• Written, produced, and directed by Ryan Cavalline
• Starring
  • Adam Berasi
  • Zenova Braeden
  • Eddie Benevich
  • Julie Starz
  • Pamela Sutch

Way back when, 3 Evil Tales was Ryan Cavalline’s first microbudget movie, an anthology of short horror thrillers he’d done on a shoestring budget. Since then, he’s put out more shorts (somehow I missed Evil Tales 2), plus he’s moved on to (just barely) feature-length projects; Shudder, Serial Killer, and Demon Slaughter have all found their way here to be reviewed. It makes for an interesting contrast, now that Cavalline’s putting so much more energy into longer projects, to see him back in the medium in which he started.

This “final chapter” is actually four chapters, four little horror tales bridged by host Pamela Sutch with a book on her lap and very little on her body. (Sutch also appeared in Serial Killer, which pioneered Cavalline’s use of “remote collaboration” — having her and other actor-filmmakers film their own parts to edit into the finished project.) With an almost bubbly joie de vivre, she introduces the cautionary tales to follow.

Dude, it doesn’t matter how extreme your dieting methods are, you still need some willpower.

The first up is “The Madness,” which promptly presents another Cavalline calling-card: A naked woman caressing herself on a sofa. (Always remember: “A Film by Ryan Cavalline” = make-work project for local stripper.) She’s part of the dream of Frank (Eddie Benevich, also in Serial Killer), and for good reason: She’s his wife, who recently left him. The other part of the dream, the part we don’t see but which has Frank waking in a panic, is the part in which he takes an axe and dismembers her. (Hey, Ryan wasn’t paying the stripper that much…)

Frank calls the Crisis Hotline, which really doesn’t inspire confidence (he says, “Yes, is this the Crisis Hotline?” which leads me to wonder how the Crisis Hotline answers their phones). They set him up with a therapist to talk to, which also doesn’t inspire confidence, as the therapist just happens to be director Ryan Cavalline. After hearing about Frank’s murderous dreams, the therapist makes soothing noises about it all being normal, about needing time after the trauma, and about taking some of the sleeping pills that the doc just happens to dispense from his pocket without a prescription.

All of which should work out fine, but after another dream (this time, she’s in a bubble bath — at least he remembers the good parts, huh?), Frank wakes to find a double-headed axe on his kitchen linoleum, covered in blood…

Can ANYONE see these things in the hardware store anymore without immediately thinking, “Mass murderer”?

The problem with this story is one of the main complaints I have with Cavalline’s storytelling in general, so I might as well just get it off my chest right here and now: Cavalline seems to think in terms of situation, not in terms of story (you know, that old cliche that I keep trotting out: beginning, middle, end). This isn’t, as you might think, a complaint specific to the shorts in his anthology pictures; I have the same problem with the longer features, too. Sure, more stuff happens in them, but the structure (or lack thereof) is the same: A setup, followed by an ending. I keep feeling like I’m missing the middle third, or even worse, the LAST third. And that’s what happens here, though I won’t spoil it with specifics; suffice it to say that we’ve just gotten through the setup when the “zinger” ending hits.

(The other problem is that, seeing a bloody axe in his kitchen, Frank never even wonders who or what was killed, and the therapist doesn’t suggest it.)

I suppose as long as I’m breaking in here to air general grievances, I ought to also offer general commendations. Cavalline’s showing a lot more confidence with his camera these days, using both good composition and good rhythmic editing to gloss over shaky performances and prosaic locations. He also has a good ear for musical accompaniment to accentuate mood and support the rhythm of the editing.

“I keep ending up in this position in Ryan’s movies. I wonder if he’s trying to tell me something…”

So. Anyway. The second story is “The Dead Forest,” starring Adam Berasi (also star of both Serial Killer and Demon Slaughter) as a man on an unwanted errand into the woods. Of all of the stories in this anthology, this one has the premise richest for emotional depth, because Adam is a man who shot his own baby when it wouldn’t stop crying. There’s a reason that “babykiller” is one of the worst epithets in every human culture, but there’s also a reason that frustrated parents harm their children, with varying degrees of intent, every year. Infants can wear you down, deprive you of sleep and quiet, and put you in an emotionally unbalanced state. (Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.) And a particularly incessant crier, plus a single parent, is a potential recipe for disaster. Which is why Adam is both a monster and a sympathetic figure, and why he goes to the woods both to bury his child and to kill himself.

It’s probably because the premise is so emotionally charged that the letdown of the execution seems all the worse. He’s haunted in the woods, yes, by ghostly baby-giggling, and by an accusatory doppelganger version of himself… But really, could any such manifestation of demons, internal or external, be any worse than the simple knowledge that he had grabbed a revolver and emptied it into a crib? It would take a damned talented director a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to pull that off.

The third story is “The Nudy [sic] Channel,” a story of two losers, a basement apartment, and a cable channel… from hell! Scott (Shawn Meyer) and his roommate Joe (hey! it’s Ryan Cavalline again!) are in the habit of staying up late watching the porno station (clips graciously provided), but one night Scott is up even later, past the end of broadcasting, when suddenly the picture comes on again, and a sultry blonde (Zenova Braeden) makes a show of caressing herself while speaking “intimately” to him. He’s so entranced by the show that he makes a point of staying up late the next night, even though he can’t get Joe to stay awake that long.

Once upon a time, there was a princess who never learned to smile…

This time, though, after giving herself a loooong sloooow shower, the blonde calls Scott by name and invites him to join her — all he has to do is slit his wrists…

It’s probably unfair of me to mention this is as the story’s main failing, but Braeden doesn’t quite have the body of a porn star, or even of a local stripper. Not that I’d be embarrassed to be seen in public with her, but she doesn’t have the kind of ultra-perfect (or over-perfected) bod that one would expect to inspire devotion worthy of suicide.

On the other hand, Cavalline seems to enjoy playing a knuckle-scraping honyock after his turn as a soft-voiced therapist.

The final story, “Demons in the Basement,” seems almost an afterthought: A young doctor (Kevin Gillespie, who also showed his face in Serial Killer) sets up a videocamera to tell the story of the demon which he has trapped in the basement after it killed his girlfriend (Julie Starz), as shown in flashback. If you guess right out the gate that the demon will turn out to be the doctor’s own delusion, sit back and watch the rest while congratulating yourself: Everything is summed up in another remotely-collaborated scene featuring Joel Wynkoop as the shrink who didn’t want to release the delusional “doctor” from Sunnyville, reviewing the videotape with two police detectives.

Pamela Sutch — the hostess with the mostest!

A final summation on the final chapter(s), then? Well, it struck me as odd that there were four stories in this anthology, as the original was contained three, and three seems to be the classic number to have. I think my instinct was right; four stories, plus bridging segments, is too many for a 65-minute anthology. I wish Ryan Cavalline would have jettisonned the fourth story and given each of the remaining three more time, more meat on the bones. (Beginning, middle, and… well, you know.)

That said, I look back on my review and see that I come across as nothing but a critical SOB. Didn’t mean to. Ryan Cavalline’s got the confidence in his “camera eye” that he could become a serious force in microbudget filmmaking, if only the stories he chose to tell went that one step further. Who knows — maybe he’ll get pissed off at my review and vow to show me with his next movie.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 6
• breasts: 8
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 3
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0