RICHARD MARTIN REVISITS THE MASTERS OF HORROR, PELTS, DIRECTED BY DARIO ARGENTO

RICHARD MARTIN REVISITS THE MASTERS OF HORROR: PELTS, DIRECTED BY DARIO ARGENTO

7/7/2021

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.

RICHARD MARTIN REVISITS THE MASTERS OF HORROR: PELTS, DIRECTED BY DARIO ARGENTO

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

Richard is an avid reader and fan of all things horror. He supports Indie horror lit via Twitter (@RickReadsHorror) and reviews horror in all its forms for several websites including Horror Oasis and Sci Fi and Scary