Facts of the Case
With nine single discs and two flippers, the entire second season of
Masters of Horror is offered here. Unlike Season One, which had to wait
until its DVD release to offer Takashi Miike's Imprint to fans, this
compendium represents everything from the series' last year on Showtime. Here
are the plotlines for each episode offered:
• The Damned Thing
Sheriff Kevin Reddle (Sean
Patrick Flanery, Powder) has been living in fear ever since he saw his
father brutally disemboweled when he was a boy. Now, the same unseen force is
coming after him—and causing the same kind of communal chaos that turned
one small Texas town into a killing zone.
• Family
When Celia and David Fuller move into a
small Midwestern neighborhood, they are befriended by Harold (George Wendt,
Cheers), an overweight busybody with a supposed heart of gold. Of course,
they don't know what sinister secrets he hides in his basement.
• The V Word
Two friends, Justin and Kerry (Arjay
Smith, The Day After Tomorrow),
decide to visit a local funeral home late one night. Their goal is to see a real
dead body. What they find is a more or less abandoned building, lots of
scattered corpses, and several large pools of blood.
• Sounds Like
Tech support manager Larry Pearce
(Chris Bauer, Flag of Our Fathers) hasn't been the same since his young
son died of a mysterious heart ailment. Now there's something wrong with his
hearing—and it seems to be connected to his growing inner pain.
• Pro-Life
A young girl pleads with the workers at
an abortion clinic to kill her unborn baby. The first complication? She's the
daughter of a notorious agitator (Ron Perlman, Hellboy) with a history of violence. The
second? She claims the child is evil.
• Pelts
Furrier Jake Feldman (Meat Loaf, Fight Club) is desperate to bed a sultry
stripper. When he comes in possession of some pristine animal skins, he hopes
the coat he makes will lure her to his whims—that is, before its fatal
intent is discovered.
• The Screwfly Solution
When a plague hits the
world, turning men into mindless murderers, two doctors (Jason Priestley, Tru
Calling, and Elliot Gould, M*A*S*H)
must try to find a cure. Slowly, they come to realize that the disease may have
been purposefully unleashed to destroy the human population once and for
all.
• Valerie on the Stairs
A failed novelist (Tyron
Leitso, House of the Dead) moves into a
writer's community where he encounters the usual unsuccessful suspects. He also
comes across a provocative young woman pleading for his help—and the
demonic presence holding her hostage.
• Right to Die
After a horrific auto accident,
dentist Cliff Addison (Martin Donovan, Weeds) must face the prospect of
pulling the plug on his comatose wife. Before he can do so, his nosy
mother-in-law steps in. It may be his unconscious spouse who has the final say,
however.
• We All Scream for Ice Cream
Back when they were
kids, the boys of the West End Bunch played a deadly prank on poor Buster
(William Forsythe, Raising Arizona),
the ice cream clown. Now, almost four decades later, the undead harlequin
appears to be back to settle the score.
• The Black Cat
Desperate to save his dying wife,
Edgar Allan Poe (Jeffrey Combs, Re-Animator) tries to sell his poetry,
but publishers only want his "fantastical" stories. Sinking deeper
into a drunken depression, he starts to indulge some of his more violent
visions.
• The Washingtonians
When Michael (Johnathon
Schaech, That Thing You Do) and Pam Franks return to his late
grandmother's home, they discover some intriguing things about American history.
Not only is their family tied to the famous Father of our Country, but
Washington may not have been the saint everyone says.
• Dream Cruise
Though he hates the water, an
American lawyer (Daniel Gillies, Spider-Man 2) working in Tokyo agrees
to a boat trip to get some important papers signed. As luck would have it, it's
owned by the husband of the woman he's having an affair with, a man with a
sinister past.
The Evidence
Talk about your determined double dips! In a strange marketing strategy,
Starz/Anchor Bay has already released all of these episodes in their own single
disc or standalone presentations. Nothing about this collection has been changed
or altered except for the flip-disc concept covering four titles. Yet thanks to
a clever box set design (it's shaped like a human skull), we get the same thing
all over again in one place. While the storylines and styles are all radically
different, there is a decidedly dark and occasionally comic tone. Even though it
tries to be its own animal, there is still a reliance on the last-act
"twist" a la the infamous EC Comics of the '50s and '60s. Also,
at 59 minutes maximum, there is a solid short-but-sweet mentality. Many of these
stories skip the outright exposition and go straight for the splatter. Others
concentrate a tad too much on plotting, leaving the scheduled scares until the
very end. Still, fans should be happy with what is presented here. Last time
around, Masters of Horror offered more clunkers than classics. With
Season Two, the ratio of good to bad is much more balanced, with more excellence
than exasperation.
