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 It was based on a story by Clive Barker that dealt with a house set up as a boarding home for unpublished writers to work on getting their projects written and published.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.
365 Days of DVDs 