Masters of Horror: Series 02 (2006)

Masters of Horror: Series 02 (2006) [Complete]

Dirs: Various (See Below) | Episodes: 13 (Total), 55 minutes each, approx.

More of the same kind of hit and miss anthology stories from many of the same people that were involved in Series One. This first half contains the first seven episodes. There may be a difference in running order between the Region 1 and Region 2 editions. I'm using the UK Region 2 editions. As with Series One, NA also got a full series box (Vols 01 + 02).

Series 02, Vol 01 begins with 01. Pelts by Dir. Dario Argento. It's a strange tale of nature's revenge on the sins of man. Argento finds an opportunity for some misogynist violence, so it's probably safe to assume that he had fun making it - likely more than I did watching it.

02. Pro-Life. Dir. John Carpenter. It's more suited to his talents than his Series 01 effort because it's a good old fashioned siege movie. He adds Ron Perlman, a rubber suit monster, and Cody Carpenter music to the mix for extra good times. The DoP made a few odd choices, but mostly it's a successful and non-biased approach to a sensitive topic.

03. Family. Dir. John Landis. It's typically blackly humorous. In Series 01 Landis slipped in a reference to his most famous horror genre film, An American Werewolf in London (1981). Here, he slips in a reference to his Series 01 episode during a fantastic opening shot.

04. Right to Die. Dir. Rob Schmidt. A vengeful spirit tale that's been done much better by the Japanese, but Schmidt keeps it interesting and it's the only one of the seven that briefly offers up some actual scares.

05. The Screwfly Solution. Dir. Joe Dante seems unable to keep politics out of his MoH contributions. TSS, about a specific kind of plague, is based on a novella by James Tiptree Jr. It isn't very exciting, but then it turns things around and finishes on a high point.

06. The Black Cat. Dir. Stuart Gordon. It ticked all the boxes for me. It reunited Gordon with his Re-Animator (1985) star Jeffrey Combs, who portrays a poverty stricken Edgar Allan Poe in a tale woven around Poe's The Black Cat. Poe fans will happy-clap at the references. It's visually striking because much of the colour is drained from the negative giving it an aged quality.

07. Valerie on the Stairs. Dir. Mick Garris. Loosely based on a story by Clive Barker called Revelations, it's about imagination and belief. It co-stars Christopher Lloyd and Tony Todd, who looks like he just stepped out of Midian. It should appeal to fans of storytelling.

Overall, the episodes are of a higher quality than the first half of Series 01, but the package is let down this time by extras that aren't as extensive as before.

Series 02, Vol 02 begins with 08. We All Scream for Ice Cream by Dir Tom Holland. It's the tale of a group of aged friends who did something morally wicked in their younger days and are now paying the price. It has a creepy ice cream van driven by a clown, for extra clichéd woefulness.

09. Sounds Like by Dir. Brad Anderson raises the bar of quality. A supervisor at a tech support call centre (Chris Bauer) has an acute sense of hearing due to a personal tragedy that turns everyday sounds into a kind of nails-on-blackboard agony. Anderson's taught style translates the pains of grief and pressure of life into elevated minutiae to a troubled mind; and like in Poe's Tell-tale Heart, the device functions as a fully engaging driving force.

10. The Washingtonians. Dir. Peter Medek helms a story that relies on a clear subversion of expectations, both in its opening scene and its main underlying contrivance that suggests a treasured American historical figure was less perfect than public records claim. The 'creepy old-timer' shtick served more than one purpose, but was so overplayed that it failed to elevate the narrative much. Scholars of US history might get some jollies from the notion, I suppose.

11. The Damned Thing. Dir. Tobe Hooper is undeniably skilled at establishing unease, but, for me personally, the intentionally messy camerawork works against it, blurring the nuance and pulling me out of the moment. If you feel the reverse is true, however, then TDT might register high on your list because an impressive level of foreboding tension exists beneath that stylistic choice.

12. Dream Cruise. Dir. Norio Tsuruta. Based on a short story by Kôji Suzuki, who's best known in filmic circles as the author of the works that Hideo Nakata's Dark Water (2002) and Ring (1998) films were based on. Dream Cruise, as you've probably guessed, also involves water. The weak framing, stupid plotting, overplayed sound effects, shit acting, lack of music, and reliance on Japanese horror clichés make it an utter washout.

13. The V Word. Dir. Ernest Roscoe Dickerson. Two thrill-seeking late-teens visit a funeral home to see a dead body, late at night, naturally, when it's at its most creep-some. The location is used well and the black humour is fun for a time, but I did lose interest before the ending rolled around. (It's perhaps worth noting that I had an audio dropout around the 33 mins mark, during the pizza scene; I don't know if it's unique to my disc or the UK collection, in general.)

I wanted a change from the horror genre after watching all of those, so I didn't bother with any of the extras on the second volume. The blurb states there are more than 10 hours of them.