Let's look at each installment individually, since the only valid way to
judge a compilation is via its individual components, beginning with:
• The Damned Thing—Score: 89
Tobe Hooper has
been taken to task over the years for squandering his scary movie cred via some
truly awful experiences in dung-like dread. Well, long-timers can finally
rejoice—if just a little. This hour-long look at Texas Tea gone terrifying
provides just enough of the director's old-school skill to remind us of why we
love/hate him in the first place. Everyone's favorite magical albino, otherwise
known as Sean Patrick "Powder" Flanery gives a fine, Henriksen like
turn as a doomed Southwest sheriff, with Brendan Fletcher filling in the gaps as
the lawman's cartoon character-obsessed deputy. Hooper utilizes the talents of
series F/X men Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger quite well, offering up a tasty
hammer murder and a funky disemboweling. Still, some may be dissatisfied with
the "crude" finale, wondering where all the evocative atmosphere and
suspense went to. While not his best, The Damned Thing is certainly
better than most of Hooper's recent output.
• Family—Score: 80
John Landis' Season 2
installment is probably one of the trickier entries. You really have to sit back
and let the sometimes silly and obvious story work on you. If you're not willing
to let things play out in their own way, to occasionally meander over into
comedy and kitsch, then you'll probably hate the journey. Sure, star George
Wendt makes an unusual killer, and his basement activities (complete with vats
of putrefying corpses) are icky fun. But there are moments when you really don't
know where this narrative is going, or how it's going to keep things from
purposefully imploding. Luckily, if you make it to the end, you'll be
rewarded—not richly, but you shouldn't come away dissatisfied. This is
perhaps the most Tales from the Crypt-oriented offering in the set. It
captures that HBO's series irreverent tone without skimping on the blood and
guts.
• The V Word—Score: 77
There is nothing worse
than a haunted house tale that cheats. You know the kind—a frightmare
where things go bump in the night without a real grounding in narrative sense or
subjectivity. In the case of The V Word, matters are made worse by the
introduction of that most tedious of terror icons—the vampire. Since we
anticipate the arrival of the neckbiter from the moment we see the title flash
on the screen, all the initial stuff in the funeral home is nothing but false.
Then, after we've had some blood sucking, the story strays from its origins and
goes literally nowhere. While director Ernest Dickerson is good at handling the
contemporary take on the material—he ties it in to videogames like
Doom and Resident Evil—the minute it turns into a test of
friendship, we get a lame Lost Boys without the Coreys or Joel
Schumacher. Taken for what it is, The V Word isn't awful. But when you
see the ambitions it carries, and the poor way it tries to achieve them, you'll
be underwhelmed.
• Sounds Like—Score: 86
As an exercise in
execution over idea, Brad Anderson's creepy Sounds Like also feels
vaguely reminiscent of another recent horror anthology. The Tales-like
narrative is all build-up, our heroes hearing problem leading up to a classic
"gotcha" denouement. Along the way, we have to put up with obvious
aural cues, unexplained motivations, incomplete plotting, and a wife character
who wears far too much pain on her constantly puffy face. Chris Bauer is very
good as our protagonist, a man undone by the untimely death of his son, and we
even buy into the reason why his aural faculties have become so pronounced. But
at a certain point, we grow tired of all the sonic shenanigans and want a little
payoff. The ending, unfortunately, may not be enough for some in the already
tested audience.
• Pro-Life—Score: 82
With John Carpenter in
the director's chair, Pro-Life already has a cinematic strike against it.
While the Halloween maestro has always
been creatively challenging, his recent films have been a decidedly mixed bag.
Of course, in this particular format, he seems to have found his niche. His own
Body Bags from 1993 was good, and last season's Cigarette Burns
got some stellar reviews. This outing, on the other hand, will be viewed as an
incomplete success by most. While the tone is definitely dark, and the
performances (especially by Hellboy
himself, Ron Perlman) are excellent, there are times when the political agenda
gets in the way of the terror. Instead, of giving us a simple setup, the
screenplay sets up a series of speeches where both sides of the abortion issue
can be hashed out. Of course, the guy pouring ammunition into his victims has
the least convincing position—and the fatal last say. Similar to Assault on Precinct 13 and his
otherwise underrated Prince of Darkness,
this is a decent, if not all together terrifying, attempt.
• Pelts—Score: 90
Leave it to the Master of
Italian Macabre to show up these fledgling filmmakers with his wonderfully
atmospheric, wildly improbable, and downright weird raccoons-as-gods goodness.
