R.I.P. Peter Bogdanovich

With the death of Peter Bogdanovich we have lost another link to the glorious distant past of American cinema. He did leave behind many treasurable interviews, essays and anecdotes regarding some of those he revered most - Cary Grant, James Stewart, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford among others as well as documentaries on Ford and Buster Keaton. The great director Bertrand Tavernier passed away in March last year and in some ways he was a similar figure in regard to French cinema and its history.

The first serious book on cinema that I acquired was 'This Is Orson Welles', a collection of interviews (edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum) that a young Peter Bogdanovich did with Welles from the late 1960s through to the mid 1970s. It was a present from my parents on a visit to a random bookshop in King's Lynn when I was a teenager. In the years since I've read it from cover to cover many times and my copy is thoroughly worn through and tattered but the personal significance and sentimental value of the thing is hard to overstate. For me, it makes a biography of Welles more or less redundant as it gives you a real sense of Welles's personality behind the maverick persona, his sense of humour, his views and passions and an insight in to the incredible life that he lived. Bogdanovich is often accused of being a sycophant when dealing with his heroes but he challenges Welles on certain topics and respectfully disagrees on key subjects. It comes across as an enlightening experience for both men. Alongside the likes of Oja Kodar, Gary Graver, Henry Jaglom, Joseph McBride and Jonathan Rosenbaum he was one of several loyal Welles associates and collaborators to whom we owe a great deal for the continuing interest in Welles's work and they were all important advocates of his later career, helping make much of it possible. 

In addition to the book on Welles I've greatly enjoyed 'Who the Devil Made It', a terrific collection of interviews that Bogdanovich did with top Hollywood directors like Don Siegel, Edgar G. Ulmer, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg, Allan Dwan, Leo McCarey, Howard Hawks and Robert Aldrich. 

There was a trend for film critics to try their hand at directing films in the 1960s, most notably the French New Wave crowd (Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette & Chabrol) from the magazine Cahiers du Cinema, Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento in Italy and Lindsay Anderson in the U.K. In the U.S. Bogdanovich's fellow Movie Brat Paul Schrader had also been a critic and published works on key figures in international cinema. Not long after the Welles book changed the way I thought about film I encountered Bogdanovich's astonishing 1968 debut feature Targets on a late night BBC 2 screening from the series Moviedrome, a showcase for cult movies with introductions by Alex Cox and subsequently, Mark Cousins. Some kind person shared a recording of the introduction on YouTube: 

In the pre-internet age, there was an incredible sense of discovery that came with seeing such films, either by chance, luck or through dedicated research and effort, trawling through TV schedules and old film guides. I had read about it being a tremendous late career highlight for its ageing star Boris Karloff, who had been one of my Horror idols ever since I first viewed Frankenstein. The film is something of an anomaly in Bogdanovich's output, and his later work would generally steer clear from violent themes. 

As a filmmaker he shared a cine-literate approach with some of his contemporaries such as Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme and like them and many other greats he served his apprenticeship under the legendary low budget director/producer/distributor Roger Corman, who produced Targets. It would be my introduction to the filmography of one of the most singular and erratic talents in modern American cinema. I'm greatly looking forward to the forthcoming BFI Blu-Ray disc of the film later in the year. 

Targets (1968)

Following his subsequent career has proved to be challenging at times (due to the unavailability of certain titles) but also hugely rewarding. In terms of critical and commercial success his career unquestionably peaked at an early stage. His sophomore film, The Last Picture Show, is still his best known and most celebrated. 

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Many have observed that his then-wife Polly Platt was a highly significant (and for a long time undervalued) creative collaborator in his early career, working in an official capacity as a production designer and co-writer but she played a crucial role in shaping those films in other respects such as casting, costumes and choice of material. Before their separation they worked together on two subsequent hits (What's Up Doc? and Paper Moon), both of which were tributes to films of yesteryear and that typified Bogdanovich's affinity with the past. 

