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An insomniac who's tired of not sleeping decides to watch a horror TV anthology hosted by 'professor' Lucius Phibes (Trent Haaga). The good professor introduces 5 separate horror tales

The first, "The Exterminator" has a tyrannical boss being kidnapped and tortured. It's atrociously acted, thinly plotted and throughly unentertaining. If I were the insomniac after watching this story, i'd be asleep with a quickness.

The second tale features a reclusive writer who doesn't want to be bothered with anyone after his wife drowns. He stumbles onto a way of 'reanimating' his poor deceased wife. It's a tad better than the first story, but it's also too lightly plotted, the 'twist' a bit too easy to realize & the characterization way too sparse.

the third deals with a group of friends unknowingly inviting a vampire into their house. The plot twists in this one don't really make all that much sense if you hold them to the light. And since it's also short, no ideas get a chance to be expounded on. This is a great detriment to the enjoyment of it in my eyes.

Moving on to the forth story, A group of people are besieged by zombies in the Old West. This segment is more 'comedic' then the first three, but sadly said 'comedy' falls decidedly flat. The zombie make-up is all right, i guess (if you squint) but the story is barren & motivations unclear. Worst of all there's no ending, it just....ends.

The last story does NOT go by that old adage 'saving the best for last' in the least. Quite the opposite in fact as it's as awful as the dreadful first story. It deals with a trio of friends hiking in the woods and catching the eye of a maniac. It's excruciatingly boring and badly acted. The less said about the soul-killing short the better.

Lastly the wraparound segments are saved only by Trent Haaga, who's the only entertaining thing about the train wreck of a film.

Eye Candy: after the ending credits roll, we are 'treated' to an extra taking a lengthy shower scene. (treated is in quotations as she's not really that good looking. she does show T&A and a hint of the other)

My Grade: D-

DVD Extras: 12 & a half minute Making-of featurette; music video by The Sea Monkees; photo reel; trailer for this movie; and trailers for "Blood Predator", "Grave Mistake" & "Rock'N'Roll Frankenstein"

Since Slices is a movie done by 5 directors each shooting one of the five segments of the movie, I'll break this review down for each part. By and large most of the segments are horribly flawed beyond just the fact that the film makers mostly shot on video with no lighting or decent sound; most of the segments have horrible acting, no coherent plot, and lack direction--amazing considering each director was only responsible for supplying about 25 minutes of the runtime.

The first segment, The Exterminator, runs on too long for how little actually occurs on screen. The camera setups are sub-film school level (I kept paying attention to the desk drawer holding a plant in the opening scene since it took up most of the frame). A close-up or two wouldn't have hurt. Shots in general are horribly framed for this, cutting off people's heads for some of the shot a lot of the time. The dialogue is plodding and adds nothing to the story--which should have just been a bad boss gets his comeuppance or a commentary on the absurdity of bureaucracy in modern business) but isn't. The story is instead about some conspiracy to keep the US population at 300 million and the conspiracy's latest victim. This segment seemed to actually have the best acting in it, but wasn't enough to save it from being a snoozefest. Score: 1/10

The second segment, Dead Letters, seems like it would have worked well as a short story about revenge. As a film, the segment falls short. First of all, the crew must not have heard of a wind screen for a mic (or chose not to ADR the dialogue in later), since all the outdoors scenes sound like they were recorded standing next to the afterburners in a jet. The "plot twist" isn't scary if you've ever seen a horror movie in your life (especially a certain one done by Mr Hitchcock), and the prop used for a carcass will literally make you laugh out loud. There's some claymation that is cool to see on screen since you don't get to see it that often nowadays. Also, this segment was the sharpest-looking out of the 5 segments, and it looks like film was used instead of video for some of the flashbacks, which worked. Score: 2/10

Night Scream is a vampire movie about a group of young adults who go out for a party in a remote location, only to come across an injured girl who is bleeding and scratched up. Short story short: nothing in the plot makes sense: the group is going to a sex party but only one of them even seems flirtatious, and the "twist" makes no sense whatsoever. And as if it had to be said, the acting is awful (I kept wondering why the hot girl only makes faces and barely says anything, then when she opened her mouth to speak I discovered why). Score: 1/10

The Range is a zombie western. That on its face sounds good, but when you take into account the bad acting/accents, lack of horses (in a western no less! the scenes for each group open with them explaining they lost their horses), and general lack of plot this is arguably the worst of the 5 segments. And then the story doesn't even keep up with zombie lore since some transvestite Indian is shot in the head in the beginning of the segment and yet comes back later as a zombie. The use of a screen wipe and still frames to depict gunfire at the end make no sense given the shots used. It looks like the director had no idea what he was doing with this and then ran out of time to shoot a full ending. Score: 1/10 (because 0 isn't an option)

Last but not least, The Turnout is actually a fairly well-made short. While the voice-over work is on par with the acting in most of the feature, it seemed like the director actually had an idea in this one. Unfortunately the story seems a bit truncated. In the behind the scenes featurette on the DVD, the actor who plays the antagonist explains the character's back story as to why he acts the way he does, and it seems like that would have been good to have in the actual screenplay somehow--especially since the ending falls a bit flat vs where it seemed to be heading as a horror short. If they could have expanded this segment and cut down some of the others it would have helped. Score: 4/10

The wraparound segments with the host introducing the segments are actually the best part of the movie. Sure it's been stolen from a billion horror movies, but it was fairly funny and served as a good introduction. However, the end sequence these wraparounds led to were not scary at all, and the post-credits sequence adding some much-needed nudity to the movie was far too little too late, especially considering most viewers wouldn't touch the stripper involved with a 10-foot-pole. Overall, I'd give this movie a 2 out of 10, and that may be generous.

