Masters Of Horror - Collector's Edition 1

6 DVD Boxed Set

340 Minutes

IDT Home Entertainment Australia.

R4 DVD

I love horror films, I adore the texture and mood of Suspiria and other works by Dario Argento and at the same time can admire the sheer brutality of Friday 13^th, Nightmare on Elm Street or related slashers. However my criteria for such enjoyment is the imagination. I have no trouble with violence and gore but they must be in context and fulfill a purpose. Over the last few years I have become a little jaded with the latest horror releases, indie releases seem even worse than mainstream. The emphasis seems to be on gore, the more the better and there seems to be a glorification of the special effects over content. Indeed the aim seems to be to shock, if we can disembowel and show as much viscera as possible then then we have achieved our goal. This may be fine for a certainly type of audience, but for me, this is not horror but anatomy ! So when I came across the Masters of Horror series, I was thrilled to say the least !

This is a series which focuses on the Imagination, sure it has lots, and I mean LOTS, of shocks, violence and gore, but the focus is on solid story telling, great acting and superb directing. This series shows a new way forward for horror films, resurrecting the old art of well crafted stories grafted with the latest in special effects.

In Australia these are being released in two boxed sets, rather than as single or double sets as in the US. These sets are superbly produced; each DVD has lots of extras from commentaries to interviews and documentaries.

The first series includes some outstanding films, to just discuss a couple..

Incident On and Off a Mountain Road is an amazing experience, directed by the Master Don Coscarelli of Phantasm fame it offers a truly terrifying journey into darkness. A young woman must battle against a deformed and demented serial killer who seems intent on her torture and death. But there is more than meets the eye, she must use the very skills she learned from her survivalist boyfriend, whom she came to loath, to survive. This is so much more that a mutant redneck tale, there are layers of story here coupled with breathtaking horror and some very challenging violence. “Moonface” the demented killer is a true horror to behold !

Cigarette Burns is another impressive showing, while some have felt John Carpenter has lost his edge in recent years, this is a real return to form. A researcher of rare film prints is given a strange task by a rare film collector played by a rather perverse Udo Kier. He is searching for a rare film allegedly shown only once and rumoured to have driven its audience into a murderous frenzy before the theatre mysteriously erupted into flames. The closer he comes to the film, the more it intrudes on his reality and film and reality begin to merge. This is fascinating, nearly dreamlike, horror experience and brings together all sorts of genres from the love of old films to the thin line between imagination and reality. The climatic ending is a real gem !

There are so many more delights in this first series including Stuart Gordon’s take on the classic H.P Lovecraft tale Dreams In The Witch House to Mick Garris’s transgressive exploration of gender in Chocolate.

The Masters of Horror is an imaginative and powerful series, bringing together an amazing array of master film-makers with the latest technology and powerful and challenging scripts.

This is not to be missed.

The second series will be out on December.