Horror Queen

Eh.

PLOT

Walter is a down on his luck college student who needs a quiet place to study. He decides to rent a room at an hold house, even though the landlord isn’t crazy about renting to a student. He gets close to a woman in the building and her young son, even helping them when she finds a rat running loose. One of their neighbors tells him it’s just a warning sign of what’s coming and warns him about the rat with a human face. Walter laughs it off until he sees the rat and starts suffering horrible nightmares. Is there something more sinister afoot or is it all in his mind?

TRIVIA

Based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft.

Directed by Stuart Gordon.

THOUGHTS

I recently watched Dreams in the Witch House again and I literally didn’t remember a single thing about it, though I’ve seen it twice. Even now I’m starting to forget about it again and it’s only been a couple of days since I saw it. The problem with the episode is that it doesn’t have anything really memorable. It’s there, you watch it and then you forget about it. Everything is fine, but it doesn’t have any real oomph.

Mm, Henry Thomas…

PLOT

Jamie is struggling to handle his job and new life after going through a divorce. One night he starts experiencing the feelings of another woman. He tastes the elegant chocolate she eats, sees her having a fun orgasm in the bathtub, you know, all that usual stuff. He eventually meets a woman and after a night of sex, he flashes to the other woman and has a seizure on the bed as she has sex with a man. He gets obsessed with her and tracks down Catherine, but not before he sees her kill her lover. Eventually she tries to kill him and as the two of them struggle, he can’t figure out if he’s seeing through his own eyes or seeing through hers…

TRIVIA

Aired in the first season of Masters of Horror.

Directed by Mick Garris who also wrote the short story Chocolate.

Garris has done several collaborations with Stephen King. Frewer (actor in the episode) starred in the television adaptation of The Stand and Thomas starred in Desperation, also from King.

THOUGHTS

The twelve year old girl inside of me is about to come out for a minute because I love (love, love) Henry Thomas. E.T. remains one of my favorite movies of all time and even though he’s all grown up now, I still love him. That said, Chocolate isn’t the best Masters of Horror episode. Matt Frewer as Jamie’s friend Wally is without a doubt the best thing about the episode. I always think about him as the Trash Can man from The Stand, which firmly establishes the Stephen King connection here. The whole plot idea is interesting, but there’s something about it that doesn’t really work for me.

Poor Petty.

PLOT

Tara is your ordinary high school student who’s picked on by the popular kids. One day she’s on her bike after school when a van hits her and the man inside throws her in the van. She wakes up in a hospital where a nurse tries to calm her after reveling that they’re in Vermont and not Connecticut where she was taken. She calls her mom, who basically ignores her because she’s in a drugged out state. She then learns that she’s actually in an old mansion and the kidnapper grabs her before she can escape. They toss her in the basement where she finds a boy named Johnny who’s near death. They become friends, but she finds warnings about a fair-haired child and urgings to run away. They also discover proof that other kids have been taken there in the past. When Johnny starts acting strange, Tara realizes that her new friend might not be as innocent as he looks.

TRIVIA

Directed by William Malone of Fear Dot Com and written by Matt Greenberg of The Prophecy 2 and Halloween H20.

THOUGHTS

It’s impossible to watch The Fair Haired Child without noticing just how bad Lori Petty looks now. It doesn’t seem like that long ago that she was acting regularly, but apparently it has been because here she looks at least 15-20 years older than she did the last time I saw her. She looks even worse than other actresses her same age. When I watched this one recently, I didn’t remember a whole lot about it, except that the girl was kidnapped. It’s kind of a lame story in all fairness and it’s easy to see where the movie’s going and what’s going to happen next. A friend really liked it, but I don’t like movies where I know the ending long before the movie actually ends.

Another one that I really liked.

PLOT

David Murch goes on television to talk up the current President, who’s running for reelection in the middle of a fairly bad war. Jane Cleaver, a writer and outspoken woman jumps all over him. A guest calls in and tells him about losing her son in the current war. Murch tells the woman about how he lost his own brother in Vietnam and tells her that he wishes her son and all the fallen sons could come back. Murch and Cleaver embark on a sexual relationship, but that all falls apart when the dead soldiers coming back start coming to life. Imagine their surprise when one of those men make it to the voting booth, only to vote for the President’s opposing candidate. Murch and the others must now find a way to put a spin on things, but he also has to deal with the secret his mother’s keeping regarding his own brother.

TRIVIA

Directed by Joe Dante of The Howling and Piranha.

Headstones in the cemetery bare the name of prominent zombie movie directors.

Episode 6 during the first season of Masters of Horror.

