Tales from the Crypt like anthology of a group of people on a studio tour who get trapped in a "psycho" like house and tell ghost stories to escape. Of interest mainly for the directors involved-Joe Dante, Ken Russel, Sean Cunningham, Monte Hellman the film itself is a mixed bag. One story has to do with an actress getting her breasts done, another has to do with a Stanley Kubrick like director and an actor friend, Another has to do with a couple who go to Japan and discover a hanged man and the last has to do with a young woman and her twin..or something. Three of the four stories aren't bad, if over long. One (the girl and her twin) is just fair. The problem is the films don't really add up to much, more so that the sting in each tale is left for the very end of the film where we are told what really happened. Its a weird way to do it, and it almost works, but not quite since any tension from the stories are long gone by the final revelations (There is also a couple of lapses of internal logic as a result of the breaking apart.) Worth a look on a slow Saturday on cable. I do have to say that the Ken Russell "Girl with the Golden Breasts" tale is very amusing and a vast improvement over his direct to video home movies. I especially loved his cameo.

A group of tourists on a movie studio lot are locked in the House of Horror and forced to tell 'true' ghost stories about themselves in order to be released. The stories range from plastic surgery nightmares to necrophilia.

Mysteriously, this film started filming shortly after Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted was released. . . but, I'll just chalk that up to coincidence. From some of the (former) great minds of horror that have brought us such horrors as Friday the 13th, Altered States, The Lair of the White Worm, The Howling, Piranha, Gremlins, The 'burbs, and. . . umm. . . Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!. . . we're now given Trapped Ashes. It's anthology of four (plus wraparound) stories that vary in quality from the average 'Jibaku' to the pathetic 'Golden Breasts,' we're given quite an array of 'terrifying' tales. Like most anthologies, it's not so much the point of the stories. . . just the stories themselves. However, Trapped Ashes did manage to give a reason for the anthology, so kudos to that. As far as the stories go:

• The Girl with Golden Breasts: The idea was interesting, like Teeth, but with a different part of the female anatomy. There was some good, cringeworthy gore. . . but that's about it. The acting was amateurish, only accentuated by terrible dialogue (including my most hated error: outwardly spoken inner dialogue). As the story progressed, it became more and more ridiculous, resulting in an almost embarrassing conclusion.

• Jibaku: In hopes of classing up the film with some Asian flare, the next story headed to Japan. It's fairly disgusting as it studies some weird necrophiliac fantasies and the story is interesting, but it becomes a bit muddled as it goes through and is ultimately forgettable.

• Stanley's Girlfriend: The third tale, this one about the peril of deceit, is the 'classiest' of the bunch, utilizing mood & suspense more than outward horror. Unfortunately, in an attempt to be slow-burning, it ends up just being downright slow. It's not poorly made, just seems rather unimportant until the final reveal.

• My Twin – The Worm: Uninvolving is probably the best word to describe this one. It was an interesting parasite-twin story. . . but, I didn't really care all that much and found myself easily distracted.

I don't know why but I used to be a huge fan of Creepshow and Tales from the crypt although the later series were rather lame. "Trapped Ashes" is very much in this tradition and features 4 horror shorts bound together in a surrounding plot of 2 couples and 2 solo people going on a sightseeing on a Hollywood movie site and getting stuck in an hold horror house with an old guy who leads them around. Turns out they can only leave if each tells their most frightening personal story... so here we go... Story 1 is about an actress who doesn't get any new jobs and decides to get a boob job. Now after her life turns around for the positive she soon realizes that her breast are vampire boobies feeding on human blood which doesn't go to well for her lovers. This story is pretty bizarre and trashy and captures the spirit of old "Tales from the crypt" stories best. Its totally idiotic but the end is so over the top its fun. Story 2 is a ghost-story about a couple moving to Japan where the woman is seduced by a monk who dies and takes her to hell where she turns into a succubus. Her husband soon learns he has to free her from there by feeding her a spell. The story is OK, but as frightening or thrilling as a Sesamestreet Episode. At least you get some naked shots and some nice animation sequences of old Japanese paintings which work pretty well. Story 3 is pretty much nothing leading nowhere. An actor and his best friend a scriptwriter regularly meet for chess until a girl appears. Soon the scriptwriter disappears and the actor begins a love affair to find out years later that the girl is some kind of ghost/witch/vampire... honestly I couldn't care less because the episode is boring and makes no sense. Story 4 is another strange one about a girl who grows up in her mothers womb along with a tapeworm and lives with a strange desire for collecting food for her "twin". When she is treated badly by her stepmother the "twin" takes revenge.

What most of the stories suffer from is incredibly long passages of introducing of characters and that is way stretched and often even unnecessary for the plod. So when the action starts most of the time is up and there is not too much time for the horror to happen. Like most of those story collections there is some bad apples in there and I couldn't recommend this average movie just for the vampire boobies and the finale. This is just for real die hard fans of horror shorts... the slow ghost movies won't be too interesting for neither "Tales..." Fans nor others because they don't lead nowhere. Too bad...