Director: Tobe Hooper

Writers: Bruce Lansbury (screenplay); Philip John Taylor (screenplay)

From short story by: Cornell Woolrich

Keywords: Horror

Name	Occupation	Birth	Death	Known for
Mädchen Amick	Actor	12-Dec-1970		Shelley the waitress from Twin Peaks
R. Lee Ermey	Actor	24-Mar-1944		Drill Instructor from Full Metal Jacket
Mary Frann	Actor	27-Feb-1943	23-Sep-1998	Joanna Loudon on Newhart
Jack McGee	Actor	2-Feb-1949		Chief Jerry Reilly on Rescue Me
Anthony Perkins	Actor	4-Apr-1932	12-Sep-1992	Psycho
Natalie Schafer	Actor	5-Nov-1900	10-Apr-1991	Mrs. Howell on Gilligan's Island
Dee Wallace-Stone	Actor	14-Dec-1948		E.T.: The Extraterrestrial

REVIEWS

Review by anonymous (posted on 4-Jul-2005)

First of all, the movie is based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich (which I've yet to find). At a Museum, a mysterious Aztec piece of history is brought and the caretaker inspects it. The object opens and reveals a dead person wearing a perfectly intact red cloak that seems to call for the professor à la the One Ring in LOTR. He straps the cloak around his neck and begins to free his tensions by killing many people in the process (don't worry, this being shot for TV, no blood is seen). Later on, Amy (Mädchen Amick), a young female student has to find some props for a group of people preparing a scene from Romeo and Juliette. She finds at a garage sale, an old looking chest. When she opens it, she touches the cloak inside and has visions of what the last person who wore it did (still no blood or gore). She takes it and hears that the professor killed himself the night before and this is the reason there is a garage sale. Amy brings back the chest to the group and one of the actors puts on the cloak and begins to rehearse a scene with a dramatic, almost vengeful look. He means to harm the other actor with his sword. Amy takes off the cloak and gets it in a bag to flee home where her drunken mother-in-law and sister-in-law are housing her and her grand-mother. Later that night, Amy has some strange spasms that wake her. She gets up and decides, under the cloak's influence, to turn it into a dress. The rest of the movie is pretty convenient and déjà vu in many ways. There are lots of cliché moments that undeniably tell the plot's weaknesses (and believe me, there are lots of those). Mädchen Amick does a great job (the only one who deserves any mention in the cast) convincing the audience of her character and talent. Tobe Hooper could have easily made it a gorier and better story if given the time from Universal. The project, as I heard back then, was supposed to be a movie but when Universal executives saw the final piece, they simply aired it on TV. They smelled something wrong here. Overall, the movie is weak at best and flawed and silly at worst. The rest of the cast does its best to look stupid (sorry Mr. Perkins, but this isn't even Psycho 2) and the conclusion is even ludicrous when a gollum-like Perkins finds the pieces of the cloak and gets them in a bag... weird. I gave 2 stars for Mädchen's talent and performance. Not only was she convincing but she looked damn sexy in the dress.

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