Masters Of Horror

This last weekend, during the MOTELx - International Horror Movies Festival of Lisbon, I ended up seing what will certainly turn out to be two of the best movies of my personal cinematic 2007. Funnily enough, they were originally made for television, as part of the Masters Of Horror project, which consisted of autonomous 1-hour episodes directed by prestigious horror-movie cineasts and first shown on cable in the USA, during 2005.


John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns (dir. John Carpenter)


Why I loved it:
- The whole huge terror-densing atmosphere built around...a search for a movie!?
- Many references that will be loved by all the cinema enthusiasts out there.
- An homage to all B-Series classics. Hell, with so many means, even some of the acting still kinda sucks and the movie only gets better because of this spirit.
- Who of us doesn't end up desperately wanting to see "Le Fin Absolue Du Monde"?
- It's a classic John-Carpenter-at-its-best, period.

Plot:
"In this film by legendary horror director John Carpenter, a wannabe film producer named Kirby Sweetman (Norman Reedus) obsesses over a lost cinematic treasure. Called LE FIN ABSOLUE DU MONDE, the film was screened only once because its premiere turned the movie theatre into a madhouse of killing and violence. As Kirby goes to great lengths to track down this notorious film, he starts to have hallucinations of dangerous proportions. Will the rumors surrounding the film destroy him, or will he find it in time to use it as a weapon?"


Homecoming (dir. Joe Dante)


Why I loved it:
- Don't think there's ever been such an acid and caustic critic towards the Bush administration as this one.
- Huge sense of irony with loads of second-meaning quotes and situations.
- Is this a horror movie, a comedy or a documentary?
- Never too much to mention the Bush thing: even Michael Moore movies are 100% politically correct when compared to this.
- You end up on the zombies side.

Plot:
"A horror film with a political message, HOMECOMING comes from director Joe Dante (GREMLINS, THE HOWLING). With a war going on abroad and an election coming up, the Republican party is anxious about getting enough votes to seal the deal. But when they wish for the soldiers who died in the war to come back to life and speak on their behalf, they never expect it to actually happen. Rising from their graves, the undead men and women set out to tell their own version of events, and to get revenge by voting out of office the party that sent them to war."