Body Bags (1993) **

 I looked back my old user comments and I have changed in terms of how I feel about the first two tales, both directed by John Carpenter, "The Gas Station" and "Hair". I think I enjoyed "Hair" a lot more in the past, while this time I just wasn't into that tale. While right the opposite of how I felt last time, I really had a good time with "The Gas Station". I think that has a lot to do with all the horror buff additions to the story including Wes Craven as this wild-haired, pallid-faced, crazy-eyed customer with a studious gaze that hangs on gas station attendant, Alex Datcher, who is rightfully creeped-out. While Robert Carradine, at the start, doesn't really show signs of a serial killer on the loose in Haddonfield (nice!), that he would later be revealed as that isn't altogether shocking. What Carpenter had in the writing of this first tale is close to the vest in terms of slasher formula. So Carpenter had to really establish this outside threat from the inside of that gas station locked glass booth with Datcher reacting cautiously and anxiously (sometimes bored, other times nervous) to each person who shows up for gas or the bathroom key. I liked that in "The Gas Station", it seems outside factors seem to pull Datcher out of her protected booth. She leaves her keys in the booth when trying to run down David Naughton of American Werewolf in London fame as he drives away, unable to get in until she finds a third set in a service station across the way so that disheveled and aloof bum Buck Flower (of course!) could use the bathroom. Peter Jason (of several Carpenter films, such as Prince of Darkness and They Live) has a woman with him who is clueless as to how to add gas to his car, with Datcher having to leave the booth again to help her. But even as she must leave the booth a few times, it is Carradine using a sledgehammer to get at her within what should be a protected location where the threat truly emerges. So that irony I consider a success. But Stacy Keach (who is a trooper and willing to go along with the joke despite his baldness used as the source of vulnerability) in "Hair" trying to cure those bald spots that seem to consume his mind constantly, despite having a very chill girlfriend often taking him to task for putting so much attention on his physical appearance, makes the most of a tale I just personally wasn't all that invested in. My own baldness (I keep my head shaved) never was an issue I gave much attention to, so Keach's plight, even as the direction by Carpenter keeps the tone comic and silly, didn't grab me this go-around. The alien hair is still rather yikes if you don't like seeing little snakes coming out of skin pores.

The Tobe Hooper directed "Eye" recovered my waning interest in this fresh revisit of the Showtime channel anthology. The combination of Hooper directing, Hamill acting, and KNB offering some neat gore makeup effects was enough to improve the film as I was worried this rewatch would prove to be a disappointment. I remember watching Body Bags (1993) as a VHS rental in 1997. There was this service station with some movies you could rent -- it is now a grocery store -- and Body Bags was available at that time. So I rented it with my then-girlfriend (later wife), excited to see Carpenter's involvement. As the host of the anthology, going by "The Coroner", he's obviously a talking corpse, quipping his heart out and really inspired in his performance...yes, as mentioned before, he's a knockoff of sorts of the Cryptkeeper, but, nonetheless, Carpenter is just a ton of fun. How could I not just jive to his tongue-in-cheek theatrics?

Hamill in Hooper's "Eye" really finds the darkness of what that surgically added killer's eyeball does to his minor league baseball player. And Twiggy as Hamill's wife is natural in her reactions to him as the eye transforms him into a monster. But the eyeball's transformation is equally effective. As Hamill's duality pits good and evil against each other, that "evil eye" wants to have more and more control...until the evil is plucked from the vessel wanting to eject the corruption it brings. I think my rating in the past -- 6/10 -- is about right. I'd say 3/5 is pretty close to how I felt Sunday evening. It was cool that Tubi TV had this available. It was overall a nice revisit thanks to Carpenter's host, some clever in-jokes for horror buffs (Sam Raimi's employee of the week picture and later murdered corpse found is a great touch, as is Hooper as a coroner getting Tom Arnold some coffee).