Synopsis

The three installments are entitled: The Girl With Golden Breasts, My Twin The Worm, and Jibaku: Six strangers (including cult actor John Saxon!) are invited to tour the legendary back lot of Ultra Studios, one of Hollywood's most venerated movie companies. Before long, the party, along with their eccentric guide (beloved character actor Henry Gibson), find themselves trapped on the set of the infamous House of Horrors, used for the notorious sixties thriller Hysteria. A sinister force will only allow them to live if they recount their most terrifying stories, just like the characters in the movie… Comprised of five vignettes by five unique filmmakers with their own twisted, perverse visions, Trapped Ashes follows the tradition of classic anthology horror films like Tales from the Crypt and Kwaidan, weaving yarns of the surreal, erotic and terrifying. In the outlandish entry "The Girl with Golden Breasts" by Ken Russell, a struggling actress's breast augmentation garners more than just attention. Sean Cunningham's "Jibaku" has a married couple discovering the body of a Buddhist monk by a remote ancient temple. The corpse makes his way into their (erotic) dreams and lures them into the dark land of the dead. In "Stanley's Girlfriend," Monte Hellman spins a tale of two ambitious filmmakers in fifties Hollywood who become unlikely friends, until a mysterious beatnik beauty begins to date one of them - to gruesome effect. Academy Award®-winner John Gaeta tells of a young expecting mother with a six-foot-long tapeworm growing inside her along with her baby in "My Twin, The Worm." The narrative thread tying them all together - the quandary of the captive storytellers - is directed by Joe Dante.

Official Review

Writer/Producer Dennis Bartok is nothing if not a true student of the cinema. He’s the son of an avant-garde filmmaker and a graduate of NYU Film School who spent 13 years as the programming director for the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles. Bartok is even responsible for restoring and re-opening the famed Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. With that kind of resume, one would imagine that as the creative force behind an anthology collection of horror films, Bartok would provide a formidable vision on screen. Unfortunately his debut production—for which he has amassed an interesting array of cult filmmakers (and one newcomer) as diverse as Monte Hellman, Joe Dante, Sean Cunningham and Ken Russell—is something of an uneven mess. And one which falls squarely on the shoulders of it’s chief architect. …Read More