Mike the Boss - Films of 2010 - Film the Eighteenth: Masters of Horror: Chocolate

Warning: If this man is in the movie you are watching, it is likely crap!

Chocolate (2005)(dir: Mick Garris)

The Masters of Horrors creator/producer tries his hand at making a scary episode and fails in spectacular fashion. One of the worst entries in the series. Mitigated only by copious amounts of nudity and sex and decent bit of gore. The story is crap, the acting is crap, the directing is crap and the end result is crap.

Here is a hint on how to tell you are watching a crappy movie/TV episode. If Matt Frewer is in it, it is crap. This will hold true in 95% of the things that he is in. I enjoyed him as Max Headroom in a decade long past but if I am honest with myself, he was crap in that too.

I’m not going to bother with a plot summary since I’m not going to recommend anyone watch this film. It is bad,. You will be disappointed. Just avoid it.

Mike The Boss - Films of 2010 - Film the Sixteenth: Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns / Dreams in the Witch House

Cigarette Burns (2005)(dir: John Carpenter) / Dreams in the Witch House (2005)(dir: Stuart Gordon)

These films are on the same disc and are both part of the Masters of Horror series.

Cigarette Burns is a fun little John Carpenter (Escape from New York, They Live) romp. It kind of acts like a complementary piece to Polanski’s much superior Ninth Gate. It deals with Kirby (Norman Reedus) being hired by Bellinger (Udo Kier) to find the only surviving copy of the most terrifying film ever to be created. Apparently, if you view this film, you will go insane and kill people and/or yourself.

The movie has some nice effects and creates a definite sense of unease throughout. However, it suffers from the fact that it needs to show you elements of this film to convince you how terrifying that it is. The problem is that the film they present to us is really just kind of wanky instead of terrifying. Carpenter would have been better off to keep it all off screen. I still think this film works because of the general creepiness that is invoked and some strong performance by Kier and Reedus. The final result is that this entry is one of the strongest in the entire Master of Horror series.

Dreams of the Witch House is a Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond) entry in Masters of Horror series. Gordon has a rep built on his entertaining film adaptations, from the 80’s, of H.P. Lovecraft stories. Witch House is another short story adaptation and it suffers from the more recent malaise that Gordon has fallen into. Gordon is still resting on the acclaim he received 25 years ago and has not adapted or evolved his craft over the years. I know he has his fans but I am not one of them.

The Witch House in the movie is a rooming house filled with misfits and has a room in the attic where the geometry of the walls serves as a gateway into a realm of evil. What could have been a scary premise is instead treated as a pseudo-comedy which disarms any horror aspects of the story. By the time the witch appears (and the appearance is laughably bad), you no longer care what happens to the Bruce Campbellesque protagonist. It is too bad that this stinker is attached to the same disc as Cigarette Burns.

Mike The Boss - Films of 2010 - Film the Fourteenth: Masters of Horror: Right To Die

Right To Die (2006) (dir: Rob Schmidt)

Moving right along with the Masters of Horror series, I watched Rob Schimdt's Right to Die. If you've never heard of Schmidt, it is because he has one real film to his name, Wrong Turn, and that film isn't really all that great. I guess they needed someone to fill the director's chair and he was all that was left. Right to Die features the overacting of Martin Donovan, as the husband of a woman who has had all of her skin removed due to a horrible car accident and fire they were in. Whenever she dies, she appears as a fleshless apparition and does terrible thing to people around him.

The story is not that great in this one either although I do enjoy the play on words in the title. Donovan is seeking to have his wife taken off of life support but in reality, it would only be correct for her to die given the nature of her wounds. Tthe weak story and bad acting is mollified by copious gore effects and plenty of nudity and sex. So while the plot may not be great, you will still be kept entertained if those things are what you are into. I did like the ending as well but it still felt like it took a little too long to get there. Anyway, not a complete dud but nothing special here.

Mike the Boss - Films of 2010 - Film the Thirteenth: Masters of Horror: Sounds Like...

Masters of Horror: Sounds Like... (2006) (dir: Brad Anderson)

Another in the Masters of Horror collection, this one is directed by Brad Anderson who did the delightfully scary Session 9 and cringe-inducing The Machinist. It deals with the manager of a call centre whose hearing becomes hyper-sensitive to the point where it is driving him crazy. This episode has an decent back story but I'm not sure it really does the job of a horror film. Sure there is the psychological aspect of his condition and what it causes him to do but I just didn't feel the tension that might have been there if they hadn't kept the story so simple. I think this is more of a failing of the concept of the Masters of Horror series than anything else. The constraint required to keep things within the 50 minute limit means that the director cannot always go where he needs to. Anyway, Sounds Like... is not great but it is still a decent diversion for an hour if you need one.

Mike The Boss - Films of 2010 - Film the Twelfth: Masters of Horror: The Screwfly Solution

Masters of Horror: The Screwfly Solution (2006) (dir: Joe Dante)

Since we are supposed to be watching a movie a day I have naturally gravitated towards the shorter movies since I can fit 1 or 2 in much more easily that way. I had not watched any of the Masters of Horror collection expect for the one by Takashi Miike which is acknowledged to be one of the best and was actually banned from US television.

The Masters of Horror collection was the brain child of Mick Garris and ran on the Starz cable channel in the USA. The concept was to get directors, who have made great horror films in the past, to do 50 minute TV movies a la Twilight Zone. Since it was to be on a cable channel, nudity and gore could feature prominently. The idea sounds like a good one but the constraints on the series (length, money, actors) resulted in an underwhelming collection of movies. However, if you are able to twist things around in your head to realize that these aren't really movies, they are episodic television shows, then they begin to shine a little brighter. None of them are great but there are quite a few that are fun. And since most of the DVDs only feature 1 episode on it, they are only half price to rent and definitely worth your time at that price.

I started with The Screwfly Solution, directed by Joe Dante, mostly because I know Dante has a good sense of humour and has been underused in Hollywood these days. I'm glad I did because Joe does a fine job of taking decent short story and working in some fine killing and a bit of sex to boot. It is based on a 1977 short story by Raccoona Sheldon who is also Alice Sheldon who wrote under the name of James Tiptree Jr. since sci-fi readers seem to have an aversion to female authors. If you don't know the story of the Screwfly, it is an annoying pest in South America that lays its eggs in human hosts which then begin to eat the living flesh while they grow. They were controlled by breeding sterile males and then releasing them in the wild to compete with the fertile males thus reducing the population.

Sheldon took this concept and applied a variation to humanity so that men become increasingly violent towards women as a result of this plague. Dante uses the obvious male violence theme to great effect having even the most well-meaning individuals hurt the ones they love the most. It is a well put together story with a bit of cheesy special effects for the grand finale but still an above average television production. Dante still has what it takes to shock us but knows full well that a bit of humour is always appreciated with our horror.