Masters of Horror Season 2 Part 7 and Conclusion

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The V Word (2006)

Director: Ernest Dickenson

Screenplay: Mick Garris

Cast: Arjay Smith as Kerry; Branden Nadon as Justin; Jodelle Ferland as Lisa; Michael Ironside as Mr. Chaney; Lynda Boyd as Carolyn

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #30

The director career of Ernest Dickenson has horror films like Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995) and Bones (2001) with Snoop Dogg. Of also considerable importance is that, until after Malcolm X (1992) he was Spike Lee's cinematographer from his film debut and including Do The Right Thing (1989), whose visual look is as much of that film's legendary status as other factors. The V Word, a vampire story, certainly looks visually interesting, a shadow filled atmosphere set within suburbia where two teenagers Kerry (Arjay Smith) and Justin (Branden Nadon) decided to go to a funeral home at night to see a real corpse. Unfortunately one of them is bitten by a vampire, later revealed to be Mr. Chaney (Michael Ironside), once a math teacher known for paedophilic tendencies before his un-death, trying to get the two boys to join him within his circle.

The film unfortunately is stuck with how overdone vampire stories are. They need more creativity to work. So many, in written and visual form exist that it's not the plots which stand out but their design, their characterisation and tones which need to. Sprinklings of potential ideas abound but none go anywhere. That it starts, as one character plays Doom 3, with the other in an argument with his father over the phone, having separated from his mother and dating a secretary. Said father figure is removed halfway through the plot and is worthless, wasting an interesting plot point. It tries something interesting in depicting the first signs of the vampire "virus" infecting someone, a half awake dazed figure their mother and little sister presume has stayed up all night in the more successful scenes, but it never gets expanded upon more. When the prologue has finished the episode is halfway through and about to end on a generic conclusion, preventing a lot else happening. Even Michael Ironside doesn't get as much as one would wish considering how always reliable he is, standing out as an inherently sinister, nearly Count Orlock form of vampire who walks around with an umbrella and has an insidious back-story that would add more threat for the young teenage leads.

I'll argue Season 2 of Masters of Horror is still better than Season 1, but there's still episodes like The V Word which have virtues but the plots don't have a lot to them. Episodes which surprisingly last over fifty five minutes but with if little in terms of events having happened, exposition taking up so much time when a vampire and its mythos is pretty well known by now for many. The result here is immensely disappointing and has little to actually write about.

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Dream Cruise (2007)

Director: Norio Tsurata

Screenplay: Naoya Takayama and Norio Tsuruta

Based on a short story by Kôji Suzuki

Cast: Daniel Gillies as Jack Miller; Yoshino Kimura as Yuri Saito; Ryo Ishibashi as Eiji Saito

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #31

Sadly Masters of Horror Season 2 officially, and for my own viewing marathon, ends with the worst episode of all two season. It's feature length, eighty three minutes uncut, is as much of the problem. But this episode is also where a lot of the problems with the Masters of Horror brand really shows its ugly face. It should be exciting to witness Dream Cruise. A second Japanese co-production which learnt from the mistakes of forcing Japanese actors to phonetically speak in English, as Takashi Miike's Imprint (2006) was stuck with, by having a bilingual script in English and Japanese subtitles from actors who can speak both languages. A story, significantly, based on a short story by Kôji Suzuki, the original author of Ringu, whose life has more than likely be canonised by how many adaptations that story has happened let alone sequels and remakes. Unfortunately Norio Tsurata was chosen to direct said episode.

Tsurata is a director of a lot of horror films, but none of his work I've seen has stood out. Nor does he have the personality that even a flawed director like Jôji 'George' Iida had, who even when the films are failures still have so much to appreciate. Tsurata feels invisible with his work as a director, which doesn't stand outs even by itself in terms of their stories. The first I saw was Premonition (2004), arguably an okay film about supernatural newspapers that predict ominous events. It was still however, within the context of the J-horror boom and the market for it in the West, pretty average. Heavily reliant on cheap jump scares and only helped by how surprisingly nihilistic the film's conclusion was. Ring O: Birthday (2000) on the other hand was just tedious, already with the issue of being a prequel (even if based on a prequel story written by Kôji Suzuki) and a miserable experience to sit through.

Dream Cruise continues as Tsurata's least rewarding of the trio I've seen, as a Western lawyer living in Japan, Jack Miller (Daniel Gillies) is invited on the boat of one of his clients Eiji Saito (Ryo Ishibashi). Jack has been having an affair with Eiji's wife Yuri (Yoshino Kimura), who has always viewed her husband as a cold hearted, detestable human being, something which Eiji desires to prove by driving his boat into the middle of the ocean with nowhere for the lovers to run.  It's a conventional plot, but always one ripe for good as there's also skeletons in the closet for everyone on the boat which come back, but Dream Cruise is so monotonously paced and obvious in its plotting as this slow pace is experienced that it's a nightmare to sit through.

It would be amazing how obvious the plot is if it wasn't also so tedious to suffer. The acting makes this worse in how bland it is, Gillies not compelling as a lead, his character the generic good man in spite of the plot having a lot to work with, both being in an adulterous affair with a married woman and that he's haunted by a childhood memory of seeing his brother drown in the ocean, a subplot which leads to something out of place for this type of story. More incongruous is how Dream Cruise manages to take Ryo Ishibashi, the lead actor of Takashi Miike's Audition (1999), and pulls out as generic a performance from as good an actor like him as you see, a generic evil character who is haunted alongside his wife by a stereotypical black haired female ghost, none of which stands out. It has all the hallmarks of all the series' problems. Then at a feature's length these flaws are amplified.

Dream Cruise feels like all the clichés of the era's wave of slow burn Japanese ghost stories, what was coined "J-horror" subgenre in the west, slowly dying a horrible death in a TV special here. When the appropriation of clichés from this trend, even if it's a Japanese co-production made in that country, have none of the actual dynamics which made these films rewarding for Westerners in the first place. Arguably this is an awful way to have ended the second season, especially to end the entire Masters of Horror franchise. Having watched this extra long episode with two big boxer dogs, pets who've sat in on viewings like this of horror films, the sensation of one of them laying on my waist crushing me was not only more pleasurable than the entirety of Dream Cruise but actually made getting through the final quarter bearable. The frustration felt both by a person aware he was wasting his life throughout this, and that of animals unaware of what he was going through but unable to settle and lay down, is something spectacularly awful for this TV episode to have accomplished.

