THE HORROR! THE HORROR!
Justin Griffin and Scott Jason review JOHN CARPENTER’S CIGARETTE BURNS, STUART GORDON’S DREAMS IN THE WITCH HOUSE, DON COSCARELLI’S INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD, MICK GARRIS’S CHOCOLATE, JOE DANTE’S HOMECOMING, JOHN LANDIS’S DEER WOMAN, and LUCKY MCKEE’S SICK GIRL. (Plus an evisceration of TOBE HOOPER’S DANCE OF THE DEAD.)"MASTERS OF HORROR – AN OVERVIEW
Scott Jason has mixed emotions.
TV anthology shows, however great their aspirations or overall delivery, are like a patch of untended highway: for all the smooth sailing and great views you get at certain points of the trip, there are likely to be potholes, breakdowns and even accidents – especially when you least expect it. While we lovers of the fantastique may wax nostalgic about THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE OUTER LIMITS or NIGHT GALLERY, even all these old chestnuts had their not so good/bad seeds. Damn, Sam, MASTERS OF HORROR (MoH) is filled with promise, but the end result of the first season turned out to be like a stretch of uneven Tennessee tarmac – murder on the ass when your suspension was out, and all shits ‘n’ grits when the road flowed, Bob.
Season One started good with Don (PHANTASM) Coscarelli/Stephen Romano’s adaptation of professional Good Ole Texas Boy Joe R. Lansdale’s short, INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD. Entertainment Weekly were creaming their underwear rating the series opener and promising goodies to come. The show, it turned out, had some highs (William Malone’s surprising FAIR HAIRED CHILD and Joe Dante’s bitchin’ HOMECOMING), some real lows (Dario Argento’s dumb-ass JENIFER; Tobe Hooper’s nonsensical DANCE OF THE DEAD – I mean, how can you so royally fuck up a story by Richard Matheson, adapted by one of his sons, Richard Christian Matheson, starring Robert Englund…and directed by Tobe Hooper? For the answer, see below).
Not all of season one’s episodes are yet available, and the banned 13th episode, Takeshi Miikie’s IMPRINT, was not sent to us for review and neither Justin nor I have had the time to check it out.
Season Two of MoH debuts Friday, October 27th at 9 P.M. EST on Showtime.
-- Scott Jason
JOHN CARPENTER’S CIGARETTE BURNS
A word of caution: If you watch this movie and like it at all, do not watch it with the director commentary. John Carpenter will ruin the fun for you as he points out various problems and scoffs at how he was too tired or lazy to do anything about it.
Fortunately for me, I found the movie just as much of a bore to watch as he apparently had making it, so the commentary ruined nothing for me. Actually, I recommend the commentary for those who don’t like it. Carpenter might actually save a bit of the experience for you by his sheer nerve. The man has got balls, I will give him that. Basically, he exposes himself as someone completely content to ride a wave of success 10, 20 or 30 years old depending on your horror religion.
But more on that later. Now to the film.
Kirby Sweetman (Norman Reedus), an apparent film buff who owes his father-in-law a lot of money, gets hired by a rich film buff, Mr. Ballinger, to find a print of a rare film called Le Fin Absolue du Monde. Udo Kier, who almost always brings a little smile to my face even when I’m just watching him pick up a paycheck, plays Mr. Ballinger, who has some interesting props from the cursed film, to say the least. What kind of curse, you might ask? Well, it turns the viewers into maniacally homicidal cannibals or makes you a cutter or a host of other things. Whatever happens, naturally it ain’t good as we get closer and closer to finding the last remaining print.
First the good: Carpenter hasn’t been this gruesome in quite some time, nor has he been this bleak. The concept is relatively interesting although as films like THE RING, FEAR DOT COM and a host of others have shown, “The Devil” or “Evil” has had his/her hand in technology for many years.
The bad is most everything else. The movie looks very TeeVee, as Carpenter admits, and the acting and dialogue is pretty poor. The harshest thing I can say is that it feels like no one really gave a shit making it. And then you listen to John Carpenter talk and you see that’s exactly the case.
It’s quite fun to watch Carpenter’s jaded but witty interview and then watch various people fawn all over him in the rather lengthy retrospective. They marvel at the intelligent discussions Carpenter wove into previous films.
