Previously posted on blog and written by B. Demeter
Bryan Cranston pulls a knife on a monkey in this movie. If that sentence didn’t cause you to immediately seek out and watch this film, nothing else I’m going to say will.
Terror Tract was a bit of a surprise. I wasn’t expecting a horror anthology but that is what I got. The anchor story stars John Ritter as a Realtor showing a young couple houses in a quaint suburban neighborhood. Each house comes with a horrific tale of dread and death. For the most part, the stories are ripped off from better horror movies. The real draws of this movie were the actors involved.
The fist story is about an adulterous wife who, along with her lover, kills her husband and dumps his body in a lake. She begins having nightmares of the husband returning from the murky depths to get revenge. At one point, the lover has to go and retrieve the husband’s car keys from his submerged corpse. The wife has a nightmare that the husband’s corpse comes back to life and drowns the lover. When she wakes, she thinks the wet footprints she finds are from the husband and blindly shoots through a door, which she thinks he is hiding behind. But in a twist anyone could have seen coming, the person that she shoots is really the lover who had wet footprints from retrieving the keys. In full despair, she hangs herself.
It’s basically a shittier version of the “Something to Tide You Over” segment from Creepshow. The reason I cared at all is the husband was played by Fredric Lehne; the U.S. Marshall from “Lost”. If you don’t care about second tier Lost characters, then there is really nothing here to make you take notice.
The second story involves Walter White and a monkey wearing pants. It is AMAZING! Yes, it is a rip off of the Living Doll Twilight Zone and Child’s Play- but with a monkey instead of a toy. Yes, you’d be better off watching the feature length Romero film “Monkey Shines”. But, neither of those other works has Heisenberg hunting down a little monkey with a shotgun.
Oh, yeah. Did I mention WCW’s Buff Bagwell plays an animal control agent?
If you watch this movie for any reason, it is because of this segment!
The third story is about a teen that believes he has a psychic link with a serial killer. He seeks the advice of a therapist and tells her his whole story. The whole time you’re led to believe that this kid is actually the killer and that he is experiencing some dissociative disorder. Not only is he there to seek the counsel of the therapist but to warn her that he has seen that she is the killer’s next victim. The therapist freaks and the kid is impaled on a memo spike (What kind of therapist has a fucking memo spike in their office? I wouldn’t trust even the most benign nut-job around something like that!). Well, jokes on her because as she rushes to the elevator to make her escape, the doors open to reveal the real serial killer who then proceeds to kill her serially.
At first I though this segment was going to go the way of “Frailty”, the 2001 Matthew McConaughey film. But I’m not that lucky. All in all, it was a bit uninspired. The weakest of the three stories, the only pull was from the doctor, played by Brenda Strong, Seinfeld’s Sue Ellen, heiress to the Oh Henry! candy bar fortune. Again, if you don’t care about third tier Seinfeld characters; there is really nothing here for you.
The anchor story concludes with the young couple refusing to buy any of the tainted houses from John Ritter. Desperate to make a sale, he accosts the couple and stabs the husband in the neck with his pen. As the wife runs screaming from the house and into the car, she notices that the quaint neighborhood has become a carnival of horrors with people being chased by cars, gunned down in driveways, and run over by lawnmowers. The final scene is unexpected and amusing.
But as I’ve said, if you’re going to watch this movie it is for the Bryan Cranston/monkey story. The rest of the movie is watchable but ultimately forgettable. I’d much rather have been watching Creepshow, quite possibly the best horror anthology of all time.
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