Being the self-proclaimed Masters of Horror, the series managed to attract some top tier talent during its two-year run, but few episodes can beat ‘Valerie on the Stairs’ for pure horror cred. Not only is it directed by series creator and serial Stephen King adaptor Mick Garris, but it is based on a story written by the legendary Clive Barker and, in a fun bit of confluence, stars the horror icon made famous by his turn as the titular Candyman in the 1992 adaptation of Barker’s ‘The Forbidden’ from his seminal Books of Blood collection. Throw in an appearance for Doc Brown/Fester Adams himself, Christopher Lloyd, and you suspect this is going to be something pretty special.

When we first meet Rob (Tyron Leitso) he is a wannabe novelist struggling to find a publisher for his work. Through a montage of rejection letters and bills past due, we see he is fighting to stay afloat and when he is offered a lifeline in the form of a residency at Highberger House, a home for aspiring writers. The rent is free, on the condition that he vacate once he becomes published. Rob is understandably thrilled to take the room, but it doesn’t take long for things to start going wrong for him.

He has barely unpacked when he begins to hear loud banging outside his door. This isn’t spooky noises late at night, this is someone knocking on his door in the middle of the day, so Rob is understandably more annoyed than frightened at this stage, as he keeps going to the door and finding nobody outside. Eventually, after much noise and a few upset neighbours, Rob meets Valerie (who, as the title suggests, he finds sat outside his room, on some stairs).

Being set in a writer’s retreat, to say that there is a colourful cast of characters is a bit of an understatement. Poor Rob is practically bland by comparison. You have rebellious ‘cool kid’ Bruce (Jonathan Watton), foul-mouthed Southern belle Patricia (Suki Kaiser) and Nancy (Nicola Lipman), the grumpy building manager with a heart of gold. As might be expected though, it’s Christopher Lloyd, playing long term resident Everett Nealy, that steals the show. Although his screen time is limited, he is a presence throughout the episode, and the script calls for a lot of exposition from his character, giving Lloyd lots of monologues and lengthy scenes, which he delivers perfectly with his trademark manic energy and bold expressions. I love to watch him work and, honestly, his casting alone makes this an episode you don’t want to miss.

Back to Rob and Valerie though, and Valerie is starting to communicate with Rob, expressing fear at an evil presence that is keeping her trapped in the house. We get glimpses here and there (a clawed hand here, an arm there) but nothing concrete until later on. Valerie is begging Rob to help her, but it’s not clear yet why she is trapped (or, more importantly, why she is unable to help herself). The more Rob sees of her though, the more he begins to develop feelings for Valerie.

Although this episode is fairly light in tone, almost Gaimanesque with its urban setting of a rundown apartment complex, with fantastical, fairy tale elements sprinkled in, the effects team are kept relatively busy in the horror department once things pick up the pace in the second half. The Beast starts to rack up a pretty impressive body count as it attacks residents and kills residents who get too close to Valerie. The Beast makeup itself is subtle (it is very clearly Tony Todd under the make-up) and effective, as it should be when you have somebody of that calibre playing the role. There is also a great CGI effect that closes out the episode that may not have aged as well as some of the more straightforward digital effects used in the shows run, but wins major bonus points for creativity.

So far, Rob has become more than a little preoccupied with ‘rescuing’ Valerie, completely forgetting about his novel. We’ve also seen Valerie on multiple occasions, but usually just playing the damsel in distress, begging Rob for help but offering little in the way of assistance or clues as to how he might accomplish this, lacking her own agency. We’ve also had glimpses of Tony Todd as the Beast. Being Tony Todd, he is a commanding presence, with his big stature and deep rumbling voice, but we’ve had no sense of why he’s keeping Valerie imprisoned so far, other than being evil for evil's sake. If it sounds like the one-dimensional characterisation and motivation of this trio is coming across as a criticism, then stay tuned, because there is method to the madness, and the (very purposeful) reasons why these three seem like archetypes is nothing less than inspired.

