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Masters of Horror: Pelts
For most followers
of 70s Italian genre films, Dario Argento is
held up as the great auteur of giallo cinema, a
filmmaker whose take on that particularly
Italian brand of murder-mystery spawned a litany
of imitators and set the formula for the rest of
the decade. From his accomplished directorial
debut, the efficient and eye-opening thriller
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage,
to the Technicolor fantasy delights of
Suspiria, to the cold and brutal
character study of The Stendhal Syndrome,
he made a name for himself as a director able to
enliven well-worn genres with his own personal
vision, giving us some of the greatest European
horror films of the second half of the 20th
century. For someone who once claimed that he
had no interest in directing the work of other
writers, and, after an unpleasant experience
with the US-produced Trauma in
the early 90s, that America could "screw
itself", his acceptance in 2005 of an offer to
direct an episode in the American
Masters of Horror television series,
from a pre-existing script adapted from a comic,
no less, was met with no small degree of
surprise.
The end result, Jenifer, sent academics
and fans alike scurrying back to revise their
auteurist theories. Bland and hopelessly
workmanlike, Jenifer sharply divided
his fanbase, with some claiming that it showed a
newly re-energised Argento finally having fun
with his work again, while others took it as yet
further proof that the once-talented maestro had
lost it completely. To date, I have been unable
to bring myself to review Jenifer, a
project so thoroughly anonymous and charmless
that I find it difficult to watch from beginning
to end, let alone write about. (There's
something to be said for the old adage that "if
you can't say anything nice, don't say anything
at all".) Before I move on, however, a few brief
words summing up my feelings about it are
probably in order.
Jenifer's problem, for me, was that it
could have been directed by anyone - and by that
I don't mean that it didn't "look like an
Argento film" (whatever that is supposed to
mean, given that Argento has embraced a variety
of visual styles, from Disney-like Technicolor
hues in Suspiria to the cold,
modern, bleach-bypassed The Card Player),
which is what the episode's defenders tend to
assume its detractors mean when they criticise
its bland appearance. Rather, it was the sort of
anonymous point-and-shoot affair that any
semi-competent director for hire could have
pulled off. Essentially, had it not said "a film
by Dario Argento" at the start, I sincerely
doubt that it would have attracted so much
notice, making the decision to fly Argento over
from Italy to direct it a rather pointless
endeavour. Jenifer was more a vehicle
for its star/writer Steven Weber than for
Argento, making the decision to market the
episode around Argento's name rather than
Weber's disingenuous at best, downright
dishonest at worst. This, in fact, has been a
continual problem with the Masters of
Horror series: the concept is geared
around the notion of big names in horror getting
to put their own personal stamp on short
television movies, when in fact the majority
have simply been offered the choice of a number
of pre-written scripts, and have been given
little opportunity to make the material their
own. There have been exceptions, admittedly, but
by and large the project is the ultimate example
of dishonest advertising.
As such, I was prepared for more of the same
with Pelts, his contribution to the
show's second season. My expectations were so
low that I couldn't possibly have been
disappointed, and, therefore, it's perhaps not
entirely surprising that Pelts is
better than I expected. Certainly, it's still
clear that Argento is slumming it, calling "cut"
and "action" and picking up a pay-cheque for his
efforts, and it's pretty near the bottom of the
barrel as far as his impressive filmography
goes, but it's a definite improvement on
Jenifer, albeit a slight one. It suffers
from most of the same problems as its
predecessor - a banal script, poor acting, and a
decision to push sex and gore to the forefront
in an attempt to conceal the obvious narrative
and thematic shortcomings, but on this occasion
at least there is the odd glimpse of the Argento
of old, trying to break out of this cynical and
boorish product.
The source material this time round is a short
story by F. Paul Wilson, and one rather suited
to the vegetarian, animal-friendly Argento's own
personal tastes. A none too subtle indictment of
the fur trade, it deals with the grisly ends met
by various unsavoury characters after they
become obsessed with a haul of enchanted raccoon
pelts. At the centre of the debacle is Jake
Feldman (Meat Loaf), a loathsome furrier who is
besotted by striptease artist Shana (Ellen
Ewusie) and her rear end. Jake gets a tip-off
from his associate, poacher Jeb Jameson (John
Saxon), that he has managed to get his hands on
the mother load, but, when he arrives at the
Jameson residence, he finds both the poacher and
his son Larry (Michal Suchanek) dead and
horrifically mutilated. Undeterred, Jake pockets
the pelts and sets off to make himself rich and
finally gain access to Shana's backside in the
process.
