Main cast: Jennifer Mercein (Madeline Penn), Timothy Booth (Peter Carver), Bonny Hughes (Darlene), and Rip Torn (Narrator)
Director: Stuart Taylor

I always love a good old love story with ghosts and all, but with Ghost Stories always knowing how to disappoint me, Cloistered ends up being more aggravating than sweet.

Basically, we have Madeline Penn, a caregiver that, after the death of her mother, decides to become the caregiver of another old coot, this time Henry Hawks, a man that can’t speak after a stroke but still loves pretty women and girlie magazines. Hey, it’s the 1990s, and old men don’t have the Internet yet to look up free porn. She soon hears the haunting music of Peter Carver, who plays the violin late at night, and decides that she will like him to listen to her as she nags him all the time. He can’t leave his house for her, though, as the ghost of his mother is determined to keep him with her forever and ever. Sigh, why does every anthology movie of this sort always have that crazy creepy over-possessive mother thing?

The problems with this episode begin with Jennifer Mercein. She’s really bad here, mouthing her lines as flatly as possible as if she were the ghost in this episode. Things become worse when she is saddled with some of the corniest, cheesiest dialogues that even the worst soap opera screenwriter would balk at. Madeline is an obnoxious know-it-all as well, immediately telling Peter what is best for him when she has just met him, and then, after having discovered his secret, declaring that he has to do what she tells him because she still knows best. This is even when she doesn’t have all the information at hand, mind you.

The whole episode is a bloated cringe-fest of terrible acting, crap dialogues, a script that seemed to be written on a dare that surely no one would be dumb enough to buy it, and lots of nauseating cheesiness. How did we go again, from the decent previous episode to this new low?