The episodes (first) big reveal, that Valerie and the Demon are fictional characters that are straight from the pages of a book the commune have been writing as a group, is a stroke of genius. It puts everything we know up to now in a whole new light and fundamentally changes the dynamics of what’s to come. Not only does it call into question the reality (or lack thereof) of everything we’ve seen so far, but it changes the emotional drive of the episode. Is Rob real, or is he an archetypal ‘hero’, written into the story to serve the narrative? Is the commune even real? Is anything we’ve seen so far? The third act now stops being about whether Rob can save Valerie (after all, is it not a given that good triumphs over evil) and the audience finds themselves more concerned about whether there is a life after for either of these characters or if their story ends there.

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 ​

Tales From The Grindhouse is retro horror madness from paperback hell! A brand new series of novels featuring adaptations of movies they dared not make, with stories so shocking and bloody that they were kept under lock and key - until now.
​

Alan Power was born in the past, screaming.  He is the author of the Tales from the Grindhouse series, for which he also creates cover art and the occasional imaginary map. He now lives in Scotland with his wife, a host of children and a flyblown horde of mangy street cur dogs that are nevertheless affectionate and mostly tick-free. He screams slightly less these days.
www.talesfromthegrindhouse.net

​The first horror book I remember reading

I think it was Frankenstein. I remember being shocked to learn that Frankenstein isn’t the name of the monster.

The First Horror Film I remember watching

Cujo. It scared the hell out of me!

The Greatest Horror Book of All Time

I loved H.P. Lovecraft’s The Lurker at the Threshold and Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla.

The Greatest Horror Film of all time

They Live. Evil Dead II is a close second.

THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME

All hail H.P. Lovecraft!

THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME

Too many good ones to pick. I really like covers on classic literature, like Madame Bovary, In a Glass Darkly, or Phantom of the Opera.

THE BEST FILM POSTER OFF ALL TIME

In the Mouth of Madness.

THE BEST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

My new psychological horror novel, Summoner of Sleep. It’s about a dark family secret. A town that doesn’t exist on any map. And a drug that will unleash an apocalyptic, transformational horror on the world. So you know, light subject matter. :)

THE WORST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

A Darling Secret. It was the last book in the Strange Luck Series and was really hard to finish.

THE MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF ALL TIME

Cemetery Man. I’ve only met a handful of people who’ve seen it.

THE MOST UNDERRATED BOOK OF ALL TIME

Carmilla. It’s a beautiful and haunting Gothic novella and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula.

THE MOST UNDERRATED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME

Sheridan Le Fanu and Arthur Machen.

THE BOOK / FILM THAT SACRED ME THE MOST

As a kid, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As an adult, anything having to do with aliens. That movie seriously messed me up.

THE BOOK / FILM I AM WORKING ON NEXT

I’m working on a few horror short stories at the moment and plan to start writing a new novel at the end of the year.

In the isolated mountain town of Marble Woods, the townspeople harbor a dangerous secret. It's here, away from the civilized world, that they can experiment with human genetics that have the power to alter your mind and body. When Ryder Ashling, a down-on-his-luck longtime sufferer of nightmares, discovers the town, he thinks he's found a cure, but bears witness to their research and its terrifying, inevitable unraveling.


In exploring the disturbing crossroads of genetic manipulation and lust for youth and control of the physical, Winters' cautionary tale of the perversion of natural order and desire will entice and rattle readers in this thought-provoking tale of terror.

BIO
A.I. Winters is an award-winning author known for her works of horror and fantasy. She is the author of the young adult fantasy novels Strange Luck, The Nightmare Birds, and A Darling Secret. Her latest horror book, Summoner of Sleep, will be released July 2021.


She currently lives in Los Angeles. When not writing books, she enjoys breaking a sweat in Jiu-Jitsu class, baking, and traveling.

