Masters Of Horror series

[MacGuffin]

Premieres on Showtime Friday, Oct. 28 @ 10pm ET/PT:
(with repeats every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night)

"Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" - Directed by Don Coscarelli ("Phantasm," "Bubba Ho-Tep")

"Dreams In A Witch-House" - Directed by Stuart Gordon ("Re-Animator," "Dagon")

"Dance Of The Dead" - Directed by Tobe Hooper ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Poltergeist")

"Jenifer" - Directed by Dario Argento ("Suspiria," "Terror at The Opera")

"Chocolate" - Directed by Mick Garris ("Riding the Bullet," "The Stand")

"Homecoming" - Directed by Joe Dante ("The Howling," "Gremlins")

"Deer Woman" - Directed by John Landis ("An American Werewolf in London")

"Cigarette Burns" - Directed by John Carpenter ("Halloween," "The Thing")

"Fair Hair Child" - Directed by William Malone ("House on Haunted Hill," "FearDotCom")

"Haeckel's Tale" - Directed by John McNaughton ("Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer")

"Imprint" - Directed by Takashi Miike ("Audition")

"Pick Me Up" - Directed by Larry Cohen ("It's Alive," "The Invaders")

"Sick Girl" - Directed by Lucky McKee ("May")



This Friday:



Teleplay by Don Coscarelli & Stephen Romano
Based on the Short Story by Joe R. Lansdale
Directed by Don Coscarelli ("Phantasm," "Bubba Ho-Tep")

Based on Joe Lansdale's short story of the same title, this episode pits Ellen (Bree Turner), a seemingly defenseless young woman, against Moonface, a deformed and demented serial killer. As the story cuts back and forth in time, we slowly discover that our heroine is not as helpless, nor as innocent as she initially seems. Trained by her abusive husband Bruce (Ethan Embry) to be a survivalist, instructed to use any and every available object as a weapon in a time of need, Ellen gets to test the real life application of these lessons. Ultimately, chained to the floor of Moonface's horrific cabin with a most unsavory roommate (Angus Scrimm), she races against the clock to free herself before she meets a grisly fate. This gritty episode pits a strong female protagonist against evil incarnate.

[Gamblour.]

Holy shit, that's awesome! I don't get HBO, but i'll be downloading this for sure.

[modage]

Holy shit, that's awesome! I don't get HBO, but i'll be downloading this for sure.

you don't need it, it's on SHOWTIME    i just got free showtime for this (cause my cable was fucking up and we were like 'give us something' and they were like 'pick a movie channel' and i was like (masters of horror) 'showtime!')  except for they should've been running these all month, even back into september and the season finale should be on halloween.  it would be great if this ended up being good, the last good anthology was Tales From The Crypt, right?

[mogwai]

yay, i also have showtime. unless my showtime is for european households only. probably.

edit: yes, it is.

[MacGuffin]

Not a bad first episode. Kinda like House Of 1000 Corpses and Enough done as an episode of Lost, where the flashbacks intercut the action to explain character knowledge. Nice to see an above average damsel in distress, where you're rooting for her (especially at the ending) instead of just waiting for her to be killed.

[modage]

i didnt really care for it.  it wasnt offensive but it wasnt great.  and since it was the first episode, it worries me.  i would think that showtime would want to put out their best episode first.  now it could be that there were only a few episodes completed for them to choose from and some of the later ones arent done being edited yet, BUT even so, if this is the best of the first handful we're in trouble.   HOPEFULLY thats not the case, or maybe this was just somehow the most accessible and the others are insanely weird and thats why they put this first.  considering the freedom these guys were given i think coscarelli really could've done something different but the story seemed pretty standard to me.  frankenstein is an hour and 10 minutes and feels like a whole movie and they've got 50 damn minutes to work with here so they should be able to tell a good story in that.  it 'looked' good (slickly shot, good KNB makeup), so the budget must've been decent.  the problems were for me: the story (not very interesting) and the acting (not very good).  so thats going to be a major hurdle as well.  tales from the crypt had some famous writers and directors but also managed to get famous (and good) actors to star in the stories.  even if they arent getting famous actors, if they could atleast get good ones it would make all the difference.  perhaps budget is a factor because of how quickly you have to shoot to get finished you dont have time for as many takes, but still...  and again, it would be more understandable if it was a shitty script that showtime had and offered it to coscarelli, but from what i understand these guys were give pretty free creative reign and he picked the story and co-wrote the script so i dont know what to say about that.  to hear 4 of the directors talking in the preshow clip you'd think this freedom would result in some really great stuff, hopefully it still will.  

side note: what the hell happened to ethan embry?

