I’ll confess that, when I saw the title and artwork for this episode, it rang absolutely zero bells with me at all, and I had no recollection of watching Chocolate before now. I know I did watch it (and one I started watching for this article, it did come back to me a little) but it clearly didn’t leave much of an impression initially. This may be partly down to the fact that it follows ‘Jenifer’, which is nothing if not memorable, but watching Chocolate was liking watching a brand-new episode for me and I have to say that it was an episode I enjoyed a great deal.

Directed by the master behind Masters of Horror himself, and based on one of his own short stories, Chocolate opens with lead character Jamie talking directly to us, recounting the story of how he got where he is, which is covered in blood and being interrogated by the police. Consider me intrigued!

As Jamie begins telling his story we open on a laboratory where he works and we’re introduced to friend and co-worker, Wally (Matt Frewer). His easy back and forth with Wally being an episode highlight and helps set a light and fun tone early on. Jamie is shown as being good at his job but perhaps a little unfulfilled and discontent. Some conflict is then introduced when he visits his ex-wife and son on his way home. His love for his son is obvious and heart-warming but we sense there is tension here as his ex-wife seems none too pleased to have him there and is quick to usher him out.

Jamie returns to his bare and impersonal looking apartment and, lying in bed later that night, he begins to experience sounds, smells and tastes he does not recognise. The sensations start with the taste of chocolate but as things progress he begins to see through the eyes of a mystery woman and experiences what she experiences. These sensations begin to intrude on his day-to-day life as he has no control over when they occur, but Jamie seems content with this, happy to have the experience whenever and however his is able as he becomes increasingly infatuated with this woman he has never met, but feels he knows intimately.

We also find out that the object of his affections has a boyfriend, a fact we first learn when Jamie experiences her having sex with him. Hats off to Henry Thomas for going all out with the scene, where he is experiencing this, with an audience that includes a one-night stand, his ex-wife and his son! The fact that everybody seems disgusted with him as he writes half naked on the bed, and doesn’t stop to consider he may be having a medical emergency is a little unintentionally funny, but it does serve to escalate Jamie’s predicament whereby he’s left in the position of either cutting himself off from people, or finding help for these bizarre experiences before they can do further damage to his relationships. Poor smitten Jamie… Is there ever any doubt he’d pick the former?

So far things have built up slowly and we’re getting pieces of the puzzle, but we’re still a long way from the blood splattered Jamie we met in the opening scene. That changes when he witnesses his one sided, long distance love interest murder her boyfriend. The episode shifts pretty dramatically at this point as the subplot of Jamie’s strained relationship with his ex-wife and young son, and friendship with Wally are left as is, as Jamie travels to Canada to track her down, using the odd flashes of her going to work or walking down a busy high street to pinpoint broadly where she lives. I have to say it was a shame to so abruptly end the time spent with Wally, who was a bit of a scene stealer, and that his mysteriously tenuous relationship with his ex-wife and son weren’t used for more, but these are minor gripes, as what comes next is certainly different, but no less entertaining.

After arriving and doing some admittedly impressive detective work, Jamie finds the mystery woman, who we discover is named Catherine (played by Lucie Laurier). Jamie has become so hopelessly obsessed with her at this point that, when he introduces himself, he comes across as a little… unhinged, desperate to make a perfect first impression and failing spectacularly. Catherine is understandably wary of him and suspicious of his intentions but Jamie is able to convince her to go to dinner with him and, as he slowly reveals how he knows so much about her, they seem to connect and he finds himself invited back to her apartment, coincidentally around the time that he confesses that he knows that she is a murderer.

If you missed any of Richard's previous Revisting The Masters of Horror articles, you can find links to them all here on our handy landing page 

The Masters of Horror ​

May is Mental Health month. I’ve been struggling horribly for a while now with disabilities including PTSD, anxiety with panic attacks, bipolar depression, ADHD, dyslexia, agoraphobia, and more. Over, the last few years these have been impossible to manage, affecting every area of my life from my physical health to my relationships. I struggle with suicidal ideations everyday, wanting the ongoing pain to stop. Throughout my life, one of my primary coping mechanisms has been storytelling in the horror genre. I found myself creating fiction in the horror genre as a form of therapy and escape. Lately, I’ve been thinking of my struggles and how storytelling and the horror genre have been such an important part of my survival. I decided to write a series of articles based on my reflections, covering my experience on how a genre that some see as taboo has been a lifeline for me all my life. Below is the first article.


