Masters of Horror: Pelts DVD: Review By Mushy

Jake Feldman (Meat Loaf Aday) is obsessed with a stripper. She is all he thinks about and when he's not thinking about her, he's thinking of ways that he can have her. After an acquaintance named Jeb kills a bunch of raccoons, Jake seems to feel that their skin could help him attain his dreams. Little does he know the price he is going to pay for his obsession.... Everyone who comes in contact with these furs mutilates their body and others in ways that are both shocking and ghastly.

Eventually, Jake gets what he wants but he has to pay an awful price for attaining it. Dario Argento seems to be having a lot of fun working in the medium of television. With only one hour to tell the story he is trying to tell, he infuses his installment of Masters of Horror: Pelts with an interesting, solemn quality. There is something about his work here that even though it is very much in the present, it recalls early TV that took it's time more to get inside who it's characters were.

Commentary Track

Screenwriter Matt Venne sits back and talks about writing this film. He discusses his reverence for Dario Argento, the characters in the story, and how the plot was constructed. As a writer myself, I always love listening to other writers discuss how they put together a movie. I think sometimes screenwriters get too caught up in the technical aspects of structure, but Venne seems to remember that it was a love of movies that got him here in the first place.

Director Biography

"All Sewn Up: Mastering The Effects Sequence" Featurette and "Fleshing It Out: The Making of Pelts" Featurette

I placed these two featurettes together because I think they cover a lot of the same ground, and they probably could have even been cut together. "All Sewn Up: Mastering The Effects Sequence" looks at the some of the effects employed in this movie. There are some very chilling sequences, with characters doing some very disgusting things to their bodies. How this is done isn't so much broken down here, as the point of what we actually do to animals to get their fur is. "Fleshing It Out: The Making of Pelts" featurette, is exactly what it says it is. We hear from talent and others as they talk about making this movie, working with a legend like Dario Argento, and what they think the subject matter and story means. These aren't the best extra features I have ever seen, but they are certainly worth a look if you are fan of blood, gore, and how horror movies are made.

Storyboard Gallery and Still Gallery

Screenplay (DVD-ROM)

I really like that they included the screenplay of this film on this DVD. I have not yet had a chance to go through the screenplay like I would like to, but I am curious to piece together how much it changed from it's being written to the final production. I looked through this a little bit on my computer, and I am still amazed how much information Argento and Venne were able to get across with so little time.

Widescreen Presentation (1.78:1) - Enhanced for 16x9 TVs. Where Dario Argento is the master is how he brings viewers into his movies. He creates an almost doc*mentary-like world so that we get comfortable with what we are seeing very quickly. This makes the gore and other things he presents that much more striking, because we usually don't see those sorts of things in our daily lives. Overall, for a one hour movie, this film feels very richly layered and textured.

Dolby Digital. The audio in this film went hand in hand with the images to create the mood. I didn't feel like I was watching a music video, horror film, as much as I was watching a scary movie with an underlying score put in for good measure. This film is very stylized, but Argento doesn't let the music or the images manipulate the viewer. He seems to work as the ultimate voyeur, letting everything play out in front of the lens. It is the audience's job to piece everything together and make it work for them.

A scantily clad woman holds a bunch of pelts with blood dripping off of them on this front cover. The back cover has a description of what Pelts is about, a Special Features listing, a cast list, and system specs. While I personally liked the artwork on the first Masters of Horror releases, I think that they have used good artwork for this DVD. This isn't the most amazing packaging I have ever seen, but it does grab your attention. Blood and nude women tend to do that.

Meat Loaf is really good in this film as Jake Feldman. I know the idea of him playing an overweight man, pining after a stripper is not that hard of a stretch, but Argento and screenwriter Matt Venne have really layered this character. It would be easy to feel sorry for Jake because of how everybody treats him, but his character is also highly unlikeable. I felt as if I was watching a fully fleshed out character, instead of one that was merely a part of an anthology series. The people behind Masters of Horror really seem intent on merging today's horror with the horror of the past. In this way, it seems like we as viewers all get to win because we get the best of both worlds.

I have seen a bunch of the movies in this collection and I am proud to say that amongst the many good tales being told, Masters of Horror: Pelts really stands out.