Author: George Daniel Lea
Cover: Nick Hardy
Publication Date: August 10, 2021
Pre-order link 
https://perpetualpublishing.com/product/born-in-blood-volume-two/
​

One of the joys of running a site like Ginger Nuts of Horror is being able to share in the joys and successes of the members of the review family.  Today we are proud to bring you the cover reveal for George Daniel Lea's Born in Blood Volume Two. 

If Volume One is anything to go by, then Volume Two  will be a must read for horror fans 

"Born in Blood: Volume One is one of those rare and revelatory works that jolts you out of a slumber and makes you look at the world with fresh eyes. Quite simply, this is a stunning collection of horror fiction." - George Illet Anderson 

We spoke to George Daniel Lea about his new collection and George had this to say about it 

Born in blood . . . the first breath and all that follow, tainted by original trauma, echoing throughout every thought, every heartbeat; blossoming into more profound pain, until breath and thought both cease . . .
What we grow accustomed to . . . what we can endure:

The days bleed into one another, as we do; hurt defining every moment.

No more. Now, all instants are one; pulsing brilliant, ecstasy and agony, rendered down; experienced in a heartbeat.

Every shame. Every sorrow. Humanity, history. This is what we are; the God we gave birth to.

Better? Yes. Yes. Now, we all suffer the same; no more division; no privilege or powerlessness. We are the same; sexless, skinless, ex sanguine.

And we celebrate, content in our disgrace.


Born in Blood: Volume 2 Preorder:

https://perpetualpublishing.com/product/born-in-blood-volume-two/

Born in Blood: Volumes 1 and 2 bundle package:

https://perpetualpublishing.com/product/born-in-blood-book-bundle-volumes-one-two/

We are living in a golden age of horror on TV. Shows like ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Supernatural’ and ‘American Horror Story’ have effectively taken the genre mainstream, offering weekly doses of gore and mayhem to the masses. Go back a decade or two however, and genre fans had far fewer options to choose from. Anthology shows, like ‘Tales From the Crypt’, ‘Monsters’ or ‘Tales From the Darkside’ were king during the horror heyday of the 1980s, providing cheesy and cheerful tongue in cheek horror in half hour bites. It wasn’t until 2005 that the TV horror anthology show got serious, and delivered arguably the most consistent, memorable and scary anthology show to date.

The brainchild of horror legend Mick Garris, the show’s title is no hyperbole. ‘Masters of Horror’ brought together the best horror talent Hollywood (and beyond) had to offer. Episodes directed by undisputed genre luminaries such as John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento and Stuart Gordon were like hour long movies brought to your TV screen. High production values, A-List talent and a free reign to do whatever they pleased resulted in some truly unforgettable work from a group of horror legends let off their leash. These are stories that have stayed with me in the fifteen years since many initially aired and, in this series, I’ll be revisiting all twenty-six episodes, one at a time, to shine a light on a fondly remembered and undeniably influential moment in horror TV history.
Join me as I take a look back at;

The Screwfly Solution
Directed by: Joe Dante
Starring: Jason Priestley, Kerry Norton, Brenna O’Brien, Elliott Gould
Original Air Date: 8 December 2006
Synopsis: A new and dangerous virus sweeps the globe, turning men into violent killers who target their rage upon women. One family race to find a cure before the human race itself is wiped out.

​Part of the fun of writing this series has not just been revisiting and reviewing these episodes, but adding a personal touch by sharing my personal experiences both now and when the episode initially aired. In the case of ‘The Screwfly Solution’ I have nothing to share in the case of the former, as I had absolutely zero recollection of this episode before rewatching it. Based on a 1970s sci-fi short story by psychologist Alice Sheldon, Joe Dante’s second episode (following Season One’s ‘Homecoming’) is big in ideas, themes and scale and, like ‘Homecoming’, uses the episode to convey some prescient social issues that are no less relevant now than they were in 1977 when the short was published, or 2006 when this episode aired.

