Masters of Horror - Stuart Gordon - Dreams in the Witch House (2005)

Mr. Gordon, can you go back to movies like King of the Ants, plzkthx?

Masters of Horror: Dreams in the Witch-House (Stuart Gordon, 2005)

Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, Stuart Gordon made a couple of really loose, really cheesy, but really good, movies based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft. His non-Lovecraft output was always stronger, but Gordon has been riding the rails of Re-Animator and From Beyond for over twenty years now, and shows no signs at all of letting up-- this despite the fact that Gordon, in the space of two years, released both his worst film to date (the Lovecraft adaptation Dagon) and his best (the non-Lovecraftian King of the Ants). You'd think the guy would have learned by now. But no, such is not the case. When the Masters of Horror folk approached him, did Gordon think "hey, maybe they really liked Dolls!"? Of course not, and so we get another Lovecraft adaptation. Even better, this one is of a story that most Lovecraft fans seem to consider among his worst. When a guy who hasn't made a good Lovecraft adaptation in two decades meets a bad Lovecraft story, there is the potential for a rip of, well, Lovecraftian proportions in the fabric of space-time.

In this one, Walter Gilman (Dagon's Ezra Godden) takes a room in a cheap house with some very odd boarders. He's next door to Frankie (Chelah Horsdal, recently of AvP2) and her infant son Danny. Downstairs is Masurewicz (Campbell Lane), who's lived in the house just about forever, and fears Gilman will see a rat with a human face. Soon enough, the rat appears and tells Gilman that she's coming for him. She who? The witch, of course!

Why Gordon and longtime partner Dennis Paoli saw fit to deviate so widely from the original story is entirely beyond me. It's not like you couldn't make the original with enough nudity (one does not need to change the sex of Gilman's next-door neighbor to throw in a completely unnecessary love story in order to get nudity; there is, after all, a witch involved) or gore (if anything, the climax of the original story is gorier than the climax of the movie), but that seems to have been the thinking here. As well, Gilman himself is turned from the seeker of arcane knowledge in the original story (where Gilman sought out the room because it was in the witch-house) to a hapless dork (who got a room in the witch-house coincidentally because it's the cheapest place in town). Even the Necronomicon bone Gordon throws Lovecraft fans rings entirely false (in the original story, Gilman had consulted the book previous to related events, rather than sleepwalking to the library and somehow getting inside a locked room in a restricted area of the building without knowing what he's doing).

Not, to be kind, one of Gordon's better offerings. **
March 25, 2008

Catches the Lovecraftian Spirit for Once

Lovecraft stories in general have never translated well on screen. While some films which are inspired by Lovecraft have fared well, the ones that really attempt to follow the stories just do not capture the richness and inexplicable sense of dread the short stories convey.

This one comes really close and results in a rather scary entry which at least captures the spirit of Lovecraft's tale. The story is set in the modern times and the director, Stuart Gordon, goes to town on the wierdness aspect and the final product did not disappoint.

Certainly one of the best in the MOH series. November 12, 2007

Chilling, fascinating

This is probably the best, if not one of the best from the Masters of Horror collection. I've seen most of the earlier series, and this one stands out as being truly chilling and fascinating. Since then, MoH has declined in quality to be honest, but I'll never forget Gordon's interpretation of Lovecraft. October 29, 2007

GORDON LOVES LOVECRAFT

Director Stuart Gordon has an obvious fondness for that master horror writer H.P.Lovecraft. This is easily proven in the fact that he has made no less than four films from the authors works (THE RE-ANIMATOR, DAGON, CASTLE FREAK and FROM BEYOND). It was no surprise to learn that when he was to be included in the Showtime series MASTER OF HORROR, that he would once again choose a work by Lovecraft.

An interesting aspect of Gordon is told in the interview done with him here on the DVD. Coming from a theatre background, when he first approached doing film he was told to do a horror piece because he could get instant backing. But the board of the Organic Theatre behind him (he was one of its founding members) wanted him to do an art film. Imagine the surprise of critics when he delivered on both counts. He continues to do so to this day. Gordon's piece for this series is entitled "H.P.Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House".

The story revolves around Walter Gilman (Ezzra Godden), a young college student named who studies quantum physics and his move into a low rent apartment. The building has two other occupants we know of, a strange man on the first floor across from the landlord and a young woman named Frances and her baby in the room next to Walter's.

Walter is in the midst of writing his thesis, a paper exploring the possibilities of parallel universes that exist on the same level as ours. What he is searching for is the doorways from one into the other. Using his knowledge, he combines angles and planes in his search, one of which bears the uncanny appearance of the corner walls in his room.

A scream in the night finds Walter running to the aid of Frances when a huge rat appears in her room. Saving her and her child from the rat, Walter wakes later that night to a dream of a rat with a human face foreshadowing events to come.

Walter's dreams continue, growing more urgent with each one. Each offers more clues as to what is going on. Eventually he discovers that a witch has used this portal before. But she needs a male human host to help her return. A male who will in turn sacrifice a young child and through its blood allow her to continue on, reaping souls for her master, Satan.

Walter does his best to battle the witch, seeking more information and doing his best to find a way to close the door. The last pieces he receives come from the old man downstairs who tried to warn him earlier. The old man was marked years before and had done what Walter may now find himself doing, killing a child.

