By: Mr. Bishop77
Unless you are a hardcore Cradle of Filth fan or a dedicated splatter aficionado, this little flick (not in length but in public awareness) may have slid under your radar. With Dani Flith, lead singer of Cradle of Filth, as its star attraction, Cradle of Fear is a low budget splatter-a-thon of the highest order. Just a forewarning though, if you despise 1) movies with the shot on video look, 2) Dani Filth, 3)excessive amounts of blood, 4)good looking women, or 5)fun sadistic movies please by all means forego reading any further because this film has all five.
I myself have never been a fan of movies that look no better than stuff I can make on my camcorder (Splatter Dead, Tim Ritter trash, or anything by Brain Damage Productions to name a few), but there are always a few films that take me by surprise (Redneck Zombies) and this film can be included now in the later category. In order for a movie to make me forget about its obvious budget shortcomings it has to rise above bargain basement thinking and be original. I can’t say that Cradle was highly original (feeling like a cross between Tales from the Darkside the movie and some supernatural crime thriller), but for what it had, it did the best it could with it. There were great performances by most of the cast, of course there were a few duds (the boss in the 4th story) but most of them were bit parts anyway, the camera was frantic and never boring, the music was pumping, and dialog seldom made me cringe(which is a big thing with movies like this).
The main focus here is to try and creep you out with the over the top gore. Here is a movie that wants you to know right off the bat what it is all about, blood and boobs. It makes no attempts at being anything but an exploitation film, lingering close up shots of blood dripping on heaving breasts can validate the proceeding statement. The women are, for the most part, beautiful, and the splatter is everywhere in creative ways.
What we are given for a story separating the centerpiece gore shows is as follows. Locked up in an insane asylum for a gruesome child butchery incident 20 years prior, a man named Kemper decides to get revenge on the people that put him away. With the aid of a killer known to us only as “the man” in the credits (Dani Filth), Kemper goes about enacting his revenge. Just forget about how he communicates with Dani cause who really cares about logic in a movie like this! I sure didn’t after a while; I just had fun with it. (Just to let you know he slides a barely readable note through the window of his cell on to a fishing line with a hook attached waiting for him – now if that isn’t ridiculous I don’t know what is!) Each of the people that Kemper wants Dani to kill become a segment not unlike those in Tales from the Crypt/Darkside/etc..
The First is a tale of 2 hot females that go to a night club and pick up a stranger that makes their lives a living hell the morning after. The Second is about 2 more hot females (getting the jist yet?) that are trying to rob a man for his money, but instead come to an altogether different outcome. Number 3 is about a man with one leg and his significant other. He has problems performing, if ya know what I mean, because of his handicap. So he goes out to get a leg so that a surgeon that he knows can reattach it and he can get his groove on again….yeah I know, remember suspension of belief? It is a horror movie by the way….. Anyway, of course he becomes haunted by the ghost of his leg and I am sure you can figure out the rest. Last but not least, story # 4 involves the main Detective on the Kemper case’s son and his twisted obsession with a snuff website entitled “The Sick Room”. Lets just say that in the end his dad is pissed and goes to enact his own revenge on Kemper in a classic scene of pure ultra violence and a great effects sequence involving Dani Filth to end the picture.
At first I have to say that I was a little leery of having Dani Filth playing the lead in the picture, but it turned out that he wasn’t really a huge player in it at all. He kind of just possessed people and made them do really awful things to each other. It was cool, and when he was on screen it was for short periods of blood drenched time.
I know it probably feels like I rushed through the explanation of the movie but it is a very long movie and I didn’t want to explain everything and ruin it for ya….he he he. With a running time of just under 2 hours, Cradle of Fear does at times feel over long. But all of the stories were written well, held my interest, and I forgot about the running time.
This is one twisted little movie and if that is something that is up your alley I would recommend hunting this one down. I doubt you can rent it, who knows, but do so if you see it. I think it may be out on DVD somewhere on the web as well.
Score: 8 / 10