His fortunes had shifted considerably by the mid-1970s after a trio of much derided flops (Daisy Miller, At Long Last Love and Nickelodeon). These 3 titles are still on my "to watch" list as the received wisdom for decades afterwards was that they were all unmitigated disasters but in recent years there have been signs of a newfound appreciation for the first two of those mentioned. Proof perhaps that the internet is a great way for even the most despised films to have a second life. The divorce from Platt, relationships with the actress Cybill Shepherd and Playboy model Dorothy Stratten as well as the growing feeling that he had been a flash in the pan behind the camera attracted fierce criticism from both the press and fellow figures in the industry and seemed to be linked to his ever-growing misfortunes. Besides 1985's Mask he would never regain the prestige or success of his early work. His career has been all but written off by many at this stage, a casual dismissal that ignores or rejects numerous wonderful films. Perhaps being unburdened by the new whizzkid and "next Orson Welles" labels attached to him in his early efforts would allow Bogdanovich to produce some of his best work, often under troubled circumstances and rather sadly few seemed to notice.

Saint Jack (1979) and They All Laughed (1981), two of his finest films, fell completely under the radar due to legal troubles and botched distribution and were very difficult to see for long periods but are well worth seeking out. 

Saint Jack (1979)

They All Laughed (1981)

There's many other excellent films to his name that are overdue for a reappraisal including Noises Off... (1992 - for me the finest of his comedies), The Thing Called Love (1993) and The Cat's Meow (2001). All of these are testament to his great rapport and generosity with actors and it's worth remembering just how many performers did some of their best work under Bogdanovich's direction. Besides Academy Award winning performances by Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman and Tatum O'Neal in his films, the likes of John Ritter, Colleen Camp, Ben Gazzara, Denholm Elliott and Christopher Reeve all did tremendous character work and showcased their comic skills like never before when working with him.  

The Cat's Meow (2001)

In Texasville (1990) he returned to the setting and characters of The Last Picture Show with the sort of maturity and grace that seems to have gained currency in recent years in the films of such veterans as Martin Scorsese (The Irishman), Nobuhiko Obayashi (Hanagatami), John Boorman (Queen and Country) and Clint Eastwood (The Mule, Cry Macho). Some saw it as symbolic of Bogdanovich's dwindling status but I find it to be an extremely sincere and moving followup. Of all the belated sequels to New Hollywood classics that appeared in 1990 (The Two Jakes, Rocky V, The Exorcist III, The Godfather Part III) it feels like the most erudite and poignant in relation to its predecessor. The film's reckoning with the past is filled with loss, regret and nostalgia but also an acceptance of the passage of time that harkens back to films like The Magnificent Ambersons, Lola Montes, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Robin and Marian. 

Texasville (1990)

New features became less frequent but each new addition to his filmography became a major event to fans like myself. The very existence of 2014's She's Funny That Way (much like James L. Brooks's How Do You Know (2010), Warren Beatty's The Rules Don't Apply (2016) and Alan Rudolph's Ray Meets Helen (2017)) feels like a miracle of sorts, a strange anachronism in the cinema of the 2010s, and there are now stories that Bogdanovich's preferred cut of the film (titled Squirrels to the Nuts) does in fact exist.* I've also heard about a longer cut of Texasville that was once available on Laserdisc. I'd love to see it get some sort of restoration. 

He was a tireless devotee of cinema even through personal tragedy, bankruptcy and scandal. His ongoing efforts to get Welles's final film The Other Side of the Wind put together and given a belated release (courtesy of Netflix) in 2018 in a strange way brought his career full circle. The same year he gave us his final work as a director, The Great Buster: A Celebration, an affectionate tribute to one of the icons of comedy and silent cinema. Bogdanovich's own life and career was a remarkable and at times troubling story in its own right, in which a film enthusiast turned critic would go on to become a notable film historian and director whose contribution to film culture is incalculable.

