by ·Comments Off on Right To Die (2007, Rob Schmidt)

Director of so-what teen-horror “Wrong Turn” (and upcoming cary elwes starrer “The Alphabet Killer”) brings a surprisingly great episode to the so-far dismal second season of Masters of Horror. Inventive, not over-long, good performances and great makeup effects.

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Dentist MARTIN DONOVAN, who I am so happy to see again, is a very bad husband who lights his wife on fire after a car accident (revealed through flashbacks) then tries to pull her life support so he can carry on with his girlfriend/receptionist Robin Sydney (of gary busey horror “the gingerdead man”, heh).

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Some problems come up. The wife’s mother starts a(n underdeveloped) media war against Martin to keep the wife alive. Martin enlists lawyer Corbin Bernsen (not the washed-up catcher from major league [that was tom berenger] but the grumpy old veteran player) to get the wife unplugged. But a bigger problem is that whenever the wife flatlines, her ghost comes after Martin (and sometimes Corbin) and tries to kill him. So Martin has to turn a 180 and try everything to keep his wife alive, even if it means skinning his girlfriend when a donor doesn’t come through in time. Fabulous ending, he misses the clock, she dies, and he resignedly walks into his house where the ghost is waiting.

MoH motifs: naked breasts, skinlessness (those two unfortunately collide), recognizable actors doing silly things, that one dark highway that I see in every episode.

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by ·Comments Off on We All Scream For Ice Cream (2007, Tom Holland)

From the non-auteur behind the classic horror hits “Fright Night” and “Child’s Play” and the less classic S. King adaptations “Thinner” and “The Langoliers” (also writer of Psycho 2). This is from the writer of “The Fury”, which makes me a little less excited to see that one.

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Holland must not have been allowed to adapt King’s “It”. Here we’ve got a story about grown men being hunted down by a killer klown, with flashbacks of these guys as young kids doing bad things together. Sounds like “It” to me. But this one adds exciting story elements that “It” never had, such as that the young kids once conspired to kill a retarded ice cream man, and that the ice cream man comes back as an evil klown and if the now-grown-men’s KIDS fall under the klown’s spell and eat a special ice cream bar, the men will turn into ice cream and melt and die.

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Ridiculous story, reasonably well acted/directed, not a bad thing to half-watch while I’m doing something else, like writing these entries.

by ·Comments Off on Pelts (2006, Dario Argento)

“A lot of bad shit’s been happening around here ever since we started working on this coat. It’s like it’s cursed or something.”

Yes, this movie is about a cursed coat made from the cursed pelts of cursed raccoons, trapped and killed by (an obviously cursed) John Saxon on some cursed land near some cursed ruins behind a cursed old witch’s house.

Terrible music and bad acting in a silly story. What, did Friday the 13th: The Series use up all the cool stuff that could possibly be cursed, so now we’re down to raccoon pelts? At least Master Argento didn’t write it – guy who wrote the novel behind Michael Mann’s The Keep did.

Meat Loaf makes coats and likes strippers (one in particular). Saxon traps a buncha raccoons and raves over how perfect they are, phones Meat Loaf who picks them up and makes a coat to woo his favorite stripper. Oh, and since the pelts are cursed, everyone who touches them kills themselves and/or someone else in a bloody, horrible way.

Should’ve hired the makeup guy from Hellraiser 2, because in the climactic scene when Meat Loaf walks around skinless, it looks very much like he’s just wearing a gory black shirt.

Contains all three of the big MoH signature elements: naked breasts (boy, a lot of them), recognizable actors doing ridulous stuff (meat loaf, duh) and something nasty happening to an eye (lady in coat factory sews hers shut).