THOUGHTS

I only have a few more Masters of Horror episodes to get through and then the rest are currently MIA, though I do have the entire series. Homecoming is quite possibly the best episode from that first season, especially for those of us who weren’t the greatest fans of our former President. I actually found myself getting teared up at a scene where a café owner invites in one of the zombies and thanks him for his sacrifice. It reminded me of my uncle breaking down when a high school boy did the same thing, thanking him for what he did in Vietnam. It all goes back to the idea that you might hate the war, but you shouldn’t hate the soldiers. Anyway, Homecoming is a good little zombie movie, but it’s also highly political.

Creepy and not just because it shares my name!

PLOT

Frank Spivey sees a man with a knife chasing a woman as he sits in his car with his police officer partner. The man warns him, but Frank doesn’t listen and shoots him dead. She launches herself into his arms and he does the manly once over to notice she has a great body, but when she looks at him he realizes that her face is scarred horribly and she’s got huge eyes. His wife tries to console him with some good old fashioned sex. Things are going fine until he flashes back to the other girl and tries to have angry anal sex with his wife. He finds out the girl’s name is Jenifer and since he can’t stop thinking about her, he brings her back to his house. He dreams about screwing her, but of course she has a beautiful face in his fantasies and the next morning she shows up naked in his bedroom. His wife and his son both think she’s creepy, but he just can’t seem to get her out of his head or forget about her…

TRIVIA

Based on a comic book story by Bruce Jones and Berni Wrightson from 1974.

Directed by Dario Argento of the way too long to list here resume.

Aired fourth during the first season of “Masters of Horror”.

THOUGHTS

This episode from the “Masters of Horror” series is completely disgusting, but what else would you expect from good old Dario? In fact, I forgot just how gross it was! The only thing I really remembered about it was the blow job scene where Jenifer gives Frank one in his car. This time around I couldn’t believe how disgusting some of the stuff was. There’s a scene where she licks his hand like a dog, with her mangled teeth and bleeding lips and I even shuddered a little bit. Plus it has Stephen Webber and I’m discovering that my crush on him isn’t quite over yet. I also like the ending and how it shows the cycle of Jenifer and how she works. Jenifer is actually a fairly disgusting little 50 minutes.

Please don’t, pick me up that is.

PLOT

A bus traveling down the highway abruptly dies and the passengers are left to stand by the side of the road. Stacia (Fariuza Balk) decides to walk into town and get away from the wait. A trucker by the name of Wheeler (Michael Moriarty, a Cohen staple) stops and offers the group a ride, with two taking him up on his offer. Birdy (Laurene Landon, another Cohen staple) seems way too interested in him, given that she’s gorgeous. She throws herself at him so hardcore that she must have just got out of prison. Wheeler makes a lot of jokes about killing people and she just laughs him off. Guess what happens? Another man by the name of Walker appears and instantly kills the people at the bus and chases one of the women through the woods before killing her. We then learn that both men are serial killers and that they don’t like the other. Walker hitchhikes and kills his rides and Wheeler picks up people just to kill them. Somehow Stacia ends up in the middle of it all.

TRIVIA

Directed by Larry Cohen who I won’t even attempt to list the credits of (except for It’s Alive) and based on a story by David Schow who wrote The Crow and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.

Quite a few horror/cult vets in this one including Balk, Moriarty, Landon and Crystal Lowe who appeared as one of the victims.

THOUGHTS

First of all, I despise Faruiza Balk with an intense passion. I can’t explain it, I just do. The mere thought of her makes me grind my teeth and I have yet to see a single movie where I liked her in any way. This movie isn’t the exception. I dug parts of the movie, just not the parts she was in. In fact when she came on screen, I wanted to fast forward. You’re supposed to feel bad for her, but I just wanted her to die. I will say that the ending is pretty good and I liked the nice twist to end things. It was kind of a middle of the road episode from the Masters of Horror series.

See what happens when we fight?

PLOT

Blizz was a nuclear attack weapon created by terrorists who somehow managed to incorporate it with the rain patterns all across the US. When it touches living skin or tissue, it instantly kills the person and poor little Peggy sees her entire seventh birthday party guests wiped out by it. It then jumps ten years down the road where we learn that 9 million have died and Los Angeles and other larger cities are completely gone. Peggy now lives in her mother Kate’s diner where she acts like a nine year old. She meets a few junkies traveling in a group and goes with them to the Doom Room, a kind of underground bar/strip club/junkie haven. She learns that the MC of the club has found victims of Blizz, filled them with blood and made them dance. She knows this because her presumed dead sister Anna is one of the dancers. As she struggles to save her sister, she learns just how she became a dancer…

TRIVIA

Directed by Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame and based on a short story by legendary author Richard Matheson. His son actually wrote the screenplay.

