Frames Of Fear — Frames Of Fear(DVD)
The film features six stories- with the whole thing been introduced & wrapped around by Festering Frank, who's played by George Stover- who started off his acting life in early John Waters films, going on to rack-up nearing 90 acting roles in various B-movie from between the 70’s & today. Stover does a satisfying enough comic & campy job as a gone-to-seed ghoulish presenter, with a cross-dressing helper who brings in the video tapes for each segment.
After the introduction, the first tale is "Night Demon"- and this is a decidedly sleazy & nasty start to proceedings. It features a man raping two separate women in their beds via found footage- then them taking revenge on him with force-feeding and rear-ending him with a stick- before dumping his body on a beach. It really lacks the humor, campiness & cheesiness of the rest of the segments, though the found footage & after torture scenes did make me slightly squirm.
The second tale is "Video Decay"- which finds people picking up a virtual reality game, where your scanned in avatar is stalked down the corridor by a deranged killer- the downside being you get hurt & possibly more when the killer attacks. This was a fun time, with the game having a nice crappy sort of late 80’s/ early 90’s look to it. The third tale is entitled "Housewarming- and as it’s title suggest it’s about a housewarming of a young women. This segment really made little or no impression on me- so for me was the lesser of the six tales.
Tale number four is "Format of the Dead",- and it tells of a trio of geeky VHS fans hunting down & stealing a rare tape. Who then get gory Herschel Gordon Lewis reattribution carried out on them by a full-figure zombified women. This segments a lot of fun, and will, of course, be enjoyed by tape-heads.
Tale five is "Wrestlemassacre"- and as its title suggests it’s themed around wrestling- we get a series of party guest been killed off by a seemingly immortal male wrestle. This segment felt quite Troma like in its feel, and while I know next to nothing about US wrestling I found this enjoyable enough.
Lastly, we have "Chester and Morty’s Grim Return"- and this tells of a group of well proportioned & tattooed women having a party in the house of their dead grandfather. The grandfather was a failed & crude mouthed ventriloquist who hung himself- and the doll still remains in the house. This stands as one of my favorite moments here- first, we get the women spouting this very cheesy dialogue, that sounds like it should be spoken by 1950’s teens. Next, we get the come-to-life dummy getting up to all manner of depraved stuff- like going down one of the women, stabbings,and intestine pull-outs. And lastly, we get some amusing softcore moments.
All in all, I was pleasant surprised by Frames Of Fear- most of the stories were enjoyable enough & the whole thing went by well. There was a good selection of cheap gore, cheesy dialogue, and lastly, it was nice to see more natural & well-proportioned women taking part in the film. So if you like lo-fi, mostly campy & fun horror fare I can certainly recommend this, and seemingly there is Frames Of Fear 2 out now- so I looking forward to checking this out.