Masters of Horror Season 1 Part 7

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Pick Me Up (2006)

Director: Larry Cohen

Screenplay: David J. Schow

Based on a short story by David J. Schow

Cast: Fairuza Balk as Stacia; Michael Moriarty as Jim Wheeler; Warren Kole as Walker

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #15

My knowledge of Larry Cohen is (surprisingly) lacking. Cohen nonetheless has a legendary reputation just in terms of independent genre filmmaking, beyond merely the horror films he made but other areas like in Blaxploitation. His reputation with New York City alone, producing movies regardless of the fact he was banned from filming there legally, is the stuff of legends. Pick Me Up feels like a production in confident hands, from someone who knows what he's doing and had one of the more rewarding scripts to work with in terms of a carefully laid out plot structure. The premise is the culmination of a certain group of horror film clichés being put together, an innately American fear of isolated country roads, where the hitchhiker one picks up could slaughter you or how dangerous it is to hitchhike yourself. Here the killer hitchhiker (played by Warren Kole) accidentally meets a killer who picks up and kills hitchhikers (played by Cohen regular Michael Moriarty) whilst circling around the same tour bus that gets stuck in the middle of nowhere. One member of that bus who wisely hiked to the nearest motel by herself, Stacia (played by Fairuza Balk), finds herself the bait between two killers jostling for territory.

It's a high concept premise which wisely is used as a three actor chamber piece. Balk, who I've always liked, sadly does take the backseat a little in this story but so  does Kole, as the younger and cockier hitchhiking killer, as Pick Me Up if effectively the Michael Moriarty show the moment he appears onscreen. The one reward even in weak episodes throughout the season has been character actors who've worked in genre cinema stealing their scenes, be they main or side roles, and Moriarty does the same here. With a visible sense of enjoyment to his role as the older, wiser man who would be lovable if he wasn't a murderous sociopath, Moriarty actively commands the screen. Thankfully, the best thing about Pick Me Up, is that it feels closer to the traditional short form horror tale with a ghoulish sense of fun to it, meaning not only does it have a three act structure that's properly set out and works, but it means that whilst Moriarty is the brightest star in the trio, Balk and Kole thankfully have as much to do. Even if they are behind Moriarty, the actors in question are just as good for their own roles. The final twist, whilst obvious, still smacks of a gleeful nastiness that's been missing from other episodes in the series, the tone revealed to be closer to the traditional, lurid scare tales of yesteryear updated to the then-modern 2000s. The tone that Pick Me Up wisely plays as much as dark comedy and drama, managing to gain as much humour and tension in a scene where everything actually stops, becoming quiet as characters literally wait for a snake to cross the road, as it does the suspense scenes. As a result, because many hadn't succeeded in the series in doing this, Larry Cohen's episode is actually one of the best as a result.

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Fair-Haired Child (2006)

Director: William Malone

Screenplay: Matt Greenberg

Cast: Lori Petty as Judith; William Samples as Anton; Lindsay Pulsipher as Tara; Jesse Haddock as Johnny

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #16

[Warning - Contains major spoilers]

William Malone would've been a controversial choice to include in this series as a "Master" director, even above executive producer Mick Garris picking himself for one of them. A lot of the issue will be that, whilst an old guard, with a great deal of history in the industry, and common commentator on horror cinema in general, his directorial filmography is surprisingly tiny. His most well known film is a divisive little remake from 1999 called House on Haunted Hill, which would immediately put him at odds with other "Masters" for the series, even Lucky McKee, whose most well known films are either viewed as canonical horror films or cult hits, not a film which has its fans but also detractors within a filmography that's not that large either to back it up. Personally, whilst dated to its time period with its Marilyn Manson song on the soundtrack and a grungy aesthetic, I like House on Haunted Hill 1999 in spite of its problems as it was one of the only films from that period, growing up, that had any sense of actual luridness and style to it without leaving a bad taste in the mouth. Not nastiness for the sake of nastiness like later torture porn films, or neutered like many late nineties American horror films, but a ghoulish nastiness with great production and art design to it.

Malone's entry for Masters of Horror, whether he deserved the status or not of directing the episode or not, is not great anyway sadly, negating that question. Fair-Haired Child does briefly suggest the style I liked in House on Haunted Hill in a dream sequence, but the tale of a teenage girl (Lindsay Pulsipher) being kidnapped by an older couple (Lori Petty and William Samples) and dropped into their basement for the titular creature is pretty obvious in where its plot twist will be and that it's not as interesting as it could've been anyway. Finding a boy in the cellar with the heroine, one puts one plus one together and realises what will happen, and the narrative of the parents resurrecting their dead son and having to make sacrifices to it manages not to stretch out enough of the one hour length nor feel elaborated enough on to be fully intriguing. It's somewhat depressing that the review of Fair-Haired Child is going to be as short as it will be, even next to other reviews, because this episode does emphasis that the experiment called Masters of Horror was effected badly by the quality of the stories, needing those that provided some meat even if they are spooky stories for the sense of fun. In this case the story's paper thin and yet is spread over fifty five or so minutes, really not having a lot to go through and thus forcing me to finish this miniscule review here.