[RegularKarate]

Stephen Romano is a friend of a friend of mine and we went to watch with him tonight.

I thought it was pretty damned decent for a television episode (I don't see where you get "decent budget" from the look at a lot of the effects shots etc...).  You have to remember that this isn't supposed to be like a movie (that's not the point, they've all done films before), it's supposed to be television.  For television, I thought it worked.

And fuck, you know?  Angus Scrimm!  How could you not applaud that?

[modage]

well showtime is billing them as "13 original one hour movies" and i thought the point was not to bring the quality down for tv but to bring the quality up.  are you implying the effects looked bad or good?  cause i thought everything looked good, but like i said, acting was bad and story wasnt that interesting.  scrimm ruled, wish he had more to do.

[RegularKarate]

Yeah, like the shots of the bodies with the light coming through the eyes... pretty low-budget looking.

I didn't think the story was that bad either... yeah, the acting wasn't great, but it didn't really get in the way of my enjoying it.

[MacGuffin]

side note: what the hell happened to ethan embry?

I thought the same thing. When did the scrawny kid from That Thing You Do become so... butch?

[MacGuffin]

Mick Garris is a modern master of horror with such films as Sleepwalkers, The Stand and Riding the Bullet and he’s a very nice guy. That’s why he’s made so many friends in the horror film industry over the years. Those friendships eventually led to awesome pizza parties that included such classic horror creators as Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, Don Coscarelli and many up and comers like Lucky McKee. Those parties sparked the idea for a new anthology series created by Garris called Masters of Horror. Starting Halloween weekend Showtime will air 13 one hour movies directed and written by those mentioned above and a horror conventioneers wet dream of Dario Argento, Larry Cohen, Takashi Miike, John Landis, Garris himself and many more.

Daniel Robert Epstein: First how did everything go with the theatrical release of Riding the Bullet?

Mick Garris: The release was a disaster. It did not do well. They only opened it in a couple of cities, but they opened it wide in those cities without any advertising. It was in 65 theaters in Southern California and not one TV spot. But it’s done very well on DVD.

DRE: Why did the distribution company do that?

Garris: The company that produced it was not nearly as good at distribution. They tried to distribute it themselves and pretty much dropped the ball. But at least I got to make the movie the way I wanted to within certain budgetary limits. I’m happy with the movie and it is out there for an audience to see. It’s gotten very varied reactions, but it’s the movie I like.

DRE: Are the 13 episodes of Masters of Horror all done?

Garris: We’re actually shooting the last one in Vancouver right now and another one is still shooting in Tokyo. Those are the last two.

DRE: I’m assuming the Tokyo one is the one Takashi Miike is directing?

Garris: That’s right. I just came back the day before yesterday from Tokyo in fact.

DRE: You went to Tokyo?

Garris: I did indeed. It’s my baby so I had to. I was there for the first four days of production to hang out and help in any way that I can. It’s his first English language film, but a lot of the actors in it are Japanese actors who are speaking English phonetically. So we had to make sure that it was understandable.

DRE: That’s so bizarre.

Garris: It is. But that’s one of the great things about this show is that it’s so varied and flexible. Every episode is completely different from every other.

DRE: Did Miike write his episode?

Garris: He did not write it, but he oversaw the writing of the script, which is based on a popular novel in Japan called Bokkee Kyotee which literally translates as really scary.

DRE: What made you guys think of having him do an episode?

Garris: We wanted this to be a varied series of films and so we definitely wanted Asian horror. Audition was one of the most shocking movies I’d ever seen and it was so disturbing. So he was one of the first people we talked about and we were amazed to get him.

DRE: What’s the one that’s shooting in Vancouver right now?

Garris: It’s a script I wrote based on Clive Barker’s Haeckel’s Tale, which is being directed by John McNaughton.

DRE: How’s John doing up there?

Garris: I’ve seen a couple days of dailies and it looks great. It looks like a Hammer film. It was originally intended for Roger Corman to direct. But Corman had health issues and McNaughton came in and he’s doing a fantastic job of it.

