Flickers on the Wall: Masters of Horror - Season 2

I just can’t keep away from Masters of Horror (my examination of series one begins here). The first season was the finest collection of genre films in over forty years. It is essential viewing for all horror fans, an encyclopedia of monsters, madmen, and fear as presented on-screen in the past half-century. It might not have always been masterful, or created by masters, but as a whole, it was genius. So, to what heights could season two climb? An expansion of season one’s scope? A deeper examination of cinematic horror? A celebration of the missing masters?

Well, not exactly.

This time around, all thirteen short films played on Showtime before making their way to DVD. They are:

• The Damned Thing (Director: Tobe Hooper. Writer: Richard Christian Matheson) – An invisible monster returns to rural Texas.
• Family (Director: John Landis. Writer: Brent Hanley.) – A psycho killer constructs a family of corpses.
• The V Word (Director: Ernest Dickerson. Writer: Mick Garris.) – Teenage boys meet a vampire.
• Sounds Like (Director/Writer: Brad Anderson) – A man’s extraordinary hearing drives him insane.
• Pro-Life (Director: John Carpenter. Writers: Scott Swan, Drew McWeeny.) – The daughter of a religious fanatic tries to abort her demonic fetus.
• Pelts (Director: Dario Argento. Writer: Matt Venne.) – Holy creatures are skinned for their fur.
• The Screwfly Solution (Director: Joe Dante. Writer: Sam Hamm.) – A disease causes men to turn against women.
• Valerie on the Stairs (Director/Writer: Mick Garris) – A struggling author encounters a nude apparition.
• Right to Die (Director: Rob Schmidt. Writer: John Esposito.) – A man fights for a court order to end his wife’s pain before discovering that her death will unleash a vengeful spirit.
• We All Scream for Ice Cream (Director: Tom Holland. Writer: David J. Schow.) – A ghostly ice cream vendor seeks vengeance.
• The Black Cat (Director: Stuart Gordon. Writers: Gordon Paoli, Dennis Paoli.) – Edgar Allan Poe is haunted by a black cat.
• The Washingtonians (Director: Peter Medak. Writers: Johnathon Schaech, Richard Chizma.) – Cannibals try to hide an unsavory bit of U.S. history.
• Dream Cruise (Director: Norio Tsuruta. Writers: Naoya Takayama, Norio Tsuruta.) – A murderer, his unfaithful wife, her lover, and a ghost are marooned in the middle of the ocean.

While a few of these seem to be misfires from their inception (yet another teens vs. vampire; an evil Good Humor man), it’s hard to tell much from brief descriptions. Besides, what made the first season remarkable wasn’t the individual movies, but how they fit together. It recounted what had gone before it with high-level examples and new twists. The second season merely tromps on well-traveled ground with a linear obsession. There’s nothing to learn, little to surprise, and not nearly enough to entertain. I should have expected it. Once you’ve covered the genre, what else is there to say? They could have filled in the cracks, but outside of twitching, long-haired, Asian ghosts and maniacs with knives chasing scantily-clad teen girls at camp, there wasn’t much missing (and the former they did include in Dream Cruise). An infusion of new masters would have been the best bet, but none were to be found. Hooper, Landis, Carpenter, Argento, Dante, Garris, and Gordon all stuck around, most with less to say, while Miike and the less masterful Don Coscarelli, William Malone, Lucky McKee, Larry Cohen, and John McNaughton were replaced by a group primarily known for TV work: Dickerson, Anderson, Schmidt, Holland, Medak, and Tsuruta. No new masters there, and the loss of taboo-smashing Miike pulled the teeth from the series. Without that larger theme, something to make the whole greater than the parts, each film has to stand on its own. Only a few can.

That’s not to say there aren’t similarities between the pieces. Gore is as common as in the first season, sometimes just stapled on, but this is horror, so it generally fits. Unfortunately, other items that might have raised the excitement level are missing. Nudity and sex still rear up, but not with any consistency. Like in so many American films, the insides of bodies trump the outsides. Sex isn’t necessary for horror, but it’s a better way to fluff out a too-short script than repeating what we already know. And there is the second common item: all of the films are too long. These are twenty- to thirty-minute movies strung out to an hour.

The most amusing frequent element is politics. Home Coming, the zombie anti-Administration first season story, got quite a bit of press, so season two produces episodes filled with social or governmental hot button issues: The V Word (race relations), Sounds Like (domestic violence), Pro-Life (abortion), Pelts (animal rights), The Screwfly Solution (sexual violence), Right to Die (euthanasia), and The Washingtonians (government cover-ups and corruption). Unfortunately, few are willing to grab the theme and run with it. Only Pelts makes a clear, powerful statement. Agree or disagree, at least its stance is clear. The others just toss the subject in as setting, letting meaning drift away in favor of a limb or two being cut off.

So, is the second season of Masters of Horror a waste of your time? No, because it can’t be judged as a single entity. Most of the episodes can be dismissed, some for the reasons already stated, others for poor dialog, excessive use of dreams (oh Stuart Gordon, why?!), and for committing the worst cinematic sin: being dull. But a few deserve attention. Pelts is satisfying because Argento doesn’t hold back. Not only does he pound us with his point, he inundates us with sensation. The gore is more visceral and violence more extreme, and the sex is more raw than anything else the season has to offer. It isn’t as shocking as Imprint, but it’s not one for the kids. It never shirks, and it finds a reason for skinning a man alive. What horror fan doesn’t rejoice at those words? Right to Die is nearly as enjoyable. The theme gets lost, and some of the blood splatter exists to fill a quota, but it’s a nice take on the revenge ghost story and one you’re unlikely to have seen before.

The two must-see films are failures, but they are fascinating failures. The Screwfly Solution is, for thirty minutes, the best episode of the season and the kind of thing horror is all about. Honor killings are on the rise and showing up in the U.S. More and more women are dying at the hands of religious fanatics, but there’s a pattern to the killings. The movie is suspenseful, mysterious, and creepy, with some genuinely interesting characters. Unfortunately, writer Sam Hamm had a great idea but didn’t know where to take it. It ends with a whimper. It’s too good to let die, and I can only hope that someone will remake it after composing an ending worthy of its start.

The gem of the season is Valerie on the Stairs, but what a chipped and dull gem it turns out to be. It incorporates longing, lust, and the twisted nature of the creative process in a neat little mystery. Set in a boarding house for unsuccessful authors, the newest boarder hears bumps in the night. Investigating, he finds a beautiful, ethereal woman who begs for help before disappearing through a nonexistent door. Naturally, no one else heard a thing, but our hero quickly discovers that his housemates are lying, and there’s worse things in the walls than Valerie. Valerie on the Stairs is ripe with perversion and terror, which is to be expected since the story came from the pen of Clive Barker. It is equally to be expected that Mick Garris (who pays the bills making tedious miniseries from Stephen King books) let it rot. I can forgive the overwrought dialog that suffuses the third act, and even Garris’s complete failure to unearth the story’s BDSM roots (we’re talking demon on girl sex here, which somehow ends up feeling like the Brady Bunch), but what brings it all down is Garris’s inability to separate plot from theme. To emphasize the writer’s struggle, he happily lets the story slip into incoherence. It’s frustrating to watch, since it could have been so much more.

So, Masters of Horror could only manage one year before falling apart. One year isn’t bad. Showtime canceled the series, and no one has shown any interest in funding a third, direct to video season. Garris is in talks to create a similar program for broadcast TV, with the sex and violence tones down for little Timmy and Aunt Matilda. This time, I’ll have my expectations properly lowered.