Film can be powerful as this little film suggests, but why would a “master of horror” make a shitty film about the power of a great horror film instead of making a great horror film?
As I mentioned earlier, at least he is honest. He admits his laziness. So why the fuck would we want to waste our time on a lazy film? I suggest you go watch a film like the one they search for in the film. It might drive you crazy, but at least you won’t be bored. -- JG
STUART GORDON’S DREAMS IN THE WITCH HOUSE
A grad student moves into a spare room in an old house. But wait, instead of the word ‘old,’ let us swap that for ‘witch.’ Ah yes, much better.
My second foray into the MASTERS OF HORROR series was considerably more interesting with Stuart Gordon’s DREAMS IN THE WITCH HOUSE, based on the classic H. P. Lovecraft story which was written in the ‘30s. Here, as adapted by Gordon and his long-time friend and frequently writing partner, Dennis Paoli, they have, as with previous Lovecraft adaptations, (RE-ANIMATOR [1985], H.P. LOVECRAFT’S FROM BEYOND [1986], DAGON [2002]) sexed up the material in such a way the old, prudish pulp writer must be rolling in his grave. And that’s some sex, too. It opens on that all-to-familiar shot of a ‘Room for Rent’ sign which pulls back to reveal a hopefully creepy, dilapidated house which pulls back even further to reveal our young, attractive protagonist.
Will he get involved with the pretty but poor woman with a baby who lives down the hall? Who is the crazy old man with the unknown, but no doubt, dark past living downstairs? And how does the landlord live there and not care or know about the spooky goings-on? I mean, the place is clearly haunted, fella. Get a clue.
Original it is not, but I guess that is the point. The MASTERS OF HORROR series almost feels like a distillation of cinema horror up to this point in time into 13 (get it?) short films. Of course, I’ve only seen two episodes, so I could be wrong.
In the special feature vignettes and audio commentary, the director and others involved talk about breaking taboos and making time for character development. I never really felt much of that or perhaps I didn’t care. I didn't really feel sorry for the characters, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it as a well-made little romp.
Gordon sticks to his tried and true method of horror mixed with delicious sprinkles of humor, but he maintains a decent amount of interest. The man-faced rodent...very nice. The scientific spin of string theory mixed with the mysticism of the immortal witch seemed relatively fresh even merely as a simple device with no explanation.
In fact, most of it works in a pleasant sort of way except for perhaps one of the big emotional pushes near the end that completely falls flat. I don't know why I won't ruin it, but I just think infanticide should be more moving. Oops.
But no matter because Gordon surprises us with a bit more gory fun. And who knows? Perhaps by the end there will be a room for rent once more if you, dear reader, want to try your hand at the table with a science-savvy sorceress.
Once again, they have put together a sizeable amount of special features for such a modest feature. Perhaps too nice considering my DICK TRACY DVD is sporting bupkis. -- JG
DON COSCARELLI’S INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD
Herein lies the best MASTERS OF HORROR I have seen to date. Interesting things to note, dear reader: it is not the best idea or the fullest story. It is, however, the most interesting one to watch and contains the least cringe-inducing moments. The cringe that I speak of is not the good "horror" kind but the kind resulting from poor filmmaking.
This one is a chase film. A slight take on the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE but with a B-story device that empowers the protagonist. It also has a dash of Lifetime movie. So why does this one work more than the others?
After four of these discs, it seems that the ultimate simplicity is what prevents this thing from being bogged down. Watch the special features. Don Coscarelli spills the same line the others do. You will listen to him and think, "I didn't get all that" just like you will any of the others. The difference seems to be that when it comes down to the camera roll and the edit, Coscarelli knows the film he is making. This thing is tight enough to bounce a quarter off whereas the others meander just too much.
Sure, this one has its problems. Ethan Embry (Rusty from VEGAS VACATION) plays such a forest-dwelling, militia dunderfuck, thickheaded douche, it is a wonder a bear didn't gobble his innards just to make the world a better place...you know, like what happened to Rodney Dangerfield (anything else you were told is a lie, God rest his soul). His courtship with our feminine leading lady is quite wrong.
INCIDENT also happens to be the best looking so far. The baddie, Moonface, is a composite character, but I was much more willing to accept the compromises, which run rampant in all of these, of this one and I attribute that to the solid pacing.