Why do the credits use a goofy comic font?
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Meat “Loaf” Aday being creepy:
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Scary raccoon:
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John Saxon (of Tenebre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Mitchell) about to be beaten to death:
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Of course, writing this led me to look up Friday the 13th: The Series on IMDB. Who knew that Atom Egoyan and actor David Morse directed episodes and the writer of Mystic River and The Postman wrote a couple? For that matter, who know that the writer of Mystic River worked on The Postman?!

by ·Comments Off on The Black Cat (2007, Stuart Gordon)

Late into SHOCKtober (Oct. 18th), I have finally unpacked my office enough to uncover the disc holding season two of “Masters of Horror”. Katy’s little brother is joining me for the celebratory kickoff screening, so I choose episode eleven, Stuart Gordon’s entry. It’s been a Gordon-filled month and his stuff is always either effective (“Dagon”) or entertaining (“Dolls”) or more usually both (“From Beyond”). Disappointingly, what we’ve got here is a slow-moving period piece that failed to impress or entertain.

The movie is supposedly based on Poe’s “The Black Cat”, but it’s actually an “Edgar Allen Poe In Love”, where we watch Poe’s visions and dreams that inspire him to write “The Black Cat”. Poe fans on the IMDB comment board enthusiastically rave about all the references to Poe’s life and stories scattered throughout the movie. Sort of a condensed look at Poe, implying that Gordon and usual co-writer Dennis Paoli will not be exploring each Poe work in-depth (this is the second after “Pit and the Pendulum”) as they have been doing for HP Lovecraft (seven films and counting).

Never heard of most of these actors and the only thing that turns up on IMDB is that half of them have been in the “Highlander” series for some reason. MoH trademark eye-gouging is here, but no nudity and I suppose an enthusiastic Jeffrey Combs will have to be our token celebrity casting.

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by ·Comments Off on Alternative 3 (1977, Christopher Miles)

Hosted by an actual BBC personality, this was a special episode of a (made-up?) show called Science Report that aired on April Fool’s Day. Plays it very straight, a well-made fake documentary. Can’t scare people with it anymore because of the dated 70’s look, but it would be fun to re-stage today, especially with global warming so big in the news.

The premise is that scientists discover global warming has passed the tipping point and the planet is doomed. The space race is a ploy, and subsequent moon landings after the first few were faked on a studio lot. Really the shuttles are delivering parts for a new ship that will be launched from orbit to send some hot scientists and a representative group of people from different specialties to live on Mars, where they have recently discovered life, to begin a new society. All of this has been hidden from the Earth public to avoid panic. The BBC has carefully uncovered hints of the truth over the last six months but hasn’t learned everything. The movie ends with questions, and a challenge to the people involved in this secret project to explain themselves on-air.

This movie is as old as I am. Cool spacey music by Brian Eno. Some of the same crew later worked on Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected, including producer John Rosenberg, who died of cancer in ’91.

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Don’t know why I saved this one for last… guess being based on a Clive Barker story made it seem like a safe bet. Might be my least-favorite episode in the series, though. I mean, “dance of the dead” was awful, but it had its apocalyptic rain scene to recommend it, and Robert Englund I guess. This one’s got mediocre actors speaking awful period dialogue in service of an awful script, and McNaughton (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Wild Things) doesn’t seem to be trying too hard, treating this as the low-budget TV episode it is, instead of aiming for something better like nearly every other director did. At least he got Jon Polito.

Dude pesters old woman necromancer to raise his beloved wife from the dead, she tells him the horrible story of Ernst Haeckel, a science student who once pestered necromancer Jon Polito. Ernst spends the night at an old man’s house. The man discloses that he keeps his young, beautiful wife by paying off Polito to reanimate her dead lover some nights so she can have a graveyard orgy. Ernst fouls everything up, the old man dies, Polito gets the high hat, and back in the “present day” the old woman reveals herself to be that young woman and she’s learned the necromancy art herself and has undead sex with Haeckel, yuck!

A slog to get through, mostly because of the dialogue… if Clive is smart he’ll want nothing to do with this one. Ohhhh, I see that George Romero was supposed to direct, but dropped out due to scheduling problems. Probably either his upcoming Stephen King movie or his upcoming zombie mockumentary. Between those two and this MoH episode, it’s hard to say which is the worst idea for Romero.

