By Geno McGahee
I love anthologies, for the most part. You are usually guaranteed one good tale out of the bunch and even if they are bad, they don’t last that long. In 1997, TWISTS OF TERROR was released and features three tales that would best be categorized as “mediocre.”
We begin with a paranoid man that hoards newspapers and is talking directly to us about the terrible world that we live in. He points to different tragedies that were covered by the media, but he shouldn’t believe everything that he reads. What a sheep. He deserves to be alone and miserable…freaking idiot.
He begins by transitioning into a tale called “The People You Meet,” where a couple, Amy (Jennifer Rubin) and Joe (Carl Marotte), break down on the side of the road after an accident and are picked up by some back wood hick. Jennifer Rubin was in NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET III: DREAM WARRIORS, and is described as “strikingly beautiful” on her IMBD page. I wonder if she wrote it. I’m not saying that she isn’t attractive, but “strikingly” seems like bragging. What does strikingly mean, anyway? Does a guy bust a nut in his Wranglers the minute he sees her picture? If they do, that would be striking.
Now, there are some predictable twists and turns in this one. The hick teams up with his redneck buddy and they kidnap the couple and then you find out that they were working for the wife…and that’s all there is. You won’t walk away saying that this tale was striking.
The next tale is “The Clinic,” where Crenshaw (Nick Mancuso) is running out of gas and pulls into a gas station, but it’s closed. When he gets out, he is attacked by a dog and chewed up pretty good. He runs away and finds a hospital, but things begin to get a little weird. They patch him up, but he begins to become suspicious of the employees working there. They seem quite off and soon he discovers that the inmates are running the asylum. It’s a psychiatric hospital and the nuts have killed all of the workers and are posing as doctors. They eventually operate on poor Crenshaw. It is probably the best tale, but still is predictable and nothing special.
Wrapping it up is “Stolen Moments,” a tale about Cindy (Francoise Robertson), a girl with bad luck with men that picks up a guy at a singles bar. He seems nice enough. They go back to his place and have some sex and then the guy brings his buddy over to have sex with her too. She agrees, but then when they reveal that they were using her, more or less, she becomes a naked killing machine. This is another mediocrity. None of these tales stand out and you will forget them shortly after you watch them.
TWISTS OF TERROR is not a bad movie, not a good one…just blah. It’s a mediocre anthology that is watchable but not memorable.
Rating: 5/10
