TRUE BLOOD
Season 1 Episode 4
“Escape From Dragon House”
Written by Brian Buckner
Directed by Michael Lehmann
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

This is gonna sound really bad, but with Dawn winding up dead, one of the things that popped into my head was: hey, we get to see more William Sanderson and Chris Bauer! And The Nine’s John Billingsley too, who debuted a couple of episodes back as the local coroner, Mike Spencer.
Her death also turns into a lookie-loo circus which then serves to showcase the community and its morbid reaction to the most recent death.


Once again, Jason comes under suspicion, and, finding himself in a cop car with a vial of V juice in his possession, he panics, and downs the whole thing (when Lafayette warned him to take a drop or two at the most).
That action then develops into another amusing subplot involving horndog Jason, as he develops a bad case of priapism, which Tara helps him out with.


Meanwhile, Gran asks Sookie to “listen in” on people in an attempt to clear Jason’s name, a request which leads Sookie to the vampire bar in Shreveport, Fangtasia, which Dawn used to frequent.
Sookie asks Bill to escort her there (“this is not a date”), and it’s a nice little sequence which introduces Eric Northman (Generation Kill’s Alexander Skarsgård), apparently one of the oldest vampires in the area.


But the most disturbing scene of the episode has to go to Sam, writhing on Dawn’s bed, smelling the sheets.
Eurrr…
So first, Jason’s the murder suspect, and now, we’re given another character to look at a little more closely.
Whether or not Sam did kill Dawn though, he’s clearly more effed-up than we were first led to believe…

(Images courtesy of fanpop.com.)

TRUE BLOOD
Season 1 Episode 1
“Strange Love”
Written & directed by Alan Ball
(WARNING: SPOILERS)


So there’s a whole lotta lustin’—bar owner Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) carries a torch for mind-reading waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin); Sookie’s best friend Tara Thornton (Rutina Wesley) carries a torch for Sookie’s horndog brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten, whom horrorheads may recall from Dead Silence)—and a whole lotta sexin’—courtesy of the horndog Stackhouse—goin’ on in Alan Ball’s latest HBO offering, True Blood.
There’s also, in case you weren’t aware, vampires here, the show based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris.
Yup. HBO’s giving us vampires.


As a pilot, this first taste of the show is fine, certainly not on the level of Six Feet Under’s debut, but an interesting slice of vampiric pop culture nonetheless.
As with Bryan Singer’s approach to the X-Men, Ball uses vampires as metaphors for those prejudiced against by society, while simultaneously casting them in the darker, kinkier shadows of human sexuality.
Yes, they’re currently being put upon and discriminated against, but boy, are they wicked lays!


Now, despite the glib and the snark, I am having fun with True Blood. It may not have the depth and the profundity of Six Feet Under or American Beauty, but it’s got a down-home charm all its own.
And did I mention the sex?


Funnily enough, though I’m digging some of the supporting cast—particularly Wesley; Lois Smith as Granny Stackhouse; J.F. Sebastian himself, William Sanderson, as Sheriff Dearborne; and Chris Bauer as Andy Bellefleur—it’s the leads, Paquin and Stephen Moyer (as vampire Bill), who’ve yet to win me over.
Particularly Paquin, who got a black mark from me a long time ago when she stole the Best Supporting Actress Oscar away from Winona Ryder…
Maybe it’s time for me to forget that slight.
Now if only Paquin would actually come across as genuine and earnest…

On the plus side though, the opening credits, orchestrated to Jace Everett’s “Bad Things,” are a blast…


(Images courtesy of fanpop.com and variety.com.)

MASTERS OF HORROR
Season 2 Episode 4
“Sounds Like”
Teleplay by Brad Anderson; based on the short story by Mike O’Driscoll; directed by Brad Anderson

On the heels of season 2’s worst (Ernest Dickerson’s “The V Word”), we move on to its most disturbing, an unnerving exploration of how the loss of a child can damage a parent’s psyche.

Larry Pearce (Chris Bauer, who’s in Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers) is the supervisor at a software company’s tech support call center. Pearce is a husband and father quietly grieving for his dead son. He’s also apparently got hypersensitive hearing, hearing which at first seems to be beneficial to his job, until things begin to spiral out of control.