The episode opens with two cleverly executed and intriguing info dumps. The first is almost like an educational video in presentation, telling the story of how a population of screwflys were controlled with a virus that prevented them from mating, thereby severely reducing the population. This is shown alongside an opening scene with a man living in an idyllic all-American suburb, cheerfully cleaning up after himself after he has brutally murdered his wife and young daughter. He seems genuinely confused when his neighbours suspect something is wrong as he hoses a sea of blood off his driveway and is ultimately arrested. It’s an interesting start that balances hints at what’s to come without offering up too many answers at this stage. 

We soon meet Alan (Jason Priestley) and his wife Anne (Kerry Norton) and his daughter Amy (Brenna O’Brien). The family are soon separated when Alan and partner Barney (Elliott Gould) two world-renowned entomologists, are called to investigate a startling outbreak of violence against women. I didn’t quite follow the logic of two scientists concerned with the study of insects chiming in on mass femicide, but moving on!

Alan and Barney surmise that this outbreak of male on female violence is a biological attack and, much like the Screwflies of the intro, humans are spreading a disease whereby male sexual arousal results in violent outbreaks. Their solution is mass chemical castration of men, a suggestion the government (a room full of men) seem strongly against.
 
Much like ‘Homecoming’, the message may not be subtle, but it is a timely one. Worldwide fears over drastic social changes and extreme violence committed with questionable justifications are the background to acts of femicide on a grand scale, and the sense of helplessness as a worldwide pandemic spreads unchecked is nothing if not relatable right now. The episode’s strong feminist undertones may use horror to get its point across, but it does so effectively, the grand post-apocalyptic setting making the all-too-real story of a gendered climate of fear more palatable. 

Dantes episodes of Masters of Horror may not have resonated with me in the same way a lot of the series has, but I do like the fact that they tried something different to the more overtly horrific or ‘pure’ entertainment episodes and one of the unsung strengths of Masters of Horror was how eclectic the episodes were, and Joe Dante is a major contributor to that, his episodes standing out as something unlike what has come before them. 
​
By the midway point of the episode, the epidemic has gotten out of control and it is suggested that women are being killed in the millions, across the globe. We get hints of this, including a particularly tense scene at an airport and on-board a plane as Alan is coming home to his family. The implications of the casual mentions of female-only flights, and scenes of women visibly nervous around anyone who is male is genuinely chilling, and the scenes of violence (and in particular the male reaction to the violence) against women really hit home and are some of the most effective scenes of the episode.

One of the things that surprised me about ‘The Screwfly Solution’ is that, given Masters of Horror as a concept is presented as a 60-minute movie, and given this episode, in particular, is so grand in scope, it feels disappointingly like what it is. A made for TV episode. I struggled while watching to pin down exactly why it doesn’t have the ‘movie’ vibe the series excels at, but it was sadly absent here. The direction is good (as you would expect) and the cast does ok for the most part, but the supporting cast doesn’t fare so well and the episode just veers a little too far into TV melodrama at times. A tighter script may have helped because a number of lapses in logic do tend to take you out of the episode and, for a family of scientists, the leads do make some jarringly unintelligent choices. It starts with a female scientist blithely continuing her studies of the disease, knowing what it is and what it does, whilst stationed on an all-male military base. Studying a virus that drives men to kill women, as a woman, surrounded by men with guns, seems almost suicidally unwise. Alan’s decision to go be with his (all-female) family when the pandemic gets out of hand is not the smartest move given 1. His gender and 2. What the pandemic is, and some serious suspension of disbelief is required to accept that Anne can wrap a scarf around her mouth and be mistaken for a man. The episode is peppered with little things like this which dragged the episode down for me.

The episode’s big reveal of the culprits behind this mass extinction event may come as a bit of a surprise, and it will no doubt be a polarising resolution, but I thought it fit very well and, without spoiling who is responsible for the virus, I liked the implications it presented and thought they offered up an interesting counterpoint to the concerns that are hinted at early in the episode about potential terrorist origins.
​
‘The Screwfly Solution’ was not one of my favourite episodes of the season and while I appreciated the fact that it is something new that the series hadn’t tried before, and was thoroughly impressed by how grand the topic was for a 60-minute TV episode, it was ultimately, for me at least, a great concept hampered by a script that relies on contrivances for its set-pieces to work. There is a lot to like here though and I do wonder if I would have viewed the episode more favourably had I not been watching in the context of a series that has consistently offered much stronger episodes.