Stephen King once said, “we make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones in the world.”


Looking back on my life, seeing how horror has helped me cope with my own trauma and mental illness, I believe that King’s statement above may sum up why people are so drawn to horror. Horror allows us to escape real-life monsters, even if it’s for just a few moments. Horror is an important piece of our culture, helping us to cope with the dark side of humanity that is sometimes too hard for a person to face.

When I look back at all the horrible times in my life, I can see I was drawn to the horror genre as a way to deal with the all too real horrors I faced daily in my home at the hands of abusive and neglectful parents. 

My father was very abusive, taking the majority of his anger out on me from when I was a very young age. I was his outlet—he and my mother blamed me for everything that went wrong in their lives.

He even pushed my mother out of a moving car when she was in the late stages of her pregnancy with me. They thought they were going to lose me for a bit. When I was born he directed his anger towards me taking it out on me any chance he could. So from an early age, my maternal grandparents would take me as much as they could, inviting me to stay at their house in Rockwood, Michigan to spare me of the terror of my parents.

I grew up on horror in the late seventies and eighties. Everything was horror and the fantastic. My grandmother introduced to me to the genre. I still remember going to the theater with her to see Poltergeist shorty after my fifth birthday. The clown scene scared the crap out of me, along with the scene with the corpses in the water. Yet I loved the movie.

At the time, I wasn’t sure why my grandmother, an old-fashioned church-going woman, decided to introduce me to horror It was much later in life that I discovered that my grandmother had loved horror before any of her children were born, reading the old paperbacks when she could, or catching a creature feature at the drive in. She even introduced all three of her children to the horror genre, turning them on to it. I also found that she had had a very bad childhood herself, full of pain and possible abuse, and that she had lost her first child just days after she was born. My grandmother also struggled with depression and possible anxiety, though she never talked about it. My grandparents were from a generation that did not believe in therapy or talking about feelings. They believed in appearances, and what people went thought was meant to be kept inside. So, looking back, my guess is horror might have helped distract her from the real-world darkness. She might have even thought it might help me. I don’t know the real reason she introduced me to all the creepy fictions most grandmothers turn their noses up at. But I’m so thankful she did.

Whenever I stayed with my grandparents, I consumed anything I could related to horror and the strange—within reason. Which was pretty often, seeing as I grew up with very abusive parents. For a while, I basically lived there with my grandparents. So, I took in a lot of horror. Whether it was sitting on the old white wooden swing in my grandparents’ back yard, reading old horror comics. Or sitting in front of the big box television set on the 70’s style pea green carpet of their living room watching black &white reruns of the Twilight Zone, Creature of The Black Lagoon, the old Hammer Horror films, and many more. I collected any monster related items from my cherished Remco Monsters to the Crestwood Monster book series. I even had one of those large official Alien action figures that my grandparents found at a garage sale for me.

When not reading or watching horror on TV, Grandma and my babysitters would take me to the theater, (both the Jolly Rogers Drive in and South Gate in door theater) to catch the new scary movie releases. Some of my very few positive childhood memories are of me going to see movies with her, such as Poltergeist, Gremlins, Critters, Day of The Dead, The Evil Dead, The Hand, and  more. I was raised on everything science-fiction, Horror, or Fantasy-related, and I loved it. The escape to the different worlds took my mind off the horrible things that awaited me when my grandparents had no choice but to send me home.

Growing up, there was something special about scary stories that grabbed my attention. Don’t get me wrong, I also loved other fantastic genres such as fantasy and Science fiction, horror just connected with me more than any other gerne as well. I remember being scared to death, but not wanting to look away. I was fascinated with the monsters, yet I was rooting for the heroes at the same time. In those stories, anything was possible. The monsters brought together people of all types, no matter their differences. The heroes always had hope, even when everything around them was telling them they should just give up. In gernes like action, the heroes were almost always trained warrior types, rushing to try to keep something bad from happening. Working to keep the villain from making the world worse fears to happen by setting off a nuke or more. Yet in horror tales, the heroes were regular day people given no choice but to run toward or face their worse fear to survive. It was in these worlds that I learn the importance of surivial.  While in those worlds, I forgot the abuse I was going through at home and the real monsters that waited for me there. Instead, I had hope and was brave and thought anything was possible. I learned the importance of having hope, creativity and so much more from my beloved horror stories.  From a young age, horror and storytelling would become my main coping mechanism whenever I was going through a hard time.
​
I have no doubt of this, as I look back at my life, which is filled with trauma and abuse. I lived through 15 years of every type of abuse you can think of, from two sick addicts who where supposed to love me, a drive-by shooting, the loss of both my grandparents, horrible health issues and disabilities,. The horror genre and storytelling have always been there to help me face the real-world pains that I could barely face on my own. Even now, as I struggle worse than ever with my disabilities, they are my primary coping mechanisms, third only to my faith and family. I definitely think Mr. King was on to something as I’m not sure what I would do without such an interesting genre such as horror as an outlet for all the real-life nightmares I have battled inside.

