RICHARD MARTIN REVISITS THE MASTERS OF HORROR: THE V WORD, DIRECTED BY: ERNEST DICKERSON

25/6/2021

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 V Word
Directed by: Ernest Dickerson
Starring: Brandon Nadon, Arjay Smith, Michael Ironside, Jodelle Ferland
Original Air Date: 10 November 2006
Synopsis: Two teenage boys left home alone decide to visit a mortuary inside a local funeral home to see some dead bodies. They find more than they bargained for when one of the corpses comes to life.

REVISITING THE ‘MASTERS OF HORROR’, THE V WORD
DIRECTED, BY ERNEST DICKERSON

Ernest Dickerson was most likely known to horror fans back in 2006 as director of ‘Demon Knight’, the movie spin-off of the legendary TV horror anthology, ‘Tales From the Crypt’. He’d also revisited the genre again in 2001 with the underrated and stylish Snoop Dogg movie vehicle, ‘Bones’ but, for the most part, is one of the few Masters of Horror who wasn’t typecast as a horror director at the time he made his contribution to the series, having directed crime dramas (‘Juice’), action thrillers (‘Surviving the Game’) and even an early Adam Sandler effort (‘Bulletproof’). Nowadays, his horror output is more prolific, having directed episodes of TV shows such as ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Dexter’, ‘Under the Dome’ and ‘The Purge’ but, in 2006, with only two horror movies under his belt, I wasn’t sure what to expect from his episode, ‘The V Word’.

The episode opens on Justin (Brandon Nadon) and Kerry (Arjay Smith) stuck home alone at Justin’s house with nothing to do except play video games. Justin’s mum and younger sister are away for the night and his father… Well, he and Justin aren’t getting along since he left his family to move in with his secretary. Succumbing to boredom, Justin suggests visiting the local mortuary where his cousin works, perhaps getting a peek at a dead body. Although he takes some convincing, Kerry gets on board and off they go.

Once they arrive there is no sign of his cousin, and they find the door unlocked and the place seemingly empty. Not wanting to waste their trip, the two boys head inside. It’s a spooky set-piece, one done a thousand times before, but effective nonetheless. Kerry is convinced that Justin is playing tricks when they start hearing noises. Justin strenuously denies it, but when they find a series of dead bodies, one of which is Justin’s cousin, the fun and games are over. As one of the dead bodies comes to life and the two boys flee but Kerry hurts his leg and the undead creature (Michael Ironside) soon catches up to him, tearing out his throat with his teeth as Justin looks on helplessly before running home, leaving his (surely dead) friend behind.

I feel like I need to pause here and acknowledge Michael Ironside. Michael Ironside of ‘Scanners’ fame. From ‘Total Recall’, ‘Starship Troopers’ and ‘Top Gun’. That Michael Ironside. Masters of Horror attracted a lot of big names, both in front of and behind the camera, but few, if any, with a CV half as impressive as that. While his appearance is little more than an extended cameo, the limited time he is on screen, the episode gets infinitely more watchable. He is clearly having fun, going big with the character, and it’s a joy to watch. It’s a shame that he doesn’t get more to do because he is, by a wide margin, the episodes absolute highlight.

Justin gets home in a panic and tries to ring his mother but gets no answer. He gets through to his father, who brushes him off and hangs up (not to worry, we’ll get back to him later on). Just as he’s about to call the police he hears a knock at the door. It’s Kerry. He begs to be let in and Justin, being a good friend (and unwisely disregarding the fact that his clearly very dead pal has been 1. bitten on the neck and 2. is asking permission to cross the threshold) lets him in. Big mistake Justin!

The word vampire isn’t used in the episode, but Kerry is ice cold, has a gaping neck wound, and all he can think about is his stomach. He’s hungry. Ravenous even! Hungry enough to take a bite out of his best friend, who promptly blacks out. When Justin awakes in bed the next morning his mother and sister have gotten home and the former is fuming about the mess he has made. There is no sign of Kerry, but Justin has woken up looking decidedly unwell, a fact that his mother notices, sending him off to bed.

