Main cast: John Carpenter (The Coroner), Alex Datcher (Anne), Robert Carradine (Bill), David Naughton (Pete), Lucy Boryer (Peggy), Stacy Keach (Richard Coberts), David Warner (Dr Lock), Sheena Easton (Megan), Dan Blom (Dennis), Deborah Harry (The Nurse), Mark Hamill (Brent Matthews), Twiggy (Cathy Matthews), and John Agar (Dr Lang)
Directors: John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper
Body Bags is a movie that serves as both a time capsule and a cautionary tale about what happens when horror royalty gets relegated to the bargain bin of cable television. This direct-to-TV anthology is essentially a neon sign flashing “CAREER DETOUR AHEAD” for directors John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper. These are two guys who once had audiences sleeping with the lights on but by the ’90s were lucky if they could get viewers to stay awake past the opening credits.
But hey, at least the casting director had one hell of a Rolodex and apparently zero shame about cashing in favors. The backstage party after filming must have looked like a horror convention exploded in a karaoke bar, with Roger Corman, Sam Raimi, and Wes Craven all showing up for what amounts to glorified cameos.
Mr Carpenter himself dons the mortician’s apron as The Coroner, presumably because he figured if you’re going to bury your career, you might as well do it literally. Meanwhile, Mr Hooper also grabbed a bit part, probably just happy someone remembered he existed.
Then there’s the gloriously bizarre supporting cast that reads like someone threw darts at a “Where Are They Now?” board: Twiggy (because every horror movie needs a ’60s fashion icon), Deborah Harry (trading Call Me for Call 911), and in a casting choice that defies all logic and reason, Sheena Easton. Yes, that Sheena Easton, the woman who sang about sugar walls is now wandering around a horror set, making you wonder if her agent lost a very expensive bet or if she was just really, really bored in the early ’90s.
Anchoring this circus of has-beens and “remember-whens” are David Naughton (still dining out on that werewolf transformation from 1981), Stacy Keach, Mark Hamill in full “please-remember-I-can-do-more-than-Luke-Skywalker” mode, and the eternally reliable David Warner, a man who could make reading a phone book sound ominous. This cast is so perfectly calibrated for cult status that they might as well have printed “MIDNIGHT MOVIE FODDER” directly on the VHS cases.
The film serves up three segments of varying degrees of “meh”, with John Carpenter’s Coroner character doing his best Crypt Keeper impression with significantly less decomposition and considerably more flannel. His job is basically to introduce us to the tragic tales of how three stiffs ended up on his slab, which sounds more interesting than it actually turns out to be.
First up is The Gas Station, where Mr Carpenter apparently decided that subtlety is for quitters and jump scares are like potato chips — you can’t have just one, you need to cram your face with them until you’re sick. Poor Anne starts her graveyard shift at a gas station near Haddonfield, Illinois (wink wink, nudge nudge, remember when John Carpenter made good movies?), and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a serial killer on the loose.
What follows is basically 30 minutes of Anne jumping at shadows, dropping things for no reason, and screaming at decibel levels that would make a banshee file a noise complaint. It’s like watching someone play the world’s most boring haunted house video game, where every door opening triggers the same “BOO!” sound effect until your brain starts producing its own laugh track just to cope.
Mr Carpenter redeems himself slightly with Hair, a segment that’s basically “What if Rogaine was made by Satan’s pharmaceutical division?”. Stacy Keach plays Richard, a guy whose receding hairline is apparently more devastating to his girlfriend than a cancer diagnosis would be. Enter the wonderfully sketchy Dr Lock (David Warner, naturally), who offers a hair transplant so revolutionary it makes Richard look like he stuck his finger in an electrical socket full of Pantene.
The segment is surprisingly fun, mainly because Mr Keach attacks his role like he’s auditioning for Shakespeare instead of schlock, and Warner delivers his lines with the kind of sinister glee usually reserved for villains who’ve just tied someone to railroad tracks. Deborah Harry shows up as a nurse whose bedside manner is about as professional as a strip club bouncer, providing the film’s only attempt at steaminess — which, given the TV movie constraints, amounts to roughly the same heat level as a lukewarm cup of coffee.
Finally, Tobe Hooper takes the wheel for Eye, starring Mark Hamill as an aging baseball player who loses an eye and gets a replacement that comes with some seriously unwanted extras – namely, visions of murders that would make CSI investigators consider early retirement.
It’s the kind of plot that’s been recycled more times than a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy, but Mr Hamill throws himself into it with the desperate enthusiasm of an actor who knows his post-Jedi career depends on convincing people he can do “dark and disturbed”. He camps it up like he’s performing dinner theater in Hell, and honestly, bless him for it. Someone needs to sell this nonsense with conviction, and if anyone knows how to make ridiculous dialogue work, it’s the guy who made “But I was going to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!” sound believable.
The real tragedy of Body Bags isn’t that it’s made-for-TV and therefore tamer than a church picnic. It’s that the stories themselves have all the narrative punch of wet cardboard. Without the gore and gratuitous nudity that usually props up weak horror plots like training wheels, these segments are left to succeed on their own merits, and let’s just say they’re not exactly overachieving in that department. It’s like watching a magician perform tricks without any props — technically impressive that they’re trying, but ultimately just sad.
The whole thing is currently available on YouTube, which means you can watch it for free and feel appropriately ripped off anyway. If you’re going to subject yourself to this particular brand of ’90s nostalgia, at least check out Hair – it’s the only segment that seems to understand it’s supposed to be fun rather than just existing as evidence that everyone involved once had better ideas.
