Masters of Horror
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Masters of Horror is an American television series created by director Mick Garris for the Showtime cable network. New episodes premiered every Friday at 10pm EST throughout the two seasons.
The show follows an anthology format, with each episode featuring a one-hour film helmed by a well-known horror film director.
Contents |
Episodes
Season 1
| Episode | Director | Title | Overview |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Don Coscarelli | Incident On and Off a Mountain Road | A young woman with a dark past matches wits with a deformed and sadistic serial killer. |
| 2 | Stuart Gordon | H. P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House | A college student discovers a plot by sinister, otherworldly forces to sacrifice his neighbour's infant. |
| 3 | Tobe Hooper | Dance of the Dead | A girl living in a post-apocalyptic village encounters reanimated corpses who dance on stage at a sinister bar. |
| 4 | Dario Argento | Jenifer | A police officer saves the life of a hideously deformed young woman, only to find himself drawn into a web of murder and self-destruction. |
| 5 | Mick Garris | Chocolate | A recently divorced young man begins experiencing the world through the senses of a woman he's never met after eating a sample of chocolate. |
| 6 | Joe Dante | Homecoming | Political satire in which the reanimated corpses of soldiers killed in Iraq return in an attempt to sway the presidential election. |
| 7 | John Landis | Deer Woman | An ancient creature from Native American mythology wreaks havoc in this horror-comedy. |
| 8 | John Carpenter | Cigarette Burns | A man searches for the last surviving print of a rare film that allegedly drove the only audience that ever viewed it into a fit of homicidal frenzy. |
| 9 | William Malone | Fair Haired Child | A teenage outcast is kidnapped by a strange couple and locked in a basement with their son, who has a dark secret. |
| 10 | Lucky McKee | Sick Girl | An insect enthusiast starts a relationship with another girl, but then also finds herself involved with a rather predatory and aggressive insect. |
| 11 | Larry Cohen | Pick Me Up | Two serial killers (one who kills hitchhikers, another who kills anyone who gives him a ride) clash over their latest victim. |
| 12 | John McNaughton | Haeckel's Tale | A man on his way to his sick father, seeking shelter in a secluded cabin, becomes involved in a grotesque orgy of the undead. |
| 13 | Takashi Miike | Imprint | A 19th century American tourist gets much more than he bargained for while searching for a Japanese prostitute he fell in love with. |
Episode 4, "Jenifer", was accidentally made available on-demand to a select audience at the same time as Episode 2, "H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House". The episode was cut for graphic violence during its initial television broadcast, and the cut scenes can only be viewed in a featurette separate from the film on the R1 DVD release.
Episode 13, "Imprint", originally scheduled to premiere on January 27 2006, was shelved by Showtime due to concerns over its content. Mick Garris, creator and executive producer of the series, characterized the episode as "the most disturbing film I've ever seen".[1] It is available now only on DVD. The episode was released on DVD by Anchor Bay Entertainment, along with the rest of the episodes in the series.[2] "Imprint" was shown in the UK on Bravo (7 April 2006).[3]
Season 2
| Episode | Director | Title | Overview |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tobe Hooper | The Damned Thing | The apocalyptic tale of a monstrous force that devastates Sheriff Kevin Reddle’s family and terrorizes their small Texas community. |
| 2 | John Landis | Family | This screenplay by Brent Hanley, tells the story of a young couple who move to a new city and soon find out that their neighbor is not what he seems. |
| 3 | Ernest Dickerson | The V Word | This vampire film reveals the punishment visited upon two teenage boys who make the very poor decision to break into a mortuary. |
| 4 | Brad Anderson | Sounds Like | Based on a short story by Mike O’Driscoll. The story of Larry Pearce, an ordinary man blessed with extraordinary hearing that drives him to the brink of insanity, and forces him to take violent action to silence the horrific cacophony in his head. |
