Tales From the Darkside - Lot 249
Written by Matthew House
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie brings to life three "tales" of absolute terror, wrapped around a story that frightens with a pleasant simplicity and proves to be ticklishly entertaining. Now, while this John Harrison directed anthology film really delivers the horror goods as a whole, our main focused will be on one segment in particular:
Holiday in Handcuffs!
Wait a second, I think I got my Slater's mixed up…
Oh yeah, that's right!
Lot 249!
Based on an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's short story, Lot No. 249 (which does not star Christian Slater) Lot 249 is your basic revenge yarn that pits the proverbial small guy up against people who have fared significantly better in life. This segment's primary focus is a brilliant but utterly poor graduate student named Bellingham (Steve Buscemi), who after being screwed out of a financially important scholarship by some greedy classmates, decides to seek vengeance by unleashing a Mummy that he bought through Amazon.
Mummy Dearest!
I think it goes without saying, but letting a Mummy loose means bad news bears for everyone involved. That is, except for one person: Christian "Hard Rain" Slater. The mummy (who I constantly mistook for Steve Buscemi) hits the road and goes on an old school embalming inspired killing spree, murdering not only Christian Slater's best friend Lee (Robert Sedgwick), but his sister Susan (played by Julianne More), too. Christian Slater don't take kindly to no punk ass Mummy's gettin' all up in his business and killing his kin, so he takes matters into his own hands and goes after Bellingham and his Mummy to carve out a little revenge of his own.
Separated at Birth?!
I don't want to delve any deeper into the ending in case anyone out there hasn't seen Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, but I will say that Lot 249 delivers a standard twist filled ending that many horror fans would come to expect from an anthology film. If you've seen a few anthology films or any number of anthology horror TV shows in your life, then you'll know what to expect. And to be clear, that is not a knock on Lot 249 in any way. In fact, I enjoy the shit out of Lot 249; it's short, fun, has a wonderful cast, and Robert Sedgwick shows a lot of thigh, which I find humorous.
"Pee-ew! And people thought Windtalkers stunk!"
Now, as far as Christian Slater goes, well, Lot 249 is a brief segment, maybe about 25-to-30 minutes, but within that time frame Slater goes from being fairly subdued to full on "Christian Slater is awesome" mode. And if anyone can appreciate full on "Christian Slater is awesome" mode, it's me. He gets a nice chunk of screen time to do what he does best, and he does so with a charming wit and sarcasm that made him who is. And as you can imagine, it's quite a blast to watch if you're a fan of the Slate, and well, that's why we're all here, isn't it?!
I want to thank Matthew for taking the time to jump in on the Slaterocalypse festivities, and goddamn I adore these beginning and ending images. You can follow Mr. House over at his blog, Chuck Norris Ate My Baby. Do yourself that favor.