​Facebook:
Eugene Johnson 

Tales Of The Lost Volume Anthology series Facebook page

Amazon Author page:
Eugene Johnson 


Tales Of The Lost Volume 2
Amazon link
​

Edited by Bram Stoker Award Winner Eugene Johnson and Steve Dillon 


We lose many things during our time in this universe. From the moment we are born we start losing time, and loss becomes a part of our life from the beginning. We lose friends (both imaginary and real), loved ones, pets, and family. We gain stuff and lose stuff, from our socks to our money. We can lose our hope, sanity, passions, our mind, and perhaps even our soul! In the end when death finds us, we end up losing everything... Don't we?


Loss is part of who we are. We can't escape it. We learn from it, grow from it, and so much more. Some of the greatest stories ever forged come from loss. Within this book is some of those stories.


Featuring stories and poetry by an amazing lineup including: 
Tim Waggoner * Lisa Morton * Neil Gaiman * Joe Hill * Heather Graham *  Christopher Golden * Tim Lebbon *  Christina Sng * Vince Liaguno * John Palisano * Kaaron Warren * Chris Mason * Greg Chapman * Tracy Cross * Stephanie W. Wytovich * Alexis Kirkpatrick * Ben Monroe * Lucy A. Snyder and Matthew R. Davis.


Edited by Bram Stoker Award Winner Eugene Johnson and Shirley Jackson award nominated author Steve Dillon. Coming in 2020 from Plaid Dragon Publishing in association with Things in The Well. With cover art by the brilliant Francois Vaillancourt, and interior art by the amazing Luke Spooner. 


Money raised by the anthology will go to benefit the Save the Children Coronavirus response. 


"Tales of the Lost 2 could be called "Tales of the Dark Heart!" From a coming home story that ends in a not-so-typical cemetery scene to a couple of ultimate sacrifices driven by love, this is a book filled with stories to tear at your heart while making you shiver. There are macabre jack-in-the-boxes and soul-stealing virtual reality games and an apocalypse vision of a mother's love the likes of which I've never read before. These are stories of love and longing and selfless giving and aching loss ... with frequent visits from the monstrous things that inhabit the night. This is a volume of horrific heart and chilling beauty."


- John Everson, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Covenant and Voodoo Heart


"Comprising unnerving tales of loss from horror's best-loved writers, LOST 2 is haunting, uncanny, and deeply disquieting. Prepare to lose sleep while reading this one." - Lee Murray, award-winning author of INTO THE ASHES.


Copyright Plaid Dragon Publishing © 2020 
Published by Plaid Dragon Publishing in association with Things in The Well.

At the start of Lockdown One, I realised I had to do something. I wasn’t furloughed from my proper job type job – for which I felt lucky – so I was working at home. But most of the writing I’d done beforehand had been on my commute, and I no longer had that. After the first month, I could feel my writing muscles becoming sluggish. And so I decided, even with all the anxiety of the world outside, I had to write something. I had to take myself away from it. So I created myself some time. While my three year old daughter watched TV for half an hour before bed, I would sit an write chapters of a new book. A ghost story. Every single day without fail until I had finished it.

This book became my novel, Terror of Breakspear Hall.

I didn’t start writing it at the beginning of the story though. Instead I started midway through, with a chapter which seemed to burst out from me. One crammed full of incident. A chapter based on a similar chapter in Ingrid Pitt’s autobiography, Life’s A Scream.