First-time screenwriter Matt Venne claims that,
when he heard that Argento had signed on to
direct, he immediately went back and reworked
the script to make it "more like a Dario Argento
film". In doing so, the film becomes peppered
with clumsy references - a close-up of
black-gloved hands washing a bloodied knife, a
severed hand, a mysterious old woman named
"Mother Mater". These have little to no thematic
relevance and come across more as half-hearted
attempts to assure jaded fans that the master of
old is indeed still in the driving seat. There
is a distinct lack of cohesion to the film, with
no discernable theme beyond the clumsy and
inconsistent attempts to code the various
characters as either hunter or hunted, while the
plot disintegrates so quickly into a series of
poorly paced grisly death sequences that the
film becomes tedious before the first act is
even out of the way - a bad sign by any stretch
of the imagination. (You can, I suppose, find
the same themes of transferral and infection of
the mind that are present in Jenifer if
you want to attach an auteurist reading to these
episodes - personally, such an interpretation
fails to convince me.)
Some of the various deaths are admittedly
interesting - the stand-out being a seamstress
who sews up her own eyes, mouth and nostrils -
but, as with Jenifer, Argento's camera
lingers too long on the effects, relishing gore
for gore's sake and making the seams all too
apparent (a hopelessly unrealistic dummy of John
Saxon's battered head being the most
embarrassing). Suspiria and
Deep Red also lingered on at
times unrealistic effects, but they were
justified by the heightened artistic and
supernatural context, and the set-pieces were
executed with enough imagination and passion for
their lack of realism not to be an issue, and in
some respects to work as a catalyst. If
latter-day Fulci-style spurting arteries and
staved-in heads are what Venne and the
Masters of Horror team think of as
quintessential Argento, they have clearly failed
to understand what made his earlier films so
special. Indeed, in retrospect I find myself
yearning for The Card Player's
controversially bloodless murders.
Having said that, the visual style is clearly
several steps up from the lifeless hackery of
Jenifer. Argento retains the former
project's cinematographer, Attila Szalay, but
this time they allow their imagination to run
wilder in terms of lighting, with the rich reds
and purples of Shana's strip-club impressing the
most, and at times evoking a watered-down
Suspiria, while the moody
opening credits, set to a Claudio Simonetti
score which recalls the wordless Edda Dell'Orso
vocals of many an Ennio Morricone composition,
and featuring slow pans over various animal
skins, are suitably chilling. The visuals are
inconsistent, though, and the scene in which
Jake visits the Jamesons' ranch in the daylight
are as flat as anything in Jenifer. On
the whole, though, the imagery is considerably
more arresting than that of the earlier project,
although there is nothing as inventive as the
design of Jenifer's deformed face.
Unfortunately, the acting is another story.
While Stephen Webber was unimpressive in the
lead role in Jenifer, he was at least
competent, the same of which cannot be said for
Meat Loaf, who chews the scenery like nothing on
earth, screaming, slavering and stomping around
with a face that could curdle milk, while even
the reliable John Saxon struggles to make
anything of a one-dimensional role that is an
insult to the excellent material with which he
had to work on his previous collaboration with
Argento, Tenebre. Ellen Ewusie,
meanwhile, is worse than virtually any other
actress cast in an Argento film that I can think
of, and, unlike most, doesn't have the excuse of
having been dubbed to explain her awful
performance. To be honest, it's a thankless
role: she does little more than scream and spend
the bulk of her screen-time with her breasts
out. She's also a lesbian, and Venne, in his
audio commentary, attempts to cast this as
complex characterisation and a profound
statement about how much she's willing to
sacrifice in order to get her hands on the fur
coat made from the pelts, but in reality this
little detail only exists in order to allow for
a good old-fashioned gratuitous girl-on-girl sex
scene. The Masters of Horror team presumably
think that this sort of thing, in addition to
gallons of blood, can be considered "pushing the
boundaries", but it all reeks a little of
desperation. The two women look so uncomfortable
during their sex scene that it's hard not to
feel sorry for them.
