“How is your courage holding out? Is it beginning to sink beneath the waves of fear?”

Justin’s rating: Five puppet buzzards out of five

Justin’s review: You know what never gets discussed seriously among the movers and shakers in the highest echelons of government? The scads of horror movie anthologies that started sprouting up all over the place in the ’80s. I keep stumbling over new discoveries, such as Tales of the Third Dimension, a fourth-rate Tales from the Crypt knock-off.

Popping out of a casket at the start of this direct-to-video movie is our skeletal host (and Rod Serling imitator) Igor. He’s so goofy and affable that I wish he had become a pop culture staple. He’s joined by five vultures that offer color commentary (three are supposed to be the Three Stooges and two are supposed to be Laurel and Hardy). It’s all so weird and wonderful that I was charmed out of my socks — and skin — right from the start.

Three movies form the narrative meat of this film: “Young Blood,” where a vampire couple try to sucker an adoption firm to bring them a child, “The Guardian,” which has grave-robbers facing off against a caretaker, and finally “Visions of Sugar Plums,” where two kids at Christmas are terrorized by their off-their-meds grandmother.

All three stories are similarly constructed: They’re more “spoooooooky” than scary, a little slow and plodding, and have some sort of twist ending. None of the acting is good, but that’s kind of what for the off-the-shelf tone.

The reason that this film’s made it into the cult circuit is for the third tale, which is by far the most off-kilter and delightfully deranged of the bunch. Watching an old lady flip over into Crazy Mode and play mind games with these kids — and also legitimately try to murder them — bizarre and made for some memorable memes.

You might not think that a lady in a slow wheelchair on a multi-level house could be a frightening horror villain, and you would be right in that. But she can totally be hilarious as she exponentially flips out in the days leading up to Christmas, eating bugs and drinking rat poison and telling the kids that their parents died in a plane crash. There’s no effort made to be anything close to terrifying, preferring instead to go bananas while plumbing for the comedy of this ridiculous plot. If I watched the first two-thirds of this movie with a passive expression, I was grinning uncontrollably during all of this. It’s like The Visit if that movie decided halfway through to be a sitcom.

Tales of the Third Dimension was made by Earl Owensby, sometimes known as the “Dixie DeMille” and the “Redneck Roger Corman,” in his native state of North Carolina. (This is the same studio that did fan-favorite Star Wars knock-off Gremloids). Tales probably had a budget in the dozens of dollars and has a quaint look to it, like a Halloween special that was broadcast on local channels. It contains a small handful of 3D elements as well in the host segments, such as when Igor sends his skull or hand oh-so-slowly floating toward the screen.

Fun fact: Owensby later purchased the defunct Cherokee Nuclear Power Plant to use as a movie set — which actually became the key shooting location for James Cameron’s 1989 The Abyss.

While the first two stories are barely middling Twilight Zone-style tropes, you’ve got to watch at last the last third of this film if the intersection of Christmas, horror, and unhinged mania interests you. It’s so-bad-it’s-good, a homebrew campfire yarn session that may not deliver screams but will give you plenty of opportunity to riff.

Intermission!

• The puppet vultures are… weird. And they talk.
• The adoption guy’s eyes look so puffy, like he’s been beat up
• If you’re vampires, you have to talk with a thick Transylvanian accents and have a fog machine right behind your front door
• Mind-controlled kids
• Worst vampire teeth ever, it’s like he has the bite radius of a three-year-old
• Vampires don’t like drinking anemiacs
• WEREWOLF ATTACK TO FUNKY JIVE
• The movie’s title card arriving two-thirds of the way into this movie makes me think they moved around some segments
• The grave robbers make sense — it IS dumb to bury someone with expensive jewelry
• The crunchy noises when they cut off the finger
• Graveyard slides into water look fun
• Fake bat attack!
• Pickaxes seem a poor substitute for a crowbar
• Those are the cutest little death rats
• One bite and he gives up?
• That slab of “stone” does not look big enough to crush someone
• Wait, Nigel was eaten offscreen by his own rats when he went to “reset his traps?”
• MARVIN THE 3D BAT!
• The strings on Igor’s hand are so pronounced during the 3D effect
• It’s always more important to beat your kids while driving than watch the road
• Yeah don’t give your elderly mother a hug or kiss or anything, just run away and fling luggage out of the car
• Those are so many, many pill bottles
• Don’t call anyone to resupply your medicine, just cry about it
• Mmm overflowing oatmeal on the table for invisible grandpa
• Grandma’s doing donuts in her bedroom!
• The cat whipping its head around when grandma goes “WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT” legitimately made me laugh
• Grandma’s eatin’ bugs now, it’s time to leave
• “How about them Dallas Cowboys! What a team, what a team.”
• Rat poison doesn’t taste so bad in hot chocolate
• Grandma zooming about and crashing into everything under the influence of rat poison
• Grandma telling the kids that their parents died in a plane crash and then laughing her head off
• Toaster + bathtub
• The horror-themed version of 12 Days of Christmas is amazing
• Grandma’s a maestro on the organ when she’s going nuts
• The dead cat in the fridge caught me off guard too. Looks delicious.
• The teddy bear gettting its head shot off is delightful, as is the Jingle Bells song over the shotgun rampage
• SANTA TO THE RESCUE!
• How are the kids going to explain that Santa murdered their grandmother?
• Igor gets the last laugh