Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		2.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

Masters of Horror: Season One, Volume I Blu-ray Movie Review

The definition of "mediocre."

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 20, 2007

Some films are meant to be seen.

I had never seen an episode of Showtime's Masters of Horror before today. After three hours and three episodes, I have now witnessed three decent, moderately scary, and ultimately forgettable episodes of the popular television show. I am reviewing volume II soon and I am hoping for a better experience. Included on this disc are John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns, Stuart Gordon's Dreams in the Witch House, and William Malone's The Fair-Haired Child. These were not the first three episodes aired (they are actually 8, 2, and 9 respectively), but since each episode is a standalone episode, it's not a big deal. This disc is part of the first wave of Starz (Anchor Bay) titles to come to Blu-ray. Below is my synopsis of each episode.

Johnny's parents can't believe how messy his room is.

Cigarette Burns

Norman Reedus plays Kirby, a film aficionado and small movie theater owner with a troubled past. He is deep in debt, a recovering drug addict, and his girlfriend has committed suicide. He has a knack for tracking down copies of obscure movies, and he is hired by an eccentric, wealthy film collector named Bellinger (Udo Kier) to find perhaps the most infamous film of all time-- La Fin Absolue Du Monde (The Absolute End of the World). Screened only once publicly, the film drove its audience insane. Four people died in the mayhem that followed and rumor has it that the only copy of the film has been destroyed by the government. Bellinger, of course, believes otherwise. Seeing a solution to his financial troubles, Kirby agrees to track down the film. His life begins to unravel as he closes in to the truth behind the film.

When I read a synopsis of this episode, I was eager to see it. With John Carpenter (Halloween, Escape From New York) at the helm, I had high hopes. I found the episode watchable but an overall disappointment. The execution of this great concept was poor. The pace was extremely slow, and I found myself checking the remaining runtime more than once. For an episode that clocks in at just under an hour, that’s a bad sign. My primary complaint was the quality of the acting. Udo Kier puts in a solid performance, as does Julius Chapelle who plays Henri, a French film archivist. I found Reedus’ performance as Kirby severely lacking, however, and it was enough to greatly distract from the flow of the story. It seemed he was simply reciting his lines without having given any thought to their meaning and place in the story. There were several genuinely scary moments and the episode is very graphic and gory. Fans of extreme gore will no doubt love this.

Dreams in the Witch House

H.P. Lovecraft is an icon of horror literature, and director Stuart Gordon has made himself a career with his film adaptations of the author’s work, including the popular Re-Animator (starring Jeffrey Combs of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame). Returning to direct yet another Lovecraft yarn, Gordon has contributed Dreams in the Witch House to the Masters of Horror collection. This episode stars Ezra Godden as Walter Gilman, a graduate student studying the possibility that alternate universes have an intersect point, and where they cross, travel between the two universes is theoretically possible. As luck would have it (or misfortune from Walter’s perspective), this point of intersection is in the corner of his bedroom. A witch and a rat (with a human face) come through this portal bent on sacrificing his neighbor’s infant son. Walter must protect the child and fight the witch’s powerful spell that is befalling him, making him want to do the evil deed himself.

I wasn’t too terribly impressed with this episode as I watched it, but having time to reminisce I find myself more drawn to the concept. There seems to be a trend here in the first two episodes--a man must battle powerful, surreal entities while trying to keep his wits and sanity about him. I think Ezra Godden fared much better than Norman Reedus at emoting the terror one would likely feel while being confronted by the unknown. This was certainly a more twisted and complex tale than was Cigarette Burns, though I felt the plot contrivances were a little too obvious. I would have to read Lovecraft’s original story to better understand Gordon’s vision of it, and I encourage everyone who is interested in this episode to do so. Technically the episode was on par with Cigarette Burns. One key special effect near the end of the episode looked laugh-out-loud bad. I have to assume they had reached the end of their budget and made do with what they could afford. While distracting, it didn’t completely take me out of the intensity of the scene. The gore is very much toned down here, especially comparing it to the very graphic Cigarette Burns.

