Masters Of Horror: Right To Die

AUGUST 27, 2008

GENRE: GHOST
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Some folks might balk at the idea of giving Rob Schmidt a slot among the “Masters of Horror”, since he only has one film (the original Wrong Turn), but either way, he’s certainly made one of the better episodes with Right To Die. Essentially a gory version of the Terry Schiavo case (and some Scott Peterson for good measure), it’s not perfect, but it’s the rare modern horror story that actually has social commentary blended in with the bloody stuff, something that used to be the norm and is now all but completely abandoned.

It’s also got one of the better casts. Martin Donovan is always fun to watch, and it’s great to see Corbin Bernsen back in full on Arnie Becker mode. Plus, uber-hot Robin Sydney spends almost every minute of her screentime in some stage of undress; hardly a bad idea. However, there actually might be a bit too much nudity; in addition to Sydney, Donovan’s equally hot wife (Julia Anderson) has a nude scene herself. I’m not against excessive nudity, but since the story is actually pretty interesting, it could have done without, as it becomes a bit distracting.

I also loved the ending, silly as it may be. The moral of the story is, when you think about it, when you get married you’re pretty much doomed. Even after she dies, Donovan is under the control of his wife, destined for a life of groveling and endless requests for forgiveness (he was fucking Sydney’s character). The final shot is just perfect; Donovan wipes his feet on the mat and sulks inside as his wife (ghost or not, not sure) shuts the door behind him, giving him the evil eye the entire time. Let it be a lesson to all you unhappily married folks who are considering letting their spouse die so that they can rake in some dough and fuck their assistant without consequences.

Also I am almost positive this is the first horror movie in which our hero drives one of those ugly ass “Smart Cars”. I’m all for saving the environment, using alternatives to oil, all that stuff, but CHRIST those fucking things are ugly. I swear that Big Oil pays off the makers of these things to ensure that they will never be fully embraced by the public, because the average person wouldn’t be able to stop laughing at the sight of the thing long enough to sign the paperwork.

The only thing about the episode that really bothered me was how Schmidt staged an early scene that is missing crucial information. It’s sort of a cheat – it’s not like doing a flashback that takes on new meaning with new information that the film has given you, that’s OK. What Schmidt does is actually edit things out throughout the scene, and then play the “whole” thing later. As a result, both scenes are pretty awkward, and I wish they had spent some time reworking the scene(s) so that it would feel less forced. There’s also a ridiculous bit where Donovan walks around a hospital with a leaking cooler. Uh... where would the leak be coming from? It’s a goddamn cooler! Plus, no one seems to mind much that this citizen is carrying a bloody object around and leaving a trail of blood wherever he goes. The whole movie is kind of silly, but you got to ground it in reality for it to work properly.

The makeup effect for the burned up wife is amazing. Apparently, they simply hired a smaller actress than Anderson so the makeup could be applied and yet still give the idea that the woman is smaller as a result of her injuries (think about it – if you got no skin, you’re like 20 lbs lighter, yet in most movies, the actor will look BIGGER because of the prosthetics applied to his/her normal body). Say what you will about MoH, but KNB’s effects are just as good as their feature film work, something even more impressive when you consider the compressed time and budget they had to work with.

As usual, there’s a pair of featurettes (good stuff) and a commentary. Schmidt is OK to listen to; like on Wrong Turn, he’s kind of awkward, but provides some good trivia and discusses technical and creative things in equal measures, which is appreciated. He also discusses the “cheat” I mentioned earlier, and seems to think that the first time we saw the scene, it felt complete, something that’s not the case. Still, worth a listen (if you liked the movie anyway).

So far, of the 5-6 episodes of Season 2 I’ve watched, it’s a vast improvement over the first. With the exception of Carpenter, everyone that came back did a better episode, and the newcomers (Schmidt, Brad Anderson) contributed worthy movies as well. I don’t know why the show gets a bum rap among fans; sure none of the episodes are exactly classics (except for Joe Dante’s Homecoming from Season 1; I haven’t seen his 2nd season film yet), but they are rarely downright terrible, and since a lot of the directors never do horror anymore (John Landis), or films at all (Carpenter), I kind of like that the series gave them an opportunity to do something different and relatively unrestrained.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Masters Of Horror: Valerie On The Stairs

AUGUST 17, 2008

GENRE: GHOST, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

It sounds a bit strange to say, but I think Valerie On The Stairs may be the first MoH that would have worked better as a feature. Mick Garris (directing, and writing based on Clive Barker’s original idea) does a decent enough job getting the important ideas across quickly, but it seems like a story that would benefit from the sort of slow burn structure of other Barker films (such as Hellraiser or even the recent Midnight Meat Train).

