MOVIE REVIEWS : DEADLY DULL ‘DEADTIME STORIES’

“DeadTime Stories” (citywide) won’t give you nightmares, but it might put you to sleep. So inept is this amateurish little horror picture that it’s a struggle to stay awake watching it.

Feature-debuting film maker Jeffrey S. Delman spins a medieval tale of two witches trying to bring their sister back from the dead, which is followed by uninspired updated versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” They’re told to a little boy (Brian DePersia) by his uncle (Michael Mesmer) in order to get the kid to settle down and go to sleep, but their R-rated sex and gore, although tepid for adult audiences in their obvious fakery, hardly seem appropriate for a child.

Even though an exploitation picture, “DeadTime Stories,” which began production four years ago in White Plains, N.Y. (and was released elsewhere last year as “Freaky Fairy Tales ), was for Delman clearly a labor of love, apparent in his painstaking attention to detail. Unfortunately, he has yet to learn the first rule of low-budget film making: Keep things moving. The pace is so draggy throughout that the film’s mild attempts at tongue-in-cheek humor rapidly evaporate. “DeadTime Stories” doesn’t make it--on any level.