Two first-season episodes of Showtime’s horror anthology series get the comic-book treatment in IDW Publishing’s MASTERS OF HORROR, a trade paperback that collects the first (and presumably all) four issues, sporting scripts from Chris Ryall and Ivan Brandon.
First up is “Incident on and off a Mountain Road,” adapted from PHANTASM impresario Don Coscarelli’s episode of a Joe R. Lansdale short story, in which a sudden car crash late at night in the middle of nowhere pits a beautiful young woman against a tall, bald, deformed, hulking homicidal maniac. You know the kind – he’d be threatening even without the cruelly curved knife he wields. Lucky for her, she’s been taught some survival skills by her militia-man ex-husband, and is able to put the elements of the wild to her use.
Jeremy Haun’s art looks cinematic, almost like a storyboard of the episode itself. His depiction of the killer is freaky, and he doesn’t skimp on the blood, especially when our heroine makes her way to the beast’s house of horrors.
Following is H.P. Lovecraft’s “Dreams in the Witch-House,” from the episode directed by RE-ANIMATOR‘s Stuart Gordon. Here, Walter, a Miskatonic University student rents a room from a stereotypical asshole landlord in a stereotypical rundown apartment building. Walter has trouble sleeping because of scratching sounds – and then there are the screams – followed by the discovery of a rat with a seemingly human face. The young man starts having terrifying nightmares that suggest he is needed to play a part in a sickening ritual of sacrifice.
Shaded with interesting colors, Dennis Calero’s drawings sometimes appear photo-realistic. He tackles the material with a more experimental style that, while appropriate for a tale like this, also makes it hard to tell just what is going on at times.
But I had fun with MASTERS OF HORROR regardless. It’s everything a good horror comic should be: gory, unsettling, sexy and refreshingly no-holds-barred. With so many episodes of the series left unadapted, it’s a shame IDW went no further with it, because the medium of comics is well-suited for such bloodletting. I would’ve bought them all. –Rod Lott
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