DRE: I thought McNaughton took over the George Romero one.

Garris: Romero never committed to one in time and then his schedule got booked up. It may have been Romero’s slot originally, but the script was originally developed for Corman and then Lucky McKee came in after Romero backed out and we filled that slot with Lucky’s show. When Corman’s health issues became a problem, then McNaughton came in and he’s making it very much his own. It’s great to see. It’s the first script I’ve written that’s been directed by somebody else since Amazing Stories. So it’s really fun to watch that happen.

DRE: I saw Coscarelli’s episode and I really liked it.

Garris: It kicks ass. He’s a great guy. Bubba Ho-tep is such a classic.

DRE: Don’s episode has a twist ending, are they all going to have twist endings?

Garris: The point I tried to make when we were putting this all together was these are little movies. I’d rather a feature shrunk into an hour than a Twilight Zone stretched to an hour. So what we don’t want is the punchline. We want a movie that stands on its own with or without the punchline. If there is one, fine as long as the movie holds up all the way to it. We’re not going for Oh Henry or a Twilight Zone or even a Tales from the Crypt sort of thing. But what you’ll find is each of them is incredibly different from each other. Don’s is probably the most traditional, contemporary one. It’s very much in the vein of the movies that have been in theaters recently. Tobe Hooper’s is very Tobe Hooper. John Carpenter’s is very John Carpenter. It wasn’t something where I was trying to guide it. Every week on Tales from the Crypt, you knew you were going to get a very campy, winky horror story. In this you’re going to get a horror story that’s smart and scary every week, but that’s all they have in common.

DRE: William Malone told me that you sent him a few scripts and then he kind of chose the one he wanted to do.

Garris: About half of them were that way. About half of them the directors developed themselves like John Landis wrote his with his son, Max, and Stuart Gordon developed an H.P. Lovecraft script with Dennis Paoli. Then we developed a Richard Matheson story that Richard Christian Matheson adapted and that was the one Tobe responded to.

DRE: Besides your Masters of Horror that are directing, you’ve got some Masters of Horror writing.

Garris: Absolutely. We’ve got Richard Matheson, Joe Lansdale, H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, and David J. Schow. It’s a really great collection.

DRE: Also there are some great comic book writers as well, did Steve Niles end up writing one?

Garris: He wrote one, but we aren’t shooting it this season. We hope to do it if we get our pickup to do another batch.

For the others, they would come and pitch stories to us and we really responded to the ones that would make great episodes. We developed 19 scripts for 13 shows. There are a few that have not been attacked yet.

DRE: It’s great to see that Bernie Wrightson wrote one that Argento is directing.

Garris: It’s a great one. In Creepy magazine in the 70’s Bernie Wrightson illustrated a story that Bruce Jones wrote. When we were shooting last year on Desperation, Steven Weber, came up with the idea of doing that story. I encouraged him and originally we were going to write it together. But I was too busy and he was too eager. He just sat down and wrote the first draft on his own and it kicked ass. It’s really a good script and Argento loved it and then did some tweaking on it to make it his own. It’s unbelievably rich with sex.

DRE: If someone told me 10 years ago someday Steven Weber was going to write something Dario Argento was going to direct…

Garris: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing and Weber stars in it as well. Steven is a big horror fan so he was thrilled to work with Argento as all of us were.

DRE: You must have met Dario Argento over the years.

Garris: I’ve met him briefly a couple of times. The first time I met him was at one of the Saturn Awards dinners right after I did The Stand and I was seated at his table. He spoke no English, but I was introduced to him as the director of The Stand. He goes, “The Stand is big.” That was my first conversation with Dario, but we got to be very good friends on the shoot. Everybody just loved him. He’s really funny and delightful to work with.

DRE: What about Drew McWeeny writing an episode?

Garris: I’d met Drew when he was working at Dave’s Video, the local laserdisc store that became the DVD store. I’d read some stuff he had done. He’d written a play and a thing for Showtime. He and Scott Swan pitched us a few stories together and Cigarette Burns was great. We showed some stuff to John Carpenter and Cigarette Burns kept haunting him so he committed to that one.

DRE: As Moriarty on Aint It Cool News, did Drew ever pan one of your movies?

Garris: I’m sure he has but that doesn’t have that much to do with it. I don’t really read Ain’t It Cool that much. I’ve enjoyed it at times, but I don’t spend a whole lot of time surfing the site.