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Masters of Horror Season 1 Part 6: Imprint (2006)

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Director: Takashi Miike

Screenplay: Daisuke Tengan

Based on a novel by Shimako Iwai

Cast: Billy Drago as Christopher; Michié as Komomo; Yûki Kudô as the Woman

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #14

There's the obvious hypocrisy, openly humorous, how the production of Masters of Horror gave their chosen directors carte blanche to film episodes with adult content, and not only hired Takashi Miike in the first place, considering his career by than included Visitor Q (2001) and Ichi the Killer (2001), but expected him not to create a transgressive story when given the chance out creative control. Miike has done commercial mainstream horror, like One Missed Call (2003), but when he was picked because of films like Audition (1999) which pushed boundaries, it's only the production staff for the series to blame when he brought back Imprint, pulled from US cable television for being too extreme. Even with concessions - all the lines of dialogue spoken in English awkardly by most of the cast, whilst Billy Drago "emotes" as an American named Christopher in period Japan going to a pleasure island looking for a geisha named Komomo (Michié) - Miike managed to pull off a paradox in this creative freedom but going too far.

It also reveals how, when J-horror became a commodity of interest for the US film industry, something was visibly lost in translation about Japanese horror storytelling. Another perfect example of this, within this same year or so, was when Miike inexplicably cameoed in Eli Roth's Hostel (2005); seeing him phonetically say a single line of dialogue about his enjoyment of something nasty and horrible, looking like a badass in his trademark shades whilst disappearing off screen never to be seen again, you could see how off the mark Roth was making immediate mirroring of his film and Japanese horror, regardless of the level of transgression in some of them, and missing the noticeable difference between them. Whilst films have been made that are gore for the sake of gore, there's some many differences in tone and content that makes the meeting between American horror and Japanese horror confused. Japanese horror in any medium beyond the gore and weirdness has a significantly different attitude. For every one that feels like a mainstream crossover in the tone of Hollywood, even mainstream films reflect reality through horror tropes (adultery, gender politics, the plight of hierarchy) that's synonymous in Japanese culture or are far more complex in their transgressive natures by way of the types of films they've been inspired by or clear genres like Ero-guro.

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The irony with Imprint is that, beyond the notorious content that got it kicked off the air, the plot's pretty standard in both Japanese horror cinema and even in the likes of Kenji Mizoguchi melodramas. If this has been an episode of a Japanese horror anthology series, it would've been a solid six out of ten.  A little disappointing from Takashi Miike when you expect better, but perfectly solid and amongst some of the Masters of Horror episodes, standing out by a country mile to many of them in terms of quality. The plot's pretty simple to an advantage, built from well aged but reliable plot threads. Christopher wants to see Kimomo again, only to meet a disfigured geisha (Yûki Kudô) who not only says his love committed suicide, but is suspicious in the exact story she tells of how this came to be as well as in discussing her own life since birth. Mostly it's a chamber piece with a Rashomon like narrative where she's not a reliable narrator, the story changing as it keeps being questioned. Kudô, in an episode which honestly has poor acting throughout it, does actually commit to a good performance, arguably amongst some of the best through the series. I was surprised to discover she's in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train (1989) as one of the iconic pair of Japanese, rock and roll obsessed tourists in Memphis, pleasantly surprised to see her here fifteen or so years later. That her career has spanned English and Japanese speaking roles means she's actually able to create an interesting performance with nuance to her dialogue, this the first of Miike's ill advised attempts at an all-English language film with non-English speakers (Sukiyaki Western Django (2007)), and with Kudô the most comfortable out of everyone including Billy Drago in acting in English. The story does overstuff the twist ending with unnecessary inclusions, missing the point when the geisha herself is so much more interesting than what's done. Not only is Kudô's performance enough by itself, but the reveal of the level of her deformities is enough for a story without the random additional twists included.

Another factor of worth is knowing Imprint's source material is from a female author Shimako Iwai, complicating potential accusations of misogyny with the content particularly the notorious torture sequence halfway through, more so as Iwai herself plays the torturer trying to gain information from Komomo. Iwai sadly doesn't even have real articles on her in the English interweb let alone any published work in English, more so a disappointment as the little on her Wikipedia page suggests such a fascinating figure. An authoress, pornographic director, television celebrity and essayist, the sort of figure I'd be dying to be able to read any of her work of as, particularly as Imprint is seen usually as Miike at his most nasty and transgressive, realising its from a woman's voice originally does bring more depth to an otherwise adequate entry. A story consisting mainly of the voice of a woman (Kudô's character) telling of how women like herself are sold in sexual slavery and the various plights women in general suffer as a result. Even if her geisha character commits evil acts, she's someone created from a life of misery and having had to become controller of said life to avoid this misery further, a continuation of countless narratives like it in Japanese storytelling. It actually further, in a story where women are the predominant characters and the sole male one is a weak willed listener, that Drago's performance is as ridiculous as it is, unintentionally adding a lot to the powerlessness of Christopher in how wooden and hysterical the performance is.

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Lastly, it's interesting for a series that I've mainly ignored the production side of the episodes, as it rarely stands out, that Imprint does stand out particularly in set and costume design. Costume designer Michiko Kitamura stands out immediately with her work giving a deliberate artificiality and sense of colour found in Japanese horror rare in Western stories, just in differing Yûki Kudô (even in the dyed colour of her hair) with blue against the other actresses playing geishas or the brothel Madame in stark red. Having the cinematographer of Gohatto (1999), Toyomichi Kurita, doesn't hurt either. Nor the general production, (be it art, production or set design), where as a period piece in stands more noticeably out than the other period stories in the series just for little touches which catch the viewer off guard. How, even when the disfigured geisha's childhood is retold with even more taboos on display, the shack she grew up in has colourful paper windmills on sticks in every version nearby in a dirt mound. For all the problems with Imprint, especially in its plot structure, it still manages to be more rewarding than other episodes because of this. Miike, even when he drops the ball, usually still creates a film of interest and only rarely in his insanely prolific career makes something completely unwatchable. This could've been a lot better, which is disappointing as one of the those die-hard fans of his, but it's in a class of its own to other Masters of Horror episodes not just because of it being the only banned from air time. 

