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by R.J. Carter Published: November 14, 2006
Haeckel (Derek Cecil) is a young, brash medical student with no use for God. He believes that he can use science to restore the spark of life to those who are deceased, citing the work in Germany of contemporary Viktor Frankenstein. Through his source for cadavers, a rather dodgy fellow, Haeckel learns of a necromancer passing through town, Professor Montesquino (Jon Polito, "Flags of Our Fathers"), who brings the dead to life for a dear cost. Haeckel attends the medicine show and sees a demonstration on a dog, which he puts down to sheer trickery. Not long after, Haeckel receives notice that his ailing father is getting worse, and sets out to see him. Along the way, the director gives us our first taste of gruesome grossness (an earlier flammable corpse not being all that startling) when Haeckel stops for lunch unwittingly beneath a tree where some pederasts were hanged; whatever it is that's brownish and leaks out of decaying bodies manages to drip onto him and his bread, inducing a nice bit of reverse peristalsis in the viewer. When the rain begins to fall, Haeckel seeks shelter near a necropolis (a fanciful word for a cemetary), where he encounters the old man, Wolfram (Tom McBeath, The 4400), who invites him out of the cold to his cabin. Inside, Haeckel is introduced to Wofram's much younger wife, Elise (Leela Savasta, Smallville). As the night goes on, Haeckel's sleep is interrupted by the arrival and departure of a stranger -- Professor Montesquino -- and by the crying of Elise's infant as she nurses it. But what Haeckel notices most is how often Elise looks out the window into the night with such longing. Ultimately, she leaves the house and runs out into the darkness.
The story isn't quite over just because Miz Carnation quits telling it. In classic Tales from the Crypt Style, the viewer is treated to a finale that's as funny as it is gruesomely shocking. The plot isn't without its holes, of course. Montesquino clearly delineates what it costs him personally to bring a man back from the dead; yet he doesn't exhibit any of those costs where we see at least a dozen zombies walking about. Nor is it explained how the zombies are reanimated in the following scenes without Montesquino's help. It's just enough of a disconnect to make this reviewer ponder it, which is disconnect enough to earn it a bit of a dinging. In addition to the optional audio commentary track with McNaughton, the special features on this set include trailers for several of the Masters of Horror episodes, a still gallery of scenes from the film (none of Leela, sad to say), storyboard drawings, and a text bio of McNaughton. There are also a number of good featurettes. In "Breaking Taboos", McNaughton basically gives the short version of his own David Copperfield, from his days growing up in the south side of Chicago, to his schooling, to making "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer". That's about twenty-three minutes, and is followed by almost twenty minutes of actors from both "Henry" and Haeckel delivering up their experiences working woth McNaughton in "Working with a Master: John McNaughton". There are three "On Set" interviews -- six minutes with Leela Savasta, almost ten with Derek Cecil, and slightly more than ten with Jon Polito (the best of the three, just to hear the man's delivery.) The "Script to Screen" feature is the largest of the set, coming in at over thirty-five minutes. It takes a handful of scenes and shows them in three segments: a voiceover on top of the graphic of the script for the scene, then the making-of view of that scene, followed by the finished product. Finally, there's the expected "Behind the Scenes" making-of featurette, which is about fourteen minutes of amateur camera footage on the sets as scenes are being shot and makeup is being applied. DVD-ROM features round out the bonuses on this disc, by way of a PDF-formatted screenplay for "Haeckel's Tale" and a screensaver. Audio is in English, Dolby Digital 5.1 or Dolby Surround 2.0. Previews on this disc include Masters of Horror, "Room 6", "Demon Hunter", and "The Tooth Fairy" |
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