Masters of Horror: Series 2

Abstract

[...]The Damned Thing becomes little more than a succession of ever dwindling shocks, doing a disservice to the original material and suggesting yet again that Hooper's sublime debut The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre may represent something of a fluke in directorial ability. [...]while not terribly scary, the episode stands out when compared to the rest of Masters of Horror: Series 2 because it refuses to substitute characterisation and good storytelling for cheap shocks and gore as many of the other episodes do.

(Showtime, 2008)

Now into its second series (and with a short-lived sci-fi based spinoff) Showtime's Masters of Horror represents an attempt to update the horror anthology format for a contemporary audience. While overseen by series creator Mick Garris (who will also supervise the upcoming NBC spinoff, Fear Itself), each episode hands over the directorial reigns to a different genre luminary who is tasked with telling a standalone self-contained story. Yet, although such a concept promises much, in practice the unique demands of television often produce less than successful results. Budgetary constraints, the need to establish likeable, nuanced characters, and the requirement to tell interesting and original genre stories has proved a difficult balancing act for many. Contributors to series two of Masters of Horror include both returning directors such as John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing) Stuart Gordon (Re-animator) and Dario Argento (Suspiria, Profondo Rosso) and new participants including Rob Schmidt ( Wrong Turn) and Tom Holland (Child's Play, Fright Night).

The second series gets off to a decidedly mediocre start with Tobe Hooper's The Damned Thing. Based loosely on the creepily effective Ambrose Bierce short story of the same name, the episode fails on a number of levels. The wooden Sean Patrick Flannery plays Kevin Reddle, sheriff of Cloverdale, Texas. We are told how, as a child, Kevin witnessed his father brutally shooting both his mother and then himself in an entirely uncharacteristic outbreak of insanity. This event has made Kevin into something of a paranoiac who's convinced that one day he'll be afflicted by whatever affected his father. Sure enough, it's not long before "the damned thing" of the title begins to turn the other residents of Cloverdale into murderous psychopaths and Kevin must try and survive long enough to find out what's going on. While the basic premise of the episode is an effective one (as it should be given the source material), Hooper's execution is poor, managing to remove most of the suspense of the set-up through the repeated use of overly gory set-pieces. Hooper's attempts to instil the story with contemporary relevance (it is suggested that the town's oil money has been attained as a result of immoral practices) also seem somewhat under-developed, leading to an episode in which the audience is more likely to be gleefully cheering on the murderous townsfolk than they are rooting for the supposed protagonist.

The Damned Thing's uneven tone and quality exemplify one of the series' chief failings, namely that the confines of an hour long television format seem to allow for very little character development or depth to the storytelling. As a result, The Damned Thing becomes little more than a succession of ever dwindling shocks, doing a disservice to the original material and suggesting yet again that Hooper's sublime debut The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre may represent something of a fluke in directorial ability.

Ernest Dickerson's The V Word represents something of a nadir for the second series. Wildly unoriginal (the premise of suburban youngsters finding that one of their neighbours is a vampire was done in both Fright Night and The Lost Boys to much better effect) the episode seems to think it is much cleverer than it actually is. Consequently, the audience is left with a clichéd mess of a story that attempts to swing between «Scream-style self-reflexiveness and more serious scares yet manages neither. Throw in some truly appalling dialogue and a lumpen performance by Michael Ironside and one is tempted to re-title the episode The S word.

Despite the series' patchiness there are, however some gems. Though perhaps not reaching the heights of the first series' Homecoming, Joe Dante's contribution The Screwfly Solution manages to successfully negotiate the potential pitfalls of the television format to tell an interesting story with political underpinnings. Based on a short story of the same name by Alice Sheldon (better known as James Tiptree Jr), The Screwfly Solution charts the effects of an alien-created virus that changes the male population of America into violent psychopaths. The eponymous solution becomes a device through which Dante (and the episode's writer Sam Hamm) explore the links between sex and violence in American society. Of particular interest in this regard is the episode's handling of the role that religion often seems to play in justifying violence towards women, with Dante using the infected men's concurrent increase in religious belief to critique the more conservative 'fire and brimstone' sectors of Christianity. Alongside its grander scale depiction of an apocalyptic America driven into a state of chaotic discordance, the episode humanises the problem by charting the deteriorating relationship between Alan and his wife and daughter. While Alan tries to produce a cure he must separate himself from the rest of his family lest he succumb to the virus and try to kill them. Though there is perhaps a little too much environmental moralising, Dante manages to depict a genuinely horrific situation, realising the breakdown of the possibility of loving relationships between men and women in a truly disturbing manner.

Another series highlight is Gordon's The Black Cat; a witty fictionalisation of the events which might have led Edgar Allen Poe to write his story of the same name. Though very different to The Screwfly Solution the episode works largely due to its contained and original premise, a literate and genuinely humorous script and a great central performance from Jeffrey Combs. In fact, while not terribly scary, the episode stands out when compared to the rest of Masters of Horror: Series 2 because it refuses to substitute characterisation and good storytelling for cheap shocks and gore as many of the other episodes do.

The same can perhaps be said of Brad Anderson's taut Sounds Like and Peter Medak's revisionist The Washingtonians. The former tells the story of Larry Pearce, who is driven to violent action when he gains a hyper-sensitive sense of hearing, while the latter details one man's discovery that George Washington was a cannibal. However, while both episodes seek to avoid some of the hackneyed conventions of the genre they are arguably less successful than Gordon's with Anderson's containing a lack of characters to empathise with and Medak's episode relying a little too heavily on a camp aesthetic that seems at odds with the more gruesome elements of the story.

The overriding impression one is left with after watching Masters of Horror: Series 2 is that of the missed opportunity it represents. While in many ways, the series must have been a dream from a marketing perspective; (with many of the directors involved - including genre luminaries such as Carpenter and Landis - producing their first significant work in the genre for a number of years) the end product fails to live up to this promise. Part of the problem may be that because of the series' over reliance on gore and violence it cannot help but seem somewhat infantile in comparison to much of contemporary cinematic horror. When judged against the more subtle chills of films such as The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense or the boundary pushing of 'gorenography' like Hostel and Saw, Masters of Horror: Series 2's 1980's horror aesthetic cannot help but seem tired and antiquated. Ironically, if anything, the show serves to undermine the credentials of many of those involved, proving that once-noted genre luminaries such as Hooper, Carpenter and Argento are long past their directorial best.

DAVID SIMMONS