R.I.P. Peter Bogdanovich (1939-2022)

Recommended links:

*James Kenney on the unreleased version of Bogdanovich's last film

2017 Q&A with Bogdanovich following a screening of They All Laughed (from metrograph.com)

Tribute by Joseph McBride (from WellesNet) 

Obituary by Glenn Kenny (from Decider.com)

Article by Kyle Smith (from National Review)

Tributes to Peter Bogdanovich (from IndieWire)

Peter Tonguette remembers Peter Bogdanovich (from IndieWire)

The Connection to Old Hollywood (from RogerEbert.com)

Peter Bogdanovich in memoriam (from The Pink Smoke podcast)

Peter Bogdanovich R.I.P. (from The Lamp magazine)

Peter Bogdanovich Recommends (YouTube Channel)

Peter Bogdanovich discusses David Fincher's film Mank (from Decider.com)

How Peter Bogdanovich shaped the backstory of modern cinema (from The New Yorker)

Bogdanovich responds to the 2012 Sight & Sound poll

Trivia:

Despite his doubts about the validity of conducting a survey of "the greatest films", Bogdanovich did contribute a ballot of his top ten films for the 1972 Sight & Sound poll. He mentioned that he had favourite directors rather than favourite films, as the list demonstrates:

• Young Mr. Lincoln (1939, John Ford)
• Only Angels Have Wings (1939, Howard Hawks)
• The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Orson Welles)
• Red River (1948, Howard Hawks)
• She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949, John Ford)
• The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
• Touch of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)
• Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
• Rio Bravo (1959, Howard Hawks)
• North by Northwest (1959, Alfred Hitchcock)

Halloween 2021

Autumn is my favourite season and, of course, October is my favourite month of the year. There are several reasons for this including the weather being more to my liking, the beautiful fall scenery in the area where I live and various annual events taking place (including Light Night in Leeds) but key among them is the Halloween period being a perfect excuse to indulge in my love of Horror films and literature. 

For my birthday this month I was very fortunate to receive the recent Studio Canal Blu-Ray of Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death, which showcases an impressive restoration by Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation. 

On the reading front I got a copy of 'The Wine-Dark Sea' by Robert Aickman and 'Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters', a collection of H.P. Lovecraft's correspondences edited by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. Lovecraft was probably the most prominent name in this month's immersion in Horror fare. More on him later.

I've got a long watchlist of Horror titles on my laptop so this month was an ideal time to work through some of the list. As usual the aim has been to watch at least 31 Horror titles by the end of the month, which I'm happy to say that I've accomplished, although it did mean missing a chance to see The Last Duel at cinemas and postponing a viewing of the new James Bond flick No Time to Die. The idea is to have a fairly eclectic range of choices, ranging from different countries, decades and subgenres. I wanted to take the opportunity to return to some old favourites but in the end I mostly took odd detours in to the genre's murkier realms.

Here's a link to the list of titles that I've watched over the course of the month.

I think I managed to cover a lot of ground, including a classic I'd not yet seen (1931's Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, with Frederic March), short films (The Death of David Cronenberg, My house walk-through), animation (Season's Greetings), a new cinema release (Halloween Kills - see review), the silent era (The Avenging Conscience & The Portrait), an anthology film (Necronomicon) and a chance to reassess one of the genre's landmarks (The Blair Witch Project).

The month got off to a lively star with Dead Silence, a semi-forgotten entry in the filmography of James Wan, being relatively obscure next to other titles of his like Saw, Furious 7 and Aquaman. It is a key entry in his work though, signifying some of what was still to come in the likes of Insidious, The Conjuring and Annabelle (which he produced). Having seen Dead Silence I can honestly say that the crazed excesses of his recent fright flick Malignant don't seem quite as uncharacteristic now.

I continued to work my way through two iconic franchises and have now reached part three of both the Phantasm and Final Destination series. I had delayed watching Phantasm III for quite some time after the crushing disappointment that I felt watching the second film. Fortunately the third entry feels like a much truer continuation of the original film and I look forward to moving on to part four eventually. I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I hadn't seen a Final Destination film until earlier this year. At the time the first film was released over twenty years ago I think I rather unfairly lumped it in with the cringe-inducing wave of post-Scream meta-Horror films that flooded screens in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Just to be clear, the Final Destination films are much smarter, wittier, more inventive, fun and worthwhile than anything Kevin Williamson has ever been linked to. FD3 doesn't reach the giddy heights of the previous two films but is a solid entry all the same. 