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Masters of Horror Season 1 Part 5

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Jenifer (2005)

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Steven Weber

Based on a comic book story Jenifer by written by Bruce Jones and illustrated by Berni Wrightson

Cast: Steven Weber as Frank Spivey; Carrie Anne Fleming as Jenifer; Brenda James as Ruby Spivey; Harris Allan as Pete Spivey; Beau Starr as Chief Charlie; Laurie Brunetti as Spacey

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #12

Amongst the growing list of disappointing entries by favourite directors in this series, Dario Argento's Jenifer can be added to them. This is neither with a sense of pain other fans of Argento's either as my relationship to his work, past Opera (1987) to be technically accurate, is more complicated than others who merely look down on it all mostly. I'd argue Sleepless (2001), flaws and virtues alike, was a great later gem and I'm not in a minority with that thankfully¹. For that period in general, the nineties is the one hazy area of Argento's career I need to view but after Sleepless I'll admit it's not been a great run. Not completely painful to sit through but with lows like Mother of Tears (2007) I couldn't delude myself in viewing as good.

There's still brief snippets of the old Argento though in these later films, like the ending of Giallo (2009), which in amidst the bad (like Adrien Brody in Giallo also) makes it a far more difficult job evaluating what's happened to the quality control of Argento's filmography. Personally the strain of resources available to Argento as a genre filmmaker is the real issue, which ties back into his episode of Masters of Horror if one forgives a tangent for the paragraph. Horror is in a scenario, since the 2000s, where it's in a golden age for many but there's none of the vibrant industry in other places where one would think it could be capitalised on. Older directors in this series (Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter) were edged out of the market at this point and for Argento it was likely a even bigger mountain to climb as (arguably) the last Italian genre filmmaker of the golden age of the industry still churning films out. Not all of them were considered "great", but the iconic and memorable names from the late fifties-early nineties run of Italian genre filmmaking have mostly left or are gone. Others died as the industry also died (Lucio Fulci), retired (Sergio Martino), had to leave or go to television directing other genres (Michele Soavi), or ended careers shooting super low budget films elsewhere until their deaths (Bruno Mattei in the Philippines). Argento, one of the best of them all, is the last of them too. He's also not someone helped by the resources he's stuck with, the screenplays he's stuck with for later work nor the lower budgets and increasing use of materials like CGI. A TV production like Masters of Horror sadly doesn't help either.

I have never read the original comic tale Jenifer originates from, though it does have a considerable reputation, enough to have been included in 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die next to legendary titles, something whatever you think of such books is still of considerable interest here for a medium like horror comics. The story as adapted to screen here - another glum policeman for the series - Frank Spivey (Steve Weber) rescues a woman from being killed in the woods only to find she's both deformed severely in the face and a simple minded, cannibalistic entity he becomes obsessive over - doesn't come off well with an immediate problem in the gender depiction. Inherently what should be a fascinating tale of male obsession over women, where one figure still yields a powerful sensuality in spite of drastic birth defects, just evokes the misogynistic phrase involving the words "paper bag". The script doesn't help, lead actor Weber not a good penman as he has male characters say "subtle" dialogue about how beautiful Jenifer is below the neck, the result of which is just the start of how crass the story is instead of showings the innate meanings you could draw from between the lines. 

The problems have nothing to do with actress Carrie Anne Fleming as Jenifer mind. In fact, under heavy makeup baring one dream sequence where she's seen without it, Fleming as an actress I've never seen in any other production does a commendable job, the one little slither of saving grace to an otherwise bland episode by doing something far more rewarding than anyone else onscreen. Playing it as a adult child who doesn't understand the difference between animal or human (even child) as baring when jealously is involved, she does a commendable job of playing a savant who yet welds an knowing, wanting sense of sensuality that proceeds to scramble Spivey's mind. In the best circumstance, a story like this rather than evoking the unfortunate misogynistic ideas I mentioned a paragraph before should've been about the problems underlining the male heterosexual libido, evoking not only ancient myths of female-monster hybrids that complicated men's notions of female beauty, but more modern retellings of this issue such as Junji Ito's pitch perfect take for manga Tomie (1987-2000) where men are easily bended towards amorality against a figure entirely supernatural, to which Fleming is playing her role as. Unfortunately, as much as I view Dario Argento as one of the best horror/mystery directors of all time, he's clearly here not a director meant for small scale character drama especially when it's not presenting him anything to work with baring Fleming herself.

