Body Bags is a movie containing three short stories, all presented by "The Coroner" played by Carpenter himself. The first tale, "The Gas Station", is about a serial killer where we get to follow a young girl working at a gas station and has to deal with that someone's trying to murder her and her weird customers. Second story called "Hair" deals with vanity and is about a man who's going bald and goes to a hair replacement clinic but who also gets more than he bargained for. The third and last story called "Eye" is about a baseball player who becomes a victim of a car accident and loses his right eye.
In the same vein as Tales from the Crypt and Creepshow we here have Body Bags, a Carpenter feature from 1993. Body Bags is a fun horror movie telling three different stories, two directed by John Carpenter and the last story directed by Tobe Hooper. John Carpenter also shows up in the movie, playing the Cryptkeeper-like character called The Coroner who presents the stories. Other than that we get to see Sam Raimi playing a corpse called Dead Bill, and Tobe Hooper shows up as a morgue worker.
There are actually quite a few familiar faces in the movie, like Robert Carradine who stars as Bill in "The Gas Station", Stacy Keach who stars as Richard Coberts in "Hair", and even Wes Craven shows up as well to mention a few. There's some humour in the movie which is a nice touch and it's somewhat similar to the Tales of the Crypt kind of humour, nothing ha-ha funny, but it might make you smile.
The first story entitled "The Gas Station" directed by Carpenter is a story about a young girl who starts working at a gas station, night shift. While on the job she meets some strange characters showing up and she doesn't seem too happy about it. Then people ends up dead and someone's trying to murder her as well. Now this story is nothing special at all, it has some suspense but never goes anywhere remotely great but still works as a nice start off. Rating 4/10.
Second story "Hair" is the best one out of the three (that is according to yours truly) and deals with vanity. Stacy Keach stars as Richard Coberts, a man who's going bald but is not ready for that so he goes to a hair replacement clinic to see what they can do to help his situation. He gets help and soon hair starts to grow on him and he's one happy man. But the hair keeps growing and growing and even though he cuts it, it still comes back just as long shortly after. This is the story that has the most genuine kind of horror in it and is captivating and interesting but at the same time a bit frightening. Rating 8/10.
The third and last story is called "Eye" and tells the story about a baseball player who loses his right eye due to a car accident. He's then given the chance to have a new eye and gets a transplant from a dead man, something that causes him a lot of trouble. Now, don't think of the movie The Eye here, it's quite different but is still worth to take notice of since this movie was made in '93. Directed by Tobe Hooper this story is ok and slightly above average but still nothing really special. Starring here as the baseball player is Mark Hamill or I think people know him better as Luke Skywalker. Rating 6/10.
I'm a big fan of this concept with three different stories, if one fails the next one might be good and so on. If nothing else at least we get some variation.
First got a rating of 4, second a rating of 8, third a rating of 6 and then the overall feel this movie gives makes it deserve one extra point. If you haven't seen it you should definitely try and get your hands on it. It's nothing spectacular but it sure manages to be entertaining and is a fun one and a half hours infront of the screen. Recommended.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: John Carpenter Presents Body Bags
MOVIE YEAR: 1993
DIRECTOR: John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper
WRITING CREDITS: Billy Brown, Dan Angel
GENRE: Horror, Sci-Fi, Comedy, Thriller
CAST: John Carpenter, Robert Carradine, Stacy Keach
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 91 min
RATING: 7/10
Body Bags Website/IMDB Click here
Body Bags Trailer Click here
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