Join me next time as I’ll be looking at episode eight of the second season, Mick Garris’s ‘Valerie on the Stairs’. See you then!

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 ​

We are living in a golden age of horror on TV. Shows like ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Supernatural’ and ‘American Horror Story’ have effectively taken the genre mainstream, offering weekly doses of gore and mayhem to the masses. Go back a decade or two however, and genre fans had far fewer options to choose from. Anthology shows, like ‘Tales From the Crypt’, ‘Monsters’ or ‘Tales From the Darkside’ were king during the horror heyday of the 1980s, providing cheesy and cheerful tongue in cheek horror in half hour bites. It wasn’t until 2005 that the TV horror anthology show got serious, and delivered arguably the most consistent, memorable and scary anthology show to date.

The brainchild of horror legend Mick Garris, the show’s title is no hyperbole. ‘Masters of Horror’ brought together the best horror talent Hollywood (and beyond) had to offer. Episodes directed by undisputed genre luminaries such as John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento and Stuart Gordon were like hour long movies brought to your TV screen. High production values, A-List talent and a free reign to do whatever they pleased resulted in some truly unforgettable work from a group of horror legends let off their leash. These are stories that have stayed with me in the fifteen years since many initially aired and, in this series, I’ll be revisiting all twenty-six episodes, one at a time, to shine a light on a fondly remembered and undeniably influential moment in horror TV history.
​
Join me as I take a look back at

Pelts
Directed by: Dario Argento
Starring: Meat Loaf, Ellen Ewusie, John Saxon, Link Baker
Original Air Date: 1 December 2006
Synopsis: An unscrupulous fur trader stumbles upon a grizzly murder scene where he steals a collection of beautiful but cursed pelts that cause violent deaths wherever they go. 

​While re-watching Season Two, there have been a number of directors who had also featured in the First Season (John Landis, Joe Dante, John Carpenter and Stuart Gordon to name just a few) and it is difficult to resist the urge to compare the two episodes each director contributed. My recent rewatch of 'Family' (John Landis) compares the episode favourably to one of my first season favourites (‘Deer Woman’) but with Dario Argento, there is an awful lot to live up to. ‘Jenifer’ is one of the most beloved and well-remembered episodes of the entire run, and while I look back fondly on ‘Pelts’, it doesn’t seem to have been remembered quite as fervently as its predecessor. Is ‘Jenifer’ truly the better episode, or does ‘Pelts’ deserve the same adoration and infamy of its first season cousin? 

The episode opens inside a garment factory, owned by Jake (Meat Loaf). His workers are sorting various pelts in order to process them. We get to know Jake as a boss and a person in pretty short order as he begins yelling obscenities at his staff, before storming out to go to a strip club, where he harasses and ultimately assaults one of the strippers (Shanna, played by Ellen Ewusie). A picture of a sleazy and unpleasant lead is painted pretty early on and he does little to endear us to him from here on out.

I’ll be honest and confess that, upon first watching the episode in 2006, I knew Meat Loaf (like I presume a lot of people did) as ‘that Bat Out of Hell’ guy. I’d seen him in Fight Club (but hadn’t realised it was him) but otherwise didn’t know him as an actor at all. I’m surprised, looking back now, at just how many acting credits he has to his name (IMDB lists over a hundred, many of which pre-date this episode, including a 'Tales From the Crypt' episode) and this experience shows on-screen with ‘Pelts’ because he is an incredible presence. His character is larger than life, very expressive and full of pent-up energy, none of which is directed in very healthy ways. He is, by quite some margin, the most unlikeable and abhorrent character in any Masters of Horror episode, and I will absolutely count the villains in that statement. He plays Jake as a bully and a manipulator, selfish to the core, and his performance strikes the perfect balance of larger than life without devolving into cartoonish wickedness so as not to downplay the heavier themes of the episode. I was impressed enough that I now can’t watch the ‘Bat out of Hell’ video without picturing Jake’s final fate. 