As I mentioned earlier, H.P. Lovecraft loomed large over this month's choices. I finally got around to reading 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward', which prompted a rewatch of Roger Corman's 1963 adaptation The Haunted Palace. For commercial reasons it was marketed as one of Corman and AIP's Edgar Allan Poe cycle, most of which starred Vincent Price. It uses Poe's poem for the title and it bookends the film in Price's voiceover but otherwise has little to no connection to his work. It's a fascinating effort but the script by Charles Beaumont feels a bit torn over which author it is meant to be serving. Necronomicon, a Lovecraft-inspired anthology film from 1993 is a little hard for me to judge as the picture and sound quality of the version I watched were pretty dreadful but I thought the final segment ('Whispers', directed by Brian Yuzna) was by far the best. The Curse of the Crimson Altar is a 1968 adaptation of 'Dreams in the Witch-House', although it uses relatively little of Lovecraft's tale and doesn't even acknowledge the original story in the opening credits. It pales next to Stuart Gordon's 2005 'Masters of Horror' episode derived from the same story but with Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee in the cast it was always going to be an enjoyable watch. Barbara Steele is the other Horror icon featured in the film and she's sadly underused. I wonder if some of her scenes were cut.

On a related note, I took the time to look up a couple of films that had been recommended by the late, great Stuart Gordon. On Trailers from Hell he discussed William Castle's 1961 chiller Mr. Sardonicus and Goodnight Mommy is a 2014 Austrian film which he championed in his Talkhouse column. Storywise the latter is very reminiscent of Robert Mulligan's The Other, which I watched in my 2020 October Horror marathon.

I've seen most of the classics of 1940s Horror (Cat People, Dead of Night, The Uninvited and so on) but it remains an underexplored period and relative blind spot in my knowledge of the genre's history. The Vampire's Ghost is notable as the first film credit of one of my favourite screenwriters, Leigh Brackett, and manages to effectively conjure an exotic, otherworldly eeriness on a shoestring budget. 1943's The Return of the Vampire was Bela Lugosi's last lead role in a major studio film, in this case Colombia Pictures. Watching Bela Lugosi when his career was on the wane after the incredible run he had in the 1930s is a rather painful task. It's sad to see one of the all time greats in irreversible decline. It has some impressive atmospherics and unconventional qualities for its period to distinguish it such as the plot using the setting of the London Blitz to bring about the revival of its bloodsucking antagonist (named Armand Tesla to avoid disputes with Universal who had done multiple Dracula films by this stage) and a female Van Helsing-like figure, played by Frieda Inescort. 

I managed to cover a fair amount from the UK over the course of the month. Pete Walker is a celebrated figure in British Horror cinema but Frightmare was the first time I've encountered one of his works. The Flesh and the Fiends is one of the better takes that I've seen on the true case of the Burke and Hare graverobbings and murders in 1820s Edinburgh, although the ending feels woefully misjudged and has an almost certainly unintended satirical quality. Hammer Horror has been well served on the Blu-Ray* market in recent times and 1965's Fanatic (a.k.a. Die! Die! My Darling) received the deluxe treatment from the Powerhouse label last year. It's one of a number of psycho thrillers that the studio did rather well but it is much less heralded for these than some of its Dracula and Frankenstein movies. Despite its UK setting it has an unmistakable Southern Gothic feel. Tallulah Bankhead (in her final film performance, I wish she'd done more big screen roles) dominates proceedings and that's certainly not a bad thing. 