DRE: Was Larry Cohen always going to direct one?

Garris: Yep. He always wanted to and we always wanted him to. I think you can’t get better, more unique and original horror movies than It’s Alive, God Told Me To and Q: The Winged Serpent.

DRE: So the series is called Masters of Horror. I’m sure on the Internet somewhere there might be people saying “There’s a guy or two in there that is a horror guy, but maybe not so much a master.” What would you say to something like that?

Garris: Everybody who’s involved has proven himself as more than capable in the genre. Even Lucky McKee has only made two movies, but all of us were really impressed by May. Bill Malone has done some really good work. He did a Tales from the Crypt that’s one of the best ones I ever saw. My work has included a lot of the Stephen King things that have been seen by giant audiences and the like. Basically we had an obligation to fulfill with the financiers because they had to approve people as being brand names in the world of horror. We knew because of the nature of the show and because all of these guys are feature directors, that things would change. But schedules and health issues came up and all that so we had to make some alterations. But I think we got a pretty damned impressive group of 13 people that I would’ve thought were impossible to commit to something like this. I know on the Internet there will be those complainers, but go make your own show.

DRE: Is there any running theme through the episodes?

Garris: There’s no host. There’s no running theme. There is a generic opening title sequence. Then it just goes right into these little, self-contained movies.

DRE: Are you guys committed for a second season yet?

Garris: It’s not official, but let’s just say that there’s a very strong chance that there will be another 13.

DRE: I think there’s no reason it won’t. I’m sure it’ll do very well on Showtime and then the DVDs will sell like gangbusters.

Garris: We’ll see. As soon as you assume something’s going to be successful, that’s when it sets out to prove you wrong. All we can do is make the best movies we can under the time and budget and hope for the best.

DRE: Besides you wanting to do a great series, did you want to reenergize some these guys’ careers?

Garris: Exactly, I wanted to get the best people working in the genre to tell a story they wanted to tell and tell it the way they wanted to tell it. Basically we just wanted to give them the opportunity to work at the peak of their powers for what we could afford and to not have to do movies that are all about teenagers that are test marketed at a mall in the San Fernando Valley.

DRE: With your lineup of directors, every single one of them has had their own Hollywood horror stories.

Garris: Yeah and the great thing is they’ve all had a great time doing it. We’ve got a really good crew, much better than you’d expect for a television series because we’re not treating it like a television series. We’re not shooting it like TV, we’re shooting it 16 x 9 the same way we’d shoot a feature film.

DRE: Let’s talk about your episode, Chocolate. Did you write it by yourself?

Garris: Yeah, it’s actually based on a short story that I had done over 20 years ago also called Chocolate. It has almost been made as a feature film several times over the years. The story and the feature script are both in my first book, Life in the Cinema because I thought, “Oh, it’s never going to get made. I may as well just show the progression from fiction to script.” It’s a nice personal piece I’ve been wanting to film for a long time. There’s nothing that’s better than working with Stephen King on a project, but it was really fun to do something entirely my own.

DRE: Did doing Riding the Bullet have an influence on you wanting to do more personal stories?

Garris: It was that I was able to do whatever I wanted and Chocolate is a story I wanted to tell. A lot of my fiction and a lot of my work is really personal, it’s just I don’t often get an opportunity to choose something of my own. Obviously Stephen King’s work is going to get an easier nod than an original by Mick Garris. A lot of my stuff is a little unconventional. Riding the Bullet was certainly an unconventional horror ghost story and Chocolate is also a very unconventional film for Masters of Horror.

DRE: When will Desperation air?

Garris: It will be on in May.

DRE: After Chocolate and Psycho IV that movie will be another collaboration between you and Henry Thomas. How do the two of you connect?

Garris: When he was 18, he was the perfect young Tony Perkins when we did Psycho IV. When we did Desperation it was a great casting idea to bring him in as the Janet Leigh of Desperation, which you’ll understand when you see it.

DRE: Oh so he gets killed.

Garris: There you go. Or not. That just renewed our friendship and work relationship so he was the first guy I thought of for Chocolate. He really does a great job in it. It’s a very moody, atmospheric and unusual performance.

DRE: When are the Masters of Horror DVDs coming out?

Garris: Anchor Bay will start releasing them two at a time in February 2006. Each one will have its own disc with an hour of supplemental materials.