Rent this one and find out if Walter can overcome his nightmares or if he will succumb to what the witch has intended for him. The film is definitely for adults, featuring nudity and enough gore to keep fans of those sorts of special effects happy. But for Lovecraft and Gordon fans, the film features enough story to go around, more than most films can say these days and especially horror films.

No mere naked teens cavorting around waiting for the next slasher franchise. This film has its roots in the tales of Lovecraft, tales of the Necromonicon. It looks at witchcraft from the past filled with blood soaked images and child sacrifices. Stephen King once said that the most terrifying thing for him was something happening to his children. Child sacrifices run rampant with this fear. And Gordon has taken Lovecraft's turn on this fear as well as his witchcraft lore and made one chilling tale.
October 3, 2007

Just another adaptation horror story

Walter (Godden) is a graduate student at Miskatonic University, studying String Theory. He's broke and in need of a quiet place to live and study while he finishes up his dissertation. He finds a room for rent in an old, run-down house which has been divided into apartments. It's not pretty, there's a strange man, Masurewicz (Lane), living in apartment two, and the manager, Dombrowski (Brazeau), is a jerk, but it's cheap, so Walter takes it. He soon befriends the woman living in apartment three--Frances (Horsdal)--by chasing off the rat that was menacing her and her baby.

But, as one might expect in this situation, strange things start happening. First, Walter hears some strange banging noises and religious chanting one night. Then, he has some very strange dreams--first, of a rat with a human face, that warns him "she" is coming for him. But that's not all. Walter's thesis involves a theory that says if you know where two planes of existence intersect, then you can figure out how to travel from one dimension to the other. And Walter soon discovers that the oddly formed corner of his room is structured like the model in his String Theory work.

Walter's dreams become progressively more and more disturbing and vivid, and Masurewicz, who has lived in the house for nearly his entire life, provides some dire warnings about the sort of thing that goes on there. But these warnings don't do Walter any good, as he finds himself under the thrall of a powerful witch, who is intent on sacrificing Frances's baby...and using Walter as her instrument to do it.

Dreams in the Witch-House was a good choice to adapt, and Stuart Gordon, on paper at least, was a good choice of director--after all, he'd directed two previous adaptations of Lovecraft's work: Re-Animator and Dagon. However, Gordon is more of a "master of schlock" than a true master of horror. There's very little that's scary or terrifying here; Gordon's ham-handed filmmaking style robs Lovecraft's story of most of its visceral power.

The mediocre acting of Godden (Walter) doesn't help much either. He's sufficient as the lead when he's just playing the part of the poor college student, but when things start turning hairy and the real horrific elements start making themselves known, all the requisite emoting and reacting are rather beyond his range. Who knows though, he might be capable of real acting; I expect Gordon directed him to act the way he does since it plays into the whole schlock feel the film seems to be going for.

Horsdal and Lane, meanwhile, are solid in their supporting roles, Horsdal as the innocent, down-on-her-luck single mother, Lane as the crazy old man with prophecies of doom. Brazeau chews scenery as the apartment manager, but his role doesn't make or break the film.

There seems to be a large community of horror fans who actually seem to prefer this style of horror filmmaking, so for them this episode might be a big hit. I admit I don't get it. There are also people who still prefer the super-pulpy SF adventure stories of the Golden Age era (the ones devoid of characterization), and I don't get that either. But for the most part print SF has moved beyond that, just as print horror has moved beyond the cheesy/cheap scare. Why is it that Hollywood so often seems out of sync with literature?

It may sound as if I'm being needlessly harsh with Gordon, but the episode is just good enough for the viewer to see what it could have been if it were in the hands of a more competent director, and such films are often more frustrating than those that are complete train wrecks.

DVD Extras
Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
Commentary: Stuart Gordon (writer/director), Ezra Godden (actor)
Featurettes: "Dreams, Darkness and Damnation: An Interview with Stuart Gordon"; "Behind The Scenes: The Making of Dreams in the Witch-House"; "Working With a Master: Stuart Gordon"; "SFX: Meet Brown Jenkin"; "On Set: An Interview with Chelah Horsdal"
DVD-ROM: Original Screenplay (PDF), The original story "Dreams in the Witch-House" by H.P. Lovecraft (PDF); screensaver
Misc.: Stuart Gordon biography (onscreen text); Still Gallery; Storyboard Gallery; Trailers

For a DVD that's only one episode of a television series, this disc is loaded with extras. It includes commentary by Gordon and Godden, five featurettes, a text biography of Stuart Gordon, and still (yawn) and storyboard galleries (double-yawn).

The disc also features some DVD-ROM extras, including: the episode's screenplay and the complete text of H.P. Lovecraft's original short story (both in PDF format), along with a screensaver, which is basically a slide show trailer for the episode (with music).

The featurettes all serve their purpose, and fans of the episode and/or Stuart Gordon in general will be in heaven. Listening to Gordon speak about filmmaking and horror, it's easy to see why he was chosen to direct this episode. He sounds passionate about Lovecraft and horror, and seems like a sharp guy. But passion and sharpness will only take you so far. In the interview, Gordon also mentions that he wasn't able to get into the only filmmaking class offered by his college; it's shame, really--perhaps there he would have learned the difference between quality and schlock. September 3, 2007

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