Two films from 1999 were revisited this month. I'm happy to say one of them was even better than I remembered it being. Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate is surely one of his most underrated films. It's thematically rich and has an intense enigmatic feel to it that never wavers. The twisted black humour and labyrinthine plotting make the film a joy to revisit. Like with other renowned filmmakers I feel that many of Polanski's films after a certain point in his career get overlooked in favour of the more celebrated earlier works (the outstanding exception of this trend in his career would of course be The Pianist). Special shoutout as well for Wojciech Kilar's unsettling and haunting score which is in the same class as his remarkable work on Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Portrait of a Lady. 

I originally saw The Blair Witch Project at the cinema in London in October 1999 so I got to experience the film when it was making its initial impact on cinemagoing audiences. It's easy to forget now what a huge phenomenon the film was on release. Today, films that gross over a billion dollars globally barely cause a ripple on a popular cultural level and are more or less forgotten within a few months but Blair Witch made a huge impact that had a lasting impact on Horror cinema. After all the buildup and hype surrounding its release I was pretty underwhelmed by what I saw. It seems to have attained the status of a modern classic of its kind but I have to say that on a second watch over twenty years later my opinion of the film hasn't changed a great deal. I admire the DIY ethic and it feels a lot more authentic than most found-footage films. For me, the film is more of a milestone in terms of marketing and as a publicity stunt, using the internet and other media to create a sense of mystery and reality about the film that no one has been able to pull off quiet so effectively since**. Found footage Horror has of course been done to death since the rather baffling success of Paranormal Activity in 2007 and in most instances I find it to be a quite restricting format A somewhat similar precedent to the Blair Witch phenomenon happened on UK television with Ghostwatch, a BBC Halloween TV movie special in 1992 that certain viewers mistook for an authentic live broadcast. I initially heard about it from a friend at school who had watched it on the night it was shown and it has taken me close to thirty years to finally watch it. 

Besides the major highlight of The Ninth Gate, I also had a few notable discoveries including Short Night of Glass Dolls, D.W. Griffith's The Avenging Conscience and two extraordinarily bleak Japanese nightmares - Jigoku and Demons. Beyond a doubt, the low point of the month was Halloween Kills, on which I've given my thoughts elsewhere. Despite that travesty, I'm cautiously optimistic about the current state of Horror cinema. After the doldrums of the 2010s I've come across a whole crop of interesting Horror titles from 2020 in recent months - The Wolf of Snow Hollow, Smiley Face Killers, The Stylist & 12 Hour Shift to name a few - that have given me a sense of hope about where the genre may be heading over the next decade.

In Leeds we are spoilt for choice this Halloween as 3 masterpieces of the genre are being screened in and around the city centre. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is showing at Leeds University Union and Nobuhiko Obayashi's House is playing at The Carriageworks. A friend and I have opted to see F.W. Murnau's silent classic Nosferatu (with a live score accompaniment) at the Howard Assembly Room and I can't think of a better way to end this year's Horror marathon.  

Happy Halloween!

Recommended links:

https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/hammer-horror-locations

*Speaking of Blu-Ray releases I realised how many titles that haven't yet been given a much deserved UK release yet. I read Dario Argento's wonderful autobiography 'Fear' this month and it occured to me that while I have splendid copies of most of his work from his stunning 1970 debut The Bird with the Crystal Plumage right through to his 1987 masterwork Opera his subsequent work has been poorly served on the home video market on UK shores. To be fair, the films that have come since are not seen by fans as being part of his "classic period" but titles from the 1990s and 2000s like the criminally underrated Trauma (as far as I'm aware this has never had an uncut UK release), The Stendhal Syndrome, The Phantom of the Opera, Sleepless and The Card Player look better and better with each passing year. I still remember seeing a region 1 copy for sale of his 2005 TV movie Do You Like Hitchcock? at a film festival stall in Manchester 15 years ago and deciding to wait for a UK release that never materialised. I regret it now furiously of course.

