REVISITING THE MASTERS OF HORROR: THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION DIRECTED BY JOE DANTE

RICHARD MARTIN REVISITS THE MASTERS OF HORROR: THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION DIRECTED BY JOE DANTE

9/7/2021

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;

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.

Revisiting the Masters of Horror: The Screwfly Solution
Directed by Joe Dante

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

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