Masters of Horror Season 1, Volume III (Blu-ray)

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Okay, horror/slasher fans, the cable-TV series "Masters of Horror" is out in High Definition. Previously released as single films on DVD, the series is now available in four Blu-ray volumes with three (o,r in one case, four) 51 to 53-minute episodes per disc, nicely grouped according to story compatibility.

Volume 1:I features "Cigarette Burns," "Dreams in the Witch-House," and "The Fair-Haired Child." Volume 1:II offers "Jenifer," "Sick Girl," and "Deer Woman," while Volume 1:IV contains "Imprint," "Homecoming," "Haeckel's Tale," and "Chocolate." We were sent Season 1, Volume III to review, the theme of which is survival.

Incident on and off a Mountain Road is probably the weakest entry of the three, and even it's successful in sustaining tension and giving us the kind of twist at the end that this series has thrived on. Don Coscarelli ("Phantasm," "Bubba Ho-Tep") directs this pretty straightforward stranded, captured, and need-to-escape-a-butcher tale that's made more interesting by the victim's flashbacks to a wacko survivalist boyfriend. At one point we even wonder, is the butcher her boyfriend? Is the boyfriend going to make an appearance? I'm not going to say, of course, but it's elements like those which add a little depth to an otherwise shallow story.

All that happens in real-time, really, is that a yoiung woman named Ellen (Bree Turner) crashes her vehicle into a car that's stopped on a dark (what else?) road. Yes, it gets stormy, too. When she comes too, she follows a blood trail to the guardrail and looks over the edge, thinking to help whoever was in the other car. Bad move. Has this woman never seen a horror/slasher film? What she sees is a horribly disfigured monster of a man called Moonface (John De Santis) who is still in the process of doing away with a woman whose car he apparently stopped. I won't say much more except to add that fecal matter happens, and our heroine tries to get away, is in fact captured, and has to endure not just seeing all of the victims' mutilated corpses knowing she's next on the menu, but also having to hear some nutcase guy who's also tied up in the basement prattle on like a Western sidekick. When this guy Buddy (Angus Scrimm) starts singing, he's so annoying that WE want to hack him to pieces. Sheesh.

As I said, the interest in this one comes from the juxtaposition of stories--one in the present, and the other in recent memory. It's how the two stories come together that both keep it moving and also sets up the twist at the end.

In this episode, which owes an obvious debt to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," Turner turns in a spirited performance, and Ethan Embry is so chilling as her psycho boyfriend that it makes Moonface look like an "Addams Family" extra. Except for the flashbacks, which provide a welcome contrast, the film is shot in darkness or low interior light. As scripts go, this one is probably the most familiar, but Coscarelli keeps it real (in, of course, a surreal sort of way).

Dance of the Dead is directed by horror/slasher legend Tobe Hooper ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre") and features another legend in front of the camera. Robert Englund (a.k.a. Freddy Krueger, from "Nightmare on Elm Street") plays a demented and derelict DJ-MC at a post-apocalyptic punk club called The Doom Room. And the pedigree for this episode doesn't end there. "Dance of the Dead" is based on a celebrated short story by Richard Matheson ("Duel," "I am Legend") and directed by his son, Richard Christian Matheson.

Shot in a style that matches the goings on at The Doom Room with music by Smashing Pumpkins front-man Billy Corgan, "Dance of the Dead" is a strange-but-consistent concoction that gives you a glimpse of what happens when a punk post-apocalyptic screenplay is mixed with a driving but raw-around-the-edges MTV-style music video. The entire film is awash with music, quick cuts, and flashing images.

After nuclear holocaust has turned America into a wasteland where only the thugs are free to go out in public and everyone is "bad," one wholesome girl seems to have survived. Peggy (Jessica Lowndes) works for her mother at the family's little café, but her life is turned upside down when she falls for a punk (Jonathan Tucker, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake). He's going to "take her for a ride," and for reasons we don't ever fully grasp, other than that beaten-to-death bad-boy fascination, she goes along against her better judgment. And she falls for this guy, whom we've seen mug little old ladies and take their blood, or else grab whole dead bodies and sell them on the black market. Some living, huh? Eventually Peggy, this bad-boy, his friend and a bimbette end up at The Doom Room, so named because (shades of "Re-Animator") the entertainment is provided by re-animated corpses.