REVIEW: MASTERS OF HORROR: PELTS [Archive]

Blackkat13

05 Feb 2007, 08:37

Here's the full review...from Fangoria

MASTERS OF HORROR: PELTS (Anchor Bay)

Reviewed by JENNIFER MORROW

Jennifer sez…

MOVIE: 2 Skulls
DVD PACKAGE: 2 1/2 Skulls

Dario Argento’s PELTS, the first Anchor Bay DVD release from MASTERS OF HORROR’s second season, is one of those episodes which plays as an entertaining lark on cable but doesn’t hold up so well on its own merits. While Argento fans and MASTERS OF HORROR completists will likely be eager to add this disc to their respective collections, casual viewers may not be as inclined to spring for this bloody little flick about an evil coat.

The movie stars, of all people, singer/actor Meat Loaf (THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW) Aday as Jake Feldman, a furrier with a knack for the art of coat-making and a depraved infatuation with a beautiful stripper named Shanna (Ellen Ewusie). Why any man would be attracted to a dancer who welcomes her best patron with the greeting “You stink like rotting flesh” is a mystery, but to be fair, Jake isn’t much of a sweetie, either. In fact, within minutes of his latest arrival, we see his enraged lady love send him fleeing like a bat out of hell from the lap-dance room for trying to stick his—ahem—little meat loaf in a very uncomfortable place.

Jake finally gets the chance to obtain his booty through more inventive means when he gets a call from trapper Pa Jameson (NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET’s John Saxon, gallantly making what he can of about five minutes of screen time), who’s offering up a newly slain batch of the most alluring raccoon pelts Jake’s ever seen. Filled with fantasies of presenting Shanna with an irresistible fur coat, Jake accepts immediately, little realizing that those particular raccoons are bent on getting their revenge, even in death…

PELTS is distinguished by a couple of neato setpieces, involving various demises lifted right out of the fur trade—animal traps, needle-and-thread, skinning, you name it. Unfortunately, even these moments can’t make up for the film’s feeble center—that damn raccoon coat. The movie tries and tries to make the garment seem worthy of all the praise and longing gazes showered upon it by the characters, but its best attempts consist of sprinkling the pelts with glitter so that they appear to sparkle in the meager light, and heralding their every arrival with angelic melodies, courtesy of regular Argento musical contributor Claudio Simonetti (who essentially sleepwalks his way through this gig). Dramatic license will indeed carry you a long way, but it takes a bit more than the music of the celestial spheres and the contents of a junior high school girl’s makeup kit to transform a couple of stitched-together animal skins into a fountainhead of lust and torment.

Granted, it’s not a simple task to convey that kind of lure on a TV show’s budget, but perhaps the result would have been stronger if PELTS had adhered more closely to the letter of its source material, a short story of the same name by F. Paul (THE KEEP) Wilson. According to the DVD’s commentary by screenwriter Matt Venne (who also wrote the upcoming WHITE NOISE 2: THE LIGHT), the pelts themselves played a more active role in Wilson’s original tale—literally active, seductively wrapping themselves around their victims rather than just inertly twinkling on the rack. That’s a nifty image which could have been presented here without too much effort, and yet was not. To his credit, though, Venne expresses nothing but respect for Wilson, as well as for Argento, who altered the screenwriter’s work in the transition from page to film. Venne’s enthusiasm is positively disarming, and the commentary makes for a pleasant listen.

Points off for laziness, however, with regard to the DVD-ROM features—the entire script for PELTS is technically available on the DVD, but to access it, you’ll have to open the disc as a data file (!?) and retrieve the document yourself. Seems simple enough (to some, anyway), but it’s embarrassingly archaic in this advanced age of embedded script readers, especially given that computers with a nasty sense of humor may refuse to open it outright.

The Storyboard Gallery is merely self-explanatory, laying out a few sequences and proving that the idea for the glistening furs existed as far back as the conceptual-art stage. Don’t expect too much out of the Argento biography, or the photo gallery for that matter, as the latter consists of little besides unexciting promotional stills and a single shot of the maestro at work.

More substantial (relatively speaking) is a 13-minute documentary entitled Fleshing It Out: The Making of PELTS, featuring a surprisingly chipper Meat Loaf and an unsurprisingly wild-eyed Argento, among others (sadly, the only version of John Saxon to turn up here is the one that was constructed by KNB guys Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger for destructive purposes). It is here where we learn that what appears to be a murky 1.78:1 transfer on the disc is actually due to an overzealous attempt to create a dark ambience, and where we also get to hear a peculiar anecdote involving the ecstatic reaction of Meat Loaf’s daughter upon being updated on the details of her father’s latest project. The singer’s impression of a young fangirl spazzing out over Argento is a spectacle you really do have to see for yourself.

The featurette All Sewn Up: Mastering the Effects Sequence is definitely the best treat offered on the PELTS DVD, providing a step-by-step look into the filming and digital-enhancement process of the finest of those aforementioned gory setpieces. It’s not essential to one’s greater appreciation of the movie, but it should make the disc’s buyers feel as if they’ve gotten their money’s worth—die-hard devotees and Meat Loaf progeny alike.

http://fangoria.com/ghastly_review.php?id=3634