Title: Locker 13
Director:Bruce Dellis (segment: “The Byzantine Order”), Jason Marsden (segment: “The Author”), Matthew Mebane (segment: “Down and Out”), Adam Montierth (segment: “Suicide Club”), Donovan Montierth (segment: “The Other Side”)
Starring: Ricky Schroder, Jason Spisak, Jon Gries, Rick Hoffman, Krista Allen, Curtis Armstrong and Tatyana Ali.
Running time: 103 minutes, Rated R, Available on DVD April 28th
An anthology film starting with Skip (Jason Spisak), a nighttime janitor at an Old West theme park. His supervisor Archie (Jon Gries) tells him tales involving a mysterious locker and that every choice made has consequences. The first story is of an aging boxer (Ricky Schroder) whom is given old boxing gloves that turn him into a lethal opponent. The 2nd story is about a man named Eugene (Bart Johnson) who is invited by his friend Clifford (Curtis Armstrong) who can possibly get him inducted as a member in a shriners-like secret society which isn’t all what it seems. Does anybody think it’s weird that the Big Lebowski is in a wheelchair, again? 3rd is of a suicidal man (Alexander Polinsky) whose attempt is crashed by a stranger (Jason Marsden) that wants to help him by suggesting creative ways to bump himself off. 4th is of an aspiring author/hit man (Rick Hoffman) and his target of 3 women who are suspected to have tried to kill the same man, and then Skip’s own life decision comes into play when he discovers the locker is a 24 hour window to himself.
The bad: Locker 13 seemed more like a long episode of Tales from the Darkside. The filmmakers took 5 very different stories and tried to string them together somehow. Hey let’s throw a locker in here to connect all of the unrelated stories. It’ll work, maybe.
The good: While some of the stories run on a bit long, I did like the plots on a couple of them and thought maybe with effort they could’ve drafted them out to be a full length movie. The one about Skip seemed familiar, but a whole film could be built around that plot alone.
Locker 13 lazily trolls along until the ending which had a better story than all combined, and then it’s over. Why did I have to sit through all of that and just have it end at the only seemingly good part?
Total Rating: C-
Reviewed by: JM Willis
