Hey, I'm gonna review a somewhat obscure horror series if that's okay with you. It is? Great. Masters of Horror go. These are in chronological order. You can also find this on my Letterboxd. Trigger warning for blood and adult themes and stuff, not for babies.
handsablaze uses Letterboxd to share film reviews and lists. 1,301 films watched. Favorites: Akira (1988), Braindead (1992), WALL·E (2008),
#1. Incident On and Off A Mountain Road: Sort of a prototype for movies like “You’re Next,” and makes the argument that sometimes one’s relationship trauma can make one better prepared for when some other jerk comes along to try and take advantage of you. You know, in this case it’s a Judge Holden-esque mute guy with alopecia rather than just some other douche bag.
#2. Dream in The Witch House: This one is a surprisingly effective mix of corny and genuinely really fucked up. There’s a goofy looking human faced rat and also like eyes getting crushed with thumbs and a helpless baby getting his neck chewed open by said human faced rat. And you can’t forget having a gross Shining-style “ew the pretty lady is actually a hag” scare!
#3. Dance of the Dead: Probably the only episode of this series that I can safely say is just straight up ass. The punk characters are all a bunch of pretentious posers that the cast of Return of The Living Dead would have kicked the shit out of. The whole thing reeks of "ugh, it's not a phase, MOM!" *hair flip*
Robert Englund works with what he's got, but it ain't much. Skip.
#4. Jenifer: The performances are wooden a lot of the time and you can kind of tell where the story is going to end up by a certain point, BUT this one swings for the fence in terms of just utter lunacy.
I love that they never explain what exactly Jenifer is, but you can understand her motivations and manipulation tactics despite her being nonverbal. Oh, but, warning to the cat lovers out there because YIKES.
#5. Chocolate: A neat enough idea where a guy starts to experience clairvoyant visions with a stranger that he becomes infatuated with. But it is CRAZY slow. This could have worked better with some of the fat trimmed off.
#6. Homecoming: Eh... This one was kinda lost on me. It's a really silly idea, and I do think it's kind of clever, even believable that the US Government would try and pull some petty bureaucratic crap to keep zombies from voting (I can't believe I just said that). But I was a little kid when it first came out so I sort of missed the boat on the whole far right government's tension in the Middle Ea-
...oh no... Maybe I should rewatch this one.
#8. Deer Woman- Not QUITE as clever as it thinks it is, but it is really funny in a few places, especially the series of potential scenarios the detective comes up with about what happened.
Also Anthony Griffith's character is pretty stupid for a cop. Like, come on man. I know dumb decisions are a part of horror films but you're a COP.
#9. Cigarette Burns: So usually in a story where there's a movie that drives people crazy just by watching it, they wouldn't explain what's on it, but in this one, not only do they explain what it is, it makes PERFECT SENSE why it would be cursed the way it is.
I also appreciate that it doesn't just make you go crazy in one way. Like yeah it makes you want to kill people or yourself but it's in a SPECTACULAR way or it would make you write a review that never ends. It's so cool, dude.
#10. Fair Haired Child: Ooo, now this one is fun. It's a little weird that an actress in her early 20's is being passed off as like a high schooler, but eh. Basically she's the last sacrifice in a series of 12 for a grieving couple to bring back their dead son, and she and a strange mute kid in the basement have to escape.
You can guess where it's going, but it's a really scary idea that the one person who can help you escape will change into a freaky (but cool-looking) demon out of nowhere and try and attack you.
#11. Sick Girl: Lucky McKee is a director that always likes to tackle women's issues in a horror lens that a lot of other filmmakers might overlook. "May" talked about autism and unusual interests isolating people, especially women. His segment from "Tales of Halloween" talked about female-on-male domestic abuse, and "The Woman" talked about how dangerous women are "civilized" while dangerous men can live normal lives thanks to a system that fails to punish them.
"Sick Girl" talks about lesbian relationships, which is pretty gutsy especially when it wasn't seen as popular or normal back in the aughties. Although I don't think there's really a message to this one like his other movies, it's more just a story of how a relationship falls apart thanks to illness, in this case, caused by a venomous bug. I guess you could say something about mental illness, buuuut I dunno.
#11. Pick Me Up: Not too bad, I guess. It's a war between two serial killers, and it's kinda cute how it takes inter-generational conflict but puts it through the lens of, you know, the best way to kill people. But I dunno, it feels like something's missing.
The ending twist is a bit of an eye-roller.
#12. Haeckel's Tale: It's a little slow in places, and the ending has a pretty easy to spot twist, but I commend this movie for just being completely GROSS. Clive Barker loved to talk about sex in twisted ways in his stories, and man oh MAN is this one gnarly.
It's better to just not mess with dead people. Frankenstein realized the horror of making life he couldn't control, Haeckel realized that the dead being brought back to life would lead to guttural horror in the hands of very sick people.
#13. Imprint: Sweet Jesus.
Okay, so, this is GOOD, don't get me wrong. Billy Drago kinda sucks and I dunno why everyone speaks English on a remote Japanese island in the 1900's, but holy FUCK.