There's little more that can be said about
Pelts. It's closer to Z-grade Troma than to
vintage Argento, and the maestro of old could
probably have directed this film blindfolded and
with one arm tied behind his back, but
gorehounds will presumably get a kick out of the
copious amounts of Karo syrup on display. I try
not to worry myself too much about attaching any
sort of auteurist reading to this project,
because I don't see either this or Jenifer
as "Dario Argento films" in the traditional
sense - the Fiat commercial he and Ronnie Taylor
shot in the mid-80s has a more deserved place in
his oeuvre than either of these TV-movies. The
end result is better than Jenifer, but
once again it uses the Argento name to market a
generic, poorly-written splatterfest that any
number of no-name directors for hire could have
pulled off. Pelts is ultimately really
just a means to an end - apparently it is thanks
to his Masters of Horror work
that The Third Mother is being
made at all. Them's the breaks, I guess, and, as
such, I'm willing to accept half-baked Argento
if it ultimately leads to some sort of a return
to form.
DVD PRESENTATION
Presented anamorphically in its original 1.78:1
aspect ratio, Pelts generally looks
very good indeed, albeit with its television
origins at times visible. Detail levels are
above average, and the rich coloured lighting of
the strip-club comes across as vibrant and
appropriately saturated, while the exterior
daylight scenes show natural-looking skin tones.
Contrast is sometimes a little inconsistent,
owing perhaps to budgetary constraints rather
than any fault of the transfer itself, while
there are no visible compression problems.
Audio comes in Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby
Surround 2.0 affairs, both English. Neither is
exactly packed with imaginative audio design,
but they do the job adequately, with the
relative lack of rear channel effects not
exactly surprising, given that the film was
intended for television and therefore, for most
viewers, stereo audio only. Claudio Simonetti's
score gains the most benefit from the 5.1 mix,
making it sound a little fuller. As with most
Anchor Bay releases, there are no subtitles.
EXTRAS
Less feature-packed than the DVD release of
Jenifer, or indeed the bulk of the DVDs for
the first season of Masters of Horror,
Pelts nonetheless has some interesting
gems to offer. The first up is an audio
commentary by writer Matt Venne, who proves to
be infectious in his enthusiasm and rather
knowledgeable about Argento's filmography and
the horror genre in general. His claims as to
the thematical complexity of his script are not
exactly convincing, but he is at least humble
enough to admit to his own failings in places,
where what he wrote was unclear and was
misinterpreted by Argento and the crew. The
track is, to some extent, clearly scripted, but
this is no bad thing as it means that Venne is
able to keep talking from beginning to end
without resorting to repeating information or
simply describing the action (although he does,
rather unnecessarily, preface his discussions of
many moments with comments such as "Now, the
strip-club scene"). All in all, this is one of
the stronger commentaries I can recall hearing
recently.
Up next is Fleshing It Out: the making of
Pelts, which, as the title suggests, is a
general behind the scenes featurette. It runs
for just over 13 minutes, and as such doesn't go
into a great deal of detail, but it features
contributions from Argento, Venne, Meat Loaf,
cinematographer Attila Szalay and a handful of
other key participants. Unsurprisingly, the main
focus seems to be on how gruesome and gory the
film is, and as such it lacks the insight
conveyed in the the commentary. Also included is
All Sewn Up, a 7 minute piece focusing
on the complicated effects required for the
scene in which the seamstress sews up her own
eyes, nose and mouth, with copious comments from
CGI supervisor Lee Wilson, effects make-up
supervisor Howard Berger, and actress Elise Lew.
The various before and after demonstrations,
showing just how much CGI was involved, are
quite fascinating, and the fact that Anthem
Digital, the crew responsible for the imagery,
are also in charge of the computer-generated
imagery for the upcoming The Third
Mother, bodes well for the quality of
its effects.
Also included are the obligitary photo gallery,
storyboards, the usual bio for Argento, and
trailers for various other Anchor Bay DVD
releases, including the Argento-helmed
Jenifer, Trauma and
The Card Player.
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