Tales of the Unliving and the Undead (1988)

The first story by "Psycho Cop" director Wallace Potts, is the most baffling. The only one shot on film, the three minute fragment feels more like test footage for a horror chic title or a sleazy fetish sex film. A man stares at a photo of a woman while sharpening a knife and consuming an ungodly amount of poppers through a gas mask. He takes a cleaver to his own hand, cauterizes the wound with a burner, and then suits up in black leather. What a great setup. He is not seen again over the next 85 minutes. Instead, the viewers are thrown into the color smeared world of analog beta video for the longest short of the anthology, a scuzzily perverted psychosexual slasher with shades of "The Killing Kind". The other two stories by "Master Demon" director Samuel Oldham and John Hays, slant towards comedy and are the weakest part of the collection. This anthology is a charmingly creative, but they just feel so out of place after the pure horror of the two openers.