The episode cuts to hunter Jeb Jameson (played by horror legend John Saxon, of 'Black Christmas' and 'Nightmare on Elm Street' fame) and his son Larry (Michael Suchanek) as they head out in the dead of night to trespass on land in order to hunt raccoon so they can sell their pelts. Unbeknownst to them, the land they are trespassing on is cursed, and the pelts they ultimately take drive their owners to suicide. The first we learn of this is when Larry, enraptured by the beauty of the pelts, calmly and serenely caves his fathers head in with a baseball bat, before taking his own life in a particularly imaginative and painful-looking manner. 

The pelts are now left unattended and when Jake and his partner Lou (Link Baker) stop by Jeds’ home the next morning to view his new merchandise, they find a lot more than they bargained for, namely two dead bodies and the finest pelts Jake has ever seen. Being the upstanding guy that he is, he ignores Lou’s suggestion that they call the cops, opting instead to steal the pelts and get the hell out of there before they’re caught. Jake’s comeuppance can’t come quickly enough at this point and, if the fate of the Jamesons is anything to go by, it will be an especially unpleasant one.
​
Sadly, Jake is not next in line, as two of his workers fall victim to the curse whilst turning the pelts into a glorious coat, which Jake hopes to use to wow at an upcoming fashion show, while simultaneously impressing Shanna by offering her the role of model… at a price. The precise nature of the curse is never really explored (although the anti-fur, pro-animal message is abundantly clear), and I think that works in the episode's favour because the focus then becomes about the consequences of falling foul of it and let’s face it, that’s a whole lot more fun.  

Until now I’ve resisted mentioning the gory set pieces and incredible special effects in the episode, solely because Argento has saved the absolute best for last, but the whole 60 minutes is filled with some astonishingly violent and grotesque images. The early scene of the ill-fated Jamesons, when Larry beats his father to death with a baseball bat before diving headfirst into a leghold trap, is unflinching, as the camera doesn’t cut away from the violence. It’s also incredibly over the top and all the more memorable for it. But wait! It gets even crazier, as the cursed furs inspire people to commit some truly disgusting and creative acts of suicide. Sue Chin Yao, the head seamstress working on the coat sows her eyes, ears and mouth shut and suffocates to death, and it is all depicted in a grimly extreme close-up. I don’t actually know how they achieved the effect, but it is pretty shocking stuff. Poor Sergio gets it even worse, taking a pair of shearing scissors and cutting through his own chest, skin and sternum, pulling out the contents until he dies.

If Argento feels like he has won the coveted ‘most extreme gore’ trophy at that year's Masters of Horror dinner, then he makes pretty sure he does so definitively with the big finale. As big a horror fan as I am, even I almost turned away when Jake decides to impress Shanna with a new coat, one he fashions hastily in her bathroom by skinning himself with a cleaver, pulling the skin off his chest and back off like a vest. It sounds silly on paper, but watching the episode, it is anything but. It all looks far too realistic to be anything less than grim and disturbing. ‘Pelts’ is a great episode, but it is absolutely elevated by the effects team, who are kept very busy and do stellar work on every set piece.

After finishing ‘Pelts’ I was struck by how well everything tied together. The supernatural elements are subtle and vague, completely at odds with the full-on violence. The cast is great, Meat Loaf in particular and the pervading tone throughout is generally unpleasant and grim. It is a memorable and effective episode.

A better episode than ‘Jenifer’?
​
For my money at least; Yes. Of both of Argento’s episodes, Pelts is the stronger of the two. It tackles a lot of the same themes and shares a lot of the episode’s strengths, but for me, just upped the ante in almost every regard.


Join me next time as I’ll be looking at episode seven of the second season, Joe Dante’s ‘The Screwfly Solution’. See you then!

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 ​