Body Bags (film)
Body Bags | |
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Newhall, California Downtown, Los Angeles Woodland Hills, Los Angeles Pearblossom, California | |
Cinematography | Gary B. Kibbe |
Editor | Edward A. Warschilka |
Running time | 91 minutes |
Production companies | 187 Corp. Showtime Networks |
Original release | |
Release | August 8, 1993 |
Body Bags is a 1993 American
The first story, "The Gas Station", features Robert Carradine as a gas station attendant with cameos by David Naughton, Sam Raimi, and Wes Craven. "Hair" follows Stacy Keach as he receives a botched hair transplant that infests him with an alien parasite. "Eye" features Mark Hamill as a baseball player who loses an eye in a car accident and receives a transplant, only to be taken over by the personality of the eye's previous owner, a murderous killer.
Plot
Prologue
A creepy-looking coroner introduces three different horror tales involving his current work on various gruesome cadavers in "body bags."
"The Gas Station"
Directed by John Carpenter. Anne is a young college student who arrives for her first shift working at an all-night
"Hair"
Directed by John Carpenter. Richard Coberts is a middle-aged businessman who is very self-conscious about his thinning hair. This obsession has caused a rift between him and his long-suffering girlfriend Megan. Richard answers a
"Eye"
Directed by Tobe Hooper. Brent Matthews is an aging Minor League Baseball player (about to be called up to the Majors) whose life and career take a turn for the worse when he gets into a serious car accident in which his right eye is gouged out. Unwilling to admit that his career is over, he jumps at the chance to undergo an experimental surgical procedure to replace his eye with one from a recently deceased person. But soon after the surgery he begins hallucinate things out of his new eye, and begins having nightmares of killing women and having sex with them. Brent seeks out the doctor who operated on him, and the doctor tells him that the donor of his new eye was John Randle, a recently executed serial killer and necrophile. Brent becomes convinced that the spirit of the dead killer is taking over his body so that he can resume killing women. He flees back to his house and tells his skeptical wife, Cathy, about what is happening. Just then, the spirit of the killer emerges and attempts to kill Cathy as well. Cathy fights back, subduing him long enough for Brent to re-emerge. Realizing that it is only a matter of time before the killer takes control again, Brent stabs his donated eye with garden scissors - severing his link with the killer - causing him to bleed to death.
Epilogue
The coroner is finishing telling his last tale when he hears a noise from outside the morgue. He crawls back inside a body bag, revealing that he himself is a living cadaver and not a coroner. The noise is shown to be the return of two other morgue workers, who begin to autopsy the "John Doe" corpse of the narrator.
Cast
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Background
Showtime Networks planned to create Body Bags as a television series similar to HBO's Tales from the Crypt. However, shortly after filming began, Showtime decided not to pursue the series. The three completed stories were assembled around John Carpenter's narration segment, and Body Bags became a horror anthology.[2]
In an interview for the book John Carpenter: The Prince Of Darkness, Carpenter explained his reasoning for working on the project: "I wanted to have the experience of playing in make-up. I thought it would be fun and it wasn't fun. It took hours to get me into that make-up every day. I enjoyed the stories a lot. I especially enjoyed the one with Stacy Keach, the hair story. It was quick and shot very fast, which is a good thing. It's a tune-up. It's like a little refresher course. It had things I hadn't done in a long time, and I just wanted to try them out."[3]
Home media
The film was released on
Soundtrack
Body Bags | ||||
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Film score by | ||||
Released | 1993 | |||
Genre | Film score | |||
Length | 55:33 | |||
Label | Varèse Sarabande | |||
Producer | John Carpenter, Jim Lang | |||
John Carpenter & Jim Lang chronology | ||||
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John Carpenter chronology | ||||
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The soundtrack is by John Carpenter (composition, performance, production) and Jim Lang (composition, performance, synthesizer programming, recording, mixing, production), with Robert Townson being the executive producer. It was released in 1993 through Varèse Sarabande.[4]
Track listing
All music is composed by John Carpenter & Jim Lang
No. | Title | Length |
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1. | "The Coroner's Theme" | 6:28 |
2. | "The Picture on the Wall" | 1:14 |
3. | "Alone" | 3:46 |
4. | "Cornered" | 1:41 |
5. | "Locked Out" | 3:11 |
6. | "The Corpse In the Cab" | 3:00 |
7. | "Body Bag #1" | 2:16 |
8. | "Brain Trouble" | 4:50 |
9. | "Long Beautiful Hair" | 5:40 |
10. | "Broken Glass" | 1:05 |
11. | "Dr. Lang" | 2:44 |
12. | "The Operation" | 1:15 |
13. | "I Can See" | 1:05 |
14. | "Vision" | 0:54 |
15. | "Vision and Voices" | 4:34 |
16. | "Put Them In the Ground" | 1:22 |
17. | "Vision and Rape" | 2:21 |
18. | "John Randall" | 4:20 |
19. | "...Pluck It Out" | 3:47 |
Total length: | 55:33 |
Critical reception
Body Bags was generally well received by critics and holds a 67% approval rating on movie
However,
Reviewing the film in Variety, Tony Scott stated that "None of the three playlets breaks barriers, and the writing's perfunctory, but the productions are good, the casting interesting".[7]
See also
- Nightmares - a 1983 anthology film with television roots.
- List of horror anthology films
References
- ^ a b Maçek III, J.C. (12 November 2013). "'Body Bags' Gives Us John Carpenter at His Funniest". PopMatters.
- ^ Macek III, J.C. (12 November 2013). "'BODY BAGS' GIVES US JOHN CARPENTER AT HIS FUNNIEST". Pop Matters. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
- ISBN 978-1-879505-67-4.
- ^ "Body Bags Soundtrack". theofficialjohncarpenter.com. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
- ^ "Body Bags". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved February 26, 2020.
- Time Out. Archived from the originalon 16 August 2007. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
- ^ "John Carpenter Presents Body Bags". 9 August 1993.
External links
- Body Bags at IMDb
- Body Bags at Rotten Tomatoes