What plays off as a psycho-sexual drama, where an original act of kindness by the protagonist becomes a strangely beautiful love affair, should be something worth so much more fascinating and transgressive beyond merely nasty gore. Even when Jenifer commits atrocious acts, Spivey gladly buries the evidence and flees with her, which could've lead to a rewarding narrative even if it deviated away from the original text. But the wrong person is at the helm. It's also clear the script is not good enough, just for how obvious and crass it is before as much of the blame is on Argento as well. How else does one explain how the immediate reaction to first meeting Jenifer leading to Spivey's emotional state being depicted with an unfortunate choice of moment in the episode, a change of behaviour mid-coitus with his wife later that night in the bedroom which comes off as silly as it is eyebrow raising. As much of this is Argento too in terms of the lack of carefulness to this material felt onscreen.

The utter lack of any of Argento's style is also felt. Even Dracula 3D (2012) has more of his touch in comparison, which is a truly damning comment to say. Only having Claudio Simonetti, a regular collaborator, evokes any of the old magic even if the score's far from memorable. The production style of Masters of Horror feels alien for a director as visual obsessed as Argento, but further enforced as well near the end of this series is that, again, when the story's not up to snuff there's going to be problems, even if its adaptation a stone cold classic from another medium.

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Dance of the Dead (2005)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Screenplay: Richard Christian Matheson

Based on a short story by Richard Matheson

Cast: Margot Berner as Marie; Marilyn Norry as Kate; Sharon Heath as Gerri; Jessica Lowndes as Peggy; Robert Englund as the MC; Ryan McDonald as Boxx; Jonathan Tucker as Jak; Don MacKay as Steven           

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #13

Dance of the Dead, set in a post apocalyptic world where chemical warfare's ravaged the American infrastructure, attempts its hardest to stand out amongst the pack. To do so, it's the most mid 2000s of the entire season in appearance and style but it was a nice try. Shaky camera. Quick editing. Beige, grey and washed out colours. Faux Goth and alt culture at the bar where the title event happens, where people are half naked, bound in leather or thrashing about to the house metal band whilst Robert Englund's the MC for Hell in his snake-like manner and constant potty mouth. Consider Tobe Hooper was in his early sixties at the time of this production, it at least warmed my heart briefly that the director I'll defend more than others was just as wild and unhinged as he was throughout the rest of his career. I'll openly admit to being an apologist, but Hooper's career is much more rewarding than initially thought of after Poltergeist (1982) throughout the eighties. Its only from Crocodile (2000) onwards, the film where any of his trademark manic energy and style was sold out, that the films are more difficult to defend from what I've seen, where even The Mangler (1995) beforehand still had a glorious derangement to it in spite of its silliness. In the beginning it looks like Dance of the Dead will be the same with an added advantage of trying to stand out from the other episodes.

As a story however Dance of the Dead is bad. A tedious drama of a young woman  growing up in post-apocalypse America going with the wrong crowd against her mother's wishes, a drama which doesn't work due to the lack of interest in any of the characters. The plot revolves entirely around its titular event which is obvious from the beginning and leads to clichés of chemical experimentation and exploitation of human life at the club. Even the title event is nothing of particular interest, leading to nothing but actors writhing about on a stage. The other problem, more crucial is that it relies on an emotional hook about the protagonist's older sister throughout the narrative. This is a problem as, baring flashbacks to a birthday party where she's a child, not as an adult, one is not provided with the connective tissue as an adult character one needs for her absence to effect one, thus leaving her as a disconnected non-entity. By its end Dance of the Dead is one of the more difficult episodes of Masters of Horror to write a lot about because it has little to actual write about in detail. Nothing particularly stands out as actually of interest, not even Englund in a very sleazy role, because there's no meat to the material as an actual story. The result after the initial rush of its tone is an immense disappointment for me.

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(1) - If only more people could see it nowadays though. An abrupt legal issue meant Arrow Video in the UK didn't just let the license go out of print, but were forced to pull copies off Amazon etc. Whatever the reason, sadly it means it's more difficult for newcomers to the director to see the film in a decent release. Bolstered by his more creative scenes of the 2000s, Max von Sydow in the best performance in any Argento film, and a killer soundtrack from the form of Goblin who reunited for that production, Sleepless has a lot to admire.

Of Freaks and Men (1998)

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Director: Aleksei Balabanov

Screenplay: Aleksei Balabanov

Cast: Sergey Makovetskiy as Yohan; Dinara Drukarova as Liza; Anzhelika Nevolina as Ekaterina Kirillovna; Viktor Sukhorukov as Victor Ivanovich; Alyosha Dyo as Kolia; Chingiz Tsydendambayev as Tolia; Vadim Prokhorov as Putilov; Aleksandr Mezentsev as Doctor Stasov

Synopsis: Turn of the 20th century Russia. Two partners in crime who produce and distribute flagellation erotic divise two seperate schemes which will be beneficial for each other. Yohan (Sergey Makovetskiy), an immigrant to the country, desires the daughter of a wealthy middle class man, Liza (Dinara Drukarova), who is herself revealled to be far from an angelic figure of innocence. His grinning compatriot Victor (Viktor Sukhorukov), meanwhile, is obsessed with a pair of Siamese twins Kolia and Tolia (Alyosha Dyo and Chingiz Tsydendambayev), step sons of Doctor Stasov (Aleksandr Mezentsev) whose blind, hostile wife Ekaterina (Anzhelika Nevolina) Victor is able to weave himself into her life by pure luck.