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Masters of Horror Season 2 Conclusion

With this, Masters of Horror Season 2 comes to a close and I have ended both seasons as well. Having never seen Season 2 before, I'll controversially suggest that it's superior to Season 1. Sadly that doesn't mean the season was perfect. Whilst the issue surrounding the show's premise was pushed to the back - famous directing episodes which however were compromised by tight production schedules and what resources in scripts and technical content were available -  there were still problems. Mainly that if the stories weren't interesting, or well made, you get duds. Season 1 is much more erratic, and there are even episodes that were deeply overrated, but Season 2 still had failures as well. Sadly due to how the second season was released on DVD in the United Kingdom most on them were at the back end of my viewing experience, making the finale more lacklustre. The late Tobe Hooper never got a great episode in either series, nor did John Carpenter even if Pro-Life wasn't as bad as its reputation suggests. Peter Medak's The Washingtonians, Tom Holland's We All Scream For Ice Cream and Ernest Dickenson's The V Word were all victims of lacklustre screenplays, and Dream Cruise was a terrible decision in general. A lot of generic plotting plagued the worst episodes in both season. Whilst Season 1 as obsessed with troubled cops, Season 2 made this problem worse by being heavily reliant on stories about bland families put in peril, no stakes or reward in these stock types who'd be okay afterwards in every story. Ironically the best episodes of Season 2 either did the unthinkable with family archetypes, like The Screwfly Solution, or was the episode Family, which satirised this with a serial killer who made up his perfect family with the skeletons of his victims.

But the greater consistency helped this season. With only one disappointing episode acclaimed by others - Stuart Gordon's The Black Cat - and none others unlike Season, everything was interesting or actually great. So much so I can have an honourable mention with Rob Schmidt's Right to Die. Schmidt was one of a couple of directors in this season who are arguably controversial to have been chosen as "Masters". Whilst someone like Peter Medak is not known as a horror director, he at least had one canonical classic like The Changeling (1980) that qualified him, whilst someone like Schmidt is known only for a film like Wrong Turn (2003) which hasn't had the same love or cult following placed onto it. But his episode undermined this, making the point of the "Masters of Horror" title pointless by making an episode so much more appropriate to what the series should've always been. Fun, misanthropic and lurid, the one episode that evokes gristly comic books of yore but with more blood and sex. His episode argues that the two series should've emphasised getting the stories right, not necessarily the stunt casting of legendary directors unless the restrictions that undermined their creative processes weren't such an issue over these two seasons. His episode is the kind that made you want to see what someone like Rob Schmidt would do next; sadly his filmography after is not as prolific as one would wish after seeing Right to Die for whatever reason.

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Third and second place were solid stories made with great performances, both following varying forms of madness, both from directors not necessarily making horror throughout their career. Third is Sounds Like, Brad Anderson the up-and-coming director picked for Season 2 who, like Lucky McKee in Season 1, made a very different film from most everyone else. Anderson's is practically psychological drama which just happens to be increasingly more gruesome and tragic as it hangs on Chris Bauer's central performance. Second is John Landis' Family. Out of all the veteran directors who worked in both seasons, its John Landis who managed the most consistency. Even if some might disagree with me on Deer Woman from the first season, it'll be hard to knock Family, another psychological drama but played for sick laughs where another central performance, by George Wendt, is the lynchpin that all the other virtues are rested on.

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And first place, without a doubt, flaws and all, is Joe Dante's The Screwfly Solution. Whilst Homecoming from Season 1 has become a dated time piece, The Screwfly Solution whilst an exaggerated interpretation on the subject of misogyny has tragically become more relevant, making my viewing of the episode [in 2017] a more disturbing experience. It's the episode out of both seasons which feels like it's taking the greatest risk, the most experimental alongside Sounds Like with its use of digital cameras and greater, more elaborate set pieces using them. It has the largest cast and number of set pieces of all the episodes. It has Elliot Gould of all people in a major role. It's also the bleakest of the entire two seasons. Far from fun, but instead something which even if its tinged with black humour is still scary. Willing to jump into sci-fi, and utterly willing to take greater risks than many of the other episodes with an ending that's actually apocalyptic, scary and a kick to the guts. Something which ends as bleak as it should and mortify the viewer afterwards. Even taking into consideration its flaws, areas which feel potentially too broad, or not fully fleshed out, this however is so much more rewarding for me than Homecoming, taking a short story by a female writer Alice Sheldon from a  period of major feminist dialogue, and showing it had greater relevancy in the 2000s and 2010s than anything else.

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With this season, Masters of Horror ended. There was a continuation of a similar premise with producer Mick Garris called Fear Itself (2998) but, made for another channel (NBC) and with restrictions on content, I'd view that series as a spin-off rather than the third season, a one series production for another day. Altogether I admit Masters of Horror wasn't perfect. It emphasises, like anthology films, how even if you have the best of a genre together, the entries could only work if their content was actually interesting. Add to this the restricted nature of television - time schedules and resources - and it adds further potential disadvantages, that and each other episode (mainly) being fifty five minutes long, which is a lot of time to take  to tell as story. I will not lie that both seasons had a lot of generic fodder which could've done better. When these seasons succeeded - Sick Girl, Deer Woman, Pick Me Up, The Screwfly Solution etc. - they worked, but significantly these were episodes that took risks. For me altogether whilst I enjoyed the experience I admit the franchise was a failure. One which offered rewards but also showed its inherently flaws symbolically with what happened to Takashi Miike's Imprint - sever restrictions even affecting a Japanese co-production allowed to breathe from the rest, script issues and the question of what the point was of Masters of Horror philosophically, particularly as for a series that wanted to be uncensored and adult, they pulled Imprint from US cable television and undermined that ethos. I wouldn't argue against having committed to this two season marathon, just for the fact that it offered up so many different subjects. From old horror stables like vampires being reinterpreted to more modern concepts being included like serial killers. The source material for episodes - Edgar Allen Poe, HP Lovecraft, EC Comics, Ambrose Bierce etc. - is in itself the Masters of Horror Literature. Barring giant ants, as there was fifties sci-fi arguably in The Screwfly Solution, there was a lot on offer which wasn't completely success but still of interest. It just has to barred in mind that all 26 episodes are unpredictable in their overall quality. A single season made from all the best episodes is possible, and would be exceptional. Two long seasons however is a lot of material and not perfect.