Within the film’s first 4 minutes, we meet our hero, discover that he is a failed writer, watch him move into the location we will spend the rest of the movie inside of, and see him react to creepy noises. All of this stuff could easily have been stretched out to 10-15 minutes, and thus later developments would work better. The demon (Tony Todd) appears about 20 minutes in, making the reasons for his appearance have less of an impact than they would had we only caught a glimpse of him here and there until the end of the 2nd act (about an hour into a regular length film). Everything is just too rushed to really resonate. Even though it’s the longest MoH ever (literally only seconds shy of an hour, most of them are about 55-57 minutes tops), it seems that 85-90 minutes would be more ideal for this particular story, to allow characters to breathe and develop, and allow the twists to come along “later”.

That said it’s still one of the better episodes. The demon makeup/design is fantastic, and the twist at the end, goofily presented as it may be, is a pretty interesting one. Richard Band’s score is incredible; I really hope some sort of MoH compilation CD is released with all the themes; the main title piece is amazing. I also liked the oddball cast (including Christopher Lloyd), and again, wish the film had more time to spend with them. Lloyd’s character suddenly becomes the most important one besides our hero, and I felt like I barely knew him at that point. And if it was some no name actor in the role, I probably wouldn’t have paid any attention to him at all in his first few scenes.

But really, how can you dislike a film where a demon Tony Todd fucks a girl (who is clearly enjoying it) after literally tearing a man’s spine out?

I was also amused by the similarities to another MoH: Stuart Gordon’s Dreams In the Witch House, which also featured an guy moving into a strange place in order to get some work done and ends up dealing with its occupants (past and present). I think Garris even saw the coincidence; there is a scene where our hero asks what is behind a particular wall. “The door to another dimension!” the landlord snaps, something that was actually the case in Witch House (I think; I was pretty baffled by that episode).

The DVD has a Garris commentary and a making of that are pretty standard (worth noting - Garris reveals that Clive’s story would indeed have been a feature had it been filmed as he envisioned). But there is also a piece on the film’s editing, which I really appreciated and enjoyed. As I am technically an editor (incidentally, I am currently working on a documentary that Barker himself executive-produced, though as of yet I have had no contact with him. Bummer), I enjoy hearing editors talk about how they put together certain scenes, how they removed a few frames to make a scare more effective, etc. I wish more editors would offer their insights on DVDs, though I can see how it’s hardly a big draw for a regular audience. The script is also included; I didn’t finish it yet but it seems to be exactly the same as the finished product, so there’s little use for it (Barker's treatment would have been a more interesting inclusion - though it is published HERE on his website) unless you enjoy seeing things in Courier New.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Masters of Horror: Pro-Life

APRIL 19, 2007

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Another Emmanuelle Vaugier movie! But that’s not the coincidence, because I knew that she was in Pro-Life. But what I DIDN’T know is that both movies would have a hilariously goofy looking monster that had its own little spider-baby. Huh. And as I learned in the commentary, Joe Bishara (who composed Unearthed) had a hand in mixing the score. Goddamn these random ties!!!

This is also another Masters of Horror, which I added to today’s viewing because halfway through watching Unearthed I remembered that I promised to watch something that was officially released. If you promise something on a blog, and no one bothers to read it, does it make a difference? Probably not, but I still had an hour to kill before work, so Pro-Life went in the player.

I wasn't a big fan of the group’s previous MoH entry, Cigarette Burns. It was better than some of the other episodes (Tobe Hooper's Dance of the Dead, for example), but I wasn't big on Norman Reedus' character, and he was front and center for the whole thing. Plus it was a bit too similar to In The Mouth of Madness at times (with some Ninth Gate mixed in). It had great moments, and Udo Kier's death scene was AMAZING, but I felt everyone could be doing better.