The high hat, the fake mustache:
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The nudity:
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Another angle on that:
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The gang’s all here:
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–

So the final Masters Of Horror Season One evaluation:

GREAT:
Cigarette Burns (Carpenter)
Homecoming (Dante)

GOOD:
Incident On and Off a Mountain Road (Coscarelli)
Dreams in the Witch-House (Gordon)
Deer Woman (Landis)
Fair-Haired Child (Malone)
Sick Girl (McKee)
Pick Me Up (Cohen)
Imprint (Miike)

OKAY:
Jenifer (Argento)
Chocolate (Garris)

BAD:
Dance of the Dead (Hooper)
Haeckel’s Tale (McNaughton)

A nice ratio, better than most X-Files seasons. On to season 2!

by ·Comments Off on The Fair Haired Child (William Malone, 2006)

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Virgin Tara isn’t very popular at school or home, gets kidnapped by “warlock couple” (IMDB’s phrasing) Anton and Judith (Lori Petty from Tank Girl and Prey For Rock & Roll), and locked in basement with Johnny. Tries to get free with friendly Johnny’s help before whatever monster comes after her, till she realizes he’s the monster. See, he’s sorta dead and has gotta kill 12 girls to be resurrected by whatever dark powers, and she’s the twelfth. Well he finally gets her, but he makes his own deal: Tara’s life back in exchange for his parents. Gotcha!

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Fun, pretty good movie from director of Fear Dot Com, Haunted Hill remake and upcoming Parasomnia. Writer Matt Greenberg just did silly John Cusack hotel horror 1408. Neither, obviously, is a MASTER of horror, but it’s a good enough title for the series. That fast/slow-moving thing used to creepy effect in Haunted Hill gets used here when Johnny turns into the creature… I love that stuff. Must be the lowest body count of all the MoH episodes I’ve seen.

MoH trademarks: don’t remember any naked women, didn’t see any familiar-looking actors, but someone’s eyeball did pop out.

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by ·Comments Off on Sick Girl (2005, Lucky McKee)

Starting with the twist-ending back-story… Lesbian entomologist Ida (see, it’s already unique) can’t find a date because her bugs scare people, cute girl sits in her office lobby stalking her for years, cute girl is daughter of Ida’s ex-prof super bug guy who ships scary bug from brazil or someplace to infect brain of Ida and lay eggs in her so daughter won’t date her, but they start dating first, then bug gets daughter, and finally bug gets ’em both, kills Ida’s male friend, and they are happy and pregnant with 1000’s of bugs together. Sort of like that episode of Creepshow except instead of an unappealing dude there’s two girls kissing… a marked improvement.

Effects are silly, plastic bugs and full-body bug-suits, but all well used. Ida is May from the movie May, has a cool voice, and stalker girlfriend is softcore porn star Misty Mundae. Fun flick, not bad at all.

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by ·Comments Off on Deer Woman (2005, John Landis)

Yaaaay, a good funnyish movie starring the guy from Dream On (Brian Benben, who I haven’t seen in too long) as a burned-out detective. He accidentally killed his partner years before, got depressed, wife left him, now just handles cases involving animals. Gory deaths apparently caused by deer trampling in strange locations (inside a truck, a hotel room) lead Brian and his makeshift partner Anthony Griffith (Charlie’s Angels 2) stumped. Brian tries on many theories (funny bit where he imagines ridiculous scenarios then mutters “stupid”), meets a native in a casino who tells him about the Deer Woman, beautiful woman with hoofs who seduces then kills guys. Partner gets trampled, Brian finds he can’t kill her with his gun, so takes to the car and runs her down, with obvious in-the-headlights reference.

Landis was great in the 80’s, with Twilight Zone, Coming To America, Spies Like Us and American Werewolf In London (fat reference to that movie in this episode), didn’t realize how he has disappeared since then. Looking forward to his next MoH episode.

Co-written with Landis’s 21-year-old son, awesome.

Who you callin’ Martin Tupper?
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Your nudity:
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Your fantasy sequence:
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Your gag ending:
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