Avoiding the woolly wildlife premise for a moment, it's clear that in the
hierarchy of the horrific, few can manage meaty arterial spray like Asia's pop.
The deaths here are truly disturbing, no matter their logistical viability, and
just as we start to question how furry hides can cause people to off themselves,
another incredibly gruesome death is featured. When you add in Claudio
Simonetti's absolutely brilliant scoring (so effective in its music-box menace)
and the grim, grotesque tone, we recognize why Argento belongs here. Though many
involved in this project may not be true auteurs of the awful, this
Mediterranean maverick was known for painting his celluloid a "deep
red." For those who thought his previous addition to Season 1 (the god
awful Jenifer) was lame, this equally bizarre bravado is one of Season
2's very best.
• The Screwfly Solution—Score: 89
You wouldn't
expect such a serious and bleak offering from Joe Dante. After all, this is a
guy who gave Gremlins their Looney
Tunes craziness and frequently infuses his films with all kinds of humor. Yet in
a Howling-like return to form, he delivers an almost epic
end-of-the-world scenario in a very short period of time. Thanks to the source
material, which provides a thought-provoking concept right up front (men killing
women because they are female) and the straightforward way it's handled, we get
lost in the logistics. Soon, we find ourselves doing what these kinds of
narratives do best—putting ourselves in the place of the characters and
wondering what we would do in their position. While Jason Priestley gets limited
screen time, he is very good. So is Elliot Gould, putting on the sarcastic
father routine to keep from falling apart. While the explanation for what is
going on seems fairly obvious, the reveal is handled well, and with its dour,
desperate finale, we get a chance to revel in some serious science fiction for
once.
• Valerie on the Stairs—Score: 81
Whenever
this critic sees the name Clive Barker on a project, it is automatically cause
for concern. Not that he has anything personal against the supposed heir
apparent to Stephen King's horror fiction mantle, but the British scribe has
always seemed to overcomplicate his ideas. He can't just have a standard story
about writers having difficulty controlling their muse, he has to turn it into a
psychosexual back and forth where being enigmatic is everything and clarity is
to be avoided at all costs. We get hints of what's happening here and
there—acknowledgments that what we are seeing may not be real, that there
is something otherworldly at work in this slovenly literary flop house. But
aside from Mick Garris' assured work in the director's chair, nothing else
really clicks. The actors are wasted (Christopher Lloyd has maybe three scenes,
tops) and the editing suggests that there may have been a longer cut sitting
around, able to make more sense of what's going on. In the end, this short film
doesn't take away or add to Barker's reputation. Viewers may come away with a
decidedly different view of its effectiveness.
• Right to Die—Score: 80
The notion of a
wrongly injured individual haunting another from beyond their comatose state is
nothing new. As a matter of fact, it's been the basis for literally dozens of
horror efforts. So Right to Die has a strike against it right off the
bat. Unless it delivers something different within this archetypal tale, we know
where this is going to end up before it even starts. So what does Wrong Turn director Rob Schmidt do? He
channels the Terri Schiavo case by adding an ineffectual political/policy angle.
The moment Cliff Addison's mother-in-law shows up, looking boozy and beaten and
threatening to halt her son-in-law's plans for a "Do Not Resuscitate"
order, we expect some courtroom fireworks—or at the very least, a little
mid-story moralizing. But the subtext goes nowhere, and soon we find ourselves
hoping that something novel will come from all this. Unless you consider a
skinning scene similar to what Argento did better a few episodes back, the
answer is Schmidt has nothing new to offer. While it's competently made,
Right to Die is one of the lesser titles here.
• We All Scream for Ice Cream—Score: 89
Like
Stephen King merged with a standard '80s slasher, this likable little gem will
definitely confuse some viewers. On the outside, it looks like nothing more than
It with a healthy dose of sinister sprinkles. But venturing below the
surface, we see some wonderful acting turns by Lee Tergesen and William
Forsythe, some over-the-top goofiness from Colin Cunningham, and a wonderful
sense of atmosphere via old-school frightmaster Tom Holland. Once a fright fan
favorite (his one-two punch of Fright Night and Child's Play remain excellent examples
of Greed-era goodness), he handles this material with more aplomb than he showed
with later efforts like the clammy King adaptation, Thinner. Sure, the
ending makes little sense, and it seems like our baddie Buster could have
secured his revenge in one angry all-nighter, but Holland's way with the
material makes us forgive its occasional flaws. It turns something potentially
cheesy into a real work of creepshow fun.