The Fair-Haired Child

Tara (Lindsay Pulsipher) is a shy, picked-on high school student who is drugged and taken away in the back of a van after school one day. When she wakes, she is told she is in a hospital several hundred miles away from her home. Tara soon enough realizes she is not where she was led to believe, and quickly finds herself locked in the basement of a secluded mansion with Johnny, a suicidal, weary, and mute young man. Tara and Johnny discover ominous warning signs scribbled on the walls, including "beware the fair-haired child." The identity of the fair-haired child is soon revealed and Tara and Johnny must face this nightmare together.

I found this episode to be the most entertaining of the three, though quite a bit of it was over the top. The identity of the fair-haired child came as no surprise, and unfortunately his reveal was lackluster. I had already seen what he looked like on the main menu of the disc. He's certainly a scary looking creature (who has night vision eyes) and a scarier reveal would have been much more effective. He also moved rather oddly. It appears they were trying to make it look like stop-motion photography. The episode's director, William Malone, has box office clunkers under his belt (the Alien rip-off Creature and FeardotCom) and this episode proves he isn't likely to break through as a director anytime soon. This episode, like Cigarette Burns, could have been much better than it was. I was intrigued by the concepts each brought to the table, and one wonders what could have been had they been given a bigger budget and more time to flesh out the details in the episodes.

Masters of Horror: Season One, Volume I Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Starz has chosen to present Masters of Horror in 1080i, the same way the show aired on Showtime. I believe the show would have benefited from a 1080p transfer on Blu-ray because the images we get here are simply average. Cigarette Burns fared the worst. Flesh tones were on the wrong side of orange. Blooming was an issue in several scenes (as it was in The Fair-Haired Child), and a very small amount of grain was noticeable throughout. Much of the image was overly soft. Black levels were fine, however, and some of the brighter daytime scenes looked good. Skin tones fared much better in the other two episodes. The Fair-Haired Child, taking place in a mostly dark and drab basement with grays, blacks, and blues as the primary hues, looked solid enough. All three episodes were very dark in nature and they are given a passable presentation on Blu-ray, but there is certainly room for improvement should Starz ever revisit this series in the future.

Masters of Horror: Season One, Volume I Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Anchor Bay has included both a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and a PCM 5.1 uncompressed track. Like the video quality, audio fared better on the final two episodes. Cigarette Burns sounded fairly drab. Low Frequency effects were clean with no distortion. Surrounds were virtually nonexistent. I also found Cody Carpenter's soundtrack to be largely hit or miss. Dreams in the Witch House sounded much better. Surrounds were active and used to great effect in several scenes. Sound moved effectively across the front of the soundstage as well. This was a very enveloping soundtrack. The Fair-Haired Child was the most average of the three tracks. It delivered crisp highs (screams sounded great), good bass and decent use of the surrounds. The best sounding part of the disc was the main menu and the title sequence at the beginning of each episode. It's a very good score and sounds great on Blu-ray.

Masters of Horror: Season One, Volume I Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Starz provides four audio commentary tracks on this disc, including two for Cigarette Burns. The first is a feature commentary by director John Carpenter. His track is rather drab, unfortunately, rarely providing meaningful insight into the production. The second track features writers Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan. The duo was ecstatic to have worked with the legendary Carpenter, and they had a genuinely good time making the episode and recording this track.

Dreams in the Witch House features commentary by director and writer Stuart Gordon, actor Ezra Godden, and DVD producer Perry Martin. The director and actor talk about the influence of Lovecraft in their work, updating the story for today's medium, and working on the set.

Director William Malone and writer Matt Greenburg appear on the track for The Fair-Haired Child. Talk of budget restrictions and run-of the mill casting info dominate this track. It's rather mundane and only worth a listen if you loved this episode.

Starz has not included any other supplements on the disc. I would not have minded previews for these or other episodes, or even the featurettes from the standard definition DVD release.

Masters of Horror: Season One, Volume I Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Seeing as these three episodes were chosen to represent volume I of the Masters of Horror series on Blu-ray, I hope they are not considered the best-of-the-best that the series has to offer. While none of them were awful, I don't see myself ever going back to this title for a private screening. The presentation would have benefited form a 1080p encode and a little more cleaning up. Audio was average, and the four commentary tracks are a decent listen. Fans of the series will be pleased with this presentation, especially if they don't already have the standard definition DVDs, but I would recommend renting before making a decision to purchase.