Of course, maybe I am biased. If you haven't checked out Coscarelli's BUBBA HO-TEP, well, I must ask you to kindly fuck off until you have. -- JG
MICK GARRIS’S CHOCOLATE
Would you like to see a man be vaginally penetrated? Well, Mick Garris' CHOCOLATE doesn't quite go there, but it does have a man feeling what I can only imagine that divinely female pleasure must be like. That lucky cat is named Jamie (Henry Thomas aka Elliott from E.T.) and he makes artificial flavors for junk food and is recently divorced. With his life in the shitter, he begins to inexplicably channel a beautiful mystery woman's senses. He feels what she feels, sees what she sees, etc. Being the lonely loser that he is, he becomes obsessed with her and after he witnesses a murder through her eyes, he falls in love with her.
I was not too familiar with Mick Garris before watching this. He seems like a nice guy in the interviews, and it turns out that either he is a nice guy or everyone they interview in the exhaustive special features is lying because they all sing his praises. Of course, this is no different than any of the other discs. Also, please note, Ron Perlman is included in the interviews as he worked most recently with Mick Garris on DESPERATION which I have not seen, but knew plenty more about after this thing as they do some shameless promoting of that movie. Curiously, the DESPERATION book makes a random appearance in the movie and it seems Jamie's son has drawn in it. I can only assume the young lad was either reading the book or had at least glimpsed the pages which, as the only Stephen King novel I have read, I consider highly inappropriate as it is quite fucked up and disturbing. I was just kidding about that being curious by the way, but Ron Perlman is a badass.
In truth, the premise of this MOH is pretty intriguing. Garris sells the thing in the interviews and commentary exceedingly well. That is to say, it is interesting to listen to him and imagine a good film that contained all those elements. But the channeling scenes have a De Palma-esque sexy voyeurism to them that definitely works. Both women who shed those horrible societal constrictions called "clothes" for the good of the film do fine, especially the woman he channels who is French-Canadian or "mudblood" for readers from Mother France. However, like most of these hour-long movies or horror movies in general, the end sacrifices the reality of the situation and the characters for the boring, hackneyed, and for some reason, seemingly trademarked "horror" ending.
-- JG
JOE DANTE’S HOMECOMING
Unquestionably the best, the smartest, and most political of all the MoH “movies” in season one, Dante’s blackly comedic satire is a knock-out. During election time, political consultant David Murch (Jon Tenney) is appearing on the “Marty Clark Live! Show.” Marty (Terry David Mulligan, an obvious Larry King parody) also has on opinionated Republican author Jane Cleaver (Thea Gill—channeling Anne Coulter, although Dante denies this). There’s another guest on a live feed, a mother who’s lost her son in “the war” (never stated exactly what war) and was recently arrested for heckling the President. In trying to placate her, Murch wishes that her son could return and explain how important the struggle that he died fighting for is. Later, during a bout of kinky sex with Coulter, er, Cleaver, Murch gets a call from advisor Kurt Rand (Dante favorite Robert Picardo from STAR TREK: VOYAGER, clearly playing a Karl Rove-like political fixer) that the President is going to use his line in a stump speech. The President wishes that all the dead soldiers could return to tell the nation how proud they were to die for their country. But be careful what you wish for. Like W.W. Jacob’s classic horror tale, “The Monkey’s Paw,” soon the dead soldiers are returning—to vote the current President out of office! The President seems to be losing the election, but then he miraculously pulls ahead (gotta love those Diebold electronic voting machines...) The election is obviously rigged, and the dead soldiers from the current war call in reinforcements.
You don’t need a degree in political science to realize Dante, an unabashed liberal, is satirizing the current administration or the invasion of Iraq. While he freely admits to his political stripe during the 24-minute featurette “The Dead Come Marching,” he’s coy about the obvious Coulter pastiche character, but he admits HOMECOMING is biased and is very anti-war and anti-Bush.