Mostly it’s a breezily written, inspirational story. Ingrid survived a harrowing childhood in a concentration camp to become the embodiment of Hammer-glamour in the early 1970s. The first section is harrowing, whilst also maintaining a childhood innocence; while the second is a collection of well-worn stories she must have used to pay her way on the convention circuit. Ingrid tells us throughout how much she enjoys writing so I presume she actually wrote it herself. Although it does have the whiff of being narrated giddily to a ghost writer.

However, the best chapter in the book – and the one which caught my attention enough to inspire me – is one that’s just rushed over,

It’s a fourteen-page chapter where young Ingrid marries the G.I. who saved her from drowning in a frozen river, moves with him to an army base in Colorado and has a daughter. Her husband (who remains unnamed) starts feeling neglected by the mother/daughter bond and volunteers for Vietnam. Not wanting to be a pining wife at home, Ingrid ends the marriage and joins a terrible travelling theatre company which travels the mid-west and where she never gets paid because the houses are too small. Realising that such a hand to mouth existence will not last, she does a moonlight flit from her guest house and tries to drive to New York towards a plane back to Europe. However, she gets a puncture and comes to a halt in front of a wrecking yard run by Native Americans. She ends up living there with them for six weeks of meditative tranquility, before the urge to get her daughter back to Europe reasserts itself. Somehow, through saving her pennies, she gets the car to the airport, but once there has no money for plane fare. A group of cab drivers comes to her rescue and helps her spruce the car up so that it looks shiny and newish, and Ingrid can sell it to a freshly arrived family of German tourists for $250. Looking up on the board she sees that the next flight to Europe is to Barcelona and slams the money down on the counter to get her and her daughter tickets, and they’re gone within the hour.

As I say, that’s one chapter. One fourteen-page chapter. But clearly there’s enough material there for a novel, a musical and a Coen Brothers movie. It’s incredible and frustrating to read just how swiftly the whole thing is dealt with.

And that was my inspiration. I wanted to write one chapter where an enormous amount happened. Where there were new characters, different cities and a rapid journey for the protagonist. It was the first chapter I wrote for the book (although not the first chapter in the book) and everything else grew out from there. So, for Terror of Breakspear Hall, I have to thank Ingrid Pitt.

In her autobiography. Ingrid – true pro that she was –  gave the public what she thought they wanted – tragic childhood, film star anecdotes, a tale of inner strength and survival – but that one chapter makes me wish she hadn’t gone with the well-polished anecdotes and instead focused on the less well known parts of her life, which sound bloody fascinating.

Directed by: Dario Argento
Starring: Steven Weber, Carrie Anne Fleming, Brenda James, Harris Allen
Original Air Date: 18 November 2005
Synopsis: When a police officer saves the life of a young woman who is deformed from the neck up, his life is turned upside down when she begins to kill and devour all those who get to close.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Masters of Horror is likely to cite this episode as one of the standouts of the shows two-year run. Directed by Italian giallo auteur Dario Argento, Jenifer boasts some truly unforgettable scenes and imagery which have stuck with me vividly since I first watched it in 2005 and of all the 26 episodes that form my rewatch, this was perhaps the one I was most excited to revisit.

Things start off deceptively low-key when we meet police officer Frank (Steven Weber, who also wrote the episode) eating lunch in his car with his partner, and generally having a relaxing afternoon on the job. When nature calls at the most opportune moment and he stumbles upon a scene with a man wielding a meat cleaver about to attack a young woman, he shoots and kills the assailant, saving the girl. When he gets up close to console her, we get a teasing glimpse of her face, with pitch black eyes and malformed jaw, and wonder just what poor Frank has gotten himself into.

So we meet Jenifer (played by Carrie Anne Fleming). Her performance throughout the episode is a brave one, as Jenifer is played as part animal, part human throughout and it’s a demanding role that’s pivotal to how effectively the concept as a whole works on screen. Fleming pulls it off big time and Jenifer comes across as either sympathetic, or horrifying, depending on what the script demands. Kudos also goes to Weber, who is great in this episode and fully commits himself to the madness.

Frank finds himself becoming infatuated with Jenifer (for reasons which are hinted at but, wisely, never overtly explained) and brings her back to his house to stay until she gets back on her feet, much to the chagrin of his wife Ruby (Brenda James) and delight of his rebellious son (Harris Allen).

After Jenifer attacks his wife and eats his cat(!) she finds herself no longer welcome at the house, but Frank is not willing to give up on her and when given an ultimatum by Ruby; her or Jenifer, he chooses Jenifer.

