Masters Of Horror: We All Scream For Ice Cream

I was looking for some short DVDs and I figured since it is getting close to Halloween, horror movies would be a good thing to check out.  We All Scream For Ice Cream was another horror short from the second season of Masters of Horror.  This one was directed by Tom Holland who did Child’s Play and Fright Night.  I remember really enjoying Fright Night when I first saw it at the Keith Albee theater, so I had hopes for this one and for the most part it didn’t disappoint. 

The plot involves a childhood prank gone horribly wrong that resulted in the death of ice cream selling clown Buster played by William Forsythe.  When one of the kids moves back into town after growing up and having a family of his own, Buster shows back up and starts killing the ones responsible for his death using their own kids and a voodoo doll-like ice cream treat.  When the kids bite into the ice cream which is shaped into a human likeness, their parent melts into a big puddle of runny melted ice cream.

I enjoyed We All Scream For Ice Cream, and like Valerie on the Stairs it has some decent making of featurettes.  One deals with the making of the film while the other deals with how the make up effects were pulled off.  Both are worth watching.

I give We All Scream For Ice Cream a 9 on the Night Flight scale as well.  I remember reading that they wanted to concentrate more on monsters for season 2 of Masters of Horror, and with the demon in Valerie on the Stairs and the killer ice cream clown in We All Scream For Ice Cream, they have a couple of decent ones.  Both of these episodes were much better than some of the season one episodes.  I’m sorry they never produced a season 3 although Garris did work on Fear Itself for NBC and a Masters of Science Fiction series that I missed.

Masters Of Horror: Valerie On The Stairs

I was really excited when Showtime announced the first season of Masters of Horror.  13 short horror movies directed by the masters of the field.  I looked over the names; Tobe Hooper, John Landis, Joe Dante, Don Coscarelli, Stuart Gordon, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Takashi Miike, Dario Argento, John McNaughton, and three names I didn’t recognize which included Lucky McKee, William Malone, and Mick Garris. I soon learned that Mick Garris was the executive producer for the series and was sort of the creator of the project.  He had also directed a couple Stephen King adaptations.  His episode didn’t actually hold any great anticipation for me, but it turned out to be a fairly decent one never the less.

For the second season of the show, I ended up missing every episode except for The Damned Thing and Family.  I kept my eyes open and figured I would grab the box sets at some point.  I never have gotten the box sets, but I have picked up a few of the single DVDs that Anchor Bay released.  What’s funny is that somewhere along the line Anchor Bay got bought out by Starz, so all the season 2 DVDs have every reference to Showtime removed as far as I can tell.

Valerie on the Stairs was Garris’ season 2 outing.  It was based on a story by Clive Barker that dealt with a house set up as a boarding home for unpublished writers to work on getting their projects written and published.  A new tenant moves in and starts hearing and seeing things.  He soon finds out that the building is haunted by a tortured young woman and the demon that loves her but keeps her enslaved.  Both of these beings were the products of failed writing done in the building with such a passion and intensity that it brought them to life.

I enjoyed the story and with Tony Todd playing the demon known as “The Beast”, I was extremely pleased.  Clare Grant as Valerie does a wonderful job in this short time to show us the frightened victim side of Valerie where she is roaming the halls naked and being sucked through walls by the demon, as well as the vindictive spirit side where she is calling in The Beast to destroy those writers that created the tortures she had to endure and that kept her imprisoned in the building by never finishing the novel.  Tyron Leitso does a decent job as the new writer who falls in love with Valerie.  The writing group that brought these dark characters to life consists of Christopher Lloyd, Suki Kaiser, and Jonathan Watton.

The disc includes a nice making of documentary which shows how they pulled off the amazing climax.  It also includes a featurette on jump shots which are designed solely to make the audience jump out of their seats.  Both are very well done and interview all the right people.  My only complaint disc wise was the huge amount of trailers on the front of the movie.  Normally I love trailers, but it seemed like we were getting trailers for all of the season 2 episodes as well as selected season one episodes.  I eventually hit the menu button and skipped past several of them.

