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MASTERS OF HORROR SEASON TWO BOX SET: PACKAGING: 4 STARS DVDS: 3 STARS TOTAL: 3 ½ STARS

The video store can be a daunting place. Thousands of discs, all in uniform sizes and colorful cases can boggle the mind. Occasionally a snappily designed box can cut through the quagmire, however. So it is with the Masters of Horror Season Two Box Set human skull packaging. The Skull Box leaps off the rack and catches your eye, and if you’re a horror fan that’s a good thing.

For the uninitiated The Masters of Horror is an anthology television series with each episode featuring a one-hour film helmed by a famous horror film director. Season one highlighted the work of genre legends Joe Dante, John Carpenter and Dario Argento. To commemorate the end of season two Anchor Bay has released the thirteen episodes in a ghoulish box set with DVDs where the brains should be.

Some of the same directors make return appearances—Argento, Tobe Hooper and John Landis all come back for more—but welcome newcomers include Norio Tsuruta who adapts Dream Cruise from a short story of the same name by Japan’s Steven King, Koji Suzuki and The Washingtonians from Romeo is Bleeding director Peter Medak.

Not all are successful. The V Word from Ernest Dickerson, despite a fun performance from horror legend Michael Ironside, and Tobe Hooper’s The Damned Thing both start with great promise but wither before the end credits roll. Overall, however, the production value is of feature film quality, the stories unique—Cannibalistic Founding Fathers! Merciless raccoons!—and the set offers up an antidote to people who think that modern horror is dull and unimaginative.  


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