Body Bags is a 1993 American horror comedy anthology television film featuring three unconnected stories, with bookend segments featuring John Carpenter, Tom Arnold and Tobe Hooper as deranged morgue attendees. It was directed by Carpenter and Hooper, with Larry Sulkis handling the bookend segments.

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."

Home media

The film was released on Blu-ray in Shout Factory!'s Scream Factory series in late fall 2013.

Soundtrack

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.

Track listing

Critical reception

Body Bags was generally well received by critics and holds a 67% approval rating on movie review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.

However, Time Out called the film "an attempt by a pair of one-time horror auteurs to emulate the successful Tales from the Crypt formula, only now it's nowhere near as happening."

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".

See also

  • Nightmares - a 1983 anthology film with television roots.
  • List of horror anthology films

References

  • Body Bags at Rotten Tomatoes