It`s an irony that ”The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover,” so stylized with symbolism and intellectual freight, should have been branded with an X rating, while ”Tales From the Darkside” and others of its ilk, which serve up gore as pure titillation, slide by with an R.
”Tales” is the sort of movie that uses grisliness as a condiment, dressing up the bland fare that serves as plot, masking the humdrum performances of its stars and the tentativeness of its director. It`s there to wake up the tastebuds of a jaded horror-show audience that squeals with pleasure at decapitations and scissors-stabbings, and that would otherwise walk out of a film as predictable and tedious as this one.
Comprising three stories deemed unsuitable for the television series of the same name, ”Tales From the Darkside” tries for the hip, deadpan tone so fashionable in the horror genre. Screenwriter Michael McDowell
(”Beetlejuice”), taking a page from the legend of Scheherezade, has fashioned a wraparound story in which a wealthy suburbanite (Deborah Harry)
prepares to roast her captive paperboy (Matthew Lawrence). To postpone his fate, the boy beguiles her with a series of tales, which we see as he relates them.
”Lot 249,” awkwardly adapted by McDowell from a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, places Christian Slater in an English-style university where one of his housemates runs an antiquities import business on the side. When the housemate (Steve Buscemi) discovers he has been cheated out of a fellowship by Slater`s sister and her boyfriend, he resurrects his latest acquisition-an Egyptian mummy-and sets him loose on the villains, with savage results.
”Cat From Hell,” adapted by George Romero from a story by Stephen King, stars William Hickey as an ancient pharmaceuticals tycoon who hires a hit man (David Johansen) to vanquish a murderous cat. This story panders to contemporary causes, since it turns out the cat is on a mission to avenge about 5,000 brothers and sisters slaughtered by Hickey`s company in the name of science.
Director David Harrison has taken this story and made it look like a third-rate vampire flick-lots of exaggerated lighting, some predictably offbeat camera angles and a chord-heavy soundtrack composed by Chaz Jankel.
”Lover`s Vow” stars James Remar as an unsuccessful New York sculptor who witnesses the terrible death of a friend at the hands of a gargoyle and, in the same night, meets a mysterious young woman (Rae Dawn Chong) whose arrival signals a dramatic change in his life and fortunes.
Of the three tales, this is the most satisfactorily realized, in part because it`s rendered without affectations and in part because it`s an original script by McDowell. Robert Klein, as Remar`s agent, gets to deliver the line that gives the denouement its feeble irony. (”For an agent, being a monster is just credentials.”) But even here, the film`s rhythm is sluggish, with gore strategically placed in case the audience nods off.
`TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE`
(STAR)
Directed by John Harrison; written by Michael McDowell and George Romero based on stories by McDowell, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Stephen King;
photography by Robert Draper; production design by Ruth Ammon; editing by Harry B. Miller III; produced by Richard P. Rubenstein and Mitchell Galin. A Paramount Pictures release at area theaters. Running time: 1:33 minutes. MPAA rating: R.
THE CAST
Andy……………………Christian Slater
Betty…………………..Deborah Harry
Halston…………………David Johansen
Drogan………………….William Hickey
Preston…………………James Remar
Carola………………….Rae Dawn Chong
