The Penny Dreadful Picture Show (not rated)
Dread Central; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes
streaming sites: none that I know of

One day in Walmart, sometime before Halloween 2013, I saw this DVD on the shelf. It looked interesting, and I considered buying it, but I decided first I'd like to do some research online. So I did, and I guess I decided to get it next time I went to Walmart. And then, the next time I was there... it was gone. So, over the course of a year, I looked for copies online several times, but couldn't find any for sale. Until a while before Halloween 2014, when I found a few copies for sale on eBay, and I ordered one to watch that Halloween. I was totally excited to finally have a copy of the DVD, largely because it was so hard to find, even though I still had no idea if I'd really like it or not. ...And I did. Oh, I also feel like mentioning that earlier this year, a show called Penny Dreadful started on Showtime, which I'd like to see, but since I don't get Showtime, I haven't had the chance. I suppose there have been various things over the years that use that title, based on 19th century penny dreadful stories. But honestly, this movie reminds me more of things like Grindhouse.

Anyway... there's this creepy movie theater inhabited by three friends. One of them is named Penny Dreadful, and she seems to be some kind of Frankenstein type monster, I guess. And she's got a sexy-creepy-psycho thing going on. There's also a guy named Ned, who I think is a zombie, and another guy named Wolfboy. And the three of them like watching scary movies. But Penny has recently been on the internet, inviting dates over to the theater, hoping to get true love's first kiss... or, failing that, she and her friends will just kill her dates.

The first movie they watch, before the first date arrives, is Slash-in-the-Box, which is the shortest of the films. The second film, which Penny and her friends watch with her first date, is "The Morning After," in which a woman named Alice has a rather strange day, while trying to remember exactly what happened to her the night before. She eventually finds out, and it's pretty messed up. Incidentally, I'm not sure when that film is set, but I'd guess sometime in the 60s. The third film, which Penny and her friends watch with her second date, is set in 1975. There's this van full of friends who do a lot of drugs. And they're out for a drive in a backwoods locale where apparently a bunch of people have gone missing, or been killed, or whatever. And when their van breaks down, a stranger invites them to spend the night at his home, with his odd family. I kind of had a suspicion about the way that would go, and I wasn't wrong, but you know... sometimes a film like this has more than one twist to it.

Anyway, the films Penny and her friends watch are all weird, and gory, and obviously low-budget. They're not good movies, but that's what makes them awesome. Even so, I was more interested in the framing story of Penny and Ned and Wolfboy. Mostly I was interested in Penny. The whole thing is kind of campy-macabre, which I really dug. And I'd love to see more of these characters, though I doubt that'll ever happen. But oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

The DVD also has a bonus film (in which Penny and the others don't appear) called "The Scout." A bunch of boy scouts go on a camping trip. And there's a snipe hunt; in this case, a hunt for some kind of monster, which obviously isn't real. (Or is it?)