Masters of Horror: Pelts
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If all you Bums out there remember, Season 1 of Masters of Horror DVDs got the prized pick of being my best of 2006. I can't tell you how many congratulatory calls I've gotten from the directors of those episodes, but needless to say, they were thankful. We now move on to Season 2 of Masters of Horror. The first out the gate on DVD is Argento's Pelts. I thought that his entry for Season 1, Jenifer, was a stunning piece of gritty horror and sex. Who knew that such a "But-R-Face" could have been so damn hot. With Season 2's Pelts Argento gives us another sexual driven episode while cranking up the gore factor. Never a bad thing.

Jake (Meatloaf) is a low life fur coat maker that lusts after a hot stripper (Ellen Ewusie) that wants nothing to do with his skeezy self. His sweat shop doesn't seem to be churning out any quality goods, until a trapper (John Saxon) and his son (Michal Suchanek) stumble upon the most gorgeous racoon pelts ever seen. The problem is, which the trapper and his son find out, the racoons that they get the pelts from are enchanted and cursed. All who come in contact with the pelts get possesed by their beauty and do horrible things to themselves or others. Well, not all that come into contact, but we'll get to that later.

Jake and his partner head out to the trapper's farm to take a look at the pelts and find both are dead in melicous ways. Being the concerned citizen that he is, he takes the pelts and heads back to his shop. With these pelts he plans to make the most stunning coat and show it off at the annual fur coat jamboree or whatever. He also has his eyes set on using the hottie stripper that he covets as his model. This will definately get him into her pants. As people start to die around him in horrible ways, all Jack cares about is finishing the coat and more importantly the mocha princess of a stripper. This all leads up to a bloody end for all involved.

This episode was a hard one to score for me. On the good side the episode was shot gorgeously with vibrant colors and a great use of lighting. Another plus that definately made this one enjoyable was how over the top everything was. The kills were ridiculously bloody and fun and the acting was also well done, if not overly acted. The problem with the episode that I had was with a couple of plot holes or just moments of no explanation.

Now I don't need to know what the whole history of the enchanted city of racoons is. I would like to know a little bit though on what happens with the pelts or why only some of the people in contact with them are being possesed. From what I took from the episode, the pelts posses and seduce individuals by their furry beauty causing them to hurt themselves in horrible ways. This is all a sort of revenge from the death of the racoons. Again, I get it I guess, but while making this perfect coat more than 2 people were touching the pelts, yet only 2 killed themselves. Hmmmm. Now taking the logic of looking or feeling the coats drives people ape shit, then when the stripper puts the coat on then all hell should have broke out on her. If touching it drives you batty, then wrapping a whole coat made from the pelts should have exploded her head like some victim in Scanners. Instead she seems unfazed. Again, a little bit of description or continuity would have been nice.

Also, everyone in this episode is dispicable. There are absolutely no redeeming values to anyone. While this wasn't nesessarily an issue, it made it hard to really care who died or didn't. Hell, I didn't even care about the racoons. I was not concerned at all if the little Racoon City would exact revenge. I've had a racoon in my trash can before, and frankly it would take some more characterization of them in this story for me to give a damn about those dirty bastards.

You know, I'm real curious how the extras will pan out on these disks. There was one featurette in all the Season 1 disks that was a blast to watch and that was the Working With The Master featurette. These were a great to enjoy and reminice on the director's past works with both the director and actors of past movies. With Season 1 having that featurette for Argento it would have really been pointless to put the same featurette on the disk, but I would have liked to see another special featurette in it's place instead of only talking about this episode.

Overall though this episode was fun, but slightly disapointing. The fun was all due to again the extreme amounts of gore and inventive deaths and one more thing. That thing was Ellen Ewusie. Good lord was her beauty enchanting. Frankly if all it took was a fur coat to hop into the sack with her, I would skin my own dog. She alone brought a can to the table. This is a bloody good time that while weak on some plot and story elements, still brought a smile to my face and made my wife wince in sickness from some of the kills.

Added:  Thursday, February 01, 2007
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