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Masters of Horror Season 2 Part 6

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The Washingtonians (2007)

Director: Peter Medak

Screenplay: Richard Chizmar and Johnathon Schaech

Based on a short story by Bentley Little

Cast: Julia Tortolano as Amy Franks; Venus Terzo as Pam Franks; Johnathon Schaech as Mike Franks; Myron Natwick as Samuel Madison III; Esme Lambert as Nancy Arnold; Abraham Jedidiah as Jared Barkish

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #28

[Spoiler Alert?]

Peter Medak qualifies for the Masters of Horror directorial chair because of The Changeling (1980), a taut and slow burn Canadian production which is underrated, a haunted house story which works as a drama and as a chilling supernatural story which uses subtlety for its impact. (I presume not for Species II (1998), the only other horror feature in his career which I saw at a young age, to be honest, alongside Species (1995) for the titillation it promised, only for schlock and H.R. Giger creature designs instead). Medak in general has one of those fascinating filmographies I would like to see more of. Hungarian born, his career includes extensive work in the British film industry during the late sixties and seventies with recognisable movies. I'm thinking in particular of The Ruling Class (1972), an epic two-and-a-half hour long satire where Peter O'Toole plays New Age Jesus much to the horror of stuffy British upper class society, a farce which has been said to including anything from musical numbers to Nigel Green as The High Voltage Messiah. One of those careers that, whilst The Changeling is one of the best horror films of its era, is worth exploring in its own right in other genres.

Sadly I can't say The Washingtonians was great despite that introduction. It's premise is utterly silly but could've made an interesting farce - imagining whether the founder of the United States of America, George Washington, was a cannibal. It's a heavy handed idea but one with potential, that the history one hold as idealised is likely to soften the real historical events, even completely go against them for the sake of myth, "printing the legend" to quote The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Particularly with individuals like Abraham Lincoln, an idealised hero who represents his country's people centuries later contrasts the more complicated version who actually lived. However I'd argue, even though it's been ten years or more since I saw the episode, that The Simpsons episode (guest starring Donald Sunderland) about the founder of Springfield  actually being an arsehole and Lisa Simpson having to deal with this issue was a far more interesting depiction of this issue.

The Washingtonians instead is pretty obvious. A lot of the problems with these lesser episodes of Season 2 are the bland families you're meant to sympathise with in the leads, presuming that a mere happy family is enough to connect to when, in reality, they should have more to them than merely an innocent kid in potential peril and their parents being generically wholesome. Said family are pitted against creepy older locals in a small town who are clearly weird in their first scene, behaving so at the start during a funeral. It's kind of obvious they're in on something from the start, and there's an absurdity unused of lunatics in powdered wigs and wooden teeth trying to get into a house and threatening to eat the occupants inside. A lot feels missing as  result A whole level of satire that could've been crammed into less than fifty five minutes. A twist from the original short story that isn't used for a dated joke from the period the episode was made, which misses out another satirical spike.  A whole level that could've happened, thinking about it mid-viewing, if there was a plot twist that George Washington was actually innocent and the Washingtonians had based their flesh eating cult on a fringe delusion. That Ravenous (1999) is a more rewarding take on pioneer era American cannibalism when this was an episode that's not got a lot to say about.

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The Damned Thing (2006)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Screenplay: Richard Christian Matheson

Based on a short story by Ambrose Bierce

Cast: Sean Patrick Flanery as Sheriff Kevin Reddle; Marisa Coughlan as Dina; Brendan Fletcher as Deputy Strauss; Alex Ferris as Mikey Reddle; Brent Stait as John Reddle; Georgia Craig as Jodi Reddle; Ted Raimi as Father Tulli

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #29

[Major spoiler warnings]

The attempt with The Damned Thing was admirable. But I don't know what to say about Tobe Hooper's second contribution to the Masters of Horror series. The most noticeable thing is that it drastically alters an Ambrose Bierce's story and turns it into a curious mix between an environmental story and an apocalypse narrative. Sheriff Kevin Reddle (Sean Patrick Flanery), the central character, suffered trauma when his father on his birthday suddenly snapped for no explainable reason, killing his wife and trying to kill Kevin as a child before he was ripped to shreds by an invisible force. This force is a curse on the men in the family, one when it goes after the males over generations brings an evil influence on everyone surrounding them, local communities turned towards irrational insanity and violence, both self harm and aggression to others, that leads to destruction and mass death.

While its subtle in back-story, the "damned thing" accidentally woken up by oil drilling and a force which has hexed the generations of people in one family, it's vague without reward. There's too many pieces missing that could've added a greater impact to the material. Especially when the monster is revealed as a CGI oil slick creature, there's a sense of too many plot points being unfocused and lacking, a misbegotten narrative as a result which should've been feature length. It also feels pointless for this to have even adapted the Bierce story as whilst that tale has enough material of interest in itself, an invisible creature and the fall out of a death its caused, it feels utterly pointless to have kept this potentially evolved predator in this episode when it's trying to be more of a literal evil from the Earth.

I cannot argue that Hooper, an older man at this time, showed so much energy with his frenzied production style here, the violent editing and intensity much more controlled and effective here than in his season one episode Dance of the Dead (2005).  There's an aggressive mood which suits a director whose famous work always had a sense of the mad and dangerous to it, heightened still here after three decades of it before. Particularly as it means Ted Raimi, he of permanent cameos in his brothers films for me, plays a priest who eventually starts howling like a madman, I can appreciate the energy.The issue is that the plot is a jumble which doesn't gel, something I have to wonder is the fault of screenwriter Richard Christian Matheson, as he also wrote Dance of the Dead which was also failed in this area. The Damned Thing because of this is a disappointment. 