After a runaway cult hit like Brother (1997), Balabanov threw a curveball from modern day crime drama to a period grotesquery involving erotica and murky moral lines. Admittedly Balabanov, until his sudden death at fifty four in 2013, wasn't exactly known for being conventional or safe. His career is sadly blighted for me with Brother 2 (2001) - a bad sequel already but with a legitimately racist monologue halfway through about African Americans - but the original Brother was a mean, fascinating film which shows how it wouldn't stop is exceptionally low budget from restricting its intrigue and great moments. Of Freaks and Men, made after, is alien to any accusations against the late Balabanov being objectionable as its confrontational and subversive. Brother and Of Freaks and Men are not that opposite of each other either beyond their surfaces, one merely the underworld as depicted in the then-modern day, post Soviet Union Russia of hoodlums struggling to survive whilst Of Freaks and Men takes the glamour of classic Russian period drama, the realm of authors of Chekhov, and shows the grimy, porn obsessed underbelly of hoodlums struggling to survive.

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Despite the steam powered boats and post Victorian fashion, this is a place where individuals of any class, from the middle class to the housemaids, is complicit to the events taking place rather than innocents. Be it the daughter ingesting erotica secretly before being in front of a camera for them, when cinematographic experiments are started by Yohan and Victor, or fathers of these children who are easy to manipulate. It's an incredibly nihilistic view. Where even the villains are far more complicated and absurd in spite of their deplorable acts. Yohan coming off as comedic with his Buster Keaton stone face, and obsessions both with his senile "aunt" who participates in the films. His obsession with dipping carrots in sour cream continually in many scenes or his crippling bouts of epilepsy. Victor with his Cheshire cat, giant teeth a buffoon who, whilst able to weave people around his fingers, eventually gets caught metaphorically with his pants down when someone else has a gun. It's parallel to the Russian literature I've been able to read where characters are permanently flawed and neither the morally bad or good, merely existing. It actually evokes the first, completed half of Gogol's Dead Souls (1842), where every character is gullible or those who are compelling to follow in spite of their cruel, monstrous behaviour, only taken to a further extreme here. The follies and complexities of people shown here in a twisted chamber piece where even the sole innocents, the twins, are actual children and suffer still from one of them developing alcoholism.

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Technical Detail:

The drastic change of tone from Brother (gritty, low budget, modern Russian streets) to Of Freaks and Men is drastic even if they act like bedfellows on the same subjects. A large part of this is the explicit references to silent cinema, shot in sepia and with intertitles emphasising important dramatic points in the narrative which can't be shown onscreen without coming off as exposition. It's a pastiche of the beginning of cinema that however doesn't lead the film to the fantasy of Guy Maddin's work. Instead it's both a beautiful but utterly grungy aesthetic that keeps you off guard. Explicitly it's the important connective tissue of the subplot following the beginning of cinema, from photography to moving pictures and showing the technical innovation not as a triumph but immediately used for pornography, for men in top hats and suits to sit glumly and politely in rooms as the less than a minute long loops play out, What The Butler Saw before any longer forms of porn came to be. The attention to detail - the elaborate wall paper to costuming - doesn't gloss over the inherently griminess the film has tonally, an elaborate aesthetic but one where for every beautiful shot by cinematographer Sergei Astakhov the viewer eventually imagines there's a grotty under passage or backstreet just out of shot of every exterior scene.

The music, lush orchestral compositions or accordion ballads, are also carefully chosen as much for Balabanov to also drag such high art into the gutter as an exploitable quantity. The film briefly demonstrates the beginning of recordable vinyl as Kolia and Tolia are pushed into a musical novelty act, one capable of actual talent but through a transgressive photo on their vinyl recording also figures of exploitation even when they are free of Victor and his teethy grin.

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Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Of Freaks and Men is actually difficult to quantify in terms of being "abstract". Its defiantly an unconventional film, strange and utterly different even from other films which took direct influence, good or bad, from silent cinema. A lot of it is a very straightforward narrative, which undermines it being an unorthodox film in presentation. Instead the film, as is visible from the beginning, is an appropriate follow up to Brother is showing how crime and hoodlums haven't really changed from before in the director-writer's eyes, piercing the aura of nostalgia the past can have by showing how the elegant gowns will be stripped off and lovely decorated rooms are stages for ladies to be laid over tables bare to be whipped by senile old women role-playing punishments. Quaintness in this erotic mixes with the complicit manipulation which pushes the viewer into a difficult scenario of whether these depictions in the film are problematic or psychologically complex, for someone like Ekaterina to visibly be a victim dragged in front of a camera there also to be the housemaids openly enjoying their employees being manipulated and also Liza, our heroine, to be someone possibly complicit in her situation as she is a victim too. It's a bleak film even if there's a sick humour to a lot of it, where the closest thing to a stereotypical male hero is a fop behind the camera who eventually becomes one of the first cinema heroes, chased by groupies, but having forged his reputation first by complicity filming Yohan and Victor's work. 

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Personal Opinion:

Now if we were just ranking this as a weird film, it definitely is weird. A strange micro drama where porn shots comes off as a farce as well as sordid tragedies. Where there are numerous scenes where sexuality are purposely lead into uncomfortable transgressions. A lot of the film can be seen as a very dark comedy, with no side to safely hide behind. As a result Of Freaks and Men is a lot more difficult for the better to digest as its meaning is more complicated than its surface. It's not a "strange" film necessarily, carefully told especially with its intertitle narration, but startling to witness. One for years I've wanted to revisit and now having a significantly changed taste in cinema which can appreciate its virtues and dank undertows.

