Lilja's Library (58 page)

Fortunately for Ellen, her husband was obsessed with her learning to take care of herself and she has skills that she now finds very useful. This is a pretty intense episode and the ending is very unexpected, to say the least.  

Sick Girl
by Lucky McKee 

Sick Girl
is the story of Ida, who is a scientist who specializes in bugs…and takes her work home with her. Her apartment is filled with different bugs and she treats them like any other pet…much to her landlord’s distress.  

Around the same time she gets involved in a love affair with a woman by the name of Misty, she receives a package on her doorstep. In the package is a bug she has never seen before. She thinks it’s a bit unusual, but is very happy to have him…until he escapes and starts acting very strange, to say the least. This episode is a typical
Twilight Zone
episode.  

H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witchhouse
by Stuart Gordon 

Here we see a student Walter, who manages to open a door to another dimension in which he encounters a witch in the shape of his neighbor. As time goes by the witch wants him to start sacrificing children, and Walter finds it harder and harder to resist.  

At the end he can’t tell what’s real and what’s not, and he finds himself going crazy…or, is it all real?  

Jenifer
by Dario Argento 

Jenifer
is probably the best one of these first six episodes. It tells the story of how a cop named Frank saves Jenifer, a disfigured girl, from a man who is about to chop her up into pieces. What he doesn’t know is that saving Jenifer is the biggest mistake he’ll ever make… 

In the lead role we see Steven Weber, who has become one of my favorite actors. And, as usual, he doesn’t disappoint you.  

Homecoming
by Joe Dante 

If
Jenifer
is the best episode,
Homecoming
is probably the slowest one of the six mentioned here. It’s a typical
Twilight Zone
episode in which a man wishes a soldier was able to return from the dead to save face on a TV show.  

And, surprise, that is just what happens. The only thing is that he is not coming alone. All of the soldiers who have died in war return from their graves and demand, not as you might expect—brains—but instead demand an end to the war.  

Cigarette Burns
by John Carpenter 

We have the best (
Jenifer
) and the slowest (
Homecoming
) episodes of the six reviewed here…and here is the most disturbing one.
Cigarette Burns
is very good, but also very disturbing. It tells the story of Kirby, who is hired by people to find things that no one else can find. One day Udo wants him to find a movie…a very special movie named
Le fin absolue du Monde
. 

What neither Kirby nor Udo know is that once you start the movie, there is no going back; you have now opened the gates to Hell and what you see won’t be pretty…  

In the U.S. these DVDs are released by Anchor Bay and in Sweden they are released by Njutafilms, and I want to thank both companies for sending the review copies. 

All of the DVDs have a lot of extra material, such as behind-the-scenes, interviews and trailers. The U.S. editions, however, have a bit more than the Swedish editions, such as commentary tracks by the directors and cast.  

Lilja’s final words about
Masters of Horror
1-6
 

I would suggest that you get all of these DVD’s, but if you’re only going to get a few of them, make sure you get
Jenifer
and
Cigarette Burns
. You won’t be disappointed. 

**** 

Masters of Horror 7-10
 

Posted: August 24, 2006  

So, four more episodes of
Masters of Horrors
have been released on DVD (some in the U.S. and all four in Sweden). Among these four we get to see the episode by Mick Garris, the man behind the project, and the episode (
Imprint
) that was so gruesome it couldn’t be aired on TV. 

I have just seen them and I’ll tell you what I think of them, and if
Imprint
in fact could have been shown on TV. 

Including these episodes, I have seen ten of the thirteen episodes so far, and the general feeling I get is that they are good and have a style that makes them connect with each other. It is really like a series and not just a bunch of movies that have been put together. I don’t know if Garris had that in mind when he decided which stories should be included (I guess he did), but either way, it’s the case. 

So, with that said, let’s get on with the four episodes I have seen this time…  

The Fair-Haired Child
by William Malone 

The Fair-Haired Child
is about Tara, who finds herself kidnapped in a basement together with a boy she doesn’t know. As it turns out the boy, Johnny, is in fact the son of the kidnappers and the reason he is down in the basement with Tara is because his parents made a terrible mistake when he was a child. A mistake that cost Johnny his life, and now Tara is his ticket back… 

The special effects in this one are really good, and when the monster in the basement moves it does so in a jerky way that makes it so much more frightening. The plot is pretty classical though. Two parents who want to help their child because they messed up, no matter what the costs are. 

