Bordello Death Tales [DVD]

!!! WARNING. MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. !!!

The British horror anthology film is dead. Long live the British horror anthology film.
Three of the U.K's most interesting low budget horror film directors have teamed up here to direct one segment each of a triology of titilating terror tales. All three stories are connected to Madame Ravens' Bordello, a place where one can fulfil their wildest dreams, and also get their comeuppance.
The first segment, called 'Ripper', concerns the sordid life of a prolific serial killer Graham(Stuart Gregory) who acquires his victims from various dens of iniquity. When he purchases a girl for the night from Madame Raven(Natalie Milner), he gets a lot more than he bargained for. Directed by Jim Eaves.
Ripper is a straightforward morality tale, the sort you would have found in many an Amicus anthology, albeit with extra gore and nudity. It treads a fine line between horror and humour, and can be a little uncomfortable to watch for that reason. A couple of great stylistic touches in this story, most notably flashbacks shown as animation and a very creepy scene where Graham returns downstairs, but leaves his relection grinning maniacally into the bathroom mirror.
The second story 'Stitchgirl' is an altogether different story. Part homage to the Universal Frankenstein films, with some Edward(or should that be Edwina) Scissorhands thrown into the mix, Stictchgirl concerns the visit of strange Dr Whale to Madame Ravens' establishment. His very specific demands for a woman lead Madame Raven to create a perfect woman for Dr Whale, a woman sewn together from various body parts, the eponomynous Stitchgirl. After a couple of surgical alterations, Whale decides he has fallen in love. Meanwhile the mixed up mind of Stitchgirl dreams in colour(apart from this sequence the whole of Stitchgirl is in black and white). Of course, this being a story in a horror anthology, Dr Whale has his dreams literally unravel at the end. Directed by Alan Ronald.
A darkly humourous gothic fairy tale, Stitchgirl is a bit of a minor triumph. The musical dream sequence is completely bonkers, but for the rest of its running time Ronald uses admirable restraint.
The third and final story, 'Vice Day', directed by Pat Higgins, is also the best. Politician Daniel Cain(Cy Henty, as good as ever) is a respectable citizen, apart from one day each year where he partakes in every act of debauchery known to man. Part of this years' celebrations is a steamy chat with webcam girl Destiny(Danielle Laws). As their chat progresses, it also gets darker in tone, with Cain revealing a sadistic side to his character. Destiny feels that they are not alone. She's right.
Pat Higgins is one of my favourite horror directors. I've enjoyed every film he has made so far, and Vice Day doesn't disappoint. It's a very creepy and unnerving tale of duplicity, as the two protagonists play games with eachother. Cain's manifestation of the dark side of his personality is especially well handled, and the fact that the story is basically a two-hander works in its favour as both Henty and Laws have a hypnotic screen prescence.
Taken as a whole, Bordello Death Tales is a witty, inventive British anthology. It might be short in its running time, but it's certainly not short on ideas. Apparently, a follow up 'Death Tales' project is underaway, with all the stories set during the war. I look forward to that. The highlight of the dvd release is a very entertaining commentary by all three directors. 5 out of 5 for the whole package.

This is an epic fail to British filmmaking so called disasterpiece in my opinion" Why was such an awful film created? why in three parts? why are the stories so lame and narrowed down to pieces of stupidness so the public wont understand the key points? At the end of the day the last story.....Vice Day should have been rendered to one full lenth movie as the acting is worthy and the story should been fixed to make a bit more sense but if it had been a full lenght movie then I bet it would have really been the one to beat and totally brilliant but sadly the director decided to mess up on an ideal script for moviemaking" as for the other two rediclouisly lame crappy stories are so crap not even worth going into!! The Ripper is the most pathetic short film I've seen in my life! The serial killer looks and acts like Mr Bean but hes also a crap actor who cant act out his easy role as a silly boring killer who hardly has to act out any parts in this short film!! Stitchgirl is absolutly horrendously silly and a total waste of a few good minutes! it has the feel of Carry on Screaming but its completly un watchable too over charged with chats and nothing going on at all really!! save your cash because you'll regret buying this trust me it really isnt worth it and theres nothing really worth watching at all in it!!