Masters of Horror Season 1 Part 4

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Deer Woman (2005)

Director: John Landis

Screenplay: Max and John Landis

Cast: Brian Benben as Dwight Faraday; Anthony Griffith as Officer Jacob Reed; Cinthia Moura as the Deer Woman; Sonja Bennett as Dana; Julian Christopher as Chief Einhron; Don Thompson as Detective Fuches; Alex Zahara as Detective Patterson

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Show) #10

By this point in Masters of Horror - at halfway through in my viewing - the first season is actually disappointing. There's a visible sense that, whilst it was an inspired idea to hire the most acclaimed horror directors to helm episodes, if the scripts aren't strong enough they don't work, more so as the restricted structure of this type of television production drastically limits the visual distinctions that many of these directors had for theatrical cinema for the small box. With this in mind, with a director like John Landis who only directed two major horror films and mainly has worked in comedy for his career, he manages to at least provide me with a laugh with Deer Woman. As his story's protagonist Detective Dwight Faraday (Brian Benben)  tries to picture multiple theories to how a truck driver was turned to mince by way of deer hooves, the same two metaphorical figures involved (the truck driver and the woman he went out a bar with) a repeatedly shown in each scenario, wearing different clothes, all of which end like the music video for Queens of the Stone Age's No One Knows. In a series where a major failing is that they're failing to provide eye-catching and memorable scenes that short form horror storytelling should provide, with the exception of one or two stand outs, this entire passage of Deer Woman is such refreshing change of pace.

It's as much, from the director of An American Werewolf in London (1981) and Innocent Blood (1992), that Landis is directing an openly comedic episode. Other episodes have had humour, but the entirety of everything I've watched so far has had a seriousness to them all. Landis with his son and future cultural commenter Max decided to pen a farce instead. It's a story whose explanation is already told to us the viewer in the title and the opening - that the figure behind random killings of men is a deer woman, an American Indian mythological figure of a beautiful woman whose half-deer.  The lack of mystery is replaced by one of the series many depressed cop protagonists having to catch up with us and being unable to accept the absurdity he's finding out. What's dismissed by a random American Indian character as an old, misogynistic tribe tale in the deer woman becomes something that utter jars with modern life, and that's where the story is actually concerned about alongside the gags.

Far from glib and insulting however, this is yet the same episode where you see the ghastliness of a Native American themed casino where patrons have to suffer through a mechanical deer's head telling god-awful pun jokes. The lack of a deeper message on the surface doesn't mean there's ideas still to read into Deer Woman, the inexplicable nature of mythological creatures running around modern civilisation far more appropriate than trying to rationalise them. It's befitting the Deer Woman, played mute by the utterly gorgeous Cinthia Moura, is a force of nature whose motif for targeting men makes little sense, barring hints at it happening centuries ago and always involving anything evoking colonisation of Native American land. That and how she's merely a force with no resolution either, a protagonist and his friendly ally Officer Jacob Reed (Anthony Griffith) always behind her. This is also an episode where a scene where Faraday confesses guilt for the death of a partner is seen as a metaphor for John Landis dealing with the aftermath of The Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), the tragedy of the deaths of actor Vic Morrow and two child actors one which, alongside the reputation of that accident, would weigh heavily on a person's life if they were in the director's chair when the tragedy happened. If the case, that scene does bring a level of emotional depth that none of the other Masters of Horror can touch.

That's neither to dismiss the humour to which Deer Woman can be bizarre as it is slapstick - men crying over dead monkeys against muggers being stabbed by potential victims with their own knives. That tone where the only rationalise why to deal with these bizarre murders is to imagine a deer man carrying a woman off like a Universal horror movie monster is far more rewarding in dealing with mythology as someone to "modernise" and complete de-fang their iconography. Far from the insulting nature of codifying such figures, letting it loose into the modern world and leaving its cast baffled is more aspirated. And as this played out, I laughed and laughed a lot, and considering my eventual reaction to Joe Dante's Homecoming (2005), which wanted to be taken serious as a legitimate political polemic, Deer Woman is one of the strongest entries and an example of when not being blatant in one's messages means far more in depth.

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Homecoming (2005)

Director: Joe Dante

Screenplay: Sam Hamm

Based on the short story by Dale Bailey

Cast: Jon Tenney as David Murch; Thea Gill as Jane Cleaver; Wanda Cannon as Kathy Hobart; Terry David Mulligan as Marty Clark; Robert Picardo as Kurt Rand

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #11

Out of all the Masters of Horror episodes, Homecoming is vividly remembered for me as the critical darling of the whole first season, all entirely in context of it being an attack on George "Dubya" Bush during a controversial period of his already divisive presidency. Before this sounds like a liberal cheaply attacking a Republican president again, it's potent in spite of my belief Homecoming has dated as a work with a message that I view it now during the Donald Trump era. Bush Deux was the president in the unfortunate position of having to react to the 9/11 Twin Towers disaster, one of the most monumental  events in my generation's life because of how tragic it truly was but also how the shockwaves from it (arguably) influenced events even still. Whether his decision to go to war in the Middle East was right is complex in lieu of an utter tragedy on American soil which no one could've been able to decide with difficulty. Certain people look on Trump as being Satan incarnate but also forget Bush Jr., whether it was wise for his party to have done in lieu of said tragedy, also brought in the Patriot Act in US law, allowing police greater power to protect their land but with all the potential for it to be as much abused.