Robert Englund (aka Freddy Krueger) has a major role in this episode.

The third episode in the first season of Masters of Horror.

THOUGHTS

I’m actually not a big fan of Dance of the Dead, despite the fact that I really love Tobe Hooper and I liked many of the Masters of Horror episodes from the first season. This one though was just kind of boring. Given the plot of the movie, it really should have been a lot better and I think it could have been better. There were some great scenes in the movie and it has a nice little twist ending (which you’ll probably see coming a mile away), but it just wasn’t enough for me. Even Robert Englund couldn’t get me interested in the movie.

Awesome!

PLOT

Ellen is calmly driving down the middle of a quiet mountain road late one night when she accidentally hit’s a car. The car’s empty, but she sees a blood trail and decides to see where it leaves. That leads her to Moonface, who just happens to be carrying off the body of another woman. She runs off and starts having flashbacks about her husband Bruce. He was a psycho of sorts, convinced that the world was going to end. We see them having sex and dating during the good times and the not so good times when he hit her, almost raped her and taught her to fire a gun. Moonface thinks he has her caught, but through her flashbacks we see what Ellen actually knows and see her hidden secret.

TRIVIA

Based on the short story by Joe R. Landsdale.

Directed by Don Coscarelli who also did the Phantasm movies and (my personal fave) Bubba Ho-Tep.

Was the very first episode ever to air of the Masters of Horror series.

THOUGHTS

Incident On and Off a Mountain Road is my favorite episode of the entire Masters of Horror series. A lot of people seemed to like Cigarette Burns and Chocolate, but this one ranks as my top. Ever since I first saw it, I’ve been recommending it to people like crazy. I love seeing Ethan Embry as the whack job husband in flashbacks (especially since I still harbor a love of the cancelled show Freaky Links) and Ellen is the kind of character that you can actually root for and still like at the end. Plus it has a fairly interesting little twist that you might not see coming. If you haven’t seen it yet, see it now.

Not the best name…

PLOT

Ida is your typical lesbian scientist who’s obsessed with the bugs she works with on a daily basis. After getting dumped by yet another woman who thinks bugs are creepy, her co-scientist Max convinces her to go after the creepy woman who sits downstairs in the lobby. Ida talks to the girl and discovers that Misty is a little crazy and talks to fast, but she’s also “adorable” so she decides to ask her out. That same night she gets a strange package in the mail that contains a bug she can’t identify, one that sings to her at night, acts aggressive and doesn’t like her other bugs. On their first date they end up back at Ida’s place, Misty makes herself comfortable and then it appears as though she’s never going to leave, especially after she gets bit by that mysterious bug…

TRIVIA

Part of the first season of Masters of Horror.

Lucky McKee of The Woods and May directed Sick Girl and co-wrote the screenplay.

THOUGHTS

Maybe it’s different for lesbians, but man did that relationship move fast. After one date, Misty’s moving into Ida’s apartment. If I went on a first date and the guy never left, I’d be more than a little concerned. Of course that might say something about me and my views on relationships more than anything!

Sick Girl is a quirky little addition to the Masters of Horror series. A good portion of the movie has absolutely nothing to do with horror movies. You have Ida being a dork, talking about her bad luck in relationships, meeting a girl and then their new relationship. There’s little hints that some type of horror is going on behind the scenes, but it’s not nearly enough. It takes far too long for the horror to start and then it’s fairly lame. Sorry about the poor little doggy, but I could really care less about him. The last 10 minutes or so really get going and then Sick Girl turns into a horror movie, but by then it’s too late.

Don’t fear the reaper, fear the cat.

THE PLOT

Edgar Allen Poe (Jeffrey Combs) is struggling to come up with his next story and his wife Virginia’s illness doesn’t help the situation. When he tries to get her the help she needs, he’s turned down because he can’t afford the doctor and the doctor will no longer take an IOU. His wife suggests selling her beloved piano, but he refuses to let her do that. In a fit of rage, he accidentally kills her black cat, only to see it return the next day. The cat becomes his most hated possession and as he gets closer to the edge of insanity he tries to kill the cat in new and elaborate ways.

FUN TRIVIA

Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs previously worked together on the Re-Animator.

THOUGHTS/OPINIONS

There was one scene involving Poe and the cat where I literally had to turn away from the movie. There are two things that get to me on film: dead children and cruelty towards animals. That scene was disturbing to me because of the brutal torture of the cat and even after I watched how they did, I still couldn’t watch the scene.

Combs pulls out a surprisingly great job as Poe and shows that he’s a far better actor than many people give him credit for. He does just a slight hint of an accent and spent time studying how Poe would interact with people and even walk. All of that shows on the screen. This was one of the best episodes of the Masters of Horror series, if not the best.