Dario Argento’s Pelts & John Carpenter’s Pro-Life (Masters of Horror – Season 2)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: B-     Episodes: (Pelts: B / Pro-Life: C-)

 

 

Once again, I seem to be visiting the world of the Masters Of Horror; the cable television series aimed at restoring many once great horror directors to new prominence by rejuvenating their filmmaking sensibilities.  Here they are offered a wider palette than could be afforded by the big studios for the higher stakes market of creating features for theatrical release.  Many of my complaints regarding the show still seem to be valid.  Most creators can be seen straddling a chasm between the intent for these to be viewed as full-length, stand-alone movies in their own right... and the reality that regardless of intent, everything churned out of this machine still only comes off as being a piece of anthology program patchwork.

 

Of the selections at hand, Pelts comes off as the much more enjoyable, much better crafted of the two.  It’s unapologetic in its gore, its sex, and ultimately is just straight-ahead fun.  Argento, I now feel, is the best fit for this show.  Like other Italian horror maestros, he is capable of dancing between theatrical and television assignments without so much as batting an eye.  Granted, on the whole, his output is largely uneven. I can’t say for sure whether or not I enjoyed this over his work on the first season episode, Jenifer.  Both are able films, and don’t shoot too high for absolute originality. You can’t, really, when you have such limited time to let your story unfold.

 

Carpenter, on the other hand, has certainly fowled up this particular effort for the show.  I may be able to say that his first outing with the Masters Of Horror, Cigarette Burns, has since grown on me a bit.  I wouldn’t go out of my way to assume that the same will happen here.  Altogether, the man seems rather bored, and I suspect he didn’t end up with the result he had initially intended.  Combining a siege film while carrying the topic of abortion would have gone over better in my eyes had he eliminated the subtext of the child in question being the progeny of a demon.

 

Worse still, when the said demon does appear, it’s a disappointing affair indeed.  A denizen of Hell, and the best he’s got to do is knock up a 15 year old girl in order to spread his seed of evil unto the world?  I’m sure a creature such as this could conjure a better method in which to bring about destruction on any scale.  This is unimportant, as the intent of having him thrown into the mix is merely the “payoff” of seeing Carpenter rip off some of his better moments with allusions to The Thing and with the rubbery antagonist, who brings about thoughts of Big Trouble In Little China.

 

The special features here are still rather bland, providing a glimmer into the moviemaking process, but not much more.  The commentaries are adequate, with writer Matt Venne doing the duties on Pelts, and putting in his two cents as to where exactly his adaptation ended up.  With Carpenter’s commentary track, you once more get the feeling that he is utterly bored with the overall outcome of his piece, and the commentary track for his film is left largely dominated by the episode’s writers, Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan.

 

The films are presented in an anamorphically enhanced widescreen format of 1.78:1.  The transfers are well done, displaying clean images with well-balanced colors throughout that lack bleeding or distortion.  The audio is decent, but nothing you’d use to show off a high performance audio system.  The disc contains both Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and 2.0 Dolby stereo surround tracks.

 

Of the latter DVD releases from this show that I’ve been privy to, I can recommend both Jenifer and Pelts as some of the better ways to spend your time and money.  If you too are sick of the excessive amount of packaging involved with adding these to your library, you may be wise to check into Anchor Bay UK’s Region 2 releases, offering the first season in two separate volumes.  Surely, more will follow in this fashion, and at $45.00 US, it’s doubtless the best way to add these to your collection, if you so desire.

 

 

-   David Milchick