This disc features a lot of great supplements, like the 22-minute “Working with a Master” featurette. It has interviews with Roger Corman, actor Kevin McCarthy, actress Dee Wallace Stone, Robert Picardo, John Tenney, Thea Gill and Corey Feldman, who was in Dante’s EXPLORERS (1985). The “Script to Screen” feature is excellent, giving viewers the chance to read some of screenwriter Sam Hamm’s (BATMAN [1989]) scenes, then view behind-the-scenes footage of said and the finished scenes themselves. DVD-ROM features include the screenplay, a screensaver and the story “Death and Suffrage” by Dale Bailey that HOMECOMING is based on. Hamm also provides an informative audio commentary. -- SJ
JOHN LANDIS’S DEER WOMAN
This episode is sheer lunacy and is so potentially stupid it really shouldn’t work, but somehow it does, which I suppose is to be expected coming from the mind of the director of ANIMAL HOUSE (1978) and THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980). All of which begs the question, why is John Landis a “Master of Horror” when he’s only ever made two horror movies, AN AMERICAN WERWOLF IN LONDON (1981) and the downright painful INNOCENT BLOOD (1992)? The answer is simple: he’s series creator Mick Garris’s friend and mentor (Landis exec-produced Garris’s first film, the Disney TV movie FUZZ BUCKET [1986]) and is a horror movie buff, and, well, AMERICAN WEREWOLF was a huge hit, even if it was made 25 years ago. But, really, who cares; written by Landis and his son, Max, DEER WOMAN’s the most dement MoH to date (although Lucky McKee’s SICK GIRL comes close).
Dwight Faraday (Brian Benben) is a washed-up homicide cop who’s been demoted to the animal attacks division. It’s boring work, but one night he catches a call concerning something abnormal at a truck stop. He and officer Reed (Anthony Griffith) go to the location and discover the stomped body of a man in the cab of a big rig. Determined to be a homicide, Faraday is taken off of the case, despite the fact that the body had hoof prints all over it – was the trucker stomped to pulp by a homicidal deer? Before you can say “supernatural creature” other male victims start showing up in the same state. Pathologist Dana (Sonja Bennett) discovers that each of the victims died in a state of arousal, with their peckers at twelve o’clock. This is where the story starts to get whacky. While visiting a local India casino, they learn there’s a legend of a Deer Woman (Cinthia Moura) who is all woman from the waist up (Moura has a beautiful rack, which Landis lovingly shows off) and a deer from the waist down. She seduces men and then kicks them to death.
Faraday is convinced that this is their prime suspect, but Reed doesn’t buy it. Guess who’s right and who ends up as deer tracks? From this point on, the story goes way over the top—and that’s why I like it!
As is usual on a MoH disc, there are a number of special features. “Animal Hooves” is a career-spanning interview with Landis. Next is the obligatory 22-minute “Working with a Master” featurette which has interviews with Don Rickles, Forrest J. Ackerman, Max Landis, Rick Baker, Dan Ackroyd, Jenny Agutter, Robert Loggia and Brian Benben. -- SJ
LUCK McKEE’S SICK GIRL
If you don’t know who Lucky McKee is, then pull up a chair and listen: for MoH’s first season, he’s the token new kid on the bloody block. McKee, who is a very talented writer/director/producer and even actor, had his breakthrough with MAY (2002), a delightfully twisted tale of loneliness and the craving for friendship—by any means necessary. His second (major) feature, THE WOODS (made in 2004, released this year) got caught up in the sell-off of MGM and subsequently failed to get a theatrical release. I haven’t seen it and word is mixed, but you gotta love this guy because he insisted on keeping his title and made mega-wealthy egomaniac M. Night Shamalama-ding-dong drop his title “The Woods,” forcing Night to rename his first full-blown turkey THE VILLAGE (2004). More recently, McKee produced THE LOST (2005), based on the Jack Ketchum novel and written and directed by Lucky’s long-term collaborator, editor Chris Sivertson, which has been burning up the international festival circuit, but has yet to obtain domestic distribution due to its unrelenting violence. He’s just acted the lead in ROMAN, a script he wrote which MAY actress Angela Bettis directed, and word has it he’s about to start filming another Ketchum book, RED, about an old man who goes all Dirty Harry on a bunch of punks who deliberately kill his dog.
But on to SICK GIRL. Ida (Amanda Bettis) is obsessed with her work with bugs and she has recently discovered a new one. Concurrently, she’s started a steamy lesbo affair with Misty (Erin Brown, the actress formerly known as Misty Mundae), but it soon turns into a three-way between carpet-munching and bug penetration...