This isn't even an era I lived through as a child that's entirely to do with the Americans either, as our Prime Minister at the time in Britain Tony Blair is still dogged by his ethics of joining the war on the Middle East with actual court investigations involved. All of this seems heady stuff some may find inappropriate to talk of, believing politics shouldn't be mixed into horror, but Joe Dante decided to take a pre-existing short story and reinterpret it as a direct comment on said political period at a bleak time, making it impossible to ignore its real life genesis. One cannot ignore either whether that message, when it was championed in context, has actually any depth beyond that period now with Trump in the White House and the effects of the wars in the Middle East leading to new concerns in the regions, whether it has any meaning still or like Michael Moore documentaries it's a fragile cultural fossil from only a decade or so ago already.

Homecoming is laborious to revisit, out of time context probably the most aged and overrated of the lot from the series. Its critical idea should've been played as a universal one, where as with the Monkey's Paw story a wish made is shown to be one to regret, in this case as political spin doctor David Murch (Jon Tenney) saves himself during a rare moment of hesitance on live television by coming up with an emotionally exploitative comment of wishing the dead soldiers who fought overseas could return back home and vote in the presidential election taking place. He lives to regret this decision when the aforementioned dead soldiers do return back but are far from please with the side he's been writing speeches for.

Whatever one's political beliefs, whether there's a "just" war in existence or not, if a morally good man or woman, one's neighbour or even yourself, wishes to serve their country in the military to protect their land and those of people in other countries, that's truly is noble and self sacrificing an act. The issues stories like this should tackle is always the moral ambiguity of said wars, or when to paraphrase Black Sabbath's War Pigs, if the generals are treating people like pawns in chess. If Homecoming had entirely been about the grief of these soldiers then we would've had a great story, figures of sadness who only bite and assault the living provoked, instead the zombie as the memories of the lost who can still influence the living. This is seen in the one good scene, where a decayed solder is welcomed openly by the owners of a cafe into their building, parents of a son off in war to treat him as someone in need of warmth and empathy, comforting him even when potential patrons are scared off by his appearance.

Instead, from the director of such manic, Looney Tunes inspired madness like Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), you get such a pretentious, bloated presentation for a one note gag, its humour entirely deciding to paint right wing Republicans, in Murch or political commentator Jane Cleaver (Thea Gill), as selfish, vain idiots. Even when Murch has back-story suggesting more complexity, it's cheap sympathy for him. Even Robert Picardo, as a Republican party member, is wasted as a villain just missing a moustache to twirl. Its unsubtle and when there's living cartoons in both left and right wing American politics to be embarrassed about, to merely throw faeces at one side with such obvious, clanging political comments is so simpleminded, even in the context of such a politically low period of 2005/6 a waste of material. It's amazing for me to think this was feared as being dangerous back when it was first produced as, nowadays, it completely misplaces emotional sympathy for moral superiority, so right its head's up its own arse and creases to be good horror or message.

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Masters of Horror Season 1 Part 3

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Chocolate (2005)

Director: Mick Garris

Screenplay: Mick Garris

Based on a Short Story by Mick Garris

Cast: Henry Thomas as Jamie; Lucie Laurier as Catherine; Stacy Grant as Vanessa; Leah Graham as Elaine; Matt Frewer as Wally

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #8

Some might've found it egotistical for the executive producer and creator of Masters of Horror, Mick Garris, to not only direct an episode but base the story off a script he's written based on one of his own short stories, but at this point in the mid 2000s Garris would've been asked anyway to contribute if he hadn't developed the entire series himself. Whether you like his filmography or not, Garris just from his Stephen King adaptations for film and especially television has left a cultural mark for anyone growing up in the 1990s and 2000s who saw any of these adaptations. King has always been huge, but those adaptations by themselves were their own institutions even if they weren't all great. I should know in particular about this - when my parents were adamant, in the early boom of the DVD industry, to acquire as much of Stephen King on film or mini-series as they could on disc, Mick Garris' name found its way on the back of many of their case covers as I watched these adaptations continually in my childhood. Outside of this, his prescience as a gatekeeper of horror culture in recent years, from collaborating with other directors to starting his own podcast to interview them, gives him legitimacy as someone worth talking to about the subject whether you like any of this works or not.

Blasphemously, when many have viewed this as one of the weakest entries of the series, I'll actually hold Chocolate up as one of the stronger above even more acclaimed ones. As time as past, and future reviews of certain acclaimed episodes will take a very opposite view in a way close to slaughtering sacred cows, Garris' actually has a nugget of originality coupled with a willingness to tackle something within this idea even if there's some major problems I'll accept openly. The story of a food laboratory employee Jamie (Henry Thomas) who, in the midst of a painful divorce, suddenly tastes chocolate on his lips waking up one morning and proceeds to feel, see and have every sensual experience of a woman he's never met before, is fascinating. If there's a flaw it's that its within a generic flashback story. It's far from perfect, more crime than horror, which resolves itself matter-of-factly when it could've gone further, but one that nonetheless does have moments of reward.

With Chocolate Garris manages to wring out some subversive moments from this premise. When others in the series have been (frankly) generic in terms of intriguing premises, what would happen if you could feel all five senses of a person far away by telepathy does immediately stand out as different. To see the room they sleep in. To have classical music drown out every other sound in a club you're in as a friend is playing in his indie rock band (Matt Frewer, as the protagonist's chirpy, older co-worker plays another side character from the series who steals their episode). To feel everything of another as if you were them. Couple this with that person being of the other gender, Lucie Laurier as the woman, and it gets stranger and touches, even if not as fully as I'd wish, on something subversive.

