Flickers on the Wall: Masters of Horror (Part 1)

There’s nothing equivalent to the fantastic fiction magazines of literature for film, nothing you can subscribe to in order to get the most exciting and skillfully conceived short movies (or poor ones that somehow got past the slush viewers) each month. There were no Weird Tales, Astounding Stories, or Worlds of IF to shepherd the young format on its way, and it’s the worse for it. How different things might have been for short film.

The closest kin is the anthology television series. Yes, there are anthology films (The House That Dripped Blood, The Illustrated Man, Creepshow), but for this tenuous and easily collapsible analogy, those map onto anthology books since each is potentially a one-shot deal.

Unlike magazines, the norm for genre TV anthologies has been to present a single work each week. There have been few Night Gallery-type programs, where two or three short films could pop up. The Outer Limits, Tales from the Crypt, and Amazing Stories gave us but one flight of fancy each week, and because of that, often ran into the same problem as low-budget “studio” features: a predetermined length. Some stories are best told in ten minutes, others in twenty-five, but since all had to fit into the allotted half hour or hour (generally sharing that time with commercials), many were stuffed with fluff.

The history of science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthology shows is not an auspicious one. Most of the programs could politely be called low rent. Others just suck. Few have had any impact on film, their genres, or pop culture. The exception is The Twilight Zone, a remarkable series that shaped a generation. Few fans remember its many slow moments and weak episodes; why should they when the likes of “It’s a Good Life,” “To Serve Man,” and “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” make up for a dozen pedestrian entries. While there’s a lot I could say about The Twilight Zone, I have a hard time describing it as the newest thing in short film, which is the concept of this column.

So, is there anything new and exciting in genre anthology TV? Indeed there is, the first series since The Twilight Zone that I can say is really good without needing to add qualifiers: Masters of Horror. My plan was to discuss season 2 as it has only recently made it to DVD, but too much of the second season relates to the first, so one column grew to two, and then to three, and now I’m starting at the beginning.

Masters of Horror was the brainchild of Mick Garris, a less than masterful director best known for Stephen King miniseries. He started a lunch group that consisted, on and off, of some of the major players in cinematic horror. They began calling themselves, jokingly, the Masters of Horror. All complained about the stifling effects of the rating system and the need to appeal to the broadest audience to please investors. Garris took this as a call to arms. He brought up the notion of a direct-to-video series of short films, each by a different “master” where they would be given free rein. Well, not entirely “free” since money was limited and shooting time would be more so, and worse, all the films had to be just under sixty minutes, even if the story only needed twenty. However, the filmmakers were free in an important way: No one would second-guess their artistic vision. They could go anywhere they wanted with horror. They could forge something calm and atmospheric or go nuts rending flesh and shattering bone. To take it wherever they desire isn’t an offer horror directors hear often, and many joined up.

Garris managed to keep his promise, for the most part. Showtime entered the picture, signing a deal to run the shorts first on cable, and they required a few restrictions. For the most part, these had little effect, though one episode was cut and another was so far beyond what they felt they could broadcast that it was eliminated from the schedule—though it did make it to British TV and onto DVD.

The series took its name from the lunch group, and like them, you shouldn’t take it too seriously. For starters, they are at best, the living Masters of Horror. Any cinematic listing of masters would have to contain James Whale, Tod Browning, Val Lewton, and Alfred Hitchcock, but since even in horror, being a corpse is a detriment, their absence is understandable. However, that lofty title is harder to accept when breathing directors such as Roger Corman, Hideo Nakata, David Cronenberg, and George A. Romero are missing from the lineup. As for those who are present, well, some are certainly masters, and some are more like janitors of horror, and that isn’t even requiring every master to be good (I’m willing to count a guy as a master if he’s simply important to the genre). The thirteen that made Garris’s cut are:

• Don Coscarelli
• Stuart Gordon
• Tobe Hooper
• Dario Argento
• Mick Garris
• Joe Dante
• John Landis
• John Carpenter
• William Malone
• Lucky McKee
• Larry Cohen
• John McNaughton
• Takashi Miike

Freedom to do anything didn’t take the masters all over the board. The films share many qualities. The most obvious is blood. Horror doesn’t require it, but no one told that to these guys. Every film is dripping with hemoglobin. A majority of them feature it spraying from sliced arteries or running from organs that are no longer in their proper places. Yeah, these are not subtle movies, which I take as a virtue. The other omnipresent element is sexuality. Bare breasts show up in every episode (though you’ll have to look really hard in one—think of it has a puzzle) and thrusting hips are more common than not. The nudity is no more gratuitous than the gore. Both only advance the plot about fifty percent of the time, but in horror, that’s not always the goal. It’s often more important to get the viewer tense and excited, and flesh, either caressed or torn, does that better than anything else.

