This is one feeble, flaccid piece of ho-hummery. I was hoping for something creepy and unsettling, but these stories start exactly as they mean to go on, with no surprises, no attempt at atmosphere, just a lot of camp. Basically, each story starts, does the set up, then plays out exactly as you'd expect it to. So, in "Sweet Tooth" and "Grim Grinning Ghost", a ghost story is related by characters and...yep, they come true. "The Ransom of Rusty Rex" replays O. Henry's classic short story, "The Ransom of Red Chief" to little effect (whoever thought that a man chasing a diminutive demon round a warehouse could be so boring?). To be fair, "Trick" brings a nice, disturbing twist, and in "Ding Dong" Pollyanna McIntosh is a stand-out in an otherwise bland cast, looking as if she's having an immense amount of fun and being genuinely disturbing -- or as close as anything in this film gets. There are puzzling cameos (how did such talent? Did any of them read the script? Could none of them help?) and self-aggrandising references (ie, a riff on Carpenter's "Halloween" theme every time a pumpkin is shown) but this film is too camp to land a blow anywhere: it's not funny and it's not remotely scary.
Review of Tales of Halloween
