MY CALL: I’d definitely call this an above average horror anthology. Not too cheap, not too dumb, not too “bad.” It also lacked higher production levels of writing, execution, and gore. But I think it made up for it with cheekiness.
MORE HORROR ANTHOLOGIES: Dead of Night (1945), Black Sabbath (1963), Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), The Uncanny (1977), Screams of a Winter Night (1979), Creepshow (1982), Screamtime (1983), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye (1985), Deadtime Stories (1986), Creepshow 2 (1987), From a Whisper to a Scream (1987; aka The Offspring), After Midnight (1989), Tales from the Crypt Season 1 (1989), Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), Grimm Prairie Tales (1990), The Willies (1990), Two Evil Eyes (1990), Necronomicon: Book of the Dead (1993), Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), Campfire Tales (1997), Dark Tales of Japan (2004), 3 Extremes (2004), Creepshow 3 (2006), Trick ‘r Treat (2007), Chillerama (2011), Little Deaths (2011), V/H/S (2012), The Theater Bizarre (2012), The ABCs of Death (2013), V/H/S 2 (2013), All Hallows’ Eve (2013), The Profane Exhibit (2013), The ABCs of Death 2 (2014), V/H/S Viral (2014), Southbound (2015), Tales of Halloween (2015), A Christmas Horror Story (2015), The ABCs of Death 2.5 (2016), Holidays (2016), Terrified (2017; aka Aterrados, a pseudo-anthology), Oats Studios, Vol. 1 (2017), Ghost Stories (2017), XX (2017), All the Creatures Were Stirring (2018), The Field Guide to Evil (2018), Nightmare Cinema (2018), Shudder’s series Creepshow (2019-2021), Scare Package (2019), The Mortuary Collection (2019), Xenophobia (2019), V/H/S/94 (2021), Netflix’s series Cabinet of Curiosities (2022) and V/H/S/99 (2022).
Featuring a rather eclectic mix of killer invertebrates, unlikely cannibals, just plain mean torture, zombies, werewolves, tentacle monsters and monstrous blind dates, Blood Clots offers an array of seven horror vignettes. While clearly not as wildly diverse as The ABCs of Death (2013) with 26 such extra brief vignettes, seven is still on the higher side such that we are more seeing “scenes” of horror than we are the 20-30 minute, more fleshed-out short horror stories of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), V/H/S (2012) or Creepshow (1982). So let’s dive into these horror shorts…
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Clot I, Hell of a Day (Director Evan Hughes)
Out in rural Australia, an injured woman at a seemingly abandoned pit stop hears a scream, finds a mangled bloody dead body with its guts strewn about, and finds herself trapped in a bad place.
This zombie apocalypse vignette features excellent gore, some creative uses of that gore, and provides a thoughtful glimpse into the tedium that would likely befall a survivor. There’s a wonderfully random injury that was executed with great creativity despite its simple elegance. I liked this a lot! Simple. A few days in the life of a survivor.
Clot II, Never Tear Us Apart (Director Sid Zanforlin)
When two guys stumble across a cannibal couple in the woods, they give chase. But it turns out an unlikely family reunion is in store.
I squee’d at the best axe to the head since Wrong Turn (2003)! Wow. Great gory death! This also features a great moment of brutal torture imagery. The dialogue is cheesy bad. But I didn’t mind at all.
Clot III, Blue Moon (Director Martyn Pick)
Things go horribly wrong (for the perverts) during the filming of an episode of European Doggers. And today I learned that dogging means having sex in public.
This is a bit perverse. I mean, there’s a ‘dick slammed in a door’ gag. Thankfully, in the spirit of good taste, the doggers get dogged by werewolves. There’s a lot of blood but nothing happens on screen. This one is more shaky cam frantic with a bit of humor.
Clot IV, Time to Eat (Director Luke Guidici)
A young boy kills some kind of tentacle monster in the basement and brings it to his mother. Apparently, he was more the monster. Just a few minutes long. A nice Sunday comic strip-lengthed idea.
Clot V, Still (Director Carl Timms)
A British statue-impersonating street performer relies on his motionless trade to survive a zombie apocalypse. Narrated by the still performer, this is charming and cheeky. It captures some excellent zombie-centric humor as he watches blood spurt from the neckbites of nearby victims. Cute idea. Feels like a scene from a zombedy.
Clot VI, Hellyfish (Directors Robert McLean and Patrick Longstreth)
CGI animated divers in search of a lost bomb in the sea are attacked by jellyfish. This is perhaps the hokiest segment. This feels like Psycho Beach Party (2000) meets Crabs (2021) but with CGI jellyfish and Jersey Shore douchebags. The jellyfish look kinda dumb… but kinda cute. Weak CGI gore, but a fun concept.
Clot VII, The Call of Charlie (Director Nick Spooner)
An impromptu dinner party includes a comically Lovecraftian dinner guest getting set up on a date. This is just charming! Everyone is normal except for the tentacle-face monster. They quibble about who makes the best sangria, the monster uses mouth wash and is dressed well for his date, one husband just doesn’t want to be there… This ventures into amusing social faux pas; typical dinner party stuff with a weird spin.
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Clocking in at a breezy 72 minutes, these seven segments are short snippets. Generally speaking, this was pretty good. The average segment had good production quality, decent gore and acting, and interesting ideas. Overall not much was wowing, but all of it was pretty good. I was very pleased with this. Especially The Call of Charlie! That short had awesome creature effects and a neat angle.