In addition to the usual reviews and comments you would find on a horror movie blog, this is also a document of the wonderfully vast horror movie section of the video store I worked at in my youth.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Horror On The Tube

Now that Lost and CSI have come to a close for another season with hockey right behind it, television has become a very dry place. But fear not, because there’s nothing to fear, but Fear Itself. Ugh… I apologize, that sounded better in my head.

Several months ago, the producers of the Showtime horror anthology series Masters Of Horror announced that they would scrapping a planned third season and instead develop a new episodic project for NBC called Fear Itself. So, essentially Masters Of Horror Lite. That’s not to say that a 14A anthology show can’t be good, but a large part of the appeal of the Masters Of Horror series were the copious amounts of gore provided by KNB EFX. Though even Showtime displayed some very un-cable network like behaviour toward the end of its first season. MOH was supposed to be series where the filmmakers had free reign, but after recruiting Takashi Miike (infamous purveyor of all things batshit loco and perverse) to direct an episode, they banned it at the eleventh hour. Basically, they let the lion out of its cage, and then acted all surprised when it fucked their shit up. I’ll always be shaking my head about that one. But, I digress.

I was initally skeptical about Fear Itself, but Mick Garris and company have managed to assemble a decent line-up of guest directors for me to since give it the benefit of the doubt. The impressive list includes such icons as John Carpenter, John Landis and Stuart Gordon, as well as Brad Anderson, Ronny Yu and Mary Harron. It premieres tomorrow night and I plan to post my thoughts after each episode. First up, is “The Sacrifice” directed by relative newcomer Breck Eisner. Eisner has been tapped to direct three remakes over the next few years (The Crazies, Creature From The Black Lagoon and Flash Gordon*), but I’ll reserve judgment until I see his episode. Sacrifice is about four criminals who take refuge in an old fort and realize they are not alone.

June seems like an odd time to be rolling out this kind of programming, but if it’s good, it will hopefully catch on with some sort of audience. Click here for more info on the show.


*-according to Imdb.

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