SICK GIRL is one sick puppy; it’s like a lesbian version of Cronenberg’s THE FLY (1982), filled with icky goo and bodily fluids and sex and transformation. McKee, no slouch in the ideas department, crams more notions and gross-out factor, taboo-busting goodies into 58 minutes than you can shake a stick at. And the FX guys from Nicotero & Berger (formerly KNB, before Robert Kurtzman split) pull out all the big bug grue for this one on a tiny budget. Bettis, as always, is great. Kudos, too, to Brown—who much as I loved her girl-next-door-strips-fucks-and...whatever as Misty Mundae in all those no-budget Alternative Cinema epics like PLAYMATE OF THE APES (2002) , SPIDERBABE (2003) and BIKINI GIRLS ON DINOSAUR PLANET (2005)—has started to prove that she really can act.
Most of the MoH season one discs make for a good rental. This, like HOMECOMING, is one to buy. -- SJ
TOBE HOOPER’S DANCE OF THE DEAD
This “movie” is based on a Richard Matheson (I AM LEGEND, HELL HOUSE, et al) short story that was first published in 1954 in STAR SCIENCE FICTION STORIES #3, edited by Frederik Pohl. The adaptation is by one of his sons, Richard Christian Matheson, the one who does horror (his short story collection, SCARS, is worth tracking down, as is his novel CREATED BY, which tears TV a new asshole; Chris Matheson, another screenwriter son, created Bill and Ted, as in BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (1989). Melissa Mathison, screenwriter of E.T., is not related to any of them—notice different spelling of surname); she was Francis Ford Coppola’s teenage babysitter who he used to sleep with before she fell in love with Han Solo and became the second Mrs. Harrison Ford and a screenwriter. Got that? Good. Let’s get back to this abortion). Aside from rumors we won’t repeat here as to why DOTD is a mess, this MoH makes no sense whatsoever. I watched my TiVo’d copy off of Showtime three times to try to understand what the fuck was going on, and forced my long-suffering wife to watch it twice since she’s smarter than me. And she didn’t get it, either.
It’s set in some kind of post-apocalypse America after something (WWWIII?) has taken place. Weird black shit rains down from the skies during the opening scene of some kid’s backyard birthday party. Some people die, others go crazy; those who don’t get covered in the black shit look on in horror. Some years later, people have survived, some people—especially disenfranchised teenagers (i.e. scum) mug old people in the streets for blood (I think)—others live in fear and try to follow a “normal” life like Peggy (Jessica Lowndes), a pretty young waitress working in her mother’s diner (who I think was one of the kids in the opening black rain birthday party scene, but I’m not certain). Anyway, she lives a boring, insulated existence until one day, Jak (Jonathan Tucker), a young thug enters her life and steals her away to the big city to his favorite hangout The Doom Room, which is owned by the MC (Robert “Freddy “ Englund). Here, the main attraction is dead people who you can jab with cattle prods and make ‘em dance. Or something. To be honest, I didn’t care when I first watched this mess, and I care even less writing about it now.
One of the main problems I had with this episode was the cinematography by resident Masters of the Horror DP Jon Joffin which constantly features weird, unnecessary in-camera effects. Superimposed images, zooming and freeze-framing over shaky-cam, seemingly used at random, do not contribute anything to the “story.” The effect, while not constant, is used during a quiet conversation in the diner to the same degree it’s used during the most violent sequences in the club. The end result can only be described as visual jibberish.
One worthy mention, however, should go to ex-Smashing Pumpkin Billy Corgan who provided a lot of the music for the Doom Room, which helped steer the soundtrack away from the usual techno-lite/faux-industrial wash of sound you typically find in such clubs these days.
DANCE OF THE DEAD had great potential, but what a mess it turned out to be. Only recommended if you’re a die-hard Hooper fan. But if you are, then you’ve probably already seen it.
CONCLUSION
Overall, the first season of MASTERS OF HORROR, while uneven, is redeemed by Anchor Bay’s presentation of the discs. With an average retail price of $16.95 (DeepDiscountDVD.com sell’s ‘em for round $10 a disc) [Prices below on link. -ed] , the grab bag of supplemental features make them worth owning if you’re a horror fan, and definitely worth renting as these stories, however erratic, are far more original than 95 percent of the crap the major studios pass off as horror flicks these days. Anchor Bay continue to deliver on the DVD front.
-- Scott Jason 
