The best scene in the Denzel Washington action vehicle ‘Man on Fire’ was this scene in which Christopher Walken and Giancarlo Giannini were just sitting down talking to each other. Director Tony Scott didn’t have to do anything but light it, get out of the way and allow these two master veterans of thespianism (a word I just made up) do what they do. The second best scene in that movie is when Denzel stuck a stick of dynamite up some dudes ass, but that’s neither here nor there. What made me think of that scene was a scene in this movie ‘Dark Reel’ which featured another pair of old thespians in Lance Henricksen and Tony Todd, a pair of actors I am quite fond of… and a pair of actors who I have observed, as I’m sure you have observed will do ANYTHING if the check doesn’t bounce… in a similar scene to the afore mentioned one by Walken and Giannini. Their scene was the best scene in this movie ‘Dark Reel’, a fairly run of the mill slasher flick that is faaaaaaarrrrr to long for its own good and were it compressed another twenty-five or so minutes, I’m thinking it would have been more entertaining that it ended up being.

Our film opens in 1950’s Hollywood where struggling actress Scarlett May (Alexandra Holden) meets some cat in a bar claiming to be a big studio honcho, lures the silly lass to a late night screen test and then hacks her to bits. Not cool. Fast forward to the present day where we meet horror movie fanboy Adam Waltz (Edward Furlong) who is only in Los Angeles following an ex-girlfriend who wants nothing to do with him. On a whim Adam enters a contest to win a walk on role in some schlock studio’s latest horror epic, the same people who made ‘Garden Gnome 2’ and lo and behold he wins. Now Adam finds himself on the set of quirky studio head Connor Pritchett (Henricksen) and his latest masterpiece of modern cinema ‘Pirate Wench’ starring the lovely Cassie Blue (Tiffany Shepis).

No sooner than Adam gets on the set does some weird stuff start happening, such as a masked killer completely eviscerating various actresses on the set of this movie. Another strange thing that happens is that the beautiful Cassie Blue has taken an intimate liking to the well worn Adam Waltz and is even sexing the dude up. Not that I’m a hater but I did think that was strange. These murders bring in L.A. top cops Shields (Todd) and LaRue (Rena Riffel) who focus in on the admittedly odd Adam as their main suspect in these murders. Also strange is that the ghost of Scarlett May seems to be floating around trying to talk to Adam and tell him something. The mystery, of course, is who is committing these murders and why? Is Scarlett back from the dead for revenge? Is Adam a murderer in addition to looking very strange? Is Tiffany Shepis going to let us look at her ass?

It was good to see veteran horror actress Ms. Shepis in more substantive role this time around and one, mind you this is a bit of a SPOILER, that she doesn’t die in… at least like the first fifteen minutes. However at the risk of being crude, which is not my way… sometimes… We here at the FCU know where Tiffany makes her money and I was getting a little concerned as this movie dragged on that I wouldn’t get a gander at that world class money maker. Phew! That was a close one. To quote the artist who is back to calling himself Prince, That’s one sexy MF right there.

But enough about the ass of Tiffany Shepis and back to task at hand of investigating ‘Dark Reel’. There were some good things in this movie such as the performance of Edward Furlong. Mr. Furlong still looks like he could use a couple of months worth of sleep in addition to perhaps hitting one his areas many local gyms, but director Josh Eisenstadt cast him in a role that plays into his current persona quite nicely and Furlong runs with the role and was pretty amusing in the role. Miss Shepis is quite the fetching starlet in the best role we’ve ever seen her in and the movie also had a clean polished look to it to go along with a certain semblance of style.

There are problems with ‘Dark Reel’ however in addition to it’s egregious length with us assuming this flick being so long as to support a script that was all over the freaking place. This thing here is a horror / comedy / supernatural thriller and it doesn’t do any of those particular genres all that well. There are so many characters and so many different plot elements and twists for the script to support, but the narrative isn’t near strong enough or clever enough to pull this off. Some of the dialog is truly atrocious, though this may be attributed to the attempted comedy aspects of the film, but alas it was more miss than hit in the comedy department. ‘Dark Reel’ wasn’t all that scary as a horror movie, the supernatural bits were kind of silly and as a thriller the twist came out of left field.

Still despite the shortcomings or long comings when talking about how this thing dragged on and on Henriksen, Todd, Shepis, Furlong and this dude Jake Grace as an onion eating smarmy British dude were fun to watch for a bit. Fun enough to watch to sit through almost two hours worth horror / comedy / supernatural thrills…? well… I don’t know if I’d go that far.