Masters of Horror works on many levels and, like The Twilight Zone, should sit on every fan’s shelf. But what makes this series impressive? Is every episode a masterpiece? “No” to the latter question. As for the former, it’s easier to answer it after looking at each film. Since I’m giving the show as a whole a positive rating, I’ll skip individual star awards, instead only indicating if each is average (which means very good), below average, or above.

Ep 1.1: Incident On and Off A Mountain Road {Director: Don Coscarelli. Writers: Don Coscarelli, Stephen Romano, Joe R. Lansdale (short story)}

How you feel about Incident On and Off A Mountain Road will depend on how you feel about the mutant cannibal redneck cycle of the 1970s (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes) and its recent rebirth (Wrong Turn, Evil Breed: The Legend Of Samhain, plus far too many remakes). Incident is a compressed and therefore more exciting version of those other films. If you’ve seen them, you’ll know where the frights are, when the gore will spurt, and what’s going to happen. But for a sub-sub-genre that has only a few gems and a lot of sand, and is known for lower-than-low production values, Incident has a moderately clean shine to it.

After a car wreck on the titular road, Ellen (Bree Turner), a girl with especially (or perhaps comically) poor taste in men, encounters Moonface, your run-of-the-mill inbred cabin inhabitant with a penchant for corpse decor. Of course, she ends up running through the woods with the big guy at her heals. Since her last maladjusted boyfriend taught her survivalist tricks, it isn’t one-way violence, but eventually, Ellen is chained to a wall and the hardcore torture begins. Naturally, there’s an elderly insane hillbilly (Angus Scrimm) in the house so there’s some reason for dialog (Moonface isn’t much of a talker).

Sure, violence, action, and tension come first, but under it all is a strong streak of girl power, and not the gentle, understanding, “we can all get along” type. It’s more the “I am woman, hear me cut off your testicles” sort (note: no testicles were removed in the making of this movie). Ellen is a direct cinematic descendent of Jennifer Hills from I Spit on Your Grave (the most famous of the rape & revenge pictures), though she has a touch of Rambo in her genes. I could almost hear the shouts of “You go girl!” as we learn that fancy knife work isn’t a skill, but a natural offshoot of getting your feminist freak on.

Incident On and Off A Mountain Road is a thoroughly unwholesome beginning for Masters of Horror, which is a compliment. Filled with pain, suffering, and the unpleasant things you can do with a drill, it informs the viewer that the thirteen episodes aren’t going to be easy to forget and won’t be sanitized for your protection.

Rating: Average

A Master? With only the cult fave Phantasm and its lackluster sequels and the quirky, overrated Bubba Ho-tep to his credit, Don Coscarelli is less a master of horror than a journeyman’s apprentice of horror. He wears the title better than a few of his thirteen peers, but in the great hall, he’s at the kiddy table.

Ep 1.2: Dreams in the Witch House {Director: Stuart Gordon Writers: Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon, H.P. Lovecraft (story)}

The masters in Master of Horror are the directors, but it’s nice when the writers are considered, and Dreams in the Witch House gives us H.P. Lovecraft. You don’t get more important to the genre than that, and it’s a nice place to go for this second outing.

In a surprisingly faithful adaptation, Walter Gilman, a graduate student at Miskatonic University in need of a quiet place where he can work on his multidimensional string theory thesis, rents a room in an old, rundown boarding house. His neighbors are odd and the landlord unpleasant, but that’s nothing compared to the nude witch and her human-faced rat companion that begin invading his dreams. Soon the Necronomicon comes into play, and Walter realizes he’s been chosen to conduct the ritual murder of a baby. Somehow he must defy the witch, avoid the man-rodent, save the baby, and win over the infant’s attractive mother. That’s a lot to ask, particularly as this is Lovecraft, which means insanity is always just a step away.

