Customer Reviews

Masters of Horror: Season One Box Set, Vol. 1

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you don't know about them, the Masters of Horror series are cable's version of horror movies set to hour-long themes. Sometimes they seem like The Outer Limits, sometimes The Twilight Zone, and sometimes they go into horrid realms where you expect the to play. The series here is Widescreen, a lovely thing, and collects 6 tales in this set.

If you take each and look them up, you'll see that these are all a mixed bag. That said, some of the pieces in this set are really worth exploring. The reviews on these are mixed, mind you, and this listing is more to summarize the set of movies than to records everything about them. Still, Cigarette Burns and Haeckel's Tale are good and the price is GREAT on the movies as a look. Look at them separately - even if you like a few it is a good pick.
That said, Chocolate and Dance of the Dead - I wish I could have had my time back. Shame on Mick Garris for his production and Tobe Hooper should know better.

This set has in it:
Movies:
(1)Masters of Horror: Incident on and off a Mountain Road (2005)
Don Coscarelli's addition to the 1st season, with love given to the slasher side of horror in an interesting little tale of travesty. The title says a lot about the movie and it is more horror than many of the Masters of horror movies.
(2)Masters of Horror: Dreams in the Witch-House (2005)
Stuart Gordon adding in another doing what he likes to do, making an "H.P.Lovecraft Adaptation" as Miskatonic University starts the dreams of the rat-faced terror.
(3)Masters of Horror: Dance of the Dead (2005)
Tobe Hooper's story about an MC tht does something a little bit, mmm, odd.
(4)Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns (2005)
John Carpenter's shot at the 1st season, with a story about an unspeakable movie that people would die to see. I really liked this one.
(5)Masters of Horror: Chocolate (2005)
Mick Garris weaves a tale of visions that become something more in rather disappointing tale that I don't even like summarizing.
(6)Masters of Horror: Haeckel's Tale (2006)
Joe McNaughton and Clive Barker (and Romero) period piece about a man and his want to bring the dead back.

Extras -
Not so much. You have interviews with all the directions, storyboards, "working with the masters" featurettes, interviews with cast and crew, and the normal bios.
Basically, its minimalism in this department.

If you like B movie horror, you can really love these tales. Some of them are better than that, and an hour is a good cut of a movie that leaves out thirty minutes of drag-time.
Basically, you have to ask what your pleasure is because only you can answer that.

If you're not a horror fan then you won't find much of interest in these Masters of Horror episodes. Limited to the One-hour format, the really interesting ones cry out for feature length treatment and those that blow make for long suffering. Overall the first season hits the mark and some really good directors get to shine.

I'd rank them up as follows:

1. Cigarette Burns. The best episode of the entire first season. John Carpenter is in full horror mode, working with an excellent script and putting his inimitable stamp on it. The gore flows here and packs a punch and the story is creepy all the way. This film in particular could have easily been stretched to feature length.

2. Haeckel's Tale. Surprisingly good period piece concerning a medical student and his interest in reviving the dead. Owes more than a bit to Michele Soavi's Dellamorte Dellamore but overall this episode is fairly atmospheric and suspenseful.

3. Incident on and off a Mountain Road. Nasty villain, cool gore scenes and a tight story with a satisfying conclusion. Fails to hit the bull's eye yet very entertaining for the most part.

4. Dreams in the Witch House. Stuart Gordon is back in H.P. Lovecraft territory. Atmospheric little flick with some nasty gore and some solid suspense, overall quite effective.

5. Chocolate. Not a bad idea but poorly executed. Henry Thomas does well in a very difficult role to pull off but in the end the material lets him down. It's not horror, not drama so you don't really know how to label it.

6. Dance of the Dead. While not a terrible idea the film doesn't work at all. Annoying fast cuts and intolerable music sink this flick and while the core idea is fairly shocking it's all for naught. Bad performances too apart from Englund who deserves better material.

The extras are extremely good with lengthy documentaries on each film, interviews, all the scripts and more. If you're interested this set is well worth buying.

Overall, I enjoyed this set less than season one volume two. Cigarette Burns had an interesting premise and a dark atmosphere. Probably my favorite. Incident on and off a mountain road was gory and suspenseful, based on a short story by Joe Lansdale, one of my favorite authors. I'm not a Lovecraft fan, so Dreams in the Witch House was so-so for me. Clive Barker's short story "Haekel's Tale" is excellent. Too bad the first twenty minutes of this episode had nothing at all to do with his original work. Bad makeup and bad acting made the rest of that episode suffer. I think the director was afraid or unable to address the topic of necromancy and/or necrophilia in a serious way and went for the campy gross out approach instead. Dance of the Dead rubbed me the wrong way for some reason, maybe because of Robert Englund's over the top performance. Finally, Chocolate, which was my least favorite episode of the season. The scenes involving the actor who portrayed Max Headroom back in the 80's as the frontman of a punk band were better left on the cutting room floor and it improve much from there. I give the set three stars on the strength of Incident on and Off a Mountain Road and Cigarette Burns.

I bought the individual volumes 1 & 2. Combined, they have the exact same run time as the Complete Series set according to Amazon. However, the episode "Imprint" is not included in either volume. I wrote to Starz/Anchor Bay and they claim it IS on the big set. What a ripoff! It's bad enough they said they'd never release the full season in order to sucker people into buying the original individual releases. Now they pull this nonsense.

Quick service but arrived with outer wrapping torn. It was a gift so that didn't look good.