Photo: File Info

The "Skin and Bones" episode of FEAR ITSELF airs at 10:00 PM on NBC this Thursday, July 31st.


I've had a long love for TV horror that's included DARK SHADOWS, THE NIGHT STALKER (the original TV movie, that is), TRILOGY OF TERROR, DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK (just announced as a Guillermo del Toro remake), FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY and Tobe Hooper's SALEM'S LOT. I was ambivalent about Mick Garris's MASTERS OF HORROR Showtime anthology, partly because I didn't think some of the representative filmmakers were masters, and partly because TV has always been a writer's medium, as opposed to feature films, which are the director's domain, and I was skeptical of Garris's intention to give his directors more say in those mini-movies at the expense of the writers. THE TWILIGHT ZONE featured outstanding work by directors like Richard Donner, but it's celebrated for the scripts by Rod Serling, Richard Mathesson, and Charles Beaumont.

I also admit to doubting the creative potential of FEAR ITSELF, NBC's spinoff sequel to MOH. After all, how could the writers and directors deliver the type of chills that audiences have become accustomed to watching the likes of SAW and HOSTEL at the multi-plex while contending with network censors? Then NBC did something really smart: they hired indie filmmaker Larry Fessenden to helm a script written by Drew McWeeney and Scott Swan (who wrote "Cigarette Burns," the MOH episode directed by John Carpenter).

Fessenden (interviewed here about this episode), is the director of NO TELLING (a modern Frankenstein riff), HABIT (vampires), WENDIGO (Indian spirit), and last year's supernatural environmental film, THE LAST WINTER (now available on DVD). He's also the head of Glass Eye Pix and its low budget horror arm, Scareflix. Fessenden's films emphasize character and tone over shock value, so it's unlikely that as a director for hire he would be hampered by the censors telling him to watch out for the gore. In an interview I recently conducted with him for an upcoming filmmaking book he lamented, "Why can't I just make a scary movie?" As it turns out, "Skin and Bones," airing this Thursday, features plenty of graphic gore and disturbing moments, and Fessenden has finally made his Scary Picture. It's a doozy.

As the episode begins, a rancher's family is distraught because he and his hunting party have been missing in the mountains for 10 days. Then he returns home--minus the other people in his party--emaciated and rather unhealthy looking; almost demonic, you might say. And very hungry...

Swan and McWeeney's teleplay, which takes the cannibalistic Donner Party as its starting point and explores an alternate version of the Wendigo legend, lacks the elegance of Fessenden's own screenwriting, but draws the characters and sets up their predicament quickly so that maximum scares can be delivered in the 42-minute running time. Fessenden takes full advantage of the Alberta, Calgary scenery before moving indoors for the claustrophobic horror. He's dealing with more action (and more overt action) and less dialogue than in his films, so I think he got to flex some different muscles here, to creative effect.

The cast and technical credits are very good, with the make-up frighteningly memorable. Kudos to NBC for allowing so much grue to go out over the airwaves, especially during the scene in which the possessed rancher forces his wife to chop up her murdered lover's corpse so they can share a reunion dinner. The only time the violence felt truncated to me was at the very end of this very chilling episode.

Bonus kudos to whoever designed the series' opening title sequence--beautiful!