Betrayed.

This is what horror fans felt by the end of the first season of Masters Of Horror. With its incredible list of genre directors, hype was expected, and hyped the show became. After all, this was the most promising horror anthology since Tales From The Crypt. But something was amiss with this new series. The fact is, a large number of episodes simply weren’t that good, and this was made all the more upsetting having been created by the world’s greatest horror veterans.

I am one of those fans. I felt betrayed.

While I didn’t hate it outright, one of the biggest disappointments of the first season to me was Jenifer. The film had a passable, but average story, poor acting, and… well, it played like a generic DTV Lions Gate thriller. Certainly, this wasn’t the work of a director that single-handedly shaped the way I viewed the horror genre, as well as foreign film, and filmmaking in general. Was it? There was no getting around it, though, Dario Argento’s name was all over the print.

So, it was with some reservation that I decided to watch Pelts, the first episode released on DVD from the second season of Masters Of Horror. I’m a glutton for punishment. I sincerely hoped that I would enjoy Pelts, but I prepped the Astroglide in case Showtime had plans to rape me again.

Thankfully, it was an unnecessary concern.

In a story that will make PeTA both wince and stand up and cheer, Pelts is an animal revenge film of a most interesting sort. A father and son team of furriers (one of whom is played by genre favorite John Saxon, A Nightmare On Elm Street) go hunting for animals on land that is not theirs. When they go to retrieve their traps, they find them filled with raccoons which have the most beautiful coats on them that either hunter has ever seen. After taking them home, cleaning them, and calling their main client, Jack Feldman (singer Meat Loaf, Rocky Horror Picture Show & BloodRayne), to report to him their findings, they turn in for the night. But the beauty of the pelts, and the spirits of the animals they once belonged to, haunt the hunter’s son, who kills his father before killing himself, both in very grotesque manners.

The following morning, Jack arrives at the hunters’ home to examine the product. Even after finding two mutilated corpses, he still can’t get over how incredible the pelts look, and immediately makes plans to fashion the most beautiful fur coat ever made, and make himself filthy rich off the attention he’s sure to generate at a fashion show the following month – all before phoning the police. He even knows exactly who he would like to model it. A lesbian stripper named Shana (Ellen Ewusie) that he has been obsessing over for some time now who wants nothing to do with him, except for his money.

Things start to go from bad to worse for Jack and his employees, as the people who are closest to the pelts grow steadily more disturbed and they start meeting their own demise in the same fashion as what they do to the pelts. A cutter starts cutting himself, a seamstress sews herself up and suffocates to death. All the while Jack remains steadfast, marching forward with one goal in mind: winning Shana. But these things never end well.

One of the things that I like about the script is the return to a moralistic type message that used to be common in horror anthologies like The Twilight Zone, Tales From The Crypt and Monsters. It gives it that old time comic book story feel, even though the subject matter is very adult. The people being punished and killed may not be the worst sinners of the world, but they are far from upstanding citizens, and the bloodshed is very eye-for-an-eye. The acting is also well done. Meat Loaf doesn’t go overboard hamming it up, but he does have enough fun with his character that his smarminess and sleaziness are enough to make the viewer sick. John Saxon was perfect. I only wish he'd had a larger role.

But what is especially great about Pelts is that it has director Dario Argento coming back to full form. You can tell he could input himself more into this script than he did with Jenifer. The obsession with cutting utensils, the old woman who owns the property the raccoons were hunted on, the extreme (and I do mean extreme, especially for television) gore shots, and a beautifully haunting score by Claudio Simonetti (who worked on the original Dawn Of The Dead and Suspiria) which precedes several of the victims just prior to their self-inflicted end.

Pelts is the episode of Masters Of Horror I’ve been waiting for. This is a fine example of what this series could accomplish. In fact, it actually has me excited about the show. Here’s hoping that, going forward, they can consistently maintain this quality.