As usual, the plan backfires though, and in
The Fair-Haired Child
it backfires in a very satisfying way…  

Chocolate
by Mick Garris 

Newly divorced Jamie awakes one night with a strong taste of chocolate in his mouth. At first he can’t understand what’s happening and dismisses it as a dream. Not long after that though, other strange things are starting to happen. He is starting to get short glimpses/flashbacks of someone else’s life. He is actually seeing things through a total stranger’s eyes… 

As times passes and these flashes keep appearing, he finds himself falling in love with this unknown woman. Jamie gets possessed by the idea that he has to meet her. That she is his dream woman, his soul mate. In a brutal way he sees that that may not be the case though… 

This is a very sexy story with a touch more of the supernatural than horror. It’s nonetheless a very interesting story, and the fact that Garris is using one of his favorite actors, Henry Thomas, makes me very happy. Thomas is a very good actor. You can also see Henry Thomas in Garris’s
Desperation
and in the episode “The End of the Whole Mess” from
Nightmares & Dreamscapes
earlier this year.  

Deer Woman
by John Landis 

Deer Woman
by Landis is probably the episode with the most comedy in it. As a police detective who is assigned to the animal attack unit on the force starts investigating a series of brutal murders where the victim seems to have been beaten to death with a deer leg, he realizes that it may actually be a series of animal attacks after all, and that the perpetrator might not be human… 

After hearing the legend about Deer Woman, he is convinced that it’s Deer Woman who is his perpetrator. Of course, his colleagues laugh at him, but as more victims start to appear he gets more convinced that he is right, and one night he gets his hoof, sorry, proof.  

This is a horror episode with a lot of comedy in it. It’s hard to take it seriously, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an entertaining episode. I will admit though that I laughed more than I screamed…  

Imprint
by Takashi Miike 

So, we have reached
Imprint
by Takashi, and I can tell you this much: I do understand why they didn’t want to air it on TV. It’s a very gruesome episode that includes incest, abortion and rape. Nothing you want to have with your TV dinner, in other words.  

How was the story itself though, one might ask, if you look past all the gore. Well, it was actually quite good. And believe me, there is a story. It’s not just gore in this one. The story is about an American journalist who is looking for his long lost love. During his search he arrives at a far away island where you can, for a small amount, be entertained by the local women. During his stay there he meets a woman who knows what happened to the love of his life…and as it turns out, her fate isn’t pretty…  

As with the previous six DVDs I have reviewed, these four also have a lot of extra material. That is one of the biggest differences between
Masters of Horror
and a regular TV series released on DVD: since these are released one episode at a time there is room for more extra material than if they had all been crammed into a box set. On the downside, the price is higher though, but I leave it up to you to decide which is most valued, the price or the material on the DVD…  

Lilja’s final words about
Masters of Horror
7-10
 

All in all these episodes are very enjoyable and I recommend that you see them all, and while you’re watching
Deer Woman
, keep an eye out for a cameo by Mick Garris… 

**** 

Masters of Horror 11-13
 

Posted: September 14, 2006  

So, it’s time for the last three episodes of season one of
Masters of Horror
. As with the other episodes, these three also give me the feeling that they are all part of the same series. Not that they are the same, but that they all have the same feeling. As a matter of fact, all thirteen episodes in the series have the same feeling. Very well done. 

And with that said, over to this review’s episodes:  

Dance of the Dead
by Tobe Hooper 

Dance of the Dead
is Tobe Hoper’s episode of
Masters of Horror
and it’s a rather classical horror movie, but also a critical look at the U.S.A. After a third world war has taken place, the world is an inferno. Cities have been destroyed and people are living on the streets. 

In the middle of this we find Peggy, who lives in the secure environment of a coffee shop that she runs with her mother. She really has no idea of how the world works today, but one day a boy from the streets gets her to leave the safety of the coffee shop and follow him out on the streets… 

Once she is out there she learns the hard way that the world has moved on and that nothing is like she remembers it. The number one form of entertainment is something called Dance of the Dead. And the Dance of the Dead is just what it sounds like: dead people who dance. MC, very nicely played by Robert Englund, resurrects dead girls that then get electric shocks to make them twitch until they fall down dead again. Entertainment deluxe… 

And as if that wasn’t enough, the ending holds a terrible truth for Peggy…and an even worse fate for her mother…  

Pick Me Up
by Larry Cohen 

Pick Me Up
is a movie about two serial murderers whose paths accidentally cross each other out in the middle of nowhere. A bus has broken down and the passengers are about to become easy prey for the villains.  

Both men are clearly psychopaths and very sadistic. They have no sympathy for their victims whatsoever. In the middle of all this death and chaos one passenger seems to walk away unaware of all that is going on though. Unfortunately, Stacia is about to find out…the hard way. 

When I watched this episode I got the same feeling I got when watching the old
Friday the 13th
movies: a madman and a bunch of kids being slaughtered. The difference here, though, is that the madman doesn’t look like a monster… 

And, to my happiness, the ending is totally unexpected. I love it.  

Haeckel’s Tale
by John McNaughton 

In
Haeckel’s Tale
we meet young Ernst Haeckel, who is obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. One night, on his way to his father’s deathbed, he needs to seek shelter for the night; he does so with an old man and his young wife. As it turns out the wife still loves her ex-husband; in fact, she is still meeting him to have sex. The only problem is that he is dead…