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Masters of Horror Season 2 Part 5

We All Scream For Ice Cream (2007)

Director: Tom Holland

Screenplay: David J. Schow

Based on a story by John Farris

Cast: William Forsythe as Buster; Brent Sheppard as Kent; Maxwell Neck as Kenny; Tim Henry as Papa Joe; Lee Tergesen as Layne; Laura Drummond as Darlene; Colin Cunningham as Virgil

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #26

First scene. A father begs his young son to not eat an ice cream he has in his hands. He refused, unwrapping it and taking a bite. Said father melts into a puddle of ice cream, a sweetly sick and delicious death. Immediately my attention was piqued by We All Scream For Ice Cream, in which a local community is terrorised by an undead ice cream man dressed as a clown called Buster (William Forsythe) out for revenge against a group of boys, now adults, responsible for his death. It evokes, well to not beat around the bush, It (1990) based on the Stephen King novel (and its subsequent 2017 re-adaptation), but what you should get here is not It's tale of adults dealing with a monster of their pasts, but the gristly horror stories of yore with misanthropic comeuppance.

Sadly that doesn't come to pass. Instead it follows Layne (Lee Tergesen), one of those boys as a man now being targeted by Buster, even responsible for a major part of his death, who is always seen throughout the narrative as a good man. From the episode's director Tom Holland, there isn't necessarily an issue with playing the material straight. We are talking of the man whose reason for becoming a "Master" for this series is because of a film like Fright Night (1985), a film which no one can argue didn't deserve him getting a slot in this television franchise even if that was the only horror movie in his filmography. It was a rock solid vampire film where the hero was a clearly defined hero, the villain a clearly defined villain. Unfortunately it was also a film which had memorable characters and a feature length running time to flesh them out which isn't available for We All Scream For Ice Cream.

This episode should've been utterly cynical with more sympathy for Buster himself as the transgressed against clown, especially with how sympathetic and good Forsythe's performance is.  It should've been like Poetic Justice, the third segment of Tales from the Crypt (1972), in which Peter Cushing plays an utterly lovable man destroyed by a bastard played by Robin Phillips, the comeuppance is utterly deserved. What it calls for is actually what Holland is more than capable of as, even with flaws, he managed perfectly  to capture this tone with Thinner (1996). Ironically, in context of this episode, it was a Stephen King adaptation from his Richard Bachman pseudonym days in which with utterly grim humour almost none of the characters were innocent, all detestable human beings, and  there was an absurd edge both in the lead actor's weight related prosthetics and what can only be described as an actual evil pie made with human blood.

Sadly the episode here is not this. Everything wraps up nicely, a literal vanilla ice cream without even a grit of a weirder flavour added, not even a 99 flake of taste if you forgive the dumb ice cream puns. It's over emphasised by Tergesen not being that compelling as a lead, as much because he's given a bland saintly figure to play as much as the lack of good characterisation in the script. This is sad in the case of We All Scream For Ice Cream as it means that it suffocates a legitimately great performance, that deserved better surrounding it, from Forsythe. Not as the undead clown his character becomes but, completely playing against his tough onscreen persona, the living Buster. A guy with a learning disability who however finds the perfect calling in life as an ice cream man, able to bring humour and magic tricks into selling his wares, even able to make something as incontinent as having to provide a lot of change back into part of his act to please the child customers. A man who could arguably be the happiest person alive were it not for some dumb, insensitive teenagers managing to kill the poor guy during a botched prank. This performance, in the flashback scenes, is legitimately up there as one of the best performances of the whole Masters of Horror seasons. But it's a shame the whole episode around this performance is average at best.

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Sounds Like (2006)

Director: Brad Anderson

Screenplay: Brad Anderson

Based on a short story by Mike O'Driscoll

Cast: Chris Bauer as Larry Pearce; Laura Margolis as Brenda; Richard Kahan as David; Michael Daingerfield as Jim

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #27

Brad Anderson, growing up with cinema really from 2004 onwards, was a hot new critical darling at this point when he directed a Masters of Horror episode. Session 9 (2001) was a cult sleeper and by the point of The Machinist (2004), fed by the publicity of actor Christian Bale's extreme form of method acting to play an emaciated lead, Anderson was looked upon as a new director with some excitement. One would presume at that point he would've become like Vincenzo Natali, a fascinating cult genre director whose new film would immediately illicit some interest due to his reputation of sculpting genre into distinct quirks, in Anderson's case by way of psychological drama to go from The Machinist and Sounds Like. Unfortunately after Transsiberian (2008) he had a long delay until Vanishing on 7th Street (2010) and The Call (2013), a Halle Berry thriller co-produced by World Wrestling Entertainment's film branch WWE Studios. After that he's sadly not had as much attention to him himself as a director like back in the mid 2000s.

Sounds Like is arguably, in mind of this, one of the best of Season 2 amongst stiff competition, making this history after this production quite sad. It's also one less interested in ghoulishness, but dark psychological drama instead. Chris Bauer, in a great performance, plays Larry, a quality control supervisor at a software company's call centre, his frankly superhuman sense of hearing useful in allowing him to even pick up on when an employee is about to burst into rage at a customer over the phone. Sound design becomes a major part of the story, in which Larry's bottled up grief for his young son's death becomes a key to madness, like a Lowercase album as ordinary sounds like the shuffling of book pages to rain drops on a car windscreen become amplified, the visual tone of the episode using extensive use of inventive camera techniques including a lot of micro-shot images of objects and even flies to emphasise how this gift becomes his downward spiral. All inventive for a TV episode but also dramatically important, , as Larry starts to slowly unravel in his sanity, between his wife Brenda (Laura Margolis) and her desire to have another child to his increasingly erratic behaviour at work. The result's in the area of Roman Polanski's psychological horror like Repulsion (1965), slow burn drama which draws out alien, nightmarish signs of the protagonist's insanity in ordinary surroundings, the most extreme being the sounds of whining  Larry hears in one scene only for him to discover a litter of offspring in the wall.

