Category: Masters of Horror

Masters of Horror (2005) s02e05 – Pro-Life

I’m not sure John Carpenter’s The Thing was a pinnacle of realistic practical special effects—I think it must’ve been one, but I’m not sure; I am confident, however, he and Dean Cundey pioneered SteadiCam (at least according to them) with Escape from New York. So watching his second (and, thankfully, final) “Masters of Horror” entry, it’s sad to see Carpenter contending with Attila Szalay’s profoundly incompetent photography and the garbage special effects from Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger. While Pro-Life is certainly better than the previous episode Carpenter directed—also written by Drew McWeeny and Rebecca Swan—it’s always in trying to find a way to get worse.

The episode opens with Mark Feuerstein and Emmanuelle Vaugier talking about how they might work together but it’s okay they just slept together. This scene will be the most dialogue Vaugier gets in the hour, with the rest of her performance quick reaction shots. They’re driving in to work and they almost hit teenager Caitlin Wachs running through the woods. Wachs was actually a teenager during Pro-Life, which makes the skimpy outfit and the graphic rape recollection even grosser than I’d assumed. That gross gets lost in the other gross when McWeeny and Swan show their edginess by disingenuously both-sidings abortion with lead Ron Perlman talking about clinic doctor Bill Dow being a baby killer. McWeeny and Swan then cop out on the whole thing with Perlman just being a pawn in Satan’s game.

Derek Mears plays the demonic Satan, walking around in a rubber suit thrown out from the original Swamp Thing movie for looking too cheesy. Despite being King of Hell, Mears can’t figure out how door handles work. Or maybe Pro-Life just thinks terrible slow motion breaking through door effects are good, actually. It certainly tries to do its gun porn but it just plays silly. This whole “Masters of Horror” big horror director who at best makes direct-to-video crap returning to their roots continues to instead suggest these guys shouldn’t be renowned because they can’t make movies anymore, not even hour long ones.

The story involves Wachs, raped by Satan, trying to get Feuerstein to abort the baby while dad Perlman shoots everyone dead to rescue her because he’s doing God’s work. He’s got three sons helping him; the nicest I’ll be is not noting their names when trying to determine the worst performance. Partially because, outside Dow as the clinic doctor, the worst performance is easily discount character actor Stephen Dimopoulos. He’s the shitty dad who brought his daughter to the clinic and gets caught up in the demonic siege.

Wachs is bad. It’s unclear how much of it’s her fault, how much of it’s the script, how much of it is Carpenter leering at her. Feuerstein’s less bad but far from good. Perlman’s decent. It’s a thin, bad part, poorly written, poorly directly, but his professionalism puts him ahead of the pack. Biski Gugushe tries the hardest as the clinic security guard.

Presumably Carpenter did this show for the easy paycheck and to get “composer” son Cody Carpenter some gigs with residuals (the music’s terrible).

But it’s insipid work and an objectively good reason to avoid giving anyone involved any attention in the future.

Masters of Horror (2005) s01e08 – Cigarette Burns

Did anyone read the script for Cigarette Burns before they started shooting? Udo Kier’s got a line about Norman Reedus following him, then Kier follows Reedus. Not to mention Reedus’s inability to open doors convincingly, much less regurgitate Drew McWeeny and Rebecca Swan’s startlingly insipid dialogue. It’s terrible when it’s Kier and Reedus delivering the lines, but it’s not truly godawful until Chris Gauthier shows up. Kier’s able to deliver terrible dialogue with no help from a director after decades of experience but watching Reedus and Gauthier try to hold a conversation with nothing but poorly written expository dialogue is something especially awful.

I’ve been avoiding Cigarette Burns for fifteen plus years, after hearing it was not a gem from director John Carpenter, but it’s not just a bad Carpenter outing… it’s a new low for him. He’s got a cinematographer—Attila Szalay—who can’t hold focus, he’s got an incompetent editor (Patrick McMahon), though I guess at least he was able to get his son Cody a gig doing the music. And the music’s the only thing not entirely terrible. Because even if Szalay’s lighting were all right—and the shots in focus—Carpenter’s composition is at best disinterested. He’s shooting for a 16:9 frame and has no idea how to compose the shots to make them interesting; it’s not just disappointing, it’s embarrassing to watch. If ever someone needed Alan Smithee….

Reedus is a revival movie theatre owner who’s going to hunt down a mythic lost film for Kier. How mythic? So mythic Kier’s got a de-winged angel who starred in it held captive, which doesn’t bug Reedus at all. He needs the money to pay off his dead girlfriend’s dad, Gary Hetherington. Zara Taylor plays the dead girlfriend in flashbacks. Presumably she got cast because they wanted someone who’d make Reedus look like an okay actor.

Hetherington’s terrible too. It ought to be a gimme of a small part, something any working actor could execute (and a great cameo spot for a Carpenter regular, though it’d just be humiliating for them too). It becomes obvious very soon into Cigarette Burns, it’s never getting better and it’s got a long way to go to hit bottom.

Is all of “Masters of Horror” so terrible? Cigarette Burns isn’t an encouragement to check out other Carpenter movies—quite the opposite—and it isn’t a celebration of his career (it’s McWeeny and Swan doing a worse-than-expected Kevin Smith does horror). But it’s also not like Carpenter’s trying with the script. There’d be some effort in the composition, the blocking would be better, Reedus might be able to open a door believably, every muddled frame of Cigarette Burns is another item on the list of its defects and incompetencies.

I wasn’t expecting Cigarette Burns to be any actual good, but I wasn’t expecting it to be worse than Carpenter’s previous lows by so much. Maybe they should’ve gotten someone to direct it who wanted to direct it (or anything). There’s not much missed opportunity in Cigarette Burns—the script’s garbage—but someone else might have some interest or enthusiasm for it.

Other than getting your kid a job.

I’m so glad I didn’t watch it at the time, when the disappointment (before it was for sure Carpenter was retired) would have be much more severe.