Great news everyone, the 1990 cult classic “Scarlet Fry’s Horrorama” is finally available on DVD after so many years! What’s “Scarlet Fry’s Horrorama,” you ask? I don’t know. Oh and I checked around the internet and no one seems to know either. So either the Matrix is on the blink and the agents have destroyed any and all evidence of the great “Scarlet Fry’s Horrorama,” or… this great news I’m reading about on the press kit is only great to the folks that made this film. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just I don’t like the pretense that something is rare and precious when it really isn’t.
Also, I searched vigorously and I don’t have a clue who Scarlet Fry is either. I’m getting an uneasy Fred Vogel/Murder-Set-Pieces false hype vibe here, and that vibe is particularly induced by the rather terrible movie that follows. The tip off is that painfully bad sound and video quality that look like VHS transfers with fuzzy video and a canned soundtrack and sound effect track; and that was when I could play the DVD. Because after failing to finish the entire thing on my computer, I then went to my DVD player and failed there, too.
I shouldn’t have so much difficulty playing a movie. I’m then met by a horrible make up job by a narrator who ensures a horrific six mortifying tales. The acting is abominable, and when I mean abominable, I mean that the director simply didn’t know how to convey to the actors how to work for the camera. They act like cartoons most of the time and I was never sure if the director wanted us to take this movie seriously, or if it was a spoof of the horror anthology flicks. I’m serious: Are we supposed to take this fiasco seriously? Am I missing a big joke here?
Are the Bullcrank fellows having a laugh at my expense? Isn’t “thirty minute anthology” an oxymoron? Anyway, beyond this trouble and obstacles, the six tales here are nothing but poorly made stories that have zero structure, zero energy, and anxiously attempt surprise endings, and ironic twists to no avail, and the director tries to squeeze it all in a half hour, to boot. Here is a description of one of the stories: Manwich – “Two lumberjacks are chopping trees when one big guy eats his lunch & is still hungry and decides to eat his partner.” And that’s literally the whole segment!
I’m calling shenanigans on this “Cult Classic” and tucking it away in my private collection (i.e. the garbage bin). Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining, and don’t call a movie a “Cult Classic” unless you can prove it. Sorry guys, but it’s just garbage. To whomever moved this release along: I’m never usually this hard on indie movies (even the bad ones get a pass), but “Scarlet Fry’s Horrorama” was a fail on every level. I spent twenty minutes trying to watch a thirty minute movie that the box told me was an hour. All for a really bad movie in a really bad quality transfer from a VHS tape. And this is a cult classic why?