At this stage the episode has succeeded in two big ways. It is incredibly tense, and it’s pretty damn scary. Jenifer is shown to be manipulative and we are already wondering what it is she wants from this relationship with Frank and what she’s willing to do to get it. The practical effects in this episode are absolutely stellar and Jenifer is equal parts disturbing and all too human, making the transitions between vulnerable and bloodthirsty both believable and unpredictable.

Tony Jones, the YA horror expert who curates the teen section of the site ‘Young Blood’ will be interviewing two rising stars of the genre Kathryn Foxfield (GOOD GIRLS DIE FIRST) and Cynthia Murphy (LAST ONE TO DIE) at the Cymera Festival for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. The panel is called "FRIENDS OR FOES" and sits on Sunday 6th June, 11am, going out live on Zoom.

Tony has been a secondary school librarian since 1994 and is regarded as an authority on YA horror, who has been writing for Ginger Nuts since 2015 and a horror fan since he learned to walk. Since 2015 Ginger Nuts has become a leading light on the YA horror genre, interviewing many of the top authors and reviewing countless novels. Some of his most popular features include his Christmas roundups, annual reviews on the HWA YA Stoker Award, and his multi-part articles on series in horror. Tony’s top fifty YA horror novels of the last decade, published last year, attracted considerable attention in the horror community.
Both novels were previously reviewed on Ginger Nuts:

Good Girls Die First:
https://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/young-blood/-good-girls-die-first-by-kathryn-foxfield

Last One To Die:

https://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/young-blood/last-one-to-die-by-cynthia-murphy-book-review

FRIENDS OR FOES will be a fascinating discussion taking in conversation points as wide-ranging as:

1. Why do so few YA horror novels get turned into films?
2. Will the Pandemic shape YA horror over the next few years?
3. Are Point Horror novels still relevant to the teens of 2021?
4. Woman and girl protagonists are totally dominating current YA horror. Is there any future for us boys?
5. Is there scope for modern YA and in particular horror on the National Curriculum? Is there life beyond classics like DR JECKYL AND HYDE or THE WOMAN IN BLACK?

Follow the link to book:

https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/book-tickets/murphy-foxfield?fbclid=IwAR38T5v-A0ZnhAAMOr1kJlAHPnvDk9N47M8cJ2i_a5mQgGiLXwFQbJ8gRVY

More about Cynthia Murphy:

Cynthia Murphy is a YA writer from the North-West of England, though her ‘real job’ is in education. She has a long-standing love affair with all things scary, reading Point Horrors at primary school before graduating to Stephen King in her misguided teens. Classic 90s and 00s horror movies are definitely her pub quiz strong point and her first love may well have been Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Studying for a degree in Art History and Archaeology meant that she developed a thirst for anything old, beautiful and very often dead. She tries to combine this with contemporary settings in her writing to make unique and chilling modern stories. Cynthia is married to her best friend and they share (are ruled by) a Romanian rescue dog called Loli, who loves to steal socks. Her YA thriller Last One To Die is published by Scholastic in the UK.

More about Kathryn Foxfield:

Kathryn Foxfield writes dark books about strange things. She blames her love of the creepy and weird on a childhood diet of Point Horror, Agatha Christie and Dr Who. She writes about characters who aren’t afraid to fight back, but wouldn’t last 5 minutes in one of her own stories. Kathryn is a reformed microbiologist, one-time popular science author, cat-servant and parent. She lives in rural Oxfordshire but her heart belongs to London.  Her YA thriller Good Girls Die First is published by Scholastic in the UK.
Find out more about Cymera 2021 here:
https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/2021-digital-events

With this series of articles, I have been focusing, at least partially, on my own personal experiences with these episodes, both in terms of my memories of initially watching them over fifteen years ago, and my thoughts revisiting them now. ‘Dance of the Dead’ is one of the rare episodes that didn’t really connect with me on my initial viewing. This may have been partially down to the weight of expectations, given the undeniably top tier horror talent involved. Directed by Tobe Hooper, who needs no introduction to horror fans, this episode starred Robert Englund and the script is even written by Richard Christian Matheson, and based on a classic short story written by his father in 1954. You feel that you can’t go far wrong with so many horror legends involved.

