Now, I’m pretty excited about this next newsy bit, not so much for the appearance of still another direct to video sludge pile being served up, but rather because it brings back an old and–I’d thought–long forgotten format: the three-vignette wraparound combo.

I know that’s a little big jargon-heavy for you, so let me break it down:  the three-vignette wraparound combo, also called a “horror anthology”, is exactly what it sounds like once you understand the terms.  Popularized in the seventies and eighties by movies like Deadtime Stories, Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, Trilogy of Terror, and Creepshow, the the three-vignette wraparound combo stages three (or sometimes four or more) short films unified by one central overarching theme, called the “wraparound story”.  For instance, if you have a movie where a little boy has been kidnapped by a witch who intends to eat him, and he tries to distract her by telling some horrible fairy tales until he manages to escape from the cage he’s being stored in and pushes the witch in the oven, you’ve got not only a prime example of the three-vignette wraparound combo, you’ve also got a lawsuit because that’s exactly the plot of Tales From the Darkside: The Movie.

Anyway, this latest exhibition of the three-vignette wraparound combo, Terror Overload, is about a trucker passing the time on a long drive by telling stories to a hitchhiker.  This is, of course, perfect fodder for this kind of movie, and promises to be downright interesting.  Word on release dates is a bit sketchy, but after seeing the previous works from the company behind it, Not For The Squeamish’s “Doomed To Consume”, I’m definitely interested.

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