Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 8:2	Budget Medium

Oh, good. Another horror movie set inside the movie industry.

The movie opens in a bar and we meet Scarlett May, a movie actress. A man walks in and they strike up a conversation and then head off to his studio where he gives her a screen test and chops her to pieces. We flash forward 53 years to meet Adam who is pretty quickly established as a major loser during a call with his ex-girlfriend. He enters a contest and wins a walk-on part in a pirate movie where we get introduced to the cast and crew of "Pirate Wenches". For some reason, the female lead of the movie falls for Adam. That night another actress is killed and dismembered. Scarlett May's ghost returns, makes some phone calls, makes herself visible to our heroes a couple of times and gets her revenge on the man who killed her.

In fairness I should point out that I rarely like movies that are centered around a movie, they frequently rely on "in jokes" and feature clueless producers who only care about the bottom line, actors with over-inflated egos, and directors who can't direct. "Stuntman" is an exception to this rule; "Dark Reel" is not. Part of it is casting and part of it is that the movie tries to do too much.

References are made to the Black Dahlia murder almost as soon as the first victim stops bleeding. We meet Adam (Ed Furlong, "Night of the Demons") and find out that he loves horror movies, has a dead end job, and he followed his ex-girlfriend out to LA from Virginia. By some odd chance he wins a walk-on role in a movie that is being produced by the same company that Scarlett did her fatal screen test for. Pirate Wenches has a lead with a British accent and the peculiar habit of eating raw onions. We immediately sense that the pirate movie is going to be low budget; no real effort is made to make the sailboat they are on look like a pirate ship or even get it away from the dock. As soon as the director calls "cut", the sound man starts jumping up and down shouting "sound was fucking perfect, no reverb". Get used to it. We will be exposed to lots of this type of character defining moments. The gang all meet up at a bar and we are introduced to a couple more of the actors. Notably the doomed Lorraine (Kate Orsini, "Puppet Master, the Legacy") and Tara (Mercedes McNabe, "Angel").

We don't quite see why, but Cassie Blue (Tiffany Shepis, "Nightmare Man") is immediately attracted to Adam. A point could be made that he was not like the rest of the Hollywood types, which he is not. But no effort is made to explain why Cassie likes him. Of course, there is usual shortened time line that movies use. Rather than have a relationship that develops slowly over a month or two, these two are soul mates in a couple of hours. Lance Henricksen, ("Piranha 2") plays the studio head with a troubled past and an odd relationship with his secretary. He says her name and she repeats the last thing he said.

The film is quite well photographed with some nicely done film noir style early on. These are done on a huge sound stage with some static shots and good editing. Once we move up to the present there is a lot of camera motion and panning shots and very deliberate setups. Which is a bit at odds with the script. At times it seems like the actors are just making up dialog as they go along. In particular the scene with Tony Todd (Jekyll and Hyde) and Henricksen seems haphazard, almost improvised. But then so does the basic story line. Scarlett's ghost makes phone calls to Adam and the victims and we initially think that she is responsible for the killings and she certainly takes out Henricksen's character. But it also turns out that Scarlett had a son and that son is killing actresses because, umm, just because I guess. He can't really be doing it out of revenge because he does not go after the actual person who killed his mom. After he is killed then Scarlett's ghost appears one more time to thank our heroes. Why? Don't really know. She didn't really need their help killing her murderer and they were involved in the death of her son. Rather than having a really cohesive plot where everything makes sense at the end, the movie just twists and turns and ends. But it does it very stylishly. My lack of enthusiasm is more along the lines of I didn't like the characters all that much. I have watched movies that make less sense and enjoyed them more.

Unfortunately, this is a polished turd of a movie. It looks pretty good but it still stinks. There are too many loose ends and unanswered questions in the movie. Why did Scarlett wait 53 years to kill off her murderer? The motive for the murder was publicity for the studio? But Scarlett was not related to the studio nor any picture they were working on, she would have been just one more dead girl. Why does Scarlett's son kill other actresses? What the hell does Cassie see in Adam? What makes it so annoying is that it would not take much of a rewrite to clear all this up. First, don't make Adam such a loser. Instead of an aimless loser, make him somehow mentally connected to Scarlett. Then he can go to LA for a reason. Make Scarlett connected to the studio so that Adam's urge to work for the studio is stronger and the motive for Scarlett's murder makes sense. Scarlett's ghost could need Adam's belief in her to be able to show herself and get her revenge. She should also be horrified by what her son is doing. This way the phone calls she makes can be seen as her warning the people that her son is about to kill. She should help Adam and Cassie stop her son in some small way to show that she is not involved in the current killings. Having this kind of storyline would tie all the big plot points together and give the movie the cohesiveness it lacks.

Still, the movie does have Tiffany Shepis in it which is worth something all by itself. And, true to form, she does fight the bad guy in her underwear but the director does not give us a long shot of it. It is all done in close ups. She also gets to scream, really loud. Because her character, Cassie, is meant to be "down to earth" and not one of those "hollywood types", she is the most normal character in the movie. She is not given any odd mannerisms nor any character flaws. As a result she is the only likeable character in the movie. It is odd about Tiffany. She is not the best looking actress out there and her acting can be over the top at times, but she always turns in a solid performance and she has great screen presence. She is quickly moving into the ranks of the great B movie queens like Michelle Bauer, Linnea Quiggley, Brinke Stevens and Debbie Rochon. Like all of these women, Tiffany has done roles that required nudity but also gets to act now and then. Jennifer Aniston is going to make more in her next movie than Tiffany likely will in her career, but I'd rather see Tiffany on the screen. Though Jennifer did star in the original "Leprechaun". Hmm, maybe that means there is still a chance for Tiffany to make it big and start playing the same character in the same movie over and over again and getting millions of dollars for it. Geez, I hope not.

This is a movie that I can't quite recommend but can't quite pan either. If you are not bothered by the plot holes and you find the characters interesting instead of annoying, you will probably like the movie. If you try to make sense out of it, you'll only end up with a headache. It really is rather pretty to look at so if you are tired of watching bad movies with bad cinematography, then this is the film for you.

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