The DVD Presentation
As expected from those following the Masters Of Horror DVD Releases, the overall quality here is very good. Darks are very dark, colors are vibrant, and compression is non-existent (it helps that the film is under an hour long). Pelts isn’t any different. Everything looks fantastic, from the nighttime hunting sequence, to the neon-lit strip clubs, everything is so clear it’s as if you were there. The audio is equally impressive, but it doesn’t have much to work with aside from the soundtrack and score. Anchor Bay still isn’t putting subtitles on the disc, which still shocks me nearly ten years after I purchased my first DVD from them. Overall though, it’s a great disc.

And the Extras Are?
Audio Commentary with Writer Matt Venne –
You might be surprised to hear this, but this is one of the best commentary tracks that I’ve ever heard. This is made all the more surprising when you hear Matt Venne state that Pelts was the first screenplay that he’s ever had filmed. He is never boring to listen to, talks in great detail about how he changed the original story, and how Dario changed some of his script, and he isn’t afraid to admit what he feels are his weaknesses. His anecdotes from the set, Argento, and his obvious affection for the genre are quite apparent. I’m stunned to believe that Matt never did a commentary track before. A surprising and much appreciated feature.

Fleshing It Out: The Making of Pelts – (13:15)
A traditional featurette, this is the meatiest feature on the DVD. It features interviews with all of the principle cast, as well as director Dario Argento and writer Matt Venne. Some of what Matt has to say is repeated from the commentary track, but the interviews with the rest are well worth the minor redundancies. If you liked Pelts, you will be interested in watching this.

All Sewn Up: Mastering the Effects Sequence – (7:23)
For the gorehounds, Anchor Bay was kind enough to include a little make-up featurette focusing mainly on the death of the seamstress. While short, it shows exactly how much work it can take just to make a scene that lasts a couple of minutes. Interviews include Lee Wilson, the visual effects supervisor, the unequaled Howard Berger, special effects make-up supervisor, and actress Elise Lew, who had to go through the hell of being under these prosthetics.

Original Storyboards by John Lund –
This is awesome in idea, and poor in execution. Each individual storyboard is shown one at a time, for a total of 43 screens you will have to flip through. This would be well and good if they were blown up to fill your screen, but they are oddly framed. It’s certainly a fun feature to compare the progression from paper to film.

Photo Gallery –
14 stills. With only a couple being behind-the-scenes set photos, this is a pretty boring collection. These suffer from the same framing problem as the storyboards.

Dario Argento Bio –
An all new bio (at least, not one used on any of the Anchor Bay DVDs I’ve seen), this offers a pretty cool rundown of the director’s work. Hopefully, it will inspire new fans with places to start if they wish to explore his past.

Anchor Bay Trailer Gallery –
It appears that Anchor Bay has dropped the inclusion of every Masters Of Horror trailer, and this time they included only those for John Carpenter’s Pro-Life (1:27) and Dario Argento’s Jenifer (1:42) both presented in non-anamorphic widescreen, along with trailers for the animated Hellboy: Sword Of Storms (0:36) and The Darkroom (1:22). Anamorphically, we are treated to trailers for the upcoming From Dusk Till Dawn rip-off Devil’s Den (1:16), as well as two of Dario Argento’s films Trauma (2:01) and The Card Player (2:05). All of these auto-play when you first play your disc.

The Bottom Line
I’m going to assume that you, reader, aren’t the type that has nothing better to do than troll horror forums like I do. In my travels, I’ve found that while every episode of Masters Of Horror has its fans and its (much greater number of) detractors, it’s widely agreed that most viewers think that 85% of this “Emmy nominated” series sucks balls. I haven’t seen all of the episodes myself, but from what I have watched I tend to agree with that statement. This being said, I think that Pelts is one of the more interesting stories, which both harkens back to the moralistic stories of television horror anthology past and is extremely well made by Argento. If you were only going to pick up one episode, I think Pelts is a fantastic example of how the show could work if everything clicked just right.

…And it kicks all sorts of ass over Jenifer.