It's a sad story ultimately, a tragedy which does so much in less than sixty minutes that it's perfect throughout, without need for expanding it out further to a feature length. In vast contrast to some of sillier episodes, it's a complete tonic that stands out for a more cerebral, quieter work. It becomes more extreme and gristlier as it reaches its climax, as the noises in Larry's ears vary from complete disarming silence to the kind of sounds which evoke what Edgar Allen Poe wrote in The Telltale Heart, of a motif tormenting a guilt person to despair, but never ignoring the calmer tone and that it's still about a father who never overcame the death of a child. As with The Machinist, its symbolising real emotional damage by way of the character's world unfolding for them. As a Masters of Horror episode, it feels like with Lucky McKee's Sick Girl (2006) a new talent outclassing veterans. And yet sadly, whilst still making films, one wishes Brad Anderson's name came up more often as it did around the mid-2000s, growing up reading the likes of Total Film that took interest in him.

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Masters of Horror Season 2 Part 4

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The Black Cat (2007)

Director: Stuart Gordon

Screenplay: Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli

Based on the short story by Edgar Allen Poe

Cast: Jeffrey Combs as Edgar Allan Poe; Elyse Levesque as Virginia Poe

A Night of A Thousand Horror (Movies) #23

The Black Cat, Stuart Gordon's second turn at helming a Masters of Horror episode, is a little disappointing considering its reputation as one of the best of the second season. It's an episode whose main draw is arguably one of the best performances of the entire two season run, where Jeffery Combs steps out of Herby West's shoes in the Re-Animator series, and knocks out a credible flesh and blood version of who Edgar Allen Poe could've been. As someone who holds biopics the lowest of all cinema genre, scrapping even below the barrel in quality in spite of their large budgets, the swerve that this is both an adaptation of one of Poe's most famous stories but also encompasses biopic details of the author's life is pretty inspired, bucking the trend of all the other episodes and standing out in tone completely. The issue is entirely that, even under an hour, it could've taken more of a risk than it eventually did.

The story of The Black Cat, a parable on the dangers of alcoholism which went on to become one of Poe's most iconic stories, where a black cat is a personification of guilt and a wall is built to hide something, is done by Stuart Gordon here with Poe himself as the central figure using autobiographic details. His marriage to a younger cousin (Elyse Levesque), played here at the point of succumbing to consumption. With Poe a known author but in significant money troubles, with writer's block and a crippling alcoholism, all of which in this version of his life leading to a nightmarish delirium the moment he lashes out at their pet black cat. The strengths of the episode is sustained by how idiosyncratic to the others. A gothic chamber piece which has the right melancholic vibe for what is. One that, despite its moments of gore, is actually a drama masquerading as a horror story an played as such. It's entirely the Jeffrey Combs show as he is the centre carrying the weight of the entire episode on his shoulders. His performance does bring up the question, like so many of these horror personalities, why he never got more roles in and out the genre.

The issue is that, outside his performance, it's a solidly done drama but could've done more. Not necessarily drastic rewritings of the material but just a change in little pieces of dialogue, tidying and expanding the structure of the plot further for more risk, evoking more the bleakness of Poe's literature. This is especially the case as this plays with reality being up to question to an entirely clichéd ending, leaving an interesting episode on a sour. It dampens The Black Cat somewhat especially as its meant to be the crown jewel of the season.

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Valerie on the Stairs (2006)

Director: Mick Garris

Screenplay: Mick Garris

Based on a short story by Clive Barker

Cast: Tyron Leitso as Rob Hanisey; Nicola Lipman as Nancy Bloom; Jonathan Watton as Bruce Sweetland; Christopher Lloyd as Everett Neely; Christine Barrie as Anna; Clare Grant as Valerie; Suki Kaiser as Patricia Dunbar; Tony Todd as The Beast

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #24

In a series which has been pretty strong, Garris' second episode for the two series is in an awkward position out of its control. Chocolate (2005) was not a great episode, with a great multi-sexual edge underused but rewarding, but in a first season full of major directors failing badly it was a higher quality entry. Here, it's in the same level of quality, Garris' reputation as a director never particularly high, but the general quality of the episodes around it was more consistent, where even a dark horse like Rob Schmidt's episode stood out more, Valerie on the Stairs was kicked down the episode rankings significantly. The problem is really how long Garris' episode takes to set up a premise. The idea of every idea a writer had, especially those never published to book and lost in memory, gaining form is intriguing. Here wannabe author Rob Hanisey (Tyron Leitso) moves into a motel where unpublished writers like him can live, for even their entire lives, until they publish a book and then have to leave. The potential material from this, of desperation mixed with weird (potential) hallucinations, is intriguing as a beautiful woman named Valerie (Clare Grant) keeps appearing to Rob. As does a horned demon (Tony Todd under heavy prosthetics) who keeps dragging Valerie off.

It has stuff to like. Christopher Lloyd appearing in these grotty horror stories does jar against the childhood image of him as Doc Brown, but even in Piranha 3D (2010), there's this wonderful picture I have of him that's completely eroded the Back from the Future memories completely from the mind, that of an older character actor who can appear in these films and can, like here, play a foul mouthed cynic with aplomb. As an author who has actually published before, and is hiding that fact so he doesn't kicked out of the motel, he's an unused resource that the episode could've lingered on more. As is the environment of aging, failing authors doomed to never getting published which immediately gains sympathy from me as one of those delusions individuals trying to write too, eccentrics who could've had more screen time even in a limited time frame for the episode. And Tony Todd is always worth seeing even in elaborate and ridiculous prosthetics. The problem is that its take all the episode to get to the really interesting story. Where its revealed the episode is a meta commentary on stories entirely in a subjected reality, with one of the strongest last minute endings of the season wasted on an episode that should've expanded the last ten minutes to the entire fifty minutes length beforehand. Garris as a director, as with Chocolate, sadly tends to drown his best ideas in ridiculous amounts of padding. (Which is why I don't like The Stand (1994) for example). Here the problem, where the episodes before in season 2 have been better in quality, stands out more to a detriment.