| 5 | John Carpenter | Pro-Life | Pro-Life tells the story of a young girl trapped inside a clinic, who discovers the only thing more dangerous than her pursuers is the demonic secret that she carries within her. |
| 6 | Dario Argento | Pelts | Fur trader Jake Feldman knows that you can't make a coat without breaking a few animals' necks. In his pursuit to make the perfect fur coat to win over a woman, Feldman steals supernatural raccoon pelts that violently turn against those that covet them. Based on a short story by F. Paul Wilson |
| 7 | Joe Dante | The Screwfly Solution | The Screwfly Solution tells the story of a nightmarish plague that spreads across the globe, transforming men into psychotic killers who attack every woman that crosses their paths. Based on Raccoona Sheldon's Nebula Award-winning short story of the same name. |
| 8 | Mick Garris | Valerie on the Stairs | This story tells the tale of a novelist who discovers there are fates worse than literary anonymity. |
| 9 | Rob Schmidt | Right to Die | After walking away from an auto accident that leaves his wife in a coma and on life support, a man must decide to let his wife die. But the situation becomes more nightmarish when her vengeful spirit threatens to expose a dirty secret of his own. |
| 10 | Tom Holland | We All Scream for Ice Cream | An ice cream man is accidentally killed during a childhood prank gone wrong. Now, years later after the kids have grown up, he returns for revenge. |
| 11 | Stuart Gordon | The Black Cat | Edgar Allan Poe, suffering from writer's block and short on cash, tormented by a black cat that will either destroy his life or inspire him to write one of his most famous stories. |
| 12 | Peter Medak | The Washingtonians | A man finds his family in danger after he discovers a shocking secret about the United States of America's founding fathers. Based on a short story by Bentley Little. |
| 13 | Norio Tsuruta | Dream Cruise | Jack, an American lawyer working in Tokyo, has fallen in love with the wife of his most valued client, Eiji. Despite Jack's deep-rooted fear of the sea, he reluctantly accepts Eiji's invitation to join the couple for a day trip on the Tokyo Bay. Pleasure turns to terror as they discover the watery destiny in store for each of them. |
Cancellation
DVD releases
Rather than the expected packaging of the first season's episodes in one comprehensive set, Anchor Bay Entertainment originally released each episode individually, as well as in double and triple packs. Each DVD promises over three hours of bonus content, such as audio commentaries, interviews, and documentaries.
These DVD releases also include covers and interior collector's cards painted by the Award-winning horror and fantasy artist Caniglia. With the release of Homecoming, the cover art changed to a more mainstream appearance. With the DVD release of the Jenifer, it appears that Anchor Bay chose to produce artwork tailored to each episode.
The Dead by Dawn film festival, which Anchor Bay supports, revealed in their festival guide that Anchor Bay UK had decided to stop releasing double pack editions and instead release a season one box set.
On August 28, 2007 the first season of Masters of Horror was released in a 14-disc box set. The set consists of all episodes, each on an individual disc, plus a bonus disc with all new features. The first season is also available in four volumes on Blu-ray Disc (volumes 1 and 2 on October 16 2007, volume 3 on November 13 2007, and volume 4 on December 11 2007).
On July 29 2008 the second season of Masters of Horror was released in a limited edition set featuring skull-shaped packaging.
Soundtrack
A two-disc soundtrack was released for the series on Immortal Records. The album features heavy metal and rock acts with a few acoustic pieces.
Comic adaptations
IDW Publishing is producing a series of comic book adaptations of several episodes from the series. The first four issues are two-parters, adapting Incident On and Off a Mountain Road and Dreams in the Witch-House.[4][5] The first two comic covers were painted by the award-winning artist Caniglia.
