I don't know what I was expecting from "Dance of the Dead," the third installment of the Showtime original series, Masters of Horror, but this certainly wasn't it. I knew that one my favorite horror icons, Tobe Hooper, was directing, so I knew the episode would be dark and filled with sub-text. I just had no idea it would be THIS dark.
"Dance of the Dead" comes to us courtesy of a short story by Richard Matheson (adapted by Richard Christian Matheson) and Chainsaw helmer, Hooper. It's the disturbing story of a girl named Peggy, who - on her seventh birthday - witnesses a devastating terrorist attack on the country. In the episode, this assault is depicted in frightening and upsetting terms: the sky goes gray and gloomy all of the sudden, and then chunks of flesh begin to peel off the partygoers and curl up like crispy potato skins. Yuck!
Flash forward ten years. The world is a vastly changed place. Especially in America. Peggy works at a local diner with her restrictive, conservative Mom, and lives a sheltered life. She knows nothing of life outside the town boundaries. Nonetheless, a new "death culture" consumes the youngsters broaching adolescence in a USA where California doesn't even exist anymore. This death culture, by the way, is a reflection and extension of the 1980s punk rock ethos. Nihilism, self-destruction, no empathy...real dark stuff.
Then, one day, a handsome bad boy named Jak comes to town, and takes Peggy to the forbidden local hot spot in Meskeet, a city where a night club called "The Doom Room" revels in human (or is it inhuman?) depravity. Robert Englund - Monsieur Krueger himself - portrays the emcee at the Doom Room, and introduces a show that features a zombified dancer jerking and spasming on the stage. She's kept on her feet by thugs with cattle prods.
That undead dancer, it seems, is Peggy's long lost sister. Sold into slavery by her Mom some years back, when the girl got into drugs and Mom didn't want to deal with her anymore.
Man, is this episode dark...
"Dance of the Dead" is the boldest, nastiest, most unpleasant Masters of Horror yet. It's gruesome, mean-spirited, and my God, it's absolutely riveting. You can't take your eyes off the screen, and no matter how much you want to turn away...you have to know how it ends. Robert Englund goes totally over the top playing an over-sexed, drunk, corrupted, half-dead underworld businessman. It's a great and daring performance full of piss and vinegar.
Drug use, the sex trade, thugs stealing blood ("we're just in it for the red..."), "Dance of the Dead" portrays an America turned upside down by a weapon of mass destruction. A terrifying aftermath has been extrapolated in this post apocalyptic world, and it ain't pretty.
In some freaky, bizarre way, the episode also plays as a parody/homage of 1950s "teenager" movies. You know the type of film I mean: a motorcycle gang rides into town, and the leader romances a pretty, virginal townie. She's innocent and wide-eyed, and her parents - naturally - are terrified she'll losie her virtue to the twin demons of Harley Davidson and rock-and-roll. In the end, the parents learn a little bit about tolerance, and the kid learns a little more about the world. Either that, or there's wall-to-wall violence and a generational culture clash...
Only here, in "Dance of the Dead" the teenage culture really is obsessed with death. The music is hateful, the drugs are destructive (and this episode includes a lot of trippy imagery...). And the "truth" out there in the world is that Mom is no compassionate, Christian conservative. She's a really, really bad person.
Like I said, this is a really dark show, but - I submit- one that is brilliantly conceived and executed. It's one of the most hardcore, balls-to-the-wall things I've ever seen Tobe Hooper direct. And I mean - shit - this is the guy who directed Eaten Alive (1976), Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and the like.
I can't really say that I enjoyed "Dance of the Dead," but boy did it keep my attention. I've never seen anything like it on television before. I've felt dirty and bad about myself ever since the screening...
"Dance of the Dead" comes to us courtesy of a short story by Richard Matheson (adapted by Richard Christian Matheson) and Chainsaw helmer, Hooper. It's the disturbing story of a girl named Peggy, who - on her seventh birthday - witnesses a devastating terrorist attack on the country. In the episode, this assault is depicted in frightening and upsetting terms: the sky goes gray and gloomy all of the sudden, and then chunks of flesh begin to peel off the partygoers and curl up like crispy potato skins. Yuck!
Flash forward ten years. The world is a vastly changed place. Especially in America. Peggy works at a local diner with her restrictive, conservative Mom, and lives a sheltered life. She knows nothing of life outside the town boundaries. Nonetheless, a new "death culture" consumes the youngsters broaching adolescence in a USA where California doesn't even exist anymore. This death culture, by the way, is a reflection and extension of the 1980s punk rock ethos. Nihilism, self-destruction, no empathy...real dark stuff.
Then, one day, a handsome bad boy named Jak comes to town, and takes Peggy to the forbidden local hot spot in Meskeet, a city where a night club called "The Doom Room" revels in human (or is it inhuman?) depravity. Robert Englund - Monsieur Krueger himself - portrays the emcee at the Doom Room, and introduces a show that features a zombified dancer jerking and spasming on the stage. She's kept on her feet by thugs with cattle prods.
That undead dancer, it seems, is Peggy's long lost sister. Sold into slavery by her Mom some years back, when the girl got into drugs and Mom didn't want to deal with her anymore.
Man, is this episode dark...
"Dance of the Dead" is the boldest, nastiest, most unpleasant Masters of Horror yet. It's gruesome, mean-spirited, and my God, it's absolutely riveting. You can't take your eyes off the screen, and no matter how much you want to turn away...you have to know how it ends. Robert Englund goes totally over the top playing an over-sexed, drunk, corrupted, half-dead underworld businessman. It's a great and daring performance full of piss and vinegar.
Drug use, the sex trade, thugs stealing blood ("we're just in it for the red..."), "Dance of the Dead" portrays an America turned upside down by a weapon of mass destruction. A terrifying aftermath has been extrapolated in this post apocalyptic world, and it ain't pretty.
In some freaky, bizarre way, the episode also plays as a parody/homage of 1950s "teenager" movies. You know the type of film I mean: a motorcycle gang rides into town, and the leader romances a pretty, virginal townie. She's innocent and wide-eyed, and her parents - naturally - are terrified she'll losie her virtue to the twin demons of Harley Davidson and rock-and-roll. In the end, the parents learn a little bit about tolerance, and the kid learns a little more about the world. Either that, or there's wall-to-wall violence and a generational culture clash...
Only here, in "Dance of the Dead" the teenage culture really is obsessed with death. The music is hateful, the drugs are destructive (and this episode includes a lot of trippy imagery...). And the "truth" out there in the world is that Mom is no compassionate, Christian conservative. She's a really, really bad person.
Like I said, this is a really dark show, but - I submit- one that is brilliantly conceived and executed. It's one of the most hardcore, balls-to-the-wall things I've ever seen Tobe Hooper direct. And I mean - shit - this is the guy who directed Eaten Alive (1976), Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and the like.
I can't really say that I enjoyed "Dance of the Dead," but boy did it keep my attention. I've never seen anything like it on television before. I've felt dirty and bad about myself ever since the screening...
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