From https://earlymorninghorrorreviews.files.wordpress.com/2016/02
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Masters of Horror Season 2 Part 2

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Pro-Life (2006)

Director: John Carpenter

Screenplay: Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan

Cast: Caitlin Wachs as Angelique; Ron Perlman as Dwayne; Emmanuelle Vaugier as Kim; Mark Feuerstein as Alex O'Shea; Biski Gugushe as Kiernan

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #19

Openly Pro-Life is superior to Cigarette Burns (2005) from the previous season. A contrary statement but whilst the Season 1  episode from John Carpenter reduced a great idea for me to dull didactic series of exposition, Pro-Life takes an idea (the moral quandary of abortion), and through adding Satan to the proceedings, creates a story that doesn't need to be paused constantly but climbs in event fully to the ending. I will openly admit that, from Carpenter, it's still not as good as it should've been, and in terms of a story tackling abortion, barely gets out of the gate in terms of tackling it with any depth. Probably the best thing about Pro-Life however is that, whilst Cigarette Burns felt like any other person could direct it, the tone of Pro-Life evokes the more nihilistic entries that formed Carpenter's series of "apocalyptic" films; even if it's not up to the quality of even Prince of Darkness (1987), that same streak of grit missing from Cigarette Burns is appreciated and gives this episode a closer bond to the director's career.

It's a broad film in tone, in which the daughter of an anti-abortionist preacher named Angelique (Caitlin Wachs) enters one such clinic with a conscious desire to terminate her unborn child only for said father (Ron Perlman) to follow with her brothers and firearms in tow. It's a pretty liberal leaning film in its politics on the subject although the real issue is entirely the lack of subtlety without all the teeth being in its mouth to make a nasty bite. Lack of subtlety, as with films in the director's filmography like They Live (1988), doesn't detract from their worth in the ideas still sting. It tries - a father of another young girl in the clinic is utterly loathsome and the head doctor of the clinic immediately snaps when threatened, going immediately to his own firearm cabinet - but this proves to be the less interesting aspect of the episode. It does thankfully have Ron Perlman as the anti-abortionist preacher which softens how blatantly sociopathic the character becomes. Even a viewer like myself pro-choice will appreciate Perlman's ability to give the character's arguments some weight even if he's a stereotype. The slithers of moral greyness are far more interesting, despite being jettisoned early, when it comes to the fact the daughter's unborn child is likely Satanic in origins but the father has voices in his head he believes are heavenly and asking him to protect it, leading to all manner of existential devastation even for his character is a one note figure.

It's also interesting to see how it also evokes Carpenter's filmography in general. The action director in its scenes of gunfire which are solidly handled. And of course the apocalyptic tone within the main clinic setting as the deaths start to pile up. It gets more gruesome than even Carpenter's previous episode, with Ron Perlman experimenting with some of the equipment in the clinic, but there's also a more tragic and severer tone which benefits Pro-Life. Whilst Cigarette Burns felt like it was trying too hard to surf on its trendy cine-literate plot without fully fleshing it out, Pro-Life is entirely within a morally complex subject that strays outside of cinema into real life, and even if it could've done so much more, it stands out more inherently for this for the better. Even if it leads to at least one ridiculous full body costume I appreciate what starts off with a tantalising start and leads to a fully successful conclusion of what would likely happen if this type of event ever took place. Where the ending is technically happy but with a terrible emotional aftermath that you never see as, like in a classic Carpenter film, he's cuts immediately beforehand and deprives you of a comfortable denouement.

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Family (2006)

Director: John Landis

Screenplay: Brent Hanley

Cast: George Wendt as Harold Thompson; Meredith Monroe as Celia Fuller; Matt Keeslar as David Fuller; Haley Guiel as Sarah; Kerry Sandomirsky as Jane; John B. Scot as Grandpa; Nancy Whyte as Grandma

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #20

John Landis, as of seeing Deer Woman (2005) from the first season and Family now in Season 2, is two for two for great segments in Masters of Horror. Again, like with Deer Woman, it's surprising that whilst he is known for An American Werewolf in London (1981) his career is mainly been outside of horror, and yet within the series named Masters of Horror he's been the figure the most consistent out of the old guard. It may however be that discrepancy which has helped with these episodes of his. Deer Woman was a comedy first within the horror genre, likely sneaking in more serious material within the farce, but still a comedy. Family is a grim, nasty little tale but there's still a streak of gallows humour presiding it, and with at least a cast member from Cheers helping him out in the lead.

Structurally, from screenwriter Brent Hanley (most well known for the script of the late Bill Paxton's Frailty (2001)), the story's a simple and low key tale with an easy to understand set up. A middle aged, single man Harold (George Wendt) lives in peaceful Americana suburbia, only for it to be immediately revealed that he's been kidnapping people, murdering them and with the help of a bathtub of acid building up his own perfect family from their bones and clothes they were taken in. His world is idealised - wife, daughter, even grandparents - with the episode cleverly depicting this through having actors in the roles for his delusions but also intercutting the prop skeletons in the same costumes during these conversation scenes. Very simple, easy to accomplish things which should be obvious for a good story, which even a layman like me who doesn't work in the film and television industry would know would help lead to a good production. The flashiest things about the entire episode is just how Landis decided to be more flamboyant in visual style, with swooping cameras, and in terms of music with the curious (but rewarding) choice of old, beautiful gospel songs chosen in a rather sacrilegious ways. The rest of Family is deceptively simple in presentation.

And that's actually why it's one of the best episodes of both seasons so far, as this basic and well thought out plotting succeeds as expected. Harold takes interest in a younger couple (Meredith Monroe and Matt Keeslar) who have moved in across the street, having interest in the wife much to his skeleton wife's chagrin. This obviously leads to a sting in the tail, but everything fleshed up around this (pun not intended) is done well. The most important factor is how George Wendt excels in the lead. This is not his first time in the horror genre - he was in House (1985) in a major role [a review is available HERE], but most of his career is outside of said genre. But it feels as if this helps allow him to really flesh out the character from a career that includes playing Santa Claus in a TV movie the same year as this, giving him the ability to depict a character who comes off as actually lovable were it not for the fact of how horrifying his behaviour is outside his warm, family valued hallucinations. There's been a little disappointment in how, in spite of Season 2 being far more consistent and better in terms of the quality of the episodes, the stand out character performances haven't been as noticeable yet, but out of both seasons Wendt is going to be amongst the best particularly in the lead.

His delusions talking back to him, even as far as potential victims speaking directly to him (and to us) from afar in one sequence all simplistic and yet credible way to depict this. And also, considering where the story goes, there's definitely moments where the viewer would question on a rewatch what was within Harold's head and what was actually said, having some clever whit to the material from Brent Hanley. Between him and Landis, the story never overcomplicates itself with subplots and plays its tone as both humorous and dark before the ending. Said ending, which I won't spoil, is as twisted as you can get, and even if you guessed it before the end, it still has that aforementioned sting because of the quality of everything built from beforehand. In general Family will rank amongst one of the best of the series and its simplicity is the reason.