With a heady mix of suspense, gore, terror, adventure, sex, humor, and camp, Dreams in the Witch House tries to be all things, and for the most part, succeeds. Much of it is just fun, with a thin layer of hopelessness coating the quirky characters and the joyfully absurd non-CGI rat. Gilman’s Walter is a pleasant everyman lead (assuming that your average person is well acquainted with advanced physics) and easily won over my sympathies. The other players are given considerably more depth than the source material managed, particularly the female neighbor, Frankie (Lovecraft was notorious for his discomfort in dealing with women, both real and literary). It is her child the witch is after, giving the tale a level of personal intensity missing from the story in which the victims are unknown.

When the blood and guts finally kick in, they do it with pizzazz and a spectacular level of sickness. What is the deal with horror directors and eyes? However, even with that dose of forced adrenaline and the earlier humor, the picture drags. There isn’t enough plot for fifty-plus minutes. Perhaps some time could have been assigned to developing the other universe, where the witch hides. It had to be considered important at some point in the scriptwriting process or there would have been no reason to make our hero an expert in dimensional mathematics. As is, he could have been a poet for all the impact his knowledge has on the story.

Dreams in the Witch House is entertaining (it would have been more entertaining at thirty minutes), but slight and unlikely to stick in your memory. If you’re a Lovecraft fan, then this is a movie you’ll want on your shelf, mainly due to the poor quality of so many films inspired by his dream worlds and mythos (try sitting through The Dunwich Horror’s disco sorcerer).

Rating: Average

A Master? Stuart Gordon is the king of Lovecraftian cinema. He did a nice job with Dreams in the Witch House, but he’s done it better with Dagon and earned his rank as a master of horror with Re-Animator and From Beyond, the two finest Lovecraft adaptations.

Ep 1.3: Dance of the Dead {Director: Tobe Hooper. Writer: Richard Christian Matheson, Richard Matheson (story)}

The third entry takes Masters of Horror in yet another direction, one that leads to the truly horrific. This one is not for everyone and many will (and have) find it uncomfortable. It isn’t happy, light, exciting fun, and it doesn’t have the kind of payoff that slasher fans long for—it’s dark, unpleasant, and a little too close to home. It’s also a textbook example of using genre fiction as a mirror of modern society, and the image isn’t pretty.

The underlying concept is the best of the entire series, and one of the best in horror history. In a bleak, postapocalyptic (or perhaps, current-apocalyptic) near-future, the counterculture, if such a term still has meaning, has discovered that chemical warfare had a strange side effect: If you inject corpses with fresh blood and zap them with cattle prods, they will jerk about, The Dance of the Dead. Watching the dancers has become the entertainment of choice for those who have nothing to hope for. Now that’s a grim vision of the future.

In flashbacks, we learn that a terrorist weapon caused acid to rain from the skies, decimating the population, destroying the largest cities, and leaving civilization in shambles. Within this world lives naive, seventeen-year-old Peggy (Jessica Lowndes). She works as a waitress in her ever-present mother’s diner. Mom, who exudes all the warmth of Mussolini, is quick to mention that with Dad and elder sister gone, Peggy is the future of the family. That means she’s controlled and kept from reality. At least her sheltered existence has left her with a pleasant personality—the only one you’ll find in this story. When a foursome of neo-Goths stop by for burgers after mugging an elderly couple for their blood, the least slimy of the group (Jonathan Tucker) latches onto Peggy, as he hasn’t seen innocence in a long time. Peggy, longing for some kind of life, sneaks out for a night that will introduce her to depravity and allow her to see an even worse version at home. It all comes together at The Doom Room, were the nihilistic emcee (Robert Englund) coughs up blood onstage and feels up the corpses in the back room. Nope, there’re no good guys here.

With a cut every few seconds, a barrage of camera tricks, and a bombastic soundtrack courtesy of Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins), Dance of the Dead isn’t easy to watch, but then it’s not suppose to be. It’s supposed to be smart, and it is.

Rating: Superior

A Master? No question about it. The man who made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Poltergeist, and Lifeforce, along with multiple lesser genre works, gets an honored seat.

