Recommend Some of the Better "Masters of Horror" Episodes

I don’t have ShowTime personally, but a lot of them (if not all) are available to rent.

I’ve already seen two of them–Tom Holland’s “We All Scream for Ice Cream” and “Dream Cruise” (don’t remember who made that one), so I know it’s kind of hit or miss. (“We All Scream for Ice Cream” was ridiculous in that “so bad it’s good” way. They played it pretty straight though, so no “Fright Night”-esque laughs.)

I’m putting “Imprint” by Takashi Miike on my list. I know that the guy who made “May” has one, “Sick Girl,” which I do want to see. “May” seriously turned my stomach, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to sit through that one, though…anyone see “Sick Girl”?

Thanks in advance, all!

None of the ones I’ve seen have been great. Miike’s and Argento’s are at least interesting, but both of them have major weaknesses.

My taste in this series tends to diverge wildly from other people’s, so, grain of salt…

Dance of the Dead (Tobe Hooper) was strange, and rather viscerally disturbing. In the end, what the hell is going on is never quite clear, but it’s bad stuff. My favourite bit is incredibly disturbing, disgusting, and also gut-bustingly funny to me, in the sheer depraved absurdity: Robert Englund’s character inducing one of the semi-animate corpses to give him head.

Homecoming (Joe Dante) isn’t scary, or even disturbing, and it’s a rather heavy-handed political commentary. But it’s also funny as all hell.

Cigarette Burns (John Carpenter) was a pretty good gore-fest, with enough of a story going for it to be interesting.

Sick Girl (Lucky McKee) is, indeed worth watching. Unless you have a bug phobia. It’s creepy, disturbing, and, actually sexy (until the real creepy stuff starts to colour that), with interesting characters, and a thin, but entertaining plot. My favourite episode of the series.

Haekel’s Tale (John McNaughton) defies spoiler-free description. It is sick and gory, manages sexy, if ever so briefly, and I couldn’t look away.

Family (John Landis) is sick and disturbing in a strange, banal way. George Went’s discussions with his family, particularly. Medium gore factor.

The Washingtonians (Peter Medak) is another that isn’t particularly disturbing, or scary, though it has some fun gore scenes. It’s a favourite of mine because it’s just. So. Fucking. Weird.

My least favourites:

Incident On and Off a Mountain Road (Don Coscarelli) had no story to speak of, no real scares, and the gore wasn’t entertaining or plentiful enough to make up for the lack.

The Damned Thing (Tobe Hooper again) and Deer Woman (John Landis) I couldn’t bear to watch long enough to make an educated comment on. Bo-Ring.

Chocolate (Mick Garris) had an interesting premise, but was rather ineptly executed, ruining the effect.

Jenifer (Dario Argento) I actually rather enjoyed, but mostly for the ‘what the fuck?’ factor. Not for everybody, and not one I’d go out of my way to watch again.

Thanks, Tengu. I do have a bug phobia, but I think I can be brave. May was a pretty awesome movie, it just seriously skeeved me. (As it was meant to.)

The concept behind the show does seem really interesting, so I’d like to watch some more of them. I’ll add the ones you mentioned as being more noteworthy to my queue.

I enjoyed Dreams in the Witch-House and The Black Cat, both directed by Stuart Gordon. These are loose adaptation of stories by Lovecraft and Poe, respectively.

Second “Cigarette Burns” and suggest “Pick Me Up”. The Movie Channel is showing MoH but not in any discernable order. I’ve been waiting to see “Cigarette Burns” again because it is one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen in recent memory.

The Movie Channel is showing “Cigarette Burns” on Saturday December 1st at 9:45 PM and it repeats on Sunday December 2nd at 12:30 AM (both times central).

I had it set up to record before this thread but now I’m looking forward to it.

I also enjoyed the one based on the Lovecraft short story, Dreams in the Witch-House. I’ve read that many people dislike when movies try to show the fantastic worlds that Lovecraft envisioned, because they could never live up to what people came up with in their own minds. They didn’t try to show us the fantastic other world and personally I think the story was the better for it (although with nifty CGI effects perhaps it could work out now).

Dance of the Dead is in my waiting to be viewed list. When my sweet pea gets some free time … Glad to hear someone enjoyed it! :slight_smile:

I too liked Dreams in the Witch House (the only MoH I’ve seen, btw). Not fantastic, but working on what seemed a limited budget, they did a good job. Not sure about the other MoH titles, but I was able to watch Dreams in the Witch House through my Netflix Watch It Now.

I was watching this faithfully for awhile when it was on, but then Jenifer came on and freaked me right the eff out and I gave up. Gah! shudder

Seriously, I guess kudos to the makeup guys, but

(spoilered for those who may not have seen it)

her freaky face and eyes and the cat part, because I cannot handle animal deaths in TV and movies

haunted me for days.

Yeah, there were a few good ones in the first series, not so many in the second.

I’d say John Carpenter’s Pro-Life and Rob Schmidt’s Right to Die were the best ones from the second series.

I’ve caught a couple of the Masters of Science Fiction series too but wasn’t impressed, seemed to be about the same standard as the remake of the Outer Limits series, ie not good at all.

May is like that, too, actually. May dating the guy who is actually Elton from Clueless…well, before the biting, it was kind of hot.

Imprint was very freaky. Granted, it wasn’t perfect, but it was creepy and actually scared me, so I’m going to check out some of the MoH episodes you guys mentioned, as well as more Miike movies.

I quite liked The Screwfly Solution, about a disease that turns men into misogynistic psychopaths. I also enjoyed The Damned Thing - it takes a while to get going, but once it does, it does a superb job of conveying a feeling of implacable dread.

Hope it’s okay to bump this one…it’s only been about a month.

I’ve seen a bunch more now. The ones I’ve seen:

We All Scream For Ice Cream
Dream Cruise
Imprint
Screwfly Solution
Sick Girl
Family
Jenifer
Fair Haired Child

My favorites are Fair Haired Child, Jenifer and Imprint…and I definitely found Family very interesting. Really liked George Wendt’s performance–I didn’t think Norm could never creep me out.

Jenifer and Fair Haired Child frightened me…almost too much.

I also really want to see “Dance of the Dead” because I loved the short story that Richard Matheson wrote. “Cigarette Burns” is on my list, too.