Trapped Ashes

MOVIE #1,891 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 08.15.24 After a nearly two decade gap, Joe Dante returned to the world of theatrical release anthology films with the much less heralded Trapped Ashes, alongside other luminaries like Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th), Monte Hellman (Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!— I'll be reviewing this come December!), Ken Russell (Altered States), and John Gaeta (who invented the “bullet time” VFX for The Matrix). This is part of a shift back to spooky movies which he began with the TV anthology series, Masters of Horror in 2005 (which I'll review on Saturday). I went in totally cold here, trying to see if I could pinpoint Dante's involvement by eye.

Well, right off the bat, the appearance of Dick Miller in the opening segment let me know this was his short (The ‘Burbs’ creepy man Henry Gibson is in this too, as a tour guide on an empty movie lot). This line seemed slightly self-referential…


Sometimes you have to do low budget anthology pictures. Even if you directed Gremlins.

The tourists (the great John Saxon slumming it here in a later role, among them) end up in a haunted house on the outskirts of the lot. They get trapped inside. Gibson says that the only way out is if they tell very personal scary stories (?). Sure. So it turns out Dante’s segment is merely the wrap-around device as each story transitions into a stand-alone short. Most of the little movies are Hollywood-adjacent.

The first (Russell) is about an actress who gets a boob job. The doctor smokes a cigarette while he lazily performs the procedure in graphic detail. It turns out her titties have little mutant monsters that like to eat flesh that pop out of her nipples. We've all been there. This guy's line read delivering the exposition says it all…


Movie #2 (Cunningham) takes place in Japan with a guy who has dragged his wife on a business trip. I lol’d at this…


This briefly becomes a low-rent anime movie before abruptly ending. The third installment (Hellman) is a period piece about John Saxon’s director buddy told in flashback, which Saxon mainly narrates. There seems to be a loose thread here were all the films involve some sort of bloodsucking zombie/entity.

We are warned that the fourth and final short — about a young goth’s tapeworm brother — is pretty grotesque. Uh oh. But it’s actually fairly tame by comparison and, story-wise, probably the best of the bunch (suprising, since it is literally John Gaeta's only directorial credit). In closing, we see a succession of twist endings to each of the shorts. Russell’s postscript is full-on, Henenlotter-level in its graphic tastelessness (the actressess’s mutant titties sip blood out of martini glasses). It turns out all the characters are basically in hell or something. Not a horrible anthology, all things considered.

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Trapped Ashes is a 2006 American horror anthology film with segments directed by Sean S. Cunningham, Joe Dante, Monte Hellman, Ken Russell, and John Gaeta. It stars Jayce Bartok, Henry Gibson, and Lara Harris. It was released on September 12, 2006.