making. His hobby is catching flies, removing their wings and using them to populate miniature dioramas: church, a diner, etc. He steals manure from a farmer to attract insects, except it’s specially engineered for growth, causing the flies to enlarge to extraordinary size. They take revenge by pulling Gordy’s arms off (top). What sick, warped mind could write this stuff? That would be… Brian Peck. Ah, no further questions, m’lud. Let us never speak of this film again.