A perverse potential love story draws out which is both creepy  yet oddly compelling as Jamie falls in love with a woman that he's been in the mind of by pure accident, the equivalent of falling in love with another's reflection from afar and the entire complexity and moral quandary of ever trying to lead that infatuation to actual romance. Garris, managing to show something that's actually transgressive for me when other more acclaimed episodes have failed to stand out and a person placing their intestines in a film projector feels ho-hum, even goes as far as show how Jamie even experiences her sexual pleasures, which could've become utterly crass in another's hands but here actually stand out. It also leads to a scene where a man in our protagonist feels the experience of what a woman feels having sex with another man, something which in one context could lead to an entire window of perception being opened to Jamie, not when he's with a woman he's spent the night with who thinks he's having a seizure and, to make this utterly comfortable, his ex-wife and son are visiting at that exact time.

Sadly Chocolate doesn't really goes in a direction one would wish for its premise, a crime story of murder which dwindles in interest. It dangles another potential profound idea of imaging killing yourself through another's eyes, but it does ebb out with conventional normalcy. Even when it's the only episode to acknowledge how these episodes were shot in Canada, with tourism of Canadian urban life in the last half, it could've gone further with the premise once it gets to this new setting. What manages to sooth this disappointment, and still stand out, is those scenes and ideas mentioned already, another in themselves to actually raise Chocolate as being a lot more rewarding for the originality it brings to the table.

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Sick Girl (2006)

Director: Lucky McKee

Screenplay: Sean Hood

Cast: Angela Bettis (as Ida Teeter); Erin Brown (as Misty Falls); Jesse Hlubik (as Max Grubb); Marcia Bennett (as Lana Beasley); Chandra Berg (as the Ladybug)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #9

[USA]

Once the first season of Masters of Horror is in the bag, I'm more than confident Sick Girl is going to remain one of the top episodes of the lot, and perversely it's not the creation of one of the "Masters" of veteran status but one of the new blood of the roster Lucky McKee, called in as part of a reshuffle due to schedule conflicts with the production but, with May (2002) under his belt by that point, a justifiable choice who would've been brought in to direct an episode anyway. McKee is one of the only directors so far in this series whose entry also feels like his own work in style and tone merely brought to television. May is arguably one of the first "indie horror" films influenced by American independent cinema of the nineties; films definitely came before (like Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (1995)), but the notion of stories with a huge emphasis on dialogue and characterisation like those American independent films but are fully submerged in horror tropes and plots have grown up through the 2000s and May for me is one of the originals. This, as I'll get into, alongside the fact May is still one of the most underappreciated horror films of the early 2000s, is more than likely why Sick Girl works so well.

The emphasis on dialogue and drama that happens within a horror story is such a drastic change on tone from other episodes which felt malnourished in this area. There's an important distinction here where the two main performances are legitimately great by themselves allowing for emotional connection. Angela Bettis as Ida Teeter plays a nerdy entomologist whose ideals of romance are always compromised by the fact every woman she's dated so far is put off by her beloved zoo of insects she keeps in her apartment, Bettis in the role playing a type of female geek that's still rarely depicted, not a fantasised version through a male gaze but one that feels closer to an actual person who is utterly loveable and charismatic, and also allowed to play the awkwardness and eccentricities fully, through her performance. Ida finally seems to have found true love when she meets Misty Falls (Erin Brown), a free spirit she always sees in the entrance hall of her work place who's obsessed with fairies, has no issue with insects whatsoever, and falls in love with Ida back when they finally interact. Brown, who most like myself will know more as Misty Mundane, star of numerous softcore sex films in the early 2000s, should have gone on to more mainstream roles as she's just as rewarding, the tougher of the roles as someone who develops almost a split personality in how drastically she changes in the film, a figure for Ida who's the ideal soul mate but, due to a Brazilian monster bug that escapes in her apartment complex and infects Misty with a body mutating sting, also becomes a figure of potential tragedy as Ida's perfect romance could lead to agony.

Simply, the premise and execution feel more nuanced. The body horror of its premise, appropriate as its shot in the Canadian home land of David Cronenberg, is horrifying but likewise also dealing with the emotional trauma of its results, Misty's transformation as frightening to the viewer as a metaphor of a love one become ill mentally and/or physically as Ida is forced to witness it reveal itself over time. The fact that this is also a story of two lesbian woman, Ida Teeter originally meant to be male, is also significant as what could've been seen as tokenism in the wrong hands is inherently a story that's both universal regardless of the gender of the characters but does openly show its characters as gay, especially as Ida's older landlady Lana (Marcia Bennett) reacts with violent hostility to her sexuality when she finally learns of it. LGBT characters are still rare in horror cinema, so it will still stand out when such characters are in the centre stage, and thankfully here is a tale both focused on this but also above merely being a message film but a story that matter-of-factly is about two lesbian characters in the midst of this cocktail of comedy, insectoid body horror, illness and love, coupled with an unexpected happy ending which is also openly transgressive. Only McKee's interest in indie rock really feels like a negative, a minor quibble especially as most of the Masters of Horror series has fallen prey to dated mid-2000s bland rock. Aside from this it's an utter stand out especially when compared to the disappointments from the series so far. 

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