DRE: Will there be director’s cuts?

Garris: These are pretty much the director’s cuts. There may be some stuff we might have to add some materials for overseas for the shows that run a little bit short, but those will be done by the directors.

DRE: How did you guys decide on the bands who did original music for Masters of Horror?

Garris: Immortal Music handles most of the music and the bands are either represented by them or on their label. We made a deal with them. They provide us a ton of material and then the directors choose from what’s available there. Some of the songs are inspired by Masters of Horror as well.

DRE: Which bands are in yours?

Garris: Mudvayne has a really great tune in mine.

DRE: I would imagine the Buckethead song is in the Carpenter episode.

Garris: Actually he’s in the Tobe Hooper episode.

DRE: What directors do you think will come back for season two?

Garris: I’m hoping that most of them will, but we hope to have some others who we weren’t able to work it into their schedules. I’m hopeful that we’ll have Hooper, Carpenter and Landis and a bunch of the guys back. I’m hoping this time we’ll be able to get Guillermo Del Toro, George Romero, Roger Corman and people like that.

DRE: Will you ask another Asian director like Park Chan-Wook or someone like that?

Garris: The Pang Brothers is somebody I’d love to have. There would be a bunch of people who would be great for us.

DRE: What’s the next movie you’ve got planned?

Garris: I’m not sure yet. I hate remakes but yet I’m talking to people about doing a remake of an Australian film almost nobody saw called Thirst. It’s a great, weird kind of vampire movie. There’s a bunch of stuff in the works, but if season two goes, that’ll be keeping me busy as well.

DRE: Is it hard to get anything made but remakes now?

Garris: Those are easier, but I would love to not have to travel that route unless it’s something that really could be an improvement in something that’s not overly familiar to an audience.

This Friday:



Teleplay by Stuart Gordon & Dennis Paoli
Based on the Short Story by H.P. Lovecraft
Directed by Stuart Gordon ("Re-Animator," "Dagon")

In this tale based on the short story by horror master H.P. Lovecraft, Stuart Gordon will once again confirm his place as the premiere director of Lovecraft's tales of terror. Walter Gilman (Ezra Godden), a college student studying interdimensional string theory, rents a garret in a run-down building in the old New England town of Arkham. Haunted by terrifying nightmares that involve a witch, a supernatural rodent and perhaps Satan himself, Walter starts to lose his grip on reality. He begins to believe his string theory studies have uncovered a portal into a parallel universe rife with diabolical forces gathering to sacrifice his neighbor's infant. As Walter struggles to prevent this atrocity, it becomes less clear if he will save the child or become its unwitting murderer himself.

[modage]

so after all the promotional materials with Romero's name on them, he's not doing an episode?  that sucks.  oops, i just noticed above that he isnt listed either.  i hadn't noticed.  also: putting them out on dvd separately instead of by season SUCKS!  but whatever, as long as they are good and can make money and keep going.

[modage]

i guess the 2nd episode was about as good as the first but since my expectations had been lowered accordingly, i enjoyed it more.  the acting is still a little shaky but overall it had some good stuff.  i still love the idea of seeing a different story by somebody great every week even if they havent lived up to the promise of the premise (yet).  i wonder if it was a decision to cast faces (except Angus Scrimm and Ethan Embry) that were totally new instead of filling it with somewhat recognizable actors (like Embry)?  so far this show has nothing on Tales From The Crypt. 

[MacGuffin]

This Friday:



Teleplay by Richard Christian Matheson
Based on the Short Story by Richard Matheson
Directed by Tobe Hooper ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Poltergeist")

Based on his father's celebrated short story, "Dance of the Dead" depicts a post-apocalyptic dystopia wherein re-animated corpses of former friends and enemies dance on stage for the entertainment of the few that survived a nuclear holocaust. Too naïve and wholesome for her own good, Peggy embarks on her first double date with a slick upper-classman. Her nervous fits of laughter quickly turn to panicked screams as she learns the truth of the dangerous world outside her mother's protective cloister, and the sacrifices that were made in order to guarantee her survival. Intelligent, haunting and just as politically relevant as when it was first published, "Dance of the Dead" will be an episode to be remembered.

[modage]

by far my least favorite episode.  i really disliked almost everything about it.  the editing/way it was shot, the story, the actors.  not good.  wtf tobe?