The Good

Master’s Of Horror continues the fine tradition of bringing great horror to TV.

The Bad

They seem to have left off some of the bells and whistles that came with the other releases.

Masters of Horror: Season 1, Vol. 1 continues Showtime’s commitment to bringing quality horror shows to television. By having Directors like John Carpenter be a part of the proceedings, a show like this attains an almost instant legitimacy. The three shows on this Blu-ray disc are:

  • Cigarette Burns

  • Dreams in the Witch House

  • Fair Haired Child

Cigarette Burns follows a man who searches for long lost films. On his quest he gets more than he bargained for with one particular property. You can read more about this film by clicking this link. Dreams in the Witch House finds horror favorite Stuart Gordon tackling the world of H.P. Lovecraft. Click here to read more about this DVD. Lastly, Fair Haired Child is surprisingly topical as a teenager is put into a basement with the child of a sadistic couple. You can click this link to find out more about this release.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

Masters of Horror is the kind of show that doesn’t shy away from mixing craft with good, old fashioned creeps.

Features

These are tracks with John Carpenter and then the one with writers Drew McWeeny & Scott Swan. I was torn with these because I didn’t have time to listen to both and certainly wanted to hear what John Carpenter had to say, yet, I have a soft spot for writers. So, I basically listened to a little bit of each of them. I found Carpenter to be pretty much how I thought he would be. He broke down the film, explaining what he was trying to achieve and the writers talked about creating the characters.

This is a commentary track with writer/director Stuart Gordon and actor Ezra Godden who plays Walter in the film. As Gordon has always struck me as a bit of a mythic character, it was interesting to hear him discuss making this film with his main actor. I think it’s interesting how he chose to focus on certain things with the material, and even though I didn’t find this film that scary, it certainly has a creepiness about it.

Writer Matt Greenberg and director William Malone sit back and discuss this film. One thing that is interesting is that since these shows are only one hour, the director and everyone else doing the commentary track has to get to their points across quicker. Sometimes that makes the people talking act in an overly serious manner, but I didn’t really see that as a problem here. They talked about the characterizations, pulling off certain shots, and what they felt all the players brought to the Fair Haired Child equation.

Video

1.77 Anamorphic - 1080i AVC MPEG-4 transfer. Cigarette Burns, Dreams in the Witch House and Fair Haired Child all looked pretty darn solid. Since this set is showcasing the work of three directors we are treated to a litany of different filmmaking styles. John Carpenter seems to take the most straight forward approach, while Stuart Gordon always seems to be searching for that particular mood. I think that William Malone brings forth the most new school-style of filmmaking, in terms of cutting and shot composition, however all the shows play nicely against one another.

Audio

Dolby Surround 5.1 - Uncompressed 5.1 PCM. The sound on this release was good but nothing really grabbed me. Since these shows are obviously made on a budget, I think that they put more stock into grabbing talent with well written scripts than they do with FX and sound work. As I said about the Look of these shows, three different directors give us three different directing styles, and that certainly is true for the audio in terms of what information it seems like the director in question want to share.

Package

This macabre looking black and red cover gives this whole Masters of Horror collection a very chilling feel. The back portion continues this motif giving us descriptions of the films, Bonus Features listings and system specs. I really liked how compact they have made this entire release as I feel it bodes well for this set.

Final Word

Getting to see Masters of Horror: Season 1, Vol. 1 on Blu-ray disc was extremely impressive. While I don’t know that it’s that great that these Blu-ray releases come out so soon after their standard counterparts, I will say that they did look pretty good. Having screened these things on standard DVD and also a little bit on TV, getting to see them on Blu-ray disc was impressive. Also, I went into this release a little skeptically mainly because I honestly didn’t think there was anything they could do to make these shows look that much better. Honestly, I don’t think that they do but if you have a Blu-ray player and you don’t already own these releases, you could certainly put some juice into your Halloween by having these discs in your collection.

As a fan of horror it is sure nice to see that this genre is alive and kicking on Blu-ray Disc.

Masters of Horror was released .