Have you ever heard of this movie from 1983? I think I saw it was 1982 in the credits but oh well OK IMDB whatever you say. But have you seen it? I never had but I’ve been watching a bunch of 80s movies over the last few months and this in all of its SD-ness came around and I was all hey ok let’s give it a shot and then it started and i was like uhhhhh i don’t know about this but then i was kind of maybe this will be good but then it started off pretty terrible and i was all man this sucks and then there were some puppets and and some angry English youths and and i felt like it couldn’t get worse but then there was the next story and it was ahhh maybe hey this chick Sue is cool and she has groovy glasses and i thought the male guy in this one was Robin Colcord from Cheers but I never bothered to look it up or anything and then it was all fiiiizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz and the last one was about some old English women and some gnomes and fairies and in the end i guess there’s a reason i’d never heard of this thing but hey i watched it and i suppose it wasn’t THE WORST thing in the world but woof.

This plays out anthology style and in the opening to the wraparound part a couple of early 80s tough guys break into a video tape store and steal some movies. They head back to one of their friend’s house who happens to be a lady who just hopped out of the shower and one of them starts eating her food from the fridge and drinking her beer and yells about how he wants to watch some movies. “But I have a date” she weakly protests wrapping a robe around her bosoms. ”So go on your date I just want to watch some movies forcryinoutloudyasleazytramp!” and he and his buddy plop on her early 80s stylish upholstered couch. ”:Oh ok but just for a minute” she weakly agrees and sits on the couch next to the other guy and says something seductive like “hey big boy while you’re just sitting there” so he starts towel drying her hair.

So he plops in a video tape and surprisingly the whole thing turns to British and someone is doing one of those Punch and Judy shows out by some British beach and boy howdy is he in trouble at home and his wife is moving herself and his ungrateful fucking stepson to Canada if he doesn’t give up the puppets but he can’t because that’s his life calling and then someone burns down his Punch and Judy puppet stand so suddenly people are very cheaply being whacked to death by a stick and you think it’s his beloved puppets come to life and I’m going to go ahead and give this one away because it’s not some big mystery but it’s the dude committing the murders:

If there was anything good to say about this segment is would be when, after chasing his no good for nothing fucking stepson’s girlfriend through some sort of rubbish plant (??) and up to some roof she knocks him off and he falls into some sort of trash compactor and the pants legs or the bottom half of the dummy they put pants on looked hilarious getting smashed. I mean – classically bad but great.

In between that and the next one, the guy drinking the beer and eating cold fried chicken tells his buddy to go see if what’s her name has any cigarettes so he does and she’s naked on the bed in her bedroom. “Hi sailor” she purrs and we cut to the next segment where an English couple have just been hitched and are moving into a domicile of some sort they inherited from his English dad. “This is too run down and not fit for living!” he grimaces. “You’ll survive, long live the Empire” volleys his mother. “Bollocks!” he replies and hangs a round picture of the Queen over a hole in the wall. Everything seems like it’s going to end up OK for them after all, there’s even a kid riding his bicycle out in the yard but suddenly his wife Sue starts having visions. Horrible visions. Blood in the tub! Blood on a knife! A guy leaping around in the hall!

And Sue, lovely Sue. I felt bad as I was watching this because even though she wicked awesome sunglasses she wore inside and out, she only ever had the one shirt : (

I won’t give this one away in case you want to spend some time on it but it’s actually kind of a decent story I guess and it involves more than a puppet. Too bad there didn’t seem to be much money for the wardrobe department. And I never have looked up that guy.

For some reason I don’t really recall what happened in between that part and then next but I was pretty sure I was going to see some early 80s people getting it on in the bed but I didn’t and we move on to the next story where some dudes in just regular clothes are doing some motorcycle riding around a muddy race track.

I’ve never been in to motor sports but I thought they always wore some sort of gear but maybe this had something to do with the wardrobe budgets again? I don’t know but the guy in the white needs some money to fix his busted cycle so he takes a job working as a handyman for a couple of English ladies who keep a bunch of money in some sort of dresser and always talk about the fairies and gnomes in their gardens which is, yes, foreshadowing.

As these things go, motorcycle guy sees their piles of money and hatches a plan to steal it proper, right! Him and his English buddies break in and get to robbing and just like during The Blitz, things aren’t going well. The best thing about this is when our man is looking for someone and there are some twinkling and flickering fairy lights going hither and thither and he turns around and poof there’s some sort of good looking Victorian (??) maybe looking lady standing there out of the blue.

I’m guessing she’s one of the fairies and he thinks she’s going to give him some forbidden love on his British pee-pee but instead she murders him with some magic and floaty props and the next thing you know his portrait has been painted and is hanging on the wall because that makes sense. But she was real cute and attractive although all she really had to do was move her eyes around and fling things magic style. But hey!

To end this cheap and silly movie that’s been fun to write about for some reason, for some other reason some sort of specters or ghouls or intruders from another realm we can’t conceive come around and kill our three Americans. I don’t if it’s for stealing video tapes or doing unmarried sex but let that be a Cautionary Tale to all of us, for Christs sake.

FILED UNDER: I WOULD BE REALLY REALLY REALLY SURPRISED TO FIND OUT THAT THIS WAS SOMEONE’S FAVORITE MOVIE BUT YOU NEVER KNOW I GUESS MAYBE IF THIS WAS THE ONLY MOVIE YOU EVER GOT TO WATCH AS A KID OR SOMETHING, LIKE MAYBE YOU DIDN’T KNOW ANY BETTER BECAUSE THAT WAS YOUR ONLY OPTION EVER – THIS OR MAYBE YENTL AND YOU HAD TO CHOOSE BETWEEN ONE OR THE OTHER AND YOU WERE ALL ‘HEY THIS HAD MOTROCYCLES IN IT’ OR ‘I LIKE DOLLS AND GNOMES’ OR ‘MAN I REALLY HAD A CRUSH ON SUE’ ‘OR MAN I SAW THAT WOMAN’S FOOT IN THE POSTER AND THAT’S HOW I LEARNED TO TRY AND BE A GOOD ARTIST’ OR SOMETHING BUT I DOUBT IT.