Nite Tales (2008)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This was at least as good as a couple episodes of "Are You Afraid of the Dark?". Not bad. Not excellent, but not bad. Oddly entertaining was the baffling and near-incomprehensible screen time with Flavor Flav "hosting" at the beginning and end, which seemed to be just rambling that essentially amounted to repetitions of "This is a movie. Know what I'm sayin'?" The second story was a lot stronger than the first. There really wasn't much to the first, aside from the twist of who they run into. The second story had enough interest to keep you guessing for a bit. Bonus points for Tony Todd in the cast.

I like Public Enemy (the group) a lot. And I think Flavor Flav is funny (in his own crazy way), but I never felt like watching the "Flavor of Love" reality show. I did see a few clips and thought it was just awkward. Now if you've seen the show or a few clips, just imagine that guy introducing Horror stories. Scared yet? You should be, but for all the wrong reasons.Flav is not working as a host. Even if there weren't other memorable characters (like the Cryptkeeper from the Tales from the Crypt series/show), you wouldn't rank him as a good host. But should that bother you if the stories themselves had something to offer? Of course not. Unfortunately, the story have not much to offer.Especially when you realize that this was a test run for a TV show. And they still went on to produce that (boy am I so NOT looking forward to watch that). Why not give it a one star rating. I thought that the last of the 3 stories had some potential. As did the other stories, but especially the first one is so badly done, that you wonder why on earth this exists. Ticking of the boxes in your script is not enough to make a good/watchable movie.Still waiting for the Tales from the Crypt complete (DVD/Blu Ray) set to come out.

Nite Tales: The Movie starts as our host Flavor Flav introduces one of two stories...First up is 'Karma' where four gangsters rob a bank in small town, expected to be an easy score an old security guard shoots one of the robbers. Later that night while driving back to the city the robbers car breaks down, noticing a farmhouse in the distance they decide to go there & steal their car. However the residents have other ideas & the robbers find that leaving the farmhouse in one piece is not going to easy...Next up is 'Storm' where five teenage friends are having fun at home during a torrential thunderstorm, then a mysterious man dressed as clown knocks on the door asking for help. They let him in & a stranded cop follows shortly after & that's when the killings start...Co-written, executive produced & directed by Deon Taylor this wasn't as bad as I had expected but it's hardly amazing, presumably a spin-off from the TV series Nite Tales: The Series (2009) this contains only two forty odd minute horror stories as opposed the usual three or four twenty minute stories that horror anthologies go for. The first story Karma is pretty much your average backwoods brutality horror film told in about half the usual running time, city folk are stuck in some isolated woods somewhere & fall prey to the sadistic inbred cannibalistic locals. There's no real twist here or many surprises & it just plays like a straight forty minute horror film, the character's are alright but the mysterious car breakdown is never explained & it's never explained when the cannibals want their money back why they don't just check the car as that would surely have been the logical place where it would be. Overall not too bad at all. The second story Storm goes more for twists & turns than visceral horror as a killer is loose during a vicious thunderstorm, the only question is who is it? Is it the creepy clown or the cop or maybe someone else? There are one or two problems with this like when Cindy is killed both the cop & clown are downstairs together & so couldn't have done it, I'm surprised no-one picked up on this & why, if he is a cop, did James dress like a clown? There's never any explanation given, do all undercover cops dress like clowns? Overall this one felt like a whodunit with slight horror overtones & the suspense & tension are built up quite well.There's no real linking wraparound story, we just get this Flavor Flav geezer trying to be cool, he fails. There's a bit of gore here, there's some flesh ripping & eating, a few people get shot & there are a couple of gory blood spurting slashed throats. The make-up effects are pretty good & Tony Todd in full creepy clown make-up & costume is unnerving. There's plenty of swearing but no nudity. This is surprisingly well made with nice photography that thankfully never overdoes the shaky or twitchy style & the use of fast editing is kept to a minimum. I mean it just looks like a proper film. The story Storm has a decent atmosphere being set at night during a thunderstorm & it feels like a horror film should.With a supposed budget of about $450,000 I am surprised at how good this looks, the production values are decent & it's certainly better made than a lot of low budget horror junk out there even if it's not exactly brilliant in terms of story. The acting is alright with Sticky Fingaz & genre favourite Tony Todd the names.Nite Tales: The Movie isn't brilliant at all, the stories lack real punch & a real memorable twist but they are well made & feel more like little horror films in their own right. Not the greatest but not the worst either, not a bad effort really.

Really, I am speechless. I will address each of the stories separately, but I will start by saying Flavor Flav almost ruins the entire movie by hosting it. He goes on and on about this movie being historic for being the first time you get 2 movies in one... Because, you know, the Horror Anthology genre doesn't exist. His rhymes are pretty stupid, and really all he did was make you feel dumb for watching it.Karma - If you watch horror movies, you have seen this done before. Same concept as House of 1000 corpses, but much less well done. Some gaping plot holes, and really no suspense buildup.Storm - If I had to choose, probably the better of the two. I actually quite liked the concept of trying to pick between the serial killer and bloody Mary. However, the producers rammed exactly what happened down your throats, and the story suffers for it. The moment of 'realization' at the end is pretty pointless considering the audience knows exactly what happened already. If you had been kept guessing on who the killer was, bloody Mary or the serial killer, this would have been far better.Then you get to see Flavor Flav again, and honestly I thought the epilogue couldn't have been any worse than the introduction... but it was.Overall, probably not worth your time. Gorehounds will get maybe a good 2 minutes of fun out of karma, the clown in storm looks kind of creepy, thats about all this movie has going for it.