CRADLE OF FEAR    2002, Pragmatic Pictures DIRECTOR: Alex Chandon   PRODUCER Eddie Kane STARRING:  Dani Filth,   Eileen Daly,    Emily Bouffante,    Stuart Laing,    Louie Brownsell,    Edmund Dehn,   David McEwen.

I was somewhat suspicious of CRADLE OF FEAR when I initially saw the packaging.   With the lettering on the front declaring: "Enough blood and guts to satisfy the most terminal gorehounds..., you have been warned." it's either going to be really good, or really suck.   Fortunately, CRADLE..., is really good -- mostly.

CRADLE OF FEAR is a collection of four vignettes, tied together by some mysterious connection to a murderous but incarcerated hypnotist, Kemper;   Kemper's mysterious and apparently nameless "man on the outside" (played by CRADLE OF FILTH singer Dani Filth);   and the cop, Neilson, who is trying to figure out what's going on before anyone else dies.

Tale #1 is the story of a goth party girl (Mel) who finds the man she believes is her "dark prince" at a club, and brings him home.   And as it turns out, she's right -- but she isn't prepared for exactly how "dark" her prince is!   This was the best tale of the movie, due in part to it's effective use of Dani Filth as the one-night stand.   AND, it's creepy enough to make you swear off designer drugs and night club pick-ups for good!

The next vignette involves a couple of tough young women who decide it'll be an easy job to rob an eccentric old hermit of his stash of cash.   Naturally, they get more than they bargained for -- in more ways than one!   This story was a bit longer than the first, and dragged in the middle.   Also, the ending was fairly predictable, but overall it was more entertaining than not.

The third story is the weakest of the four, and did very little to hold my attention.   It's the story of a rich and jaded couple who are so heartless that they hit a homeless man while speeding down a street at night, and their only thought is "Thank god the car wasn't scratched."

Life isn't perfect for our couple, though.   The man, Nick, has had his left leg amputated just above the knee, and he doesn't seem to be able to "perform", sexually speaking, without it.   He has a doctor that can fix him up, but he's missing a leg for the transplant.   So, Nick takes matters into his own hands, to good results -- for a while.   Like I said before, this part was boring, and I think Chandon would've done better to pad some of the other bits more and just have a trilogy.

The final tale is that of a young man, Richard, who works at an internet provider company.   His job is to seek out particularly nasty internet sites and compile a report on same.   Problem is, he has a bit of a sadistic streak and he really gets off on what he sees.   So he's really jazzed when he happens across an interactive snuff site, where he can control the action.   Unfortunately, he keeps encountering trouble whilst accessing the site, and the more trouble he encounters the more obsessed he becomes with finding out about the site.

This one was probably the second most entertaining story of the movie, although it isn't a difficult stretch to guess how things will ultimately turn out for Richard.  

And finally we get the grand "wrap up scene" with the detective, Kemper, and the mysterious man on the outside.   I actually didn't expect what happened here, and I think it'll come as a decent surprise for most viewers.