An insomniac plops down on his sofa to watch(as we do as well)a chiller theater program running "tales of the macabre". The first tale, "The Exterminator" is your employee torture fantasy regarding the near distant future where an agency sends out "exterminators" to rid the world of those deemed disposable. The head of this agency, a real detestable blowhard(we witness the bastard chastise an underling for not getting him a list of the names of people ready for extermination), is about to experience the terror of those his company eradicates. In "Dead Letters", successful novelist, still a grieving widower despite the fact his wife has been dead for two years, strong on the drink and having not written a book in some time, believes she has returned from the grave, manifested from the words on the printed page by his typewriter. His agent, however, soon discovers that his once prominent author has slipped into madness, the wife not exactly as alive as visualized, far from it. In "Night Scream", a group of four are potential victims of a ferocious, but beautiful vampire while staying at a remote house in the woods. In "The Range" frontier cowboys become victims of alien body snatchers turning them into zombies. While on a hiking trip with a mutual friend, a couple are besieged by a crazed mountain man in the wilderness(this one titled, "The Turnout").

Lo-fi anthology film reminiscent of those shot-on-video flicks from the 80s. The stories are as clichéd and dull as they sound. The directors use fade to black a hell of a lot, particularly during acts of violence; it gets more than a bit old after a while. As expected, the wraparound story involving the insomniac ends with the poor fellow experiencing his own macabre fate.

QUICK FIX: An insomniac channel surfs one night looking for something to help relax him and hopefully finally give him some rest, but instead he stumbles upon Prof. Lucius Phibes and his TALES OF THE MACABRE TV show, which sets up the excuse for five different filmmakers to offer up five, count 'em FIVE, different tales of terror with the obligatory CREEPSHOW-ish wrap-around story, giving us everything from a "bring 'em back undead or alive" type zombie western to a WRONG TURN-infused hiking trip gone haywire. How'd they hold up? Well, I've always felt it best to single each one out individually, so let's take a look: RAMBLINGS: "Where's my cake, Bedelia?? YOU BITCH!!!" First up from writer/director Vito Trabucco, we have revenge/torture-centric tale, THE EXTERMINATOR, a futuristic story in which America's population absolutely must be kept right at or below the 300 million mark; not a single person higher. I actually think this would have been a much cooler premise to explore in a feature had they had the dough to do so, as I would love to see the filmmakers run with that storyline to see other avenues of it touched on rather than just dipping straight into HOSTEL territory for the majority of its running time. Next up, Steven Richards' DEAD LETTERS, a story about an alcoholic author who can't let go the memories of his dead wife, but who may just have a chance to relive the glory days with the arrival of a special package in the mail one day. This was an entertaining little story which reminded me very much of Stephen King's short, THE WORD PROCESSOR OF THE GODS. Third in line is Neil McCurry's NIGHT SCREAMS, the vampire tale of the bunch. I have to say this one was my favorite of the five, not only because no matter how much vamps have been sanitized, sterilized, and bastardized in the TWILIGHT series, I still have a soft spot for them in my black little heart, but also because I felt it told the best story in the little time it had. And even though I had it figured out before the bleak end, it was still a nice ride and I had a good time with it. Next up, Lance Polland's THE RANGE, about some Confederate soldiers on the run, the law dogs after them, and those nasty zombies that always get in the way and mess things up. I really hope this segment was intended to be as funny as I thought it was watching it, as more than one scene reminded me of one of my favorite westerns of all time, BLAZING SADDLES…. Our headliner in this series of stories comes from Lenny Lenox. TURNOUT is the story of a couple and their friend out for a leisurely hike that encounter a deranged psychopath in the woods who abducts them one by one for his nefarious…well, what other reason do maniacs abduct hikers in the woods for?? Body count, of course

And lest we forget, there is the wraparound segment featuring our Insomniac, whose unraveling mental state thanks to no sleep is slowly blurring the lines between reality and what he's seeing unfold on the TV screen in front of him. Also, guys (and some of you girls out there – you know who you are), stay with the flick through the end credits…it's blatant, it's gratuitous, and it's wonderful.

LAST WORDS: So now, you may or may not be asking, that we've been through everything, is the sum as good as the total of its parts? Or however the hell that saying goes….anyway, I did enjoy some segments by far more than others, and I understand all too well how some days you just have to make the most of your budget, roll with the punches, have a little fun, and go for it. This wasn't a bad movie, and I enjoyed it for what it is. Anthology lovers – it's worth a look, as the CREEPSHOW vibe is definitely there, save for the big Hollywood names and much larger budget they had back in 1982. Aspiring filmmakers – you should watch this to see what can be accomplished with not a lot of cash to spare and still put out a product you can be proud to show to genre fans.

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While this movie is arguably the worst I've ever seen, and that's saying something after watching Vito's other work, I thoroughly enjoyed watching it with my friends. Truly the perfect movie to brighten your day, this film is a joy to riff with your pals. From the immaculately hilarious frame story to the pointless nonsense that ensues throughout the five shorts, there is nothing to respect and everything to love about this cinematic catastrophe. Why is the bit about a vampire family reunion called "Night Scream"? Why did the zombies in "The Range" howl at the end like werewolves? Why did the couple in the final short fail to escape,or even to remove the tape from their mouths, when their hands were so loosely tied? Say what you will about "Slices," but I say the mark of a good film is its ability to make you ask questions.