Having also directed Session 9 and El Maquinista (The Machinist; best known as the film Christian Bale lost 2/3 of his body weight for), it’s apparent that Anderson is fascinated by the psychological effects guilt can have on a person’s mental health. In Pearce’s case, his hearing intensifies to the point where the jerky movements of a fly become deafening noise to his ears.

Among other things, “Sounds Like” is an interesting variation of The Tell-Tale Heart. And though its gore quotient is pretty low compared to some other MoH episodes, Anderson still crafts an unsettling little tale where the scariest thing is how guilt and loss can transform any of us into monsters.

Parting shot: Anderson’s next feature, Transsiberian, is nearly upon us… While we're waiting for it to pull into the station though, you can check out a review of El Maquinista in the Archive.

(Sounds Like DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)

(Originally posted 032607.)

MASTERS OF HORROR Season 2 Episodes 3 & 4

“The V Word”
Written by Mick Garris; directed by Ernest Dickerson

The title pretty much telegraphs what the episode is about. What it doesn’t tell you is that this is probably the worst that MoH’s second season has to offer.

We follow best friends Justin (Branden Nadon) and Kerry (Arjay Smith), as they enter a funeral home in the dead of night to see a corpse, up close and personal, only to discover some cadavers just don’t stay dead.

Now, I have very little patience for stories that begin with teen-agers getting into all sorts of trouble with the supernatural because they did something patently stupid on a dare, or for lack of anything better to do. I have even less patience for the characters themselves. It’s difficult to find any sympathy for people who basically asked to get screwed by acting like complete juveniles. (Yes, juveniles are exactly what teen-agers are, but that doesn’t mean they don’t use their God-given brains, right?)
So, when Justin and Kerry meet the undead Mr. Chaney (genre icon Michael Ironside; you’ll undoubtedly recognize him from Scanners, TV’s V, and Total Recall; he also voices Darkseid on the Superman and Justice League animated series), all I can think to myself is, Well, you asked for it. (The fact that Justin is such an indecisive wuss for the majority of the story makes me care even less for his welfare.)
And when the episode devolves into I Was A Teen-Age Vampire, things get even worse.

This is such a difficult episode to get through, with long stretches of tedium desperately masquerading as suspense. Then, throw in Jodelle Ferland (Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill, Terry Gilliam’s Tideland, and the Pang Brothers’ The Messengers) as Justin’s sister, Lisa, and reaching the end credits on this one gets even dicier. I’m just thankful Ferland‘s screen time is at a minimum here; though she does have her share of admirers, I’m not one of them at the moment.

Ernest Dickerson was the frequent cinematographer for Spike Lee, before getting a director’s chair of his own, helming films like the Tales From The Crypt feature Demon Knight and the failed TV pilot Futuresport (with Dean Cain and Wesley Snipes). More recently, he directed the Heroes episode “Collision.” What he does on “The V Word” is anyone’s guess. This one is so boring, it’s almost as if Dickerson slept through the proceedings, as the audience is sorely tempted to throughout the one-hour-running-time-which-seems-like-an-eternity.

As much as I try to find even the smallest of redeeming qualities in even the sorriest pile of cinematic poop, scrambling to find something nice to say about “The V Word” is a tall order. The only bright light in this mess was the thought that the remaining 10 episodes of the season couldn’t get any lower than this.

“Sounds Like”
Teleplay by Brad Anderson; based on the short story by Mike O’Driscoll; directed by Brad Anderson

And sure enough, we go from season 2’s worst, to its most disturbing, an unnerving exploration of how the loss of a child can damage a parent’s psyche.

Larry Pearce (Chris Bauer, who’s in Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers) is the supervisor at a software company’s tech support call center. Pearce is a husband and father quietly grieving for his dead son. He’s also apparently got hypersensitive hearing, hearing which at first seems to be beneficial to his job, until things begin to spiral out of control.

Having also directed Session 9 and El Maquinista (The Machinist; best known as the film Christian Bale lost 2/3 of his body weight for), it’s apparent that Anderson is fascinated by the psychological effects guilt can have on a person’s mental health. In Pearce’s case, his hearing intensifies to the point where the jerky movements of a fly become deafening noise to his ears.

Among other things, “Sounds Like” is an interesting variation of The Tell-Tale Heart. And though its gore quotient is pretty low compared to some other MoH episodes, Anderson still crafts an unsettling little tale where the scariest thing is how guilt and loss can transform any of us into monsters.