As silly as it seems when I’m summarising the episode like this, it did come as a genuine surprise when Kerry attacked Justin. This is around the halfway mark of the episode and the boy’s friendship has been portrayed from the start as a strong one and their easy back and forth and good-natured camaraderie carries the early sections. I was expecting more of a ‘Return of the Living Dead III’ plot development where Kerry has turned and Justin goes into denial, trying to help his friend in an ultimately doomed effort to maintain the friendship. But no, Kerry takes a big ol’ bite out of him and does a runner. The build-up to the moment made me think it was going to go one way, when it actually went in the direction that, in retrospect, was the obvious way to go all along. Touche Mr Dickerson.

When night falls, Justin begins wandering around the house, going into his little sister’s room but, as tempted as he is to feed he resists, leaving before his bloodlust gets the better of him. Desperate to flee the temptation, he ventures out and decides to visit his fathers’ new house, where Kerry is waiting for him. Kerry is frustrated by his friend’s reluctance to feed and kills his father, hoping that Justin’s instinct will take over and he will drink, but Justin still finds the willpower to resist and Kerry has no choice but to take him back to the mortuary where he was turned, to meet the creature who bit him in the hopes that he may be a little more convincing.

What follows is, for my money, the best two scenes in the episode. In the first, Michael Ironside's character takes matters into his own hands, deciding he will make Justin feed. His plan; he kidnaps Justin’s sister, ties her up and draws some blood with a syringe, injecting it into Justin’s neck. The idea is that now Justin has had a taste he won’t be able to resist, and he’ll feed on his own sister. It seems like a given, knowing how easily Kerry turned to the dark side, and Justin has done an admirable job so far in delaying the inevitable.

Justin doesn’t give up though and when he is let free, resists the bloodlust one last time to fight the creature. He begs Kerry to help, too weak to fight him alone and although clearly reluctant, Kerry joins the fray, holding the creature down while the sister escapes and Justin decapitates him with a handsaw in an especially impressive closeup shot showcasing some gnarly practical effects.

Evil defeated and the friends reunited, it just leaves one unresolved issue. They are both still vampires. While Kerry clearly has zero issues with the killing part, having just killed Justin’s father and aided in kidnapping his sister for the express purpose of being eaten, it is a line Justin is not willing to cross. The pair’s friendship has been one of the driving forces behind the story so far and, despite everything that Kerry has done, Justin understands why he did it, even taking some responsibility, having been the one to instigate the trip to the mortuary in the first place, and tells him to leave town and never come back. Justin, now alone, unable to go home, and incapable of living a life without killing others to survive, opts to stay where he is, waiting for the sun to rise as we cut between shots of his sister running home safely, and Justin lay on a mortuary table, engulfed in flames.

The episode wraps up with Kerry leaving town on a bus, doing an absolutely atrocious Blade impression, donned in a long black coat and sunglasses and spouting some truly dire one-liners to an oblivious guy sat across from him (“I don’t drink…. wine!” Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink). It’s a shame to end it on such a hammy note after an otherwise effective and downbeat ending.

Overall, ‘The V Word’ is an enjoyable enough episode, but not a stand-out one. Other than a jarringly shoddy and tonally out of place last few minutes, it manages some pretty tense scenes, some great effects and decent performances, particularly Michael Ironside, who steals the episode entirely with his five minutes of screen time. A lot of the episode worked well, but I’m hard-pressed to pick out much that it excelled at. The series is called ‘Masters of Horror’ after all and when you’re getting weekly episodes from the best directors the genre has to offer, even a solid, entertaining episode doesn’t fare well in comparison, especially sandwiched as it is between two of season twos strongest episodes.
Speaking of which…

Join me next time as I’ll be looking at episode four of the second season, Brad Anderson’s ‘Sounds Like’. 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