"Creeptales" is a little known anthology of short films that I think deserves more accolades than it typically gets. Specifically I love the story called “Groovy Ghoulie Garage.” I am such a fan of this film that when I first stumbled across it many years ago I copied it to VHS and then later transferred that to DVD for safe keeping which indeed is still on my shelf and has been played many times.

 

Naturally the quality of such a copy of a copy sucks eggs so I jumped at the chance of owning it on a professionally produced DVD when I found it. Honestly I could have stuck with my pirate copy; the quality of the DVD version isn’t as much of an improvement as I’d hoped. But more on that in the buying guide.

 

If I were making a short horror film with my friends I would love to make something like “Groovy Ghoulie Garage.” The story follows two friends who break down along the side of the road in the middle of nowhere on Halloween. A kindly but odd-looking mechanic promises to have them up and running ASAP and suggests they kill time by heading over to the town’s big Halloween bash. There they discover something amiss as if the town were stuck in years passed.

 

The flick is campy but very enjoyably so. It carries a great sense of humor and combines a great ending with plenty of chuckles. The acting is a bit amateurish at times but is ceaselessly entertaining (which can really be said about all of the movie). It’s unfortunate that the two leads don’t have any other acting credits. I would love to check them out in other things. I also really enjoy the party music.

 

There’s more to the anthology, though. There’s a frame story that involves a bunch of ghouls tracking down a copy of "CreepTales" to watch on Halloween night. They dig up their dead uncle and steal the copy he was buried with, but he wants it back! The bulk of this romp involves their video watching party segments between the film shorts. It’s supposed to be humorous, but I found it just stupid silly (silly can be good but stupid silly not so much). The audio and video quality is so atrocious that it’s hard to tell what’s going on sometimes, and I often can’t understand what they are saying.

 

“Warped” is the first actual story. A woman has it in for a pretty young girl on the run. She’s “had it” with the lass. Flashback and we’ll find out why. Elizabeth is fresh out of a mental institution and visiting her extended family. She begins digging into her family’s past and uncovers some dark secrets that appear to be the root of the insanity to which her family seems prone.

 

This is a good vision but poor quality and execution. The editing could be better, and the acting is sometimes too over the top. Still it manages to have some good moments and has a satisfying payoff at the end.

 

“Snatcher” is all about a purse snatcher on the loose. He’s about to snatch the wrong bag! You’ll have to see it to find out why. It’s very short with cheesy effects, but I enjoyed it a lot even if the purse snatching montage goes on a bit too long. It features the only name in this whole project I recognize from other places, Tom Kenny. Yes, I do mean SpongeBob SquarePants! (and Wheelie – the new one). The credits suggest that it's actually him singing the montage song, too!

 

“The Closet” is even shorter. Is there something in the closet or is it just little Jeremy’s imagination? Another good offering with the exception of some of the costuming.

 

“Howling Nightmare” is all about a a werewolf tearing apart a posse that is hunting it. The wolf costume is bad and the whole thing just seems rather pointless if you don't catch the joke (which I didn't when I was younger). The dark humor is mildly amusing now that I do get it.

 

“Sucker” is probably the most polished of all the stories. It still very much falls into the realm of B movie, but it has better production, better acting, better costuming, and better effects than anything else here. It’s got a good story and is just overall an enjoyable if strange horror movie experience.

 

It’s about an unhappy middle-aged woman who dreams of killing her husband. An odd salesman shows up in the middle of the night with a magical ware: it sucks up bad thing like an ethereal vacuum cleaner. Of course, there are rules to using it and consequences for misuse. As you might expect she misuses it with monstrous consequences.

 

The IMDB date for this movie is 2004, and it lists a copyright date of 1989 for “Howling Nightmare.” I can promise you, though, that this is early 90's at the absolute latest. One date I've seen listed for it is 1986, and I figure that's probably closer to being correct than any other. I mention this because the movie shows its age. If you think you're about to watch even a low-budget flick made in '04 you might be unpleasantly surprised.