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Masters of Horror Season 2 Part 1: Pelts (2006)

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Director: John Carpenter

Screenplay: Matt Venne

Based on a short story by F. Paul Wilson

Cast: Meat Loaf as Jake Feldman; Link Baker as Lou Chinaski; Emilio Salituro as Sergio; Ellen Ewusie as Shanna; John Saxon as Jeb 'Pa' Jameson

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #18

I return back to Masters of Horror for Season 2, which had a surprisingly quick turnaround as whilst the first season ended in the spring of 2006, the second started in late 2006. Even swifter than this is how, not far from viewing Dario Argento's Jenifer (2005), I'm now viewing his second addition to the TV series Pelts. Jenifer was an immense disappointment, having the potential for a great psychosexual drama but given to the wrong director. Pelts is an immediately better episode. Not great, but better. 

The one advantage Pelts has, for all its silliness, is that it relies on the tone of ancient folklore to justify anything that happens in the plot. Meat Loaf is Jake Feldman, a greedy fur merchant with an obsession with a stripper/former model Shanna (Ellen Ewusie) who thinks he can bribe her affection and succeed in life when he acquires a set of suspicious fur pelts from a trapper Jeb Jameson (John Saxon, whose return to an Argento film after Tenebre (1982) is still awesome even if his role is brief). The pelts are cleared hexed the moment they were acquired, taken from a sacred raccoon shrine in the woods, with a tendency to woo people into committing suicide in utterly ridiculous ways.

Expecting a deeper message of Pelts being anti-fur is absurd, but what stands out for the better is how the pelts as an item of symbolic meaning evokes common folklore in various cultures of the dangers of transgressing nature. In this case, the curse generated against those who transgressed over a sacred animal shrine allows the episode to get away with such ludicrous deaths as witnessed throughout the episode. Sewing one's face close is absurd, but using the logic of this taboo in human myth makes it more acceptable, as such folklore stretched into the fantastical.

Aside from this, it's Argento making a lurid story for the sake of it, which varies per viewer in reward. Whilst his golden run of films were lurid too, especially on gore, they were also filtered through a rich aesthetic and stories which twist and turned with invention and spark. Here, in later year Argento, its having everything ramped up to an exaggerated extent with that content itself the main dish being served. Where Meat Loaf chews scenery. Where the gore, including the most impractical of suicide methods including animal trap, are as visceral as possible and not stylised. Where sex and nudity is up front, including random lesbianism. Stuff you'd expect more from an Andrea Bianchi or one of the other more infamous Italian genre directors of yore. Not Argento who combined the hyper violent and sensual with a bit more class than this.

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Masters of Horror Season 1 Part 8

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Haeckel's Tale (2006)

Director: John McNaughton

Screenplay: Mick Garris

Based on a short story by Clive Barker

Cast: Steve Bacic as John Ralston; Micki Maunsell as Miz Carnation; Gerard Plunkett as Dr. Hauser; Derek Cecil as Ernst Haeckel; Pablo Coffey as Chester; Jon Polito as Montesquino; Warren Kimmel as Faron; Jill Morrison as Rachel; Leela Savasta as Elise Wolfram

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #17

[Warning - This review contains major spoilers]

Ending my viewing of Masters of Horror Season 1, everything ends with necrophilia. Certainly a memorable way to end the series after thirteen episodes. Haeckel's Tale, based on a Clive Barker story, was also the other episode another director had to step in to replace one that couldn't join the production schedule in time. This one particularly raises a curious what-if in that it was originally the late George A. Romero who was meant to direct this. As a director known for his zombie films, this scenario here with a noticeably kinkier take on them would've raised questions in where he'd go with the subject matter even if following the same Mick Garris screenplay. Instead, when Romero had to step away, in his place came John McNaughton. Whilst there are a few other horror films in his filmography, his reputation in this genre is built upon Henry: A Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), as drastically different from Haeckel's Tale as you could get in tone. He does well though, knowing all this backstory, with this gristly period piece,  a slice of 19th century morbidness in which a man is warned of the dangers of resurrecting the dead, in bookend segments, by the tale of Ernst Haeckel (Derek Cecil) a wannabe Victor Frankenstein whose failures in actually raising the dead lead him both to Montesquino (Jon Polito), a self proclaimed necromancer, and a couple with a significant age gap, the older Walter Wolfram (Tom McBeath) and his younger wife Elise (Leela Savasta), who rely on Montesquino's services for some very eyebrow raising reasons that prove love will even overcome rotting flesh.

The result's an obvious transgressive plot twist in the end, of love beyond the death of one's lover, but that doesn't stop this from being memorable. It seems pointless to elaborate on this plot as once the plot twist is fully revealed, it has no need for over elaborating on this point. Instead, in favour for Haeckel's Tale is its weirdly luscious tone that's appropriate for an adaptation of Clive Barker. Its behind Takashi Miike's Imprint (2006) in terms of production design, but being the only other period story of the series drastically helps it, as for period detail it inherently requires a clear aesthetic with some care for it rather than shooting in a modern day setting without concern for the environments chosen. The 19th century is perfect for cinema not just for adapting the stories written in the period but because it was an era crossing rationalism through scientific innovation with gothic aesthetic, leading to a decadence in the aesthetic (from the clothes to the locations) which works for horror cinema, from the resurrectionists to literature itself from the likes of  Mary Shelley, That Haeckel's Tale is effectively taking a century old message from folklore, that one has to accept death and any attempt to change that is cause for later remorse, fits the era Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) was written within. That Haeckel's Tale by way of Clive Barker twists this with a significant exceptional to the rule - if  one loves another physically and romantically with flesh or not - not only stands out in the period setting but feels more sacrilegious and subversive as a period piece than set in the modern day.

