 When Masters of Horror was initially announced, I must say that my heart (or at least
the black lump of afterbirth I claim to be a heart) was downright aflutter at the possibility of such a show ever existing.
When the directors were announced, my eyes went wide and my
anticipation was even stronger than before. But a couple of
things caught my attention; for one thing, what the hell was
William Malone doing on the project? The other was Stuart
Gordon.
Almost
all of the filmmakers included in the project were high profile,
and yet had fallen from grace – some of them rather
harshly. Even Lucky McKee (who helmed Sick Girl starring your favorite and mine, Misty Mundae) managed to
hit it out of the park with his debut May,
but was bitch-slapped by the major studios after making The
Woods over two years ago - and it still has yet to be released.
There are exceptions of course; Don Coscarelli managed to
come back with his surprisingly touching Bubba Ho-Tep,
while Mick Garris… Well… He created the series,
so everyone else can fuck off if they don’t like Sleepwalkers.
Oh wait, Garris wrote the script for The
Fly II? Nevermind – I love you, Mick Garris.
As
for Gordon, despite the cult success of Re-Animator he never truly made the big leagues. That’s not to say
that Gordon’s work is any less influential or good in
comparison to other people who worked on Masters of
Horror, but the man isn’t exactly high-profile,
nor has he ever been, really. In fact, I’m surprised
Stuart Gordon was hired in the first place. He seems like
the type of horror director that wouldn’t have even
been considered to do the series, which would have left me
asking, “where’s Stuart Gordon?”
 But hey, Gordon actually was attached to direct
an episode of Masters of Horror and now we
have the proof that it actually happened! Stuart
Gordon brings us episode two of the first season of Masters
of Horror: H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams In The
Witch-House.
In the creepy town of Arkham, Massachusetts
(where the state bird is despair), Walter Gilman, a studious
young man researching quantum physics, string theory and all
that wacky nonsense has just moved into a ramshackle apartment
complex. Aside from the rats in the walls, everything seems
to be going decently; the rent is the cheapest he can find
and that’s all that matters. In fact, Walter even manages
to strike up a friendship with his neighbor Frankie, a young,
attractive single mother.
Like most Lovecraft stories, things soon start falling apart.
However, unlike most Lovecraft stories, this adaptation features
neither antiquated language nor unapologetic racism –
two elements I consider crucial to any Lovecraft classic.
 Soon,
Walters dreams about the peculiar Brown Jenkin, a gruesome
rat with a human face – a psychotic little Muppet familiar
who does the dirty work for a witch who gets her kicks coasting
from dimension to dimension, seducing men with her wily ways
(it’s a Showtime original series, bring on the nudity!)
and demanding the sacrifice of children. Initially Walter
is easy prey, but he slowly realizes what’s going on;
the witch has her eye on Frankie’s child. Walter tries
to keep a grip on reality, but with a witch on the brain and
a fat superintendent demanding rent, he can’t hold onto
his sanity for much longer.
Here’s a clue: you can tell how far off his rocker
Walt is by monitoring his stubble growth. The longer the stubble,
the more insane he is.
Dreams In The Witch-House is a fairly slight
story. It’s self-contained, has one location, a handful
of roles and a limited need for special effects. In other
words, it’s absolutely perfect for a low-to-mid budget
cable series. Thankfully, Stuart Gordon’s previous films
show that he’s adept at drama in  addition
to splatter, and Dreams In The Witch-House benefits from this. But there is one major misstep, and that’s
its star Ezra Godden.
Stuart, why use Ezra Godden – not once, but twice in your movies? The man sticks out like a sore thumb in a
capable cast. Chelah Horsdal is convincing as Frankie (and
has quite the backside, I must admit) and Campbell Lane is
excellent as the religious kook Mazurowitz (and has quite
the backside, I must admit). But Godden? He takes me straight
out of the action with his constant mugging and his stubble
growth. I swear there was a point where Godden actually stopped
time with his acting. My eyes rolled into the back of my head,
I sat there in the darkest recesses of infinity, and when
I came back it was still 11:43. It turns out you don’t
need deep meditation, lucid dreaming or psychotropics to induce
astral projection, you just need an hour with Ezra.
Presentation
The anamorphic widescreen video is sharp, and the
muted color palette (though certain bursts of color are permitted
to surprising effect) comes across very well. It’s not
a dazzling transfer, but there’s little to complain
about. Also quite good is the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.
For the most part it’s a subtle yet effective mix; this
is a quiet story, but the score comes through nicely, and
when the tension starts to mount, the soundtrack goes with
it.
The Extras
When it was revealed that the Masters of Horror series would be released episode-by-episode at around $15
a pop, it seemed like a ridiculous money-grab. However Anchor
Bay, who knows how to throw together a decent special edition,
managed to pack in enough extras to take the sting out of
the release format – though it proves frustrating at
times.
First up we have an audio commentary featuring Stuart
Gordon, DVD Producer Perry Martin and plank-o-wood Ezra Godden.
Focused and informative, Martin drills Gordon on making of
the film, working on film  adaptations,
differences between the source material and general chitchat.
It’s quite easy to say that this is the most essential
extra on the disc.
Under the Featurettes section of the disc we have
two excessive celebrations of Stuart Gordon’s work, Dreams, Darkness And Damnation: An Interview with Stuart
Gordon, and Working With A Master: Stuart Gordon.
The first covers Gordon’s history including his start
in theater and his break into film, while the second collects
interviews with people Gordon worked with in the past. From
Jeffrey Combs to Ken Foree, everyone has nothing but good
things to say about Gordon, which leaves the whole thing a
little dull. They’re worth viewing once, but they probably
don’t have much replay value.
Also, the spoiler warning in front of these featurettes isn’t
screwing around – not only do they spoil Dreams
In The Witch House, but there are many clips from
Gordon’s previous work that it spoils, right down to
even showing clips from Robot Jox.
Tired of the Gordon love fest? Well, there’s an on-set
interviewwith actress Chelah Horsdal that runs roughly
7 minutes and covers her dedication to the project, and shows
off her actorly ways.
Since there aren’t too many gore effects to focus on,
the featurette on special effects focuses on Brown Jenkin,
the hybrid man-rat and servant to the witch. Under SFX:
Meet Brown Jenkin, we’re introduced to  recent
Academy Award-winning Howard Berger and his tiny rat puppet,
which proves that you should never show special effects under
natural lighting.
Finally, a behind the scenes footage collage proves
worthless since most of the footage shows up in the previous
features.
Back to the main Extras menu, we have a collection
of picture and text based features that nobody pays attention
to and don’t need much elaboration. There’s the stills gallery, the storyboard gallery,
a Stuart Gordon biography and the DVD-ROM extras,
which include both the original story by H.P. Lovecraft, and
Stuart’s adaptation of the material.
Finally, floating somewhere in-between the commentary and
the text-based extras in terms of importance, we have trailers for eight Masters of Horror episodes (Takashi
Miike’s Imprint is still M.I.A.) and
additional Anchor Bay trailers for Masters of Horror (which summarizes the entire series), Room 6, Demon Hunter and Halloween.
Overall
Dreams In The Witch-House is a minor effort from a director I admire, but it’s
not a total loss. The DVD presentation is solid, and there
are a few decent goodies in the extras worth looking into.
Having not seen the Masters of Horror series
until now, I do hope that the scope of the series widens,
though.
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