Drive-in Horrorshow

"Drive-In Horrorshow" is a low-budget horror anthology made of 5 segments that have nothing in common, except that they all belong to a particular horror sub-genre. These segments are introduced by a ghoulish host that looks straight out of a b&w TV show, which nicely hints at the anachronistic nature of the segments, or rather their desire to encompass all eras of horror movies.

In no particular order, there's the monster movie, the torture movie, the slasher, the urban maniac and some sci-fi with men in black thrown in. This should make for a fun spectacle, but most of the segments go nowhere. The most blatant example is the first bit, "The Pig", which is 10 minutes of a raped girl torturing her tormentor in the bathtub until...he dies. There's no twist. This can also be said of the sci-fi segment, which reads like the 1st 20 minutes of a movie and then cuts. The slasher bit is simply 90 minutes of SOV backwoods slasher condensed in 20 minutes.

Although not original in any way, the "Meat Man" segment at least has endearing performances by the lead kids and some sort of twist, as does "The Closet". You get the feeling that the director simply wanted to pay respect to the many sub-genres of horror, but was simply out of ideas. As a homage, it works in a modest way, but as a movie, there is simply nothing to hold on to.

The grue is omnipresent, though surprisingly no so much in the torture segment. Even with 20 minutes segments, this mostly bored me. There's obviously a lot of heart, but no ideas. Next time, try a script.