• Directed by Michael P. Russin
• Written by Jayson Palmer and Michael P. Russin
• Starring
  • Gene Moore
  • Lori Thomas
  • Nathan Lanmanb
  • Karen Wooley

Beginning, middle, end. Beginning, middle, end. Everyone say it along with me: “Beginning, middle, end.” Very good.

What does a story have to have to be considered a story? Beginning, middle, end. Lose any of that, and you don’t have a story. You have a vignette, or a scene, or a scenario, or a sketch, or something.

I don’t think I’m being bearish if I expect that from a movie. Even a shoestring indie. I mean, there are a lot of things you might not be able to afford on a microbudget — certainly not all at once. Film. Sets. Costumes. Special effects. Actors (both in quantity and quality). I can be forgiving of deficiencies in all of the above, because I understand that their presence or absence is very much dependent on monetary resources.

Chunky dead guy alert!

But a story? That’s not necessarily expensive. It’s typing. It takes no more time or money to write a good story than to write a bad one. And since having a story to tell is foundational to narrative moviemaking, it behooves a filmmaker to make sure that the story is good, because (as an itinerant preacher and agitator in the Middle East said 2000 years ago) it makes a big difference if your house is built upon a rock or on the sand.

And making an anthology movie is no excuse for not telling complete stories. You’re just telling more of them. The stories have to be smaller, since you’re going to tell each of them in less time, but that doesn’t give an excuse for not telling whole stories. Complete with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I’m not harping on Creepy Tales because it’s a particularly horrendous example of this flaw, but… well, let me show you what I mean.

The anthology is hosted by “The Professor” (Joe Heffernan), a coffin-lurking genteel spook in formalwear, meant to call to mind the old TV-style horror-host. (From the miniature set used to establish the spooky old mansion in which he lives, it appears that The Professor’s digs represent the hidden dark side of Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood.) In classic bwa-ha-hah style, he Rod Serlings us into the stories:

“Heh heh. Heh. Heh heh heh.”

First up. In a sepia-toned flashback, a ten-year-old boy is propositioned by two clergymen (the one with the goatee’s James Eisenfeld; the other one’s Dan Kosa) for a hush-hush little mission in the church, if you know what I mean (and given the connotations of even seeing a priest with a youth these days, I’m sure you can imagine).

Now it’s twenty years later, and the boy, Ray (now played by Gene Moore) has something of a deadhead: ripped flannel clothes, wild hair, scuzzy goatee, and a Beavis & Butthead demeanor. Oh, and he now has Monsignor Duran (Eisenfeld) in his trunk, on the way to an out-of-town mechanical shed to terrorize him with his girlfriend Nevada (Lori Thomas).

By the way, Duran hasn’t changed much in twenty years — same haircut and goatee, with a smattering of white shoe polish through it. The other priest, Father Leonard (Kosa), is about the same (even less shoe polish, if possible), although halfway through he exhibits a sudden haircut.

So then… um… well, Ray and Nevada kick Duran some and make veiled violent allusions to what the priests did to young Ray, using a vocabulary not entirely in keeping with their southern redneck delivery. Meanwhile, Leonard finds the ransom note that was left and drives out into the country.

And when he gets there, Ray shoots them and himself. The end.

Sorry, but that’s not a story. At best, it’s an event; at worst, it’s a series of time-killing scenes meant to pad a smidgen of an idea out to twenty minutes.

“So it’s okay to get blood on this carpet, right?”

Second up (after The Professor gives us a vague little cautionary monologue about the masks we wear in our lives — thanks, Prof, but Billy Joel said it better twenty years ago):

Mike (Nathan Lanman) and his girlfriend Daria (Karen Wooley) watch a stupid zombie movie on TV, until Mike just can’t stand how badly it sucks. He then goes on an impassioned rant about how there aren’t any creative ideas coming out of Hollywood, and there hasn’t been an original script since Pulp Fiction, and how he’d be able to give them a great screenplay if given half a chance. (Note to microbudget filmmakers: I understand that the biggest audience for microbudget films is other microbudget filmmakers. But I suspect that even other filmmakers get tired of watching films about filmmakers. And if you’re going to have a character get all impassioned about the quality of scripts, you’d damned well better have a stupendous one yourself.) And when Daria tries to console him by telling him that she didn’t marry him for his million-buck screenwriting ability, all he hears is condemnation and accusations.

So he does what anybody would do in this situation: He goes into the bathroom, pulls out his handy theater makeup tacklebox, paints his face like a cross between the Crow and Ronald McDonald, pulls out a crossbow, and goes girlfriend hunting.

No, I DON’T think Brandon Lee would have gotten as much respect with a red-tipped nose.

Which really doesn’t lead to much suspense, as she’s in the next room, and even using all of her “Final Girl” tricks, the show’s over in two minutes.

Again — that’s not a story. It’s maybe a setup for a story, or the first draft of an exploratory character piece that really doesn’t explore too far… but by the time any real dramatic situation presents itself, it’s over.

The third segment — all right, this one actually IS a story. Struggling artist Jim (David Benson) is committed to his art and craft, but just can’t seem to make that big break. You can see how dedicated he is when he’s willing to draw mostly naked hotties (like Lori Thomas again) while his live-in isn’t home. (For most of it, she’s just barely what we call a “draped model” in the art world, though for about one full second she crosses over to the “undraped” side of the fence.) In fact, girlfriend Diane (Elizabeth A. Scott) is nearing the end of her rope; Jim spends so much time trying to win and complete assignments, with the Big One always just out of his grasp, that he doesn’t seem to have time for her anymore.

In an errant moment, Jim makes one of those declaration that those of us who watch these movies know better than to make: He says something about being willing to sell his soul for success, and suddenly, his basement studio is visited by the smarmy “Sam Hain” (Gene Moore again, this time in a nice suit and ponytail). It only takes smart ol’ Jim a moment to divine his visitor’s true identity, and rather than go for the standard “soul for success” deal, he proposes an alternative: Jim will do Satan’s portrait. If it manages to capture the essence of the Lord of Darkness, then Jim gets success and all that, without signing over his soul. If the portrait isn’t up to snuff for Scratch, then Jim gets no success but keeps his soul anyway.

Hubba.

Can Jim truly capture the inner fire that is the Infernal Adversary? Can he win the good life for himself and Diane? And more importantly, can Lucifer still manage to turn it all to his advantage?

Hey, I’m not going to tell you (though I know which way I was betting). At least it’s a story. Granted, it’s a deal-with-the-devil story, which is a cliche roughly as old as Creation itself, but at least it’s a story.

Sometimes I wonder if anthology movies aren’t really a deceptively evil trap for indie filmmakers. True, it means you don’t have to assemble as large a cast for as many shooting days; you can even do each segment as a separate little bite-sized production. But so few moviemakers have really been weaned on short films; their dream is to make features, and somehow they don’t know how to bring their sensibilities down to the scale needed for stories of 30 minutes or less. The whole ends us being less than the sum of its parts.

My advice to the Cinema Sky principals is to take their experience in running a production and concentrate on something feature length. Something with real building drama, something big enough that both they and the audience can really sink their teeth into it.

Something with a beginning, a middle, and… well, you know by now.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 6
• breasts: 2
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• “Misfits” T-shirts: 2
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0