Its far more so as the ending suggests a beautiful romance between lover and her decaying late husband that transcends the age of either of the couple and one that even becomes a polyamorous relationship with multiple husbands, appropriate from a story by the creator of Hellraiser. It also manages, bizarrely, to evoke Peter Jackson's Brain Dead (1992) with an undead baby, unintentionally hilarious but not distracting to a tone that already has a macabre sense of humour secretly within it already. Haeckel's Tale in general is a solid episode for the series because of this. Its only flaw is nothing to do with the quality of the episode itself, only that it has to bare the weight on its shoulders of other episodes which were less than stellar inclusions, forcing it to have to be picked at more severely in terms of whether it's great episode or just a good, solid one as it actually is. That doesn't however detract from what it does right.

From https://mannysbookofshadows.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/
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Masters of Horror Season 1: Conclusion

After all thirteen episodes have been finished, Masters of Horror Season 1 shows itself an awkward experiment, one which was hindered by the title itself. With the weight of expectation that title presents, the irony was that having some of the most iconic directors of the genre helming episodes wasn't something the series was possible to lean on. Its production style, as episodic anthology television on a quick schedule, completely goes against hiring directors like the late Tobe Hooper and John Carpenter in that their trademarks have to be compromised for the shift deadlines. What was a tantalising prospect on paper was actually a poisoned chalice in execution especially as television, unless it has the budget for theatrical cinema level production, lives and dies on factors like performances and scripts rather than their directors.

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The scripts were the biggest issue. Even if the series concentrated on presenting solid twist frights, from well used but still reliable tropes, it would've been enough to have made this series more rewarding. A lot of the episodes however didn't even structure the basics of traditional horror plots well, even ones I was fonder of like Takashi Miike's entry Imprint suffering from botched ending twists if not, with other examples, the entire structure being completely off. It was actually most of the critically acclaimed episodes as well which were the worst offenders for their scripts for the exact reasons they were once praised. John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns being pleased with its cursed film plot but wasting time continually expositing on this trope. Dario Argento's film Jenifer really feeling like a collection of gore scenes without the charm of the schlockier Italian hits, which sounds hypocritical from a die-hard Italian horror fan who knows how many of them of yore were notorious for nonsensical plots, but with the significant different here being an utter lack of mood they had and with a rich psychosexual level to the plot that it wasted. And Joe Dante's Homecoming, probably the most disappointing of them all, being an utterly one note political tale which may have been necessary back during the Iraq War in 2005 but feels so political malnourished in meaningful ideas.

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The project ultimately wasn't strong for the most well known horror directors as a result. Some, like Stuart Gordon, left the project as being utterly reliable with their jobs whilst others led to immense disappointments that would unfavourably be compared to their theatrical hits, fed by the marketing of the series with their involvement. The question of who qualified as a "Master", whilst a greater issue for Season 2 in the future, did rear its head briefly too. Mick Garris, executive producer of the series, including himself in the director's chair would've rose an eyebrow from viewers but really it came more into question with William Malone, whose House on Haunted Hill remake I liked but sadly coming in flat with his episode Fair-Haired Child. If I'm going to rank at least the top three episodes, the best of the series came not only for one of two later replacements for the directors originally chosen who had to step away from the project, but was Sick Girl by Lucky McKee, at that point in 2005-6 new blood for the genre. As the young hot talent in a group of old veterans, he topped the whole series with an episode which felt exactly like his one sole known film beforehand (May (2001) in tone, putting together a story with emotional depth, fun and two memorable central performances.

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The second best was Deer Woman by John Landis, from a director who has only directly two catagorisable horror films, one legendary, but has mainly done comedy and other genres for his whole career, undermining this project being where the best in horror cinema would actually produce the best episodes. The result here though was deeply underrated, openly presenting a farce with his son Max Landis' script in which they took a mythological creature and placed it in the modern day, letting the audience know from the beginning its existence whilst the police chasing it are the ones left baffled by what they learn. I will remember Brian Benben having to console a crying man about his dead monkey. I will remember that, secretly, what could be a one note tone actually has a poignant commentary about the appropriation of  American Indian culture when one sees inside a ghastly Native American themed casino. I will remember the entire, extended punch line Benben imagining various bizarre dear related murder scenarios in bed and being as baffled by what he images. I will remember, for a series that could arguably have been a little juvenile in its lashings of gore and female nudity, especially as banning Miike's Imprint off US cable brings up a huge discrepancy with the lack of restrictions allowed, that you can't argue with Cinthia Moura with her literal doe-eyes being utterly gorgeous as she tempts men on to their doom. And importantly, I've now come around more to the confessional scene of culpability for the protagonist having connotations to Landis exorcising his guilt about what happened during Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), which has to be the one legitimately meaningful moment you take from the series entirely above everything else.

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Finally for third? One of the veterans chosen helming a solid and fun spooky tale in Larry Cohen's Pick Me Up. Both a well made tale with a three act structure, a twist and Michael Moriarty stealing the entire season. Even with the weaker episodes, the real surprise wasn't the directors chosen but, for a medium that depends on performances especially, the actors onscreen. Regardless of my divisive opinion on Masters of Horror Season 1, I will gladly end this coverage of said series with praise for the various actors who stood out as they were the real highlights. The late Angus Scrimm, in Incident On and Off a Mountain Road, playing a mad old man so delighted with everything that his infectiousness could make anyone both happy and as insane as him if stuck with him for hours. Matt Frewer, a Mick Garris regular, in the later's episode Chocolate as the lovable, older friend and joker who can still head a rock band in full Mohawk punk regilia. Angela Bettis being as awesome as she was in May as Sick Girl's lead, a reversal of what was a male character originally allowing her to be a rare case of a geeky woman with verisimilitude to her and being utterly lovable, a greater boost in how her love interest for the story is softcore star Misty Mundae, under her real name Erin Brown, giving such a great performance too that I wish, as I did back when I first saw Sick Girl, that she entered into more known roles. Youki Kudoh, managing to go from being the seventeen year old actress in an iconic role in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train (1989) to running rings around every other actor in Imprint, especially Billy Drago in what was arguably the worst performance of the whole series, so bad it actually added a feminist dynamic to the narrative which his excitied whinging. Brian Benben and Anthony Griffith as the central cops of Deer Woman, utterly sympathetic as the cops left scratching their heads at the joke only the viewers are in on with perfect comedic banter between them and the rest of the cast. And finally, Michael Moriarty in Pick Me Up. Because Michael Moriarty. 

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