Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on October 25, 2006, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
As Showtime and creator Mick Garris’ Masters of Horror enters its second season of handing veteran fright directors and talented up-and-comers the keys to the kingdom (well, OK, a modestly budgeted but well-furnished house), two of the first episodes to be made visible are encores by directors whose Masters were among the most polarizing of the first round. Tobe Hooper’s Dance of the Dead and Garris’ own Chocolate were largely love-’em-or-hate-’em affairs; the former’s The Damned Thing kicks things off on Showtime, while the latter’s Valerie on the Stairs (pictured above) will be shown at Phoenix, AZ’s 2nd Annual International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival. Both are more straightforward fear fests than the punk-flashy Dance and the romantically oriented Chocolate, and contain enough spookiness and grue to satisfy fright-seeking viewers.
The Damned Thing is an extremely loose adaptation—or more accurately, an expansion—of an Ambrose Bierce (very) short story. Screenwriter Richard Christian Matheson, also returning from Dance, has expanded the account of a man’s murder by a monstrous unseen force into a tale set in Hooper’s familiar stamping grounds of rural Texas. Here, a vivid prologue establishes the malefactor as one that influences others to awful deeds, heralded by the dripping of blackish-green gook (appearing left over from the director’s feature Mortuary) from the ceiling. It causes a loving father and husband to turn a shotgun on his own family, with his son escaping to grow up into tormented sheriff Kevin (Sean Patrick Flanery), who when we meet him in adulthood has separated from his wife (Marisa Coughlan). All his life, he has been possessed by fear of “the damned thing” that drove his dad to homicide—to the point of installing video surveillance cameras around his house—and a series of strange and violent incidents begin to suggest that it’s on its way back, with a vengeance.
One of the first of these setpieces continues Hooper’s penchant for misuse of household tools but contains more spurting blood than all of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and is among a few moments in The Damned Thing that are genuinely cringeworthy. While the director sneaks in a few touches of his traditional sardonic humor (my favorite: a throwaway shot of a poster advertising the movie Jesus Heist), he mostly concerns himself with the inexorable dramatic build as more and more townspeople fall under the sway of “the damned thing” and Kevin is left to protect his family and confront his ancestral connection to the frightening phenomenon. The exposition is a little shaky, and the narrative doesn’t all hold together, but then coming apart is what this episode is all about, and Hooper creates a palpable tension and sense of small-town apocalypse.
Flanery, who has filled out somewhat since his Young Indiana Jones days, makes for a credibly haunted protagonist, and genre buffs will enjoy a supporting turn by Ted Raimi as the local priest, who is not immune to the godless presence overtaking his flock. The Damned Thing builds to an ending that, once again, is likely to divide viewers; some will find it effectively bleak, others unsatisfyingly abrupt. Either way, the episode is well worth tuning in for.
Valerie on the Stairs may find Garris adopting darker tones (visually and emotionally) than in Chocolate, but thematically they’re very much of a piece. Both center on young men who become fixated on young women they cannot touch, and seek to physically connect with them; for that matter, Valerie, based on an original treatment by Clive Barker, also bears echoes of the Barker-derived Candyman in its theme of imagination spawning a physical monster. (It even casts Candyman’s Tony Todd as the demon in question.) The setting is a boarding house/writers’ retreat where budding scribes can live and work rent-free until they find takers for their masterpieces, and is inhabited by the expected collection of misfits along with the titular ghost (Clare Grant). The house’s newest resident, 20something Rob Hanisee (Tyron Leitso), has barely moved in before he first hears Valerie’s cries and then encounters the spirit-girl, who is clearly in torment and gets snatched away into the shadows before Rob can have meaningful communications with her.
Taken with Valerie’s plight (and the fact that she looks great naked), Rob starts an investigation which leads him to discover that the girl is directly connected not only to the house, but to more than one of the writers living there. The earnestness of Rob’s quest and Leitso’s performance is nicely balanced by an amusing, eccentric turn by the dependably amusing and eccentric Christopher Lloyd, playing a longtime resident whose sole published credit is a long-ago tacky horror novel that was made into an even tackier film. (Another fun onscreen poster detail: That movie was so bad that the director’s credit is Alan Smithee.) Grant isn’t just a gorgeous object of desire but brings sympathy and vulnerability to the role of Valerie, and her innocence plays effectively off of Todd’s domineering malevolence as her demonic captor.
KNB EFX’s makeup for this sexual monster is just enough to establish his underworldliness while still allowing Todd to bring him to life with his own face and body language. Just as in Damned Thing, though, there’s no restraint in the gore department, as Garris showcases a handful of showy splatter setpieces that pack a strong, visceral punch. These moments, along with the creepy atmosphere the director elicits in the dilapidated house as well as in the netherworld below it, help Valerie past the occasional overly expository or on-the-nose dialogue passage, paying off with an odd, graceful and remarkable final scene. And as in The Damned Thing, the story content feels right for the hour length that the Masters of Horror format demands. If these two entries are any indication, the series doesn’t seem to be in any danger of falling into a sophomore slump.