Pile in pretty much every taboo you can think of, and make the truth at the end so unbelievably horrible that you'll want to lobotomize yourself, and end on a note that is both deeply confusing and incredibly hopeless, and you have a recipe for a long shower and a night staring at the ceiling.
#14. The Damned Thing: Eh...
I appreciate the effort of taking an Ambrose Bierce story that's just a few pages long and trying to make it feature-ish length, but I dunno, I feel like some kind of homicidal-rage-inducing oil monster is a bit of a weird direction to take things.
That scene with the hammer is genuinely very upsetting though.
#14. Family: George Wendt absolutely carries this film about a psycho that makes his family out of the skeletons of his murder victims. It's like Ed Gein meets Norman Rockwell and it's as disturbingly funny as you'd expect. It's tense, really creepy, and ends on a note that's super violent but incredibly satisfying.
#15. The V Word: This one is, for all intents and purposes, not groundbreaking at all. It's a very straightforward vampire story. But for some reason it's a lot of fun.
I dunno, maybe it's some of the commentary on desensitization to violence, or how it's gleefully bloody, or has some very flat but charming teen acting (minus Michael Ironside, the nasty lead vampire). But it goes down smooth and painless.
#16. Sounds Like: I'm writing this review as the laundry machine in my apartment complex hums relentlessly above me. Not quite loud enough to be an actual nuisance but a constant, dull throb of monotonous noise.
I think this story takes the idea of how grief can make everyday things absolutely unbearable and pushes it about as far as it can go. I have depression and it makes everything just feel awful and against you. Sure, it doesn't make someone's hearing so good that raindrops sound like gravel falling on sheet metal. Sometimes it also feels like that real peace is impossible to find in a society where there's stimulation all the time.
And the amazing sound editing deserves some applause as well.
#17. Pro-Life: This one is... confusing. I feel like it doesn't really have anything to say about abortion apart from... uh, it should like, exist? Like, yeah, don't get me wrong, the movie is cool and Ron Perlman is great to see, plus the effects are great (at least the practical ones). But like, what is it trying to say? Abortion should exist in the case of SA? I mean, yeah, duh. Especially if you've been SA'd by a literal fucking demon, lol.
It's fun, but I feel like it's more of a straightforward demon movie that uses an abortion clinic as a backdrop rather than a legitimate commentary on abortion.
#18. Pelts: This one is so gnarly and fun. It's an extremely simple idea where cursed pelts harvested from enchanted raccoons kill a bunch of fur designers in karmic ways. There's not much in terms of story, and the acting is... fine, but you're not here for that, you're here for the incredible gore effects.
Also, shoutout to Claudio Simonetti for the soundtrack. He always does good work, but the music while Michael Suchanek's character is admiring the magical pelts is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.
#19. The Screwfly Solution: Incredibly disturbing idea that is played totally straight. Men suddenly decide they want to kill women worldwide. I feel like this movie was sort of made to get people start talking, sometimes about uncomfortable topics, sort of like Joe Dante's other episode in this series. Although there are a few really bad decisions made in this movie, like, even for a horror film.
#20. Valerie on The Stairs: This is the one that I always forget about. I feel like every anthology show has that one episode that just sorta slips through the cracks in your mind. Anyway, I like this idea fine, I've actually been to a writer's retreat before and it was very chill. But like… How do you make Christopher Lloyd and Tony Todd boring man? Booooooooo!
#21. Right to Die: Basically the plot of that Throbbing Gristle song "Hamburger Lady."
Okay, so it's actually about a guy whose wife is horrifically burnt and left barely alive after a car wreck, and now he has to decide whether or not to end her suffering. Buuuuuut it's a little trickier than that, since whenever her heart briefly stops, she emerges as a vengeful, angry ghost.
Probably the most like "Tales from The Crypt" this series ever got, down to the cruel twist ending, sex appeal and, shall we say, morally challenged characters.
#22. We All Scream For Ice Cream: Aw, now how can you hate this? It's about a ghostly clown that drives around in an ice cream truck and gives kids voodoo ice cream pops to eat that melt their parents.
It's just silly, blackly comic fun. Plus the scene where the pedophile melts in the hot tub is just... so wonderful. Gory and gross and absolutely deserved for a completely irredeemable shitbag.
#23. The Black Cat: This one's fine I guess, but Jeffrey Combs gives it his all as usual, so please just watch the episode just for him. His thick Virginia accent is so entertaining and his drunken antics as Poe could honestly fill a whole movie. The actual story is pretty disturbing but also tricky to follow, and there's a scene with an axe that is super fucking disturbing and gross.
#24. The Washingtonians: This one is one of the most bonkers ideas this show ever put out. Like, an entire secret society of powdered-wig wearing colonial cannibals that secretly run America behind the scenes, amazing. Hilarious.
But there's not a whole lot that actually happens in this one either. Like, go all the way up to 11 with it, man. Or, hell, go into the more political side, how things that were normal back then are horrific and racist now. I dunno, it just doesn't quite push the envelope enough.
#25. Dream Cruise: Man what a snoozer to end on. There's some fun effects work and enjoyably over the top performances in here, but it's mostly just like… dull. The open ocean is terrifying, you can do so much with that, but this one plays it way too safe.
