Masters of Horror season 1

I know this is a TV series and I don't put TV series here, but as each episode is a short movie by itself I'll review them here. Idea of this series is that Anchor Bay has gathered some of the greatest horror movie makers together to make one hour long short movies. The selection varies from poor to very good. Finally had the time to watch them, so here's season one.


Incident on and Off a Mountain Road (2005)

Movie starts off as a quite basic slasher, but towards the end gets some twists to mix it up. Didn't like the flashbacks at start, they were just plain stupid, but as they tell a story of their own which influences the outcome, they were kinda needed. The first half with a survival battle in the woods was quite bad though there were some unintentionally funny moments which kept it entertaining. Towards the end it took a better turn and the twist wasn't that bad either. All in all quite ok movie.
60%


Dreams in the Witch-House (2005)

I like the Lovecraft story but this movie wasn't doing it much justice. There were some ok scenes, but not enough to carry the whole movie. Acting was quite bad and some scenes were just stupid. The man-rat was stupidly goofy and the witch wasn't exactly scary either. In the end not very good film with very little to offer.
20%


Dance of the Dead (2005)

This post apocalyptic vision by Tobe Hooper was surprisingly good, especially knowing what kind of crap the guy has made since the late 80's. Liked many of the ideas in this and it was nicely done. Too bad that towards the end all the momentum it had made falls into the corny plot. Worth the watch and one of the better ones he has made in the last 20 years.
70%


Jenifer (2005)

Dario Argento was at one point one of the best horror movie makers in the world, but has since faded in the vast nothingness. So my hopes were definitely not high for this one. And unfortunately it was pretty much what I feared. The story was ok, though the way the motives were brought up very poor. Rest was below average, even bad at points.
29%


Chocolate (2005)

Kind of an ok movie but with a lot of plot holes. I got the feeling that this story would have worked way better as a book and not a short movie as it rushes things a bit too much.
52%


Homecoming (2005)

Quite a nice film with a very different take on zombies. I can imagine this movie had even a stronger impact when Bush was the president. Still somewhat fresh movie worth watching.
80%


Deer Woman (2005)

The idea is just stupid, but it's more of a horror comedy anyways so it works quite well. This was surprisingly badly made, there were tons of little errors and those weird moments where the editing and dialog didn't really match. Also those crossfaded images were just plain crappy, could have worked in the 70's but not today. But still didn't get bored and it had it's moments. The lady was quite nice.
43%


Cigarette Burns (2005)

John Carpenter's best movie in over 20 years. Though that's not really anything special as he has put out some crappy films lately. Anyways this was a nice surprise and good to see that he can still do it when the story is right. Sure there were some bad scenes and the acting was sub par, but in the end it was entertaining and at points even quite chilling.
78%


The Fair Haired Child (2006)

This was surprisingly good. The demon kid was actually quite well made and looked freaky enough to be scary. The story was nothing special, but it kept me interested well enough. Worth the watch.
66%


Sick Girl (2006)

The leading lady in this one couldn't act at all, really a horrible performance. The story was kinda ok at parts, but the creatures were a bit too goofy to be scary. Nice ending though.
46%


Pick Me Up (2006)

This was total garbage. Bad acting, bad story, bad film. Though at some points it almost was bad enough to be good, but not quite.
2%


Haeckel's Tale (2006)

Clive Barker's story and the director of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) sounds good on paper. Well the movie wasn't bad either. Kind of predictable at parts, but the undead love was kind of a nice what the fuck moment.
58%


Imprint (2006)

Takashi Miike is a guarantee for something absurdly disturbing, so this wasn't a big surprise even though there were scenes that were really strong. One of the better from the series and totally in a different world than the rest. Well worth watching.
79%


All in all a very mixed series. Some of the movies were idiotic crap and some actually very good. As a whole it still kind of left a bad taste in the mouth. Is this really the best these "masters" of horror could do?