Anne is a young college student who arrives for her first shift working at an all-night filling station near Haddonfield, Illinois (a reference to the setting of Carpenter's Halloween).

The worker going off shift, Bill, reminds her that a serial killer has broken out of a mental hospital and cautions her not to leave the booth at the station without the keys because the door locks automatically.

After Bill leaves, Anne is alone and the tension mounts as she deals with various late-night customers, unsure whether any of them might be the escaped maniac.

Before she can get the spare key from a nearby garage, a homeless transient (George Buck Flower) approaches her and asks to use the restroom.

Anne later goes inside the men's restroom to check on the transient, only to find an elaborately grotesque drawing of an evil-looking entity carrying beheaded people.

The fake "Bill" attempts to kill Anne with a machete, breaking into the locked booth by smashing out the glass with a sledgehammer, then chasing her around the deserted filling station and garage.

Richard answers a television ad about a "miracle" hair transplant procedure, pays a visit to the office, and meets the shady Dr.

Trying to cut a hair out of his mouth, he hears it shriek and, examining it under a magnifying glass, sees that it's alive and resembles a tiny serpent.

Lock explains that he and his entire staff are aliens from another planet, seeking out narcissistic and vain human beings and planting seeds of "hair" to take over their bodies for consumption as part of their plan to spread their essence to Earth.

Brent Matthews is an aging Minor League Baseball player (about to be called up to the Majors) whose life and career take a turn for the worse when he gets into a serious car accident in which his right eye is gouged out.

Unwilling to admit that his career is over, he jumps at the chance to undergo an experimental surgical procedure to replace his eye with one from a recently deceased person.

[5] However, Time Out called the film "an attempt by a pair of one-time horror auteurs to emulate the successful Tales from the Crypt formula, only now it's nowhere near as happening.

"[6] Reviewing the film in Variety, Tony Scott stated that "None of the three playlets breaks barriers, and the writing's perfunctory, but the productions are good, the casting interesting".