Awards and nominations
| Year | Award | Result | Category | Recipient | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Saturn Award | Winner | Best Television Presentation | | Tied with The Triangle |
| 2007 | Nominated | Best Presentation on Television | | | |
| Won | Best Television Series Release on DVD | | | ||
| 2006 | Emmy Award | Nominated | Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score) | Richard Band | For episode "Dreams in the Witch House" |
| Won | Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music | Edward Shearmur | | ||
| 2007 | Satellite Awards | Won | Best DVD Extras (Season 1) | | Tied with Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan |
General Trivia
* This show was fully financed even before Showtime came along. Originally the episodes were just going to be released on DVD by Anchor Bay Entertainment. * According to creator Mick Garris, the directors involved were given free reign as to what stories they told, however they wanted to tell them. But when Showtime came on board, they laid out a handful of rules. One was, there could be no full frontal male nudity. Another was, there could be no violence committed on a child by another child (but violence by adults on children or children on adults was fine). * In this movie it's the second time Ezra Godden has a character that wears a 'Miskatonic University' t-shirt in a Stuart Gordon film. The first one was Dagon where they both were involved. * This was the only Season 1 episode to require cuts. 2 shots were removed from the final film, both involved graphic depictions of oral sex. The first one occurred during the sex scene in the car, and the second occurred at the end of the film. The deleted scenes are edited into the 'So Hideous My Love' documentary on the DVD. * The source material first appeared in 1974 in Creepy #63 and was illustrated by Bernie Wrightson. * When Jamie is in his bed, he takes the book "Desperation" by Stephen King off his night stand. Director Mick Garris directed the TV version of Stephen King's Desperation, in which Henry Thomas also stars. * At the end when the zombie soldiers coming out of their graves the tombstones have the names of veterans of the horror and zombie genre, easy to read are: Jacques Tourneur, G.A. Romero ( George A. Romero), Jean Yarbrough and Delbert Tenney ( 'Del Tenney (I)'), harder to read are: Lucio Fulci, Victor Halperin and Gordon Douglas. The (readable) graves have this order: Romero and Tenney in the first line, behind them Fulci and Halperin and in the last line behind Fulci is Tourneur, who is in the middle of Douglas and Yarbrough. * WILHELM SCREAM: Used twice - A zombie gets blasted with a shotgun and a zombie gets dragged by a car. * One of the three men who win the jackpot in the casino is Mick Garris who created the Masters of Horror series. * When talking to the captain, the police discuss a wolf attack in London in 1981. That'll be the events that John Landis' An American Werewolf in London they are talking about. * One of the paintings shown on the beginning is 'Frida Khalos "La Venadita" * The newspaper columnist lives in a secluded house in Carthage, New York. John Carpenter (i), who directed the movie, was born in Carthage, New York. * Roger Corman was going to direct Sick Girl but was replaced by Lucky McKee. * The role of Ida Teeter, played by Angela Bettis, was a role originally written for a man with the character name of "Ira Teeter". * Laurene Landon not only plays a small role in this episode, but also wrote the lyrics to the ending credits theme song. * The van in which Walker hitches a ride with Stoney and Lilly has Wyoming license plates. The first digit before the Wyoming Bucking Bronco denotes the county in which the vehicle is registered. In this case, county #1, which would be Natrona County. * George A. Romero was originally going to direct, but couldn't fit it in his schedule. Then Roger Corman was approached to helm the episode, but health issues came up and he was then replaced by John McNaughton. * This episode was originally going to be shown on Showtime in January 2006, but the station banned it shortly before the broadcast. It debuted in America on DVD on September 26, 2006. * Shimako Iwai, the author of the novel on which the film is based, appears as the sadistic torturer. * DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: One of the cartoon characters says it near the end of the first TV showing. * When George Wendt's character is speaking to Matt Keeslar's character in the ER waiting room, there are a couple of pages for "Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine". This is a nod to the Three Stooges' short Men in Black (1934), which paged the Stooges with calls of "Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard". * The hospital was actually a set built in the high school where Harold looks for a "big sister". * In the hospital scene, when 'George Wendt' is waiting in the lobby. You can hear on the intercom "Calling Doctor Howard. Doctor Fine." It's a reference to The Three Stooges. * The game played at the beginning is Doom 3. * During the scene in which the soldiers were shown pornographic movies in the lab, the clip of the Japanese women was taken from 'Imprint', the 13th episode of the first season. Since it was decided that 'Imprint' was too graphic for television so was not aired, this was the first time it was seen in the US before being released on DVD. * The rejection letter in the opening shots from DMG Publishing House is dated February 29, 2007. Obviously that date does not exist in our world, as 2007 is not a leap year. * The Director credited on the movie poster is "Alan Smithee," a fictional alias sometime used when a director has asked that his name be removed from a film he no longer claims. * The number on the door of Rob's room in Highberger House is 217. This is also the number of the notoriously haunted hotel room in Stephen King's novel The Shining.
References
- ↑ Template:Cite news
- ↑ Lambert, David (2005-12-17). "Masters of Horror - 13 Master-ful DVD Releases (But Not 13 Episodes) To Be a Pricey Proposition". tvshowsondvd.com.
- ↑ "Masters of Horror". bravo.co.uk.
- ↑ Masters of Horror at IDW Publishing
- ↑ IDW Unleashes The Masters of Horror in December (press release), Newsarama, November 28, 2005
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