One of the things I love about the little advertising deal RopeofSilicon has worked out with Anchor Bay is that they send me screener copies of all their Masters of Horror DVDs. Of course no one likes everything they watch, especially me, but these are always a lot of fun. Even if I don’t really like the flick, it is only 60 minutes and always a good bit of fun.
Luckily, this month I can honestly say these are three quality titles and all for varying differences. Of course, the Masters of Horror Collection is a collection that depends on a viewers taste. If you don’t like gore you might as well piss off right now because gore is number one with these movies and aside from Dream Cruise, the other two flicks in this update are extremely gory. However, this time around a couple of these films show some serious potential to be remade into actual feature films. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see a film based on Dream Cruise inside the next couple of years.
Let’s dive into this edition and see what you guys are in for, should you decide to pick any of these three titles up.
The story was inspired by Ambrose Bierce’s and the teleplay was written by Richard Christian Matheson, son of Richard Matheson of “I Am Legend” fame. The story begins with a young Kevin Reddle (played later on by Flanery) as he ultimately watches his dad go crazy and blow his mother away with a shotgun only to soon find himself viciously disemboweled stating, “The damned thing…it found me.” Years later Kevin is sheriff and he is a bit paranoid to say the least. He has surveillance cameras all over his house and he twists and turns at any little sound. What’s he scared of? The damned thing of course, but the question is… What the hell is it? You see, this is where the running time and limited space for a proper back-story and satisfying ending hurts this little commentary on oil. The film is based on the idea that oil money is blood money and as the oil runs out people’s thirst for it begins to become unquenched causing them to go crazy, all of which results in one big … Ah, I won’t spoil it.
The thing about The Damned Thing is that it has some seriously great moments, some of which horror fans are going to LOVE! First off, the disemboweling of Kevin’s dad is violently graphic; next we see Kevin try and save a woman involved in a car crash only to see him lift her off the pavement and have her fall in half and her guts spill out. However, the worst is a scene in which a guy pummels himself to death with a hammer, the worst part of it being when he takes the jagged side and scrapes it down the front of his face (it looks incredibly fake, but the sound effects make it gut wrenching).
Fans of horror will have fun with this one and with some script doctoring and a little more back-story added on it could actually become a decent feature length film, providing some studio would be ballsy enough to keep the gory goodness in.
The two names you are most likely to recognize in this vampire flick are Michael Ironside (Jester from Top Gun) and Jodelle Ferland (the little girl from Silent Hill). The story begins with a brutally violent video game, it may be real, it may not be, either way it is violent as hell. We have two friends and one of them asks the other if he has ever seen a dead body before. Of course, for the sake of the story, he hasn’t and it is off to the mortuary to stare at dead people. The one thing The V Word does is prove that if you ever walk into any place uninvited in a movie some bad shit is going to go down. It just so happens for these two boys they meet the owner of the mortuary played by Ironside, who turns out to be a vampire.
As most Masters of Horror short films go, this one has some serious gore, primarily involving the removal of one gentleman’s throat (later he drinks some water, which is a bit of a laugh). There is also a corny little phone conversation the lead of the film has with the cops, I can only assume writer Mick Garris doesn’t hold a place in his heart for the fuzz.
Overall, The V Word isn’t the greatest of the Masters of Horror collection, but it is far from the worst as it offers up a satisfying amount of pretty much everything you expect from these films – gore and a small dose of comedy. Both are readily available in this one.
One thing you will immediately recognize about this story is its atmospheric qualities and a lot of that can be credited to Kôji Suzuki who wrote the short story and also wrote the short story “Ringu”, which inspired the Japanese horror and later the American spin-off. A lot of what made those films creepy is in this one, most noticeable is water… I think Kôji is a bit afraid of the water if these films are any indication.
While I do think The Damned Thing could certainly be turned into a feature film with some serious script doctoring, I think it would only take a few rewrites to get Dream Cruise into theaters in a feature film format. This is such a simple story, easy to tell, yet it has so many things working for it that it really could be made into something great if some money and better talent was thrown its way. There are a few gory elements to it, but nothing like Damned Thing or V Word, this is more about atmosphere and a sense of pending suffocation. The water angle is played up quite well, and you even have a little Samara style chick walking around the boat.
The whole back story to the film is incredibly flimsy, but it works and I really would not be surprised to hear of an American remake being greenlit in the next few years. So see the original now and tell your friends.
Oh, and one last thing for you SERIOUS horror fanatics, and I mean you guys are fucking hardcore about these flicks… There is a contest for a DVD called Buried Alive (you may have seen the ads running around the site). Well, this little contest has an impressive little prize, it is a Coffin Guitar Case filled with Horror DVD’s. Ah, okay, maybe you don’t have to be die hard horror fan to want that.
Anyway, you can enter the contest up through October 31, 2007 by visiting buriedalivecontest.com. So, go enter and when you win that coffin send me a DVD!