John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness has not had a home format release in Britain since the VHS era. I have a region 1 copy but as this is now widely regarded as one of the best Horror films of the 1990s surely a decent Blu-Ray wouldn't go amiss? (Please take note Arrow, Second Sight, Powerhouse or any other adventurous labels). Last year in North America there was a highly regarded Blu-Ray restoration  of one of my favourite films (Roman Polanski's The Tenant) but there are no signs of a similar release over here, perhaps due to cancel culture, whatever the reason I'm stuck with my basic 2004 DVD release from Paramount unless I decide to invest in a multi-region Blu-Ray player. Besides a very fine Criterion disc of Cat People, none of Val Lewton's 1940s RKO productions have had a decent release in the UK.  As it's Halloween, I should also mention that I'm also jealous of film collectors across the Atlantic who have been blessed with a special release of the Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers: Producer's Cut Blu-Ray in 2015 and a recent 4K restoration of Halloween III: Season of the Witch (my favourite of the franchise by some distance). Anyway, enough about my UK Blu-Ray wishlist. I could carry on all day but those are some Horror titles that I think deserve to be given a decent UK release.

**Side note, the much maligned sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 released the following year is a guilty pleasure of mine. 

Masters of Horror

An appetite for Horror has stuck with me in November. I decided to follow my October Horror Marathon with a run of the remaining 'Masters of Horror' episodes that I hadn't yet seen. By chance this coincided with the show's 15th anniversary, which was recently marked by show creator Mick Garris on his Post Mortem podcast.

Until this month, I had seen 20 of the 26 episodes that were made over two seasons of the show from 2005 to 2007. I never managed to watch all of the broadcast episodes and set out to finish the series for the sake of completion. Perhaps I was too focussed on the "must see" episodes by the filmmakers I most revered or put off by some of the weaker entries. Having finally got through the whole set of episodes and with 20/20 hindsight I can see how the show went from being a major event to what some saw as a squandered opportunity. 

I still remember the excitement I felt about the show when it was announced in 2005. At this point I was probably at the peak of my Horror fandom. Horror seemed alive and dangerous again after the genre had fallen out of favour with mainstream audiences in the early 1990s. There were exceptions of course, but while they didn't hide their gruesome side some of the more notable crowd-pullers of this time had been marketed with a classier sheen and big stars. The Silence of the Lambs was presented to audiences as a superior thriller and Bram Stoker's Dracula (tagline: "Love Never Dies") played up its gothic romance. Generally speaking it was a rather dormant stage in the genre's evolution. This was marked by diminishing box office clout and franchise fatigue, which was fairly evident in titles like Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. That all changed when 1996's Scream became a phenomenon that would lead to a significant revival of interest in scary movies and this was further cemented by two runaway hits in 1999 - The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project. Both of these enjoyed a cultural and commerical impact that confounded even the wildest expectations. At the start of the millennium, films like Ginger Snaps and May convinced me that Horror was once again entering an exciting phase. Working in a video store at the time I found a growing number of low budget, foreign and independent genre titles that grabbed my attention. I attended Frightfest screenings quite reguarly and showings of Freddy vs. Jason and Seed of Chucky from the same period were some of the best cinemagoing experiences I had at that time. The DVD market was unearthing obscure treasures as well as giving us better quality versions of certain classics and in the UK censorship on gory titles had eased up considerably since the 1990s. 

The early years of the new century now looks like a thriving period in the genre's history. Asian imports were becoming more widely available to western audiences and the J-Horror boom churned out multiple gems. The "Splat Pack", which included the likes of Rob Zombie, James Wan, Greg McLean, Alexandre Aja and Eli Roth, was emerging and bought us a new generation of Horror auteurs. There was also "New French Extremity" films like Trouble Every Day, In My Skin and High Tension. A new wave of zombie films would follow on from the success of 28 Days Later... and Shaun of the Dead. Remakes of classics were in full swing, with new versions of House of Wax, Willard, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead turning out better than expected. 2005 marked the return of George A. Romero after a long absence with Land of the Dead. We also got Tobe Hooper's last great flurry of activity with Toolbox Murders, Mortuary and his two episodes of 'Masters of Horror' all coming out over the space of a couple of years. Perhaps it was the timing of all this or a kind of nostalgia at work but I've not really felt that same buzz in the years since where Horror is concerned. 

