The Morguekeeper

Horror comes in many forms and three of them can be seen in the 1993 anthology film Body Bags. Primarily a John Carpenter production, with two stories directed by Carpenter and one by Tobe Hooper, it was originally intended to be a Showtime series designed to compete with HBO's Tales from the Crypt. I don't know how good the show might've been but as a film it's pretty good.

John Carpenter himself suffers the indignity of imitating the Cryptkeeper, appearing in host segments as a living cadaver who makes wisecracks about his fellow corpses. It's the only part of the movie that really doesn't work, though it's difficult to judge it on its own merits because most of the time I was just thinking, "You're not the Cryptkeeper, you'll never be the Cryptkeeper, and, let's face it, you don't really want to be the Cryptkeeper."

The best segment is the first story, "The Gas Station", directed by, though not written by, Carpenter himself.

Alex Datcher stars as Anne, a young woman on her first evening at work as an overnight gas station attendant. I really appreciated how Carpenter stayed with her point of view. We feel nervous for her with each new appearance by a strange customer who might be the killer. It's also one of those moments in an older film where I enjoy the novelty of a main character being genuinely working class. From the details of her desk routine and the business with the bathroom key the viewer's really left with the impression that someone who worked on this movie knew what it was like to work at a gas station.

Alex Datcher doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry but she's perfectly fine in the role. She's pretty and good at seeming genuinely scared. But the short is probably more notable for its cameos by David Naughton and Robert Carradine, not to mention two legendary horror directors, Wes Craven and Sam Raimi.

I thought the second story was nicely, perversely funny. "Hair" stars Stacy Keach, David Warner, Sheena Easton, and Deborah Harry. Keach plays a man obsessed with his thinning hair and David Warner is the sinister doctor who gives him more hair than he wants. And also tiny snakes.

The final story comes from Tobe Hooper and is a nice variation on the old "possessed by surgical transplant" story. In this case, Mark Hamill plays a baseball player who loses his eye. A pair of doctors played by none other than Roger Corman and John Agar replace it with a serial killer's eye. Things go as you might expect, which is to say, unhappily for Hamill's character and his wife, played by Twiggy.

I almost thought Hamill and Twiggy had unsimulated sex in this movie. In a very unsexy sex scene shot from behind the two, you can see between both their legs and it definitely looked like something was going into Twiggy. Inspecting screenshots, I saw what I think was a modesty sock on Hamill. It really looks like Twiggy was penetrated, though, so I almost think it's a strap-on. Which would raise a whole lot of questions. I'm still not sure what I was seeing.

No, I won't post the screenshots, you perverts! Watch the movie yourself. It's available on Shudder.

Our Idea of Fun

What could be more fun than terror? It sounds strange but it's basically the idea behind funhouses, as demonstrated in 1981's The Funhouse. Directed by Tobe Hooper, it portrays events that form a commentary on the concept of fear as entertainment. I'm not sure Hooper has a point precisely but it's an interesting rumination on how humans get their kicks.

Several horror movies are directly referenced. Right at the beginning we get an enjoyably gratuitous reference to Psycho. The film's protagonist and obvious Final Girl, Amy (Elizabeth Berridge), is taking a shower when her little brother intrudes to stab her with a rubber knife. Furious at the prank, she chases him to his bedroom where she promises to get him back for it someday, somehow. We see the little boy's room is covered with horror memorabilia, including three stills from Bride of Frankenstein.

Downstairs, their father is actually watching Bride of Frankenstein on TV. Later, at the carnival where most of the film takes place, we get our first sight of this film's monster (Wayne Doba), looking fairly inconspicuous in a Frankenstein's monster mask.

These aren't just references to movies, they're put in the context of performance. The little boy was trying to scare his sister, the monster is wearing a monster mask as part of the funhouse. But then there's real horror also presented in an audience/performer dichotomy, first when the film's teens see a pair of real deformed cows on display at the carnival, then when they actually witness a murder.

They witness it through the slats of floor boards above the room where it takes place, much like a movie audience watches events take place between characters unaware that they're being observed.

Again, I don't think Hooper is making an argument with any of this--of if he is, it doesn't come through very well. But that's okay. It's a good jumping off point for ideas. I suppose you could say it mischievously implicates the audience for gawping at the strange and pathetic.

The monster commits the murder of the fortune teller, Zena (Sylvia Miles), after he's prematurely ejaculated after he paid her to have sex with him. As a teen film, in which the main teenage characters are contemplating whether or not to have sex, it's a nice way of exploiting a young person's discomfort over sexuality. I like how the monster does all this wearing a Frankenstein's monster mask. The immobility of the mask gives it the same kind of creepiness as Michael Myers or even, of course, Hooper's own Leatherface. The fact that it's one movie monster wearing the mask of another movie monster is kind of intriguing.

I liked Elizabeth Berridge as Amy. She's pretty. It's pretty clear at the beginning that she's going to survive longer than the other teens because she expresses reluctance about going to the carnival and about having sex. But she's not as morally pure as other Final Girls--she laughs with her friends at the deformed cows and at the old fortune teller. But I was still rooting for her to escape.

The Funhouse is available on Shudder.