"Masters Of Horror" tried to start out strong, raising the bar for their show early and, subsequently, disappointed the audience with the following episodes, a series of half-baked and idiotic hack-jobs, most glimmers of hope and promise not returning for another five episodes.

Don Coscarelli was a fair enough choice to start out the proceedings, though it could be pointed out that he's hardly a "Master" of anything, having only managed to crank out the Phantasm films, Bubba Ho-Tep, and The Beastmaster, easily his best work. Others might defend Phantasm, an impossible feat given that it's a festival of retardation revolving around exploits at a funeral home where corpses are turned into undead dwarves and transported to another planet (with higher gravity, hence the need for dwarves) by The Tall Man as a cheap form of labor. Fine stuff, right? Bubba Ho-Tep isn't much better, though the fans will watch any retarded shit as long as it stars Bruce Campbell, a cool enough guy that's given far too much credit in exceptionally mediocre films idolized by fucktards.

Given these drawbacks, Coscarelli does a good job, doing yet another Joe Lansdale adaptation, this tale involving a girl stopping on the side of the road, only to be chased by a pale mute giant with a knife, intent on having her as a fleshy toy with which to test his drill press. The straightforward and bloody plot is interspersed with the development of the girl's relationship with her husband, from first date to his neo-fascist survival obsession, where he trains and abuses her, toughening her up along the way.

Bree Turner does a good enough job as the damsel du jour, though the real marks go to Ethan Embry as her ever-more-unstable husband and Angus Scrimm (far from his Tall Man days) as Buddy, the lunatic captive of killer Moonface, there to voice mad concern for Miss Turner as she frantically plots her escape. Scrimm is the best thing about the episode and, along with Embry and the beautifully filtered and filmed darkness and gore, is all that's worthy of merit, but it was an above-par beginning to a series that promised a new revolution in horror... If only it had delivered as well as the limited abilities of Mr. Coscarelli, then I would have no complaints at all.

Welll, there's good news and bad news, dear readers... The good news is that the second episode of "Masters Of Horror" was one of the better Lovecraft adaptations. The bad news is that it's another bland and not-particularly-good Lovecraft adaptation.

True enough, Dagon was enjoyable enough, without really capturing any part of the Lovecraft "Deep Ones" stories to any great degree, but doing an admirable job of capturing some fo the atmosphere of the tales, though tweaking it up with a certain kitschy and Sci-Fi Channel-like sheen of silly low-budget-tude. Others are very fond of Re-Animator, but I found that movie to be an annoying waste of time, focused more on providing yet another plot point by having the wretched cunt girlfriend cause more trouble. When your plot is based entirely around some bitch that we're supposed to believe another character likes causing as much pain and discomfort to everyone as humanly possible with her idiotic, whining decisions, then perhaprs you shouldn't make that movie at all...

But "Dreams In The Witch House" restrained a bit of those annoying points and tried to rein in the kitsch by updating the story and trying to actually manifest Lovecraft's "impossible angles" and dream geometry visually. To a certain degree, the points of the story are accomplished, but with no great flair by anyone involved.

The plot was thin, but at least it was servicable as a Lovecraft adaptation. It didn't stab me in the eye and that's saying something. But it definitely did nothing to raise "Masters Of Horror" above the level of "Tales From The Darkside".

The first episode of "Masters Of Horror" season two turned out shockingly well, moreso because of how immensely disappointing this same creators were in the terminally awful "Dance Of The Dead" episode, which was both dull and stupid. It may be in part because, instead of being based on a story by the writer of the episode, this one is based on a story by Ambrose Bierce (though I imagine the basis is tenuous at best) and the quality is immediately more apparent, though the episode seems far from literary. In fact, it's still a fairly stupid episode with no clear goal and no explicable purpose to the creature or force, the titular "damned thing", making up for the lack of content with a decent visual style delivered by Tobe Hooper, some decent acting by Marisa Coughlan (out of her comedic element) and Sean Patrick Flanery, and plenty of gore, sure to please all those complaining jackass gorehounds who refuse to recognize anything as "horror" if it doesn't swim in blood and feature people being chased by monsters or slashers.

Hooper and his writer have shown how bad they can possibly be in "Dance" and this episode shows that they can do servicable, if not great, work. Despite writing flaws, Hooper manages to give it a theatrical look and it features plenty of shock moments (you haven't lived until you've seen a man kill himself with a claw hammer).

Hopefully this season starting out on a better note with one of its weakest links is a good sign that the episodes will, in general, be of higher quality.