Having learned about several leading Horror directors taking part in a new series that was designed to give them a free reign over their respective episodes I was ecstatic to say the least. In addition to the filmmakers involved it would feature adaptations of stories by the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Richard Matheson, James Tiptree Jr., Koji Suzuki, and F. Paul Wilson. As a Horror fan it felt like a dream come true. I even made a special trip to Brighton to see a UK premiere screening of Dario Argento's first episode, Jenifer, at the Duke of York's Picturehouse in 2005. I still have the standalone DVD releases by Anchor Bay of Cigarette Burns and Dreams in the Witch House. Plans changed in the UK and each series was broken up in to 2 separate box sets with 6 or 7 episodes each instead of individual releases for each title.

There was a sort of precedent for this kind of project. In the past films such as Spirits of the Dead and Two Evil Eyes were Horror anthologies inspired by Poe stories that emphasised the directors of the different segments. Twilight Zone: The Movie had paid tribute to the legendary TV show with four segments made by hotshot directors of the time (including two future "Masters" - John Landis and Joe Dante). 

Among the participants, Don Coscarelli and Stuart Gordon made the most of the opportunity presented by the series, seeing it as a perfect chance to film previously unrealised projects. Dreams in the Witch House would end up being the last of five Lovecraft adaptations by Stuart Gordon. Coscarelli talks about the experience of making Incident On and Off a Mountain Road in his autobiography 'True Indie' and how the series was the ideal form for a relatively simple tale by Joe R. Lansdale that wasn't exactly feature length material. I wish that more episodes had been developed along the same lines. 

Too many episodes felt like random assignments rather than material the directors were engaged with but a personal stamp was sometimes in evidence. Cigarette Burns can be seen as a companion piece to John Carpenter's 1994 film In the Mouth of Madness* (many noted the similarities between the two) while Pro-Life** revisits his beloved siege scenario from earlier films like Assault on Precinct 13, Prince of Darkness and Ghosts of Mars. Although by no means the first person to bring humour to macabre fare, Deer Woman and Family continued the unique mixture of comedy and Horror that John Landis had developed in An American Werewolf in London and Innocent Blood. Both were very much of a piece with his earlier work and are among his better latter day efforts. 

Several long term star-director collaborators were reunited for the show - Angela Bettis and Lucky McKee (Sick Girl), Robert Englund and Tobe Hooper (Dance of the Dead), Michael Moriarty and Larry Cohen (Pick Me Up), Robert Picardo and Joe Dante (Homecoming), Jeffrey Combs and Stuart Gordon (The Black Cat). It was also something of an opportunity for father and son bonding - Richard Christian Matheson did the screenplay for Dance of the Dead, which was based on a short story by his father, Max Landis co-wrote John Landis's first episode, while Cody Carpenter provided the music for both of his father's entries in the series. The show was designed as an auteurist project giving filmmakers creative control in television, a medium where writers, producers and showrunners are the more dominant figures. In many ways, the true auteur of the series was show creator Mick Garris, who penned 4 episodes (two of which he directed) and who already had a well established history in television with his miniseries adaptations of Stephen King's The Stand and The Shining.

Unfortunately, certain names that would have been a perfect fit for the show's premise didn't get involved. At different stages early on both George Romero*** and Roger Corman were set to direct Haeckel's Tale before John McNaughton finally took the helm. While not shy of his genre association, David Cronenberg ushered in another phase of his career in 2005 with A History of Violence, one that was very much a step away from the Horror fare that made his name. In a 2005 interview John Landis stated that Sam Raimi and Hideo Nakata were both set to do an episode****, although neither were ultimately involved with the series and may have had to drop out due to other projects and commitments. It's tempting to think of other names who might have been called on had the series fared better. I would loved to have seen episodes by the likes of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Eric Red, William Lustig, Mary Lambert, Wes Craven, Ronny Yu and Bernard Rose, all of whom have the credits to justify the "Master" label. 

