I’m a sucker for portmanteau/anthology horror films: Dead of Night, Creepshow, Trick r Treat, the V/H/S films, anything from Amicus or Hammer and I am one happy camper.  I share this to let you know I am predisposed to like them.  The best and the worst of the form are on display in Dr. Saville’s Horror Show.

The wraparound sequence, in which the eponymous Dr. Saville (Allen Valor) tortures Michael (Michael Hanelin) while telling him stories. This sequence, which intersperses through the others, is the least interesting and effective.  The wraparound sequences go on interminably to no discernable purpose.  Usually, in an anthology film, the premise of the film and the reasons for the specific stories being told are laid out (such as finding the previous director of the asylum in Amicus’s Asylum, or the discovery of a cache of VHS tapes in V/H/S).  There can be a host (such as Peter Cushing in Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors). I’m not entirely certain who Dr. Saville is, or why he tortures people while telling them scary stories.  The histrionics serve neither the narrative nor the film. And what’s with Dr. Saville sometimes having a muppet voice?

In “Consume,” Anna (Honda King) joins a weight loss program to drop a few pounds before she marries her girlfriend,  The program, however, uses programmable tapeworms to help get the pounds down.  Horror ensues.

“It’s Complicated” tells the story of not-lucky-in-love Jake (Jedediah Jones), a doughy, bearded, dad-bod everyday kinda guy, who gets an “Aquapets” kit, what seems like Sea Monkeys, but is actually an alien woman, Mary (Kristina Cat).  After two days, he asks her to marry him. But when Jake looks at a passing pregnant woman, Mary gets very jealous and stabs her to death. Then she kills all his friends at his surprise birthday party. Horror comedy ensues.  The ending, however, is not a twist but the obvious working out of the story and less interesting than it could have been.

The final story, “Break,” is a zombie narrative, beginning with a father, Drew (Kirk Levingar) putting his daughter (Harley Queen) in a closet while he kills the zombie that used to be her older brother.  He then tries to keep her safe whilst battling the zombies that surround the house, except maybe the zombies might not be real.

Overall, the quality of Dr. Saville’s Horror Show is uneven, and the writing and performances could have been stronger.  But the nice thing about portmanteau films is, if you are not enjoying the story, wait twenty minutes and you’re watching a new film.  There’s some interesting ideas here, but the endings of the individual pieces never quite live up to the promise of those ideas.