This one looked to be an improvement for the first 20, 25 minutes or so. In fact, it’s only when the actual ‘horror’ elements start to come into play that it starts to go off the rails. The demon birth is sort of creepy, but the ridiculous sound it makes is laughable. Ever play with Popoids as a kid? That’s what it sounds like. In addition, the ‘father’ monster looks like the Devil at the end of End of Days, but even sillier. And in what has to be the silliest goddamn scene in recent cinema history, Ron Perlman, who is so hellbent on saving his daughter’s baby before it is aborted, stops to talk to the abortion clinic’s owner for a while, then castrates him. One would think perhaps he would, I dunno, stop the abortion first, and THEN go play Bond villain?

I had a great time with the commentary track though. The highlight is when Carpenter realizes it’s been 20 minutes since he’s had a cigarette so he has to leave. You can hear him put on his coat or whatever he’s doing away from the microphone saying “No go ahead guys, you’re doing great.” Hahahaha, God bless him. Be even funnier if he never even bothered to come back (he barely seems interested anyway, offering mainly “yeah”s for insight while the writers take charge).

It's not a total loss though, because Cody Carpenter’s score is quite good, Carpenter seems a bit more into it this time, and like I said, the first 20 min or so are pretty interesting. But the monster stuff sort of lost me (though the spider-baby has a human baby head, which is torn apart by a bullet, so there’s something). Apparently, the original script had no monster, it was a straight siege story. The supernatural angle was added in later, so I am curious how it all ended up before this was added, and if the changes were for the better or not. Either way, it's an improvement to be sure, but still, given the pedigree, I'm disappointed. Maybe in Season three the trio will knock it out of the park.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Masters of Horror: Pelts

APRIL 16, 2007

GENRE: POSSESSION
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Not enough movies feature Meat Loaf. And certainly not enough of them feature Meat Loaf doing whatever he can to fuck a stripper in the ass. Or magical raccoons. But that’s why we have Dario Argento. He will do what others will dare not (we are also treated to the sight of Loaf without a shirt, and then without skin, though somehow that’s not as disturbing as the former), as is plainly evident in his second season Masters of Horror episode Pelts.

The Masters of Horror series gets a bum rap I think. Sure, there are some stinkers (Tobe Hooper’s Dance of the Dead from the 1st season ranks as one of the absolute worst things I have ever seen, in any format), but I think folks expect the same level of greatness they get from the directors’ full length films. As talented as Argento, Carpenter, Landis, etc are, there’s no way they can pull off Suspiria, The Thing, or American Werewolf with a limited budget and even more limited time (and, to a lesser but still important extent, at least for Carpenter and Argento: without the ability to shoot in full 2.35:1 scope). So you gotta take them as what they are, which are episodes of a TV show.

Either way, so far, at least of the ones I have seen, Season Two has been a pretty big improvement over Season One. Hooper’s episode was a million light years ahead of his first one (though still the weakest of the half dozen I have seen), and Argento’s is stronger as well. The music is fantastic, the story is strange enough to hold my attention, and the murders, while lacking the suspense one would expect from him, are bloody as hell and extremely disturbing.

I haven’t mentioned it yet here, but Meat Loaf is my favorite musical artist, in particular the 1st and 2nd Bat out of Hell albums. So I always check out his films, though I have never been particularly amazed with his acting (that's not to say I don't enjoy seeing him onscreen). His musical persona is just too larger than life; I cannot mentally remove that aspect in order to accept him as a character most of the time. Also, most of the movies just suck (and yes, I include Fight Club in that list). But he’s surprisingly pretty damn good here. I’d rather he was making better albums (Bat 3 was disappointing) but hey, if Dario Argento wants you in his movie, you damn well better say yes. I would. But I’d also say yes to whoever the hell directed Boogeyman, because I need money.

It’s a shame this was just an hour long, as, unlike many of the MoHs, this one could have been its own full length movie. John Saxon’s character isn’t in it enough, and some of the death scenes come too quickly. Some fleshing out and this could have been one of Argento’s better movies from the last 20 years. So I definitely recommend the DVD, as it includes some decent featurettes. The commentary track, however, is entirely worthless. It’s just the writer, and he alternates between narrating the onscreen action and kissing everyone’s ass (including his own). Worthless. It would have been nice if they included the short story the film is based on, but alas.

And yes, obviously it doesn’t count as a “coincidence” that I watched two Argento movies in a row, since it’s not like I was surprised to learn that. But just like Deep Red, a person who is apparently sans bones is killed with an elevator. So there ya go.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...