The names attached to the series were its drawing card but also in some ways a hindrance. 

The show was sold to audiences on the directors involved. By proudly boasting of exciting new works from the makers of such beloved titles as Halloween, Suspiria, Phantasm, Poltergeist and Re-Animator it may have created unrealistic expectations. These were after all fairly low budget one hour TV movies shot in roughy 10 days. The episodes have a nice variety in tone and story but many look and feel too similar stylistically, in part due to the same crews and locations being employed on several episodes. 

The biggest letdowns for me were the two Argento episodes (Jenifer and Pelts) and Carpenter's Pro-Life, which is perhaps the worst effort of his career. The satire of Peter Medak's The Washingtonians and Joe Dante's Homecoming felt clumsy and far too heavy-handed, very much dating the show to the George W. Bush/Iraq invasion era in which they were made. Several directors had been involved with struggles with censorship in the past, which may have indirectly caused them to overindulge here. The gore felt overdone in several instances, as though they felt a need to compete with the emerging torture porn craze of Saw, Hostel et al. and push the envelope given the lack of restrictions. A few trims were made to Jenifer before it was screened but Takashi Miike's episode Imprint evidently crossed a line as Showtime chose not to broadcast the episode in the US. Some of the younger talent fared well, with Lucky McKee and Brad Anderson more than holding their own against the veterans with Sick Girl and Sounds Like respectively. Ernest Dickerson managed to bring some of his trademark visual flair to The V Word and William Malone's Fair-Haired Child is arguably his best work to date. 

Fewer prestigous names were attached to the second season, although some returned for a second outing. The poor reception of the later episodes may have led to the show being cancelled and later revived as 'Fear Itself' on NBC in 2008, which no longer had Mick Garris involved. I've only seen one episode of 'Fear Itself' (Stuart Gordon's final directorial outing Eater) so that series may be a viewing project for another time perhaps. 

The show had its share of disappointments but seen from a distance advanced hype and heightened expectations may have caused the series as a whole to be judged too harshly. Even the worst episodes are watchable and viewers accustomed to the Horror anthology format will feel very much at home with its highs and lows. I have a special fondness for Cigarette Burns, which begat the Willowy Being moniker for this blog. In recent years I've come to regard Carpenter as a somewhat overrated figure but this is one of the few titles of his that I still like to revisit occasionally.

The show came along at the perfect time for me and I enjoyed it more as an event and for its individual highlights than I did for its overall quality. Several of the talents showcased were near the end of their careers or at least edging towards long inactive spells. Pick Me Up would be Larry Cohen's swansong in the director's chair. Stuart Gordon's two episodes were among his final works, sadly no longer making films after 2008. Tobe Hooper would make just one more feature before his death in 2017. Joe Dante has mainly worked in television or anthology shorts ever since. Besides 2010's The Ward John Carpenter has showed no signs of returning to directing features and Dario Argento's workrate has slowed down considerably over the past decade or so. If the show wasn't exactly a defining moment for many of them it was a nice way to recognise their earlier achievements, which had enriched the field immeasurably. With Horror now thoroughly gentrified and with many of today's offerings masquerading as high art, I appreciate the show now as something of a last hurrah for several genre icons before the Horror tradition lost its sense of fun and its subversive edge was blunted.

Footnotes: 

*The mysterious film director Hans Backovic character feels reminiscent of the missing Horror novelist Sutter Crane in In the Mouth of Madness. For me, Cigarette Burns is more of a hybrid of Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate (1999) and Gore Verbinski's US remake of The Ring from 2002. 

**There's a deliberate callback in Pro-Life to the infamous spider-head sequence from The Thing. It: Chapter Two (2019) also explicitly lifts from this sequence. Both instances seemed like ill-judged homages to me.

***Romero's involvement is inferred in the above 2005 trailer video clip when it mentions Night of the Living Dead among the credits of the "Masters" involved)

****http://www.clivebarker.info/haeckeltv.html