Ep 1.4: Jenifer {Director: Dario Argento. Writers: Steven Weber, Bruce Jones (story)}

The fourth entry keeps the twisted nature of Dance of the Dead but raises the gore factor as well as the sex. Based on an illustrated story in Creepy (July 1974) that was drawn by the renowned Bernie Wrightson, and adapted by star Steven Weber (Wings), Jenifer is the ultimate girl-with-a-bag-over-her-head story. It also gives us cannibalism, a child murder, and an animal torn to pieces.

Police detective Frank Spivey shows up just in time to gun down a homeless psycho who was about to behead a young whimpering girl, a girl with a terrific body but a horribly deformed face, one that stretches past the bounds of human. Frank obsesses over the event and the girl, known only as Jenifer, and when she’s labeled mentally incompetent and sent to a hellhole asylum, he takes her home—just until he can find her a place to stay. It’s no surprise that an often naked, fanged girl who tends to roar when not sobbing puts a strain on his marriage, and that’s before anyone notices that Jenifer likes her meat raw and fresh.

As exploitation theater, this is wonderful: lots of bare breasts (well, mainly the same pair, but they come out a lot), plenty of sex—sometimes friendly, sometimes less so—and more gore than you can shake the entrails of a cat at. Good, lowest common denominator films are hard to find, generally fixating on dimwitted jokes and missing what makes those swarms of butterflies reenact the Indianapolis 500 in our stomachs. Jenifer goes straight for the gut, and the lower intestine. It pushes every button it can find and laughs at the bounds of good taste.

Still, disappointment tempers my rollicking in the flesh, both hot and dismembered. The episode should have been more. Jenifer screams to be a metaphor for…something. The most obvious is something to do with the nature of the male sex drive (there’s still people—female people—who think that something else is relevant to men; silly). Unfortunately, the metaphor is left lying on the floor. The best Jenifer managed was to initiate Internet discussions by men on if they’d sleep with a horribly deformed and feral woman if she had a plentiful rack. The stated answer from Weber and Argento is “yes.” And, as long as a wife or girlfriend isn’t listening, I’m sure that’s the answer for 99% of the straight male population. (OK, maybe she needs more than just firm breasts; the rest of the body needs to be sumptuous too before multiple murders can be ignored.)

However, saying that men will do anything to get laid isn’t the height of art. Showing that, and making anyone who doesn’t understand that already feel it, is, and Jenifer doesn’t manage that. We’re not told enough about Frank, pre-Jenifer to let us know how he’s changing. Was he an alcoholic? Was he nearing impotence? Was he abusive or neglectful? Or was he a happy, semi-normal family man? It would have been nice to have had some idea. Since he’s already being offered playtime by his hot wife, the whole “men will do anything to get it” statement goes nowhere. After all, men are also lazy. Since Argento was envisioning Jenifer as an alien being (he’d planned to fashion part of her anatomy out of chicken innards, but the powers that be considered that to be too much), there was the potential for some interesting statements about the thin line between beauty and ugliness, attraction and repulsion, as in Crash, but he didn’t take the step into perversion which would have made this a classic.

The story doesn’t have enough substance to cover up the failed themes and has a plot hole on a scale rarely found in even the lowest of low-budget horror. It’s as if script pages were tossed out without changing what was left. People are murdered, and no one notices. Frank’s family drives away from home and out of the story. And since when can police claim wards of the state as their personal sex toys? I’m pretty sure there’d be some paperwork.

So, we’re back to enjoyable exploitation. Hey, it’s enough, as we’re down and dirty here. Though for pure exploitation, it’s a shame that those powers considered Jenifer to have crossed the line. Apparently penises are the line. The “masters” were told their work would go uncensored, but in this case, the promise was broken. Argento removed the full frontal male nudity, including oral sex, and did not reinsert it for the DVD. Does that harm the film? Hard to say, but when you’re dealing with exploitation, more is usually…well…more.

Rating: Average

A Master? While a majority of Dario Argento’s works are best classified as bloody-thrillers, he has substantial credits directing, editing, and producing pure horror. Best known for Suspiria, his influence is hard to miss in the U.S. and is everywhere in Italy. Yup, Argento belongs, though fans won’t see any of his brightly colored surrealism in Jenifer. Only the music marks this as an Argento project.

To be continued >>