• The Black Cat—Score: 80
With Re-Animator's Stuart Gordon at the helm
and underrated actor Jeffrey Combs essaying the famous writer, you'd think
The Black Cat would turn out to be one of Masters of Horror's
best. For a while, we get lost in both men's abject greatness. No one
understands the basics of fear better than Gordon, and when he's on, Combs can
be brilliant. But somewhere near the middle, right around the time Poe has his
first "hallucination," we sense that this story is not going to play
fair. Indeed, as it continues on its often confusing paths, we lose sight of the
scares and instead find ourselves overly interested in minor things like
narrative logic and historical accuracy. No one is claiming that this is a
precise portrayal of the author's life—especially when the last-act
"twist" plays out—but since we aren't aware of the reality until
then, we find ourselves struggling to make up our minds. On the one hand, Gordon
and Combs make this well worth visiting. The end result is mostly forgettable,
however.
• The Washingtonians—Score: 70
In a classic
case of goofy premise made even more unappealing by the way it is told, this
story of cannibals and hidden U.S. history is pretty stupid. Like Family
before, you have to be willing to meet this material halfway. If you don't
cotton to the killers in powdered wigs, if you see everyone Franks befriends in
this small Virginia town to be an obvious suspect, if you just don't like the
way in which the last-act deus ex machina comes out with guns blazing,
then this will be one of your least favorite Masters installments. On the
other hand, the core concepts are gruesome enough to warrant some attention, and
the direction by Peter Medak (Species II, Homicide: Life on the
Streets) is very good. Just like genre buffs who don't like slasher films or
fans who feel cheated every time a vampire rears his fanged head, this
combination of flesh eating and farce will be too much to bear. It's not badly
done, just brazen in its desire to shock while making you smile.
• Dream Cruise—Score: 74
Since J-Horror has
long given up its fad gadget novelty, the concept of a similarly styled thriller
on the high seas seems double dopey. Leave it to Masters of Horror to
prove this point with relish. Since it was originally slated as 90 overlong
minutes (and we get every languid moment on the restored DVD), one could easily
see how the hour-long version would make little sense. Director Norio Tsuruta
(whose minor reputation begs the "Master" moniker) spends far too much
time in standard suspense setup. When you add in the frequent flashbacks and
foreboding, there's little time for anything else. What saves the experience,
however, is the grue. Thanks once again to some amazing special effects, we are
treated to smashed skulls, gaping wounds, and severed limbs. In fact, the
juxtaposition between the tepid tone control Tsuruta utilizes and the
well-placed blood seems odd. Still, after a season's worth of excellent entries
(and a few flops), this is an odd way to end it all. Out of the context of a
weekly airing, we are allowed to sample Dream Cruise as it was originally
intended. It may not have been worth the wait.
When determining the overall value of Masters of Horror: Season Two,
the aforementioned charge says it best. This is a far better collection of
creepouts than what was offered in Season One. While there is no true breakout
classic like Homecoming, it's a
consistently good collection. Naturally, there are some inherent barriers to
total enjoyment. As stated before, the nature of the format definitely hobbles
some of the stories. Episodes like Screwfly and The Damned Thing
could definitely go on longer, while something like Family or The
Washingtonians would have worked much better as a 30-minute experience. The
choice of filmmakers is also interesting. It's nice to see Session 9's
Brad Anderson working here, as well as the all-but-forgotten Tom Holland. But
the lack of other big names like Romero, Raimi, or Roth is troubling. It seems
like Masters of Horror has its own idea about what makes a successful
scary movie and wants very little to do with anything provocative, troubling, or
taken too far. Indeed, this is not necessarily dreadful for the fans of extreme
fear. Instead, there is still a little bit of broadcast conservatism among the
blatant offal.
As for the tech specs, again nothing is new here. These are the same digital
packages created for each episode when Starz/Anchor Bay released them
separately. The 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen images offered are uniformly good,
with specific efforts like Screwfly and Valerie as standouts.
There is never any major defect or visual issue, though there can be some
occasional grain in the night scenes. On the sound side of things, it's either a
messy Dolby Digital 5.1 track or a straight Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 mix from
which to choose. While the twin speaker presentation is good, some may complain
about the lack of a carefully balanced multichannel choice. There are times when
the music overwhelms the mood, and dialogue can be difficult to hear (some
directors clearly tell their actors to whisper, as if that will add some manner
of fright to the mix). Still, Masters of Horror provides solid digital
dynamics for the most part. As for added content, it's a mixed bag indeed.
Almost every episode has a commentary, but not every one features the famous
name that made it. Instead, you can wind up with actors, producers, and/or
screenwriters. There are a few making-of featurettes, some interview segments, a
selection of scripts and production stills, trailers, and other bonus tidbits.
Together, they make an already above-average presentation something worth
seeking out.