I thought this was a pretty decent Masters of Horror, and much better than Garris’ season one episode.  I give it a 9 on the Night Flight scale.

Videodrome

I saw Videodrome when it was first released and it blew me away.  I didn’t completely understand it, but I still loved it.  The effects were revolutionary for the time and the idea that a person could be turned into a human video player that could be controlled by what was on a tape inserted into their body was mind-boggling.  I did some trading and managed to get the one sheet for this film and it hung over my bed for years.  Several years later I recall finding out that the film was available as an unrated DVD.  I began searching for it, but kept running into the R rated version.  Finally I found a used copy at FYE.  I was ecstatic.  Then I found out Criterion had released a two disc edition packed with all sorts of goodies.  I stumbled across that at FYE as well and added it to my collection.  It had been several years since my last viewing of Videodrome, and I had never checked out either of the DVDs I had purchased, so today I popped the original unrated Universal DVD into my player.

I was surprised at how much of the film I had forgotten.  There were scenes I just did not recall.  And these weren’t the scenes that had been added to the uncut DVD.  I also couldn’t help but marvel at the pronouncement of one of the characters, Professor Brian O’Blivion.  He states that O’Blivion is not his birth name, that it is his television name.  He then states that soon everyone will have television names.  Well, he was half right.  Most people these days have a screen name, but it is for the computer, albeit often for video blogs which is similar to television.

Videodrome stars James Woods as Max Renn, a sleazy cable channel operator that is looking for something edgier than the soft core porn he has been airing.  He stumbles across Videodrome, a television program with no plot except sexual torture.  He is hooked and his new partner, Deborah Harry, becomes intrigued as well.  She is into pain as a form of pleasure showing Max scars where other boyfriends had cut her at her request.  She offers to show Max a few things and soon he is sticking needles into her ear lobes.  Max has one other major change in his life.  He has started having headaches coupled with hallucinations.

David Cronenberg has often been described as a “body horror” filmmaker, and Videodrome takes this to new levels.  Max develops a giant slit in his abdomen where a gun can be hidden, or a living video tape inserted.  It’s hard to tell where Max’s dreams begin and reality ends.  One scene has him grabbing his secretary and slapping her only to watch her turn into Debbie Harry and then back with another slap.  He apologizes for his reaction and then for hitting her, but she informs him he never did hit her.

The Universal DVD is light on extras.  There are a couple of the slide show production notes and cast bios as well as one of the theatrical trailers.  The Criterion edition is much more giving in the extras department.  There are two commentary tracks as well as the short film Camers on the main disc.  The second disc contains a couple of featurettes created by Mick Garris as promotional tools for Universal when the film was first released.  One of them contains a roundtable interview with Cronenberg as well as John Landis and John Carpenter (who was currently finalizing The Thing).  The interview was very entertaining although it was not truly Videodrome specific.  Mick’s second featurette was on the making of the film.  While this feature was more Videodrome specific, I didn’t find it nearly as interesting.  Part of this may have been because much of the footage in this featurette had also been featured in a featurette about the special effects and make up crew’s challenges on the film.  That featurette was created for Criterion and looks at Videodrome from the perspective of 2004.  The people they interviewed including Rick Baker no longer had to worry about spoiling key plot points or revealing trade secrets of the time, so it was much more informative,

The Criterion edition also includes three trailers and a slide show of  various marketing materials.  The French lobby card set looked really nice.  If you needed any further reason to pick up the Criterion edition, there is also a nearly 40 page booklet as well as a truly cool looking DVD case decked out to look like a video tape.

Videodrome is still an amazing movie, although it may not be what one would call escapist entertainment.  It challenges the mind and creates images that will remain in your mind long after the movie is over.  By all means, if you are a fan of the film, grab the Criterion edition which also contains the 89 minutes uncut version.  Videodrome gets 3 1/2 stars.