CRADLE OF FEAR

Review By Diana Thoren

I am a huge fan of horror movies. And I am an enormous fan of Cradle of Filth. So when I heard about this movie, starring lead singer Dani Filth as the killer, I was intrigued. I was also skeptical because it kind of looked like maybe it was crap. But eventually I broke down and bought it because I was buying “Day of the Dead” and wanted Amazon to give me the super-saver shipping. Also I’m really, really hot for Dani Filth. So there’s that.

I saw an interview with Dani Filth where he described “Cradle of Fear” as being four stories linked together by one central character in the vein of “Creepshow.” Sounds like a good idea, right?

Let’s start with the good news: It’s gory. Real gory. Gallons and gallons of blood, heaps of innards, cracking skulls, stuff like that. The special effects are brought to us by the fine folks at Creature FX, who also did special effects for “Hellraiser” and “Black Hawk Down.” Some of the CGI stuff is obvious, but the practical effects are good.

Also, for you fellas out there, writer/director Alex Chandon did not skimp on the titty. I wouldn’t say the titty is really worth watching the whole movie for, so maybe you should just call me and I’ll tell you where it is so you can skip around. But there’s plenty of it, at least in the “unrated” version that I got.

Now for the bad news: This movie is bad. Like I don’t mean “so bad it’s good,” I mean bad. I haven’t decided yet if it’s, as my friend Sarah likes to say, “”Congo” bad,” but it’s bad. For the first half hour I was laughing at it because it was so over-the –top and stupid, but after that I just started watching the timer to see how much longer it was going to be on. Cradle of Filth’s music videos have more plot and forward progression than this movie does, and are 115 minutes shorter. Even Wild Turkey didn’t help. And Wild Turkey helps a lot of things.

There probably are four stories. I can’t remember. But the only one that is any good is the first one. After watching the stills gallery on the extras this morning and sort of ‘reliving’ the film, I decided that the whole thing could have been a lot better if they had just stuck to the first story and ditched the rest. The girls are good actresses, the plot is hilarious (intentionally or not), and I felt like we might be getting somewhere. Then the story suddenly ended and we moved on to the next one.

The stories are loosely linked by Dani’s killer character (called “The Man”) and also the bumbling cops assigned to the case, who mostly just serve to muddle up the whole “plot” and make things more confusing. They run around looking for the killer, who they figure is this Rob Zombie-looking dude that’s already locked in an asylum. It didn’t help matters that the sound is kind of bad and they have thick accents, so I had trouble understanding much of what they were saying.

One of the great things about slasher flicks is the killer’s character development, learning his motivation, and maybe getting the audience to get a little attached to him or relate to him somehow. Dani Filth’s killer has virtually no depth. He’s fine in his role, since it’s basically just his on-stage persona, but he’s barely in it and we learn almost nothing about his character. At the end of the movie we are tossed a little crumb of potential motivation, but by then I’d already written off the movie entirely and didn’t give a damn. The Rob Zombie dude in the asylum is pretty rad, but he’s barely in it and we don’t learn anything about him either.

Again, I think if they had just stuck to one story everything could have been fleshed-out better. Also it should have had a lot more of Dani Filth running around in leather pants covered in blood, because I think that’s really, really, really hot.

In conclusion, rent “Cradle of Fear” if and only if:

1> You’ll take your gore and titties any way you can get them;

2> You’re as hot for Dani Filth as I am;

3> You really like the song “Lord Abortion” which runs throughout the movie, making it kind of easy to zone out and pretend you’re watching a video for the song.

Otherwise, don’t bother.