The episode opens at a children’s birthday party which is soon interrupted by what we later found out is a terrorist attack, when a biological weapon is unleashed, killing almost everyone in attendance. This big, bold opening statement really sets the tone for what’s to come and, some pretty shoddy (even by fifteen-year-old TV Movie standards) VFX aside, it is an effective and downbeat beginning and very much sets the tone for what’s to come.

Fast forward ten years and one of the survivors, Peggy (Jessica Lowndes) is living with her mother (Marilyn Norry) who owns and runs a rundown diner in a post-apocalyptic world decimated by a Third World War. We are also introduced to Jax (Jonathan Tucker) and his partner in crime, Boxx (Ryan McDonald), both criminals and drug addicts, as they assault and rob an elderly couple in broad daylight, stealing blood from one of them before fleeing. They don’t flee all that far and end up in Peggy’s diner, where the sweet but naïve young woman takes a (frankly inexplicable) shine to Jax and agrees to meet him later that night, much to her mother’s chagrin.

The episode really gets going once the group venture out later that night. The post World War III setting is suitably grim and ravaged, populated by thieves, criminals and (gasp!) teenagers! There are a lot of drugs taken and alcohol consumed as they make their way to the Doom Room, a packed nightclub with what we later find out has a particularly unique brand of entertainment in store.

Speaking of the drug taking, the direction of the episode so far has leaned heavily into the ‘jarring and disorientating’ style of camera work and there is a lot of what I can only refer to as ‘clumsy cam’ (like shaky cam, but more lacking in focus and coordination, as if it’s filmed handheld by someone who forgot to tie their shoelaces) and an odd trick of overlaying images with multiple, out of focus versions of itself. In terms of conveying disorientation (or drug taking) it works fine, but it’s so overused throughout, particularly when the group arrives at the Doom Room, it gets very distracting very quickly.

As soon as they arrive we find out why Jax and Boxx stole the blood earlier, as the clubs MC (Robert Englund) buys it from them for a mysterious purpose related to that night’s ‘entertainment’. The club, and Robert Englund, prove to be the highlight of the episode. Englund seems to be having a great time playing a decadent, larger than life showman and the club itself, packed with gratuitously half nude patrons, wire cages and heavy metal, is equal parts decadent and wretched, a ton of fun on screen but nowhere you’d dare go near in real life.

​Sadly, the plot gets a little convoluted from this point. The blood turns out to be part of some scientific sounding movie nonsense that causes the dead bodies of overdosed drug addicts to reanimate, enough so that when the body is brought out on stage, they are able to stand and, with the help of two topless women wielding cattle prods, ‘dance’. Putting aside the fact that this is an oddly dull spectacle as presented on-screen, Peggy soon recognises one of the deceased dancers as her sister, who she thought lost (and who barely got a mention until this point, lessening the impact of the big reveal somewhat). Things escalate, Peggy’s mother conveniently shows up in time for some moderately shocking family revelations. Without spoiling the ending, suffice to say that nobody lives happily ever after.

The one thing that did resonate with me when re-watching this episode is just how bleak it all is. The story opens with the mass killing of children at a birthday party (and even revisits the scene again in a flashback for good measure) and fast forward ten years in the future, every character besides Peggy and her mother are either drug addicts, dead, or dead drug addicts. The ending makes it clear that Peggy’s mother is not as innocent as she first appears and she certainly pays for her actions in a big way, but even Peggy, who is shown throughout as good-hearted, innocent and trusting, quickly becomes embroiled in the criminal life Jax has introduced her to and any suggestion that she may help Jax escape his lot in life (and is actively shown to be dissatisfied with) is brutally dismissed in the final scene. It’s all very downbeat and sombre, maybe even cynical and a bit mean-spirited, but I loved that nothing was sugar-coated and the characters ultimately get left in a hopeless world with no chance of change or redemption by the time the credits roll.   

Ultimately, I think the story is an interesting, albeit flawed one and I did very much enjoy how nihilistic and unrelentingly unpleasant the whole thing was, but the direction left me a little cold and Peggy just isn’t a strong enough character to carry the episode. I do think I appreciated ‘Dance of the Dead’ more upon my recent re-watch than I did on its initial airing, but my opinion that it’s not one of Masters of Horrors finest hours remains sadly unchanged.

Join me next time as I’ll be looking at episode four of the first season, Dario Argento’s ‘Jenifer’. See you then!