The thirteenth and final episode of the first season of the “Masters
of Horror” anthology series, Fair Haired
Child stretches the boundaries of appellative generosity laid forth in the
compendium’s title. The hour-long piece is directed by William Malone (the
recent remake of The House on Haunted
Hill, and the exorable, awful FeardotCom),
and it doesn’t live up to many of its predecessors, certainly not
directorially.
, who<br />
is somewhat cute but still an outcast since she’s more interested in sketching brooding<br />
fantasy characters in her notebooks than paying attention in math class. One<br />
day, riding her bike home from school, she’s kidnapped and taken to another<br />
state, where Anton (William Samples) and his wife Judith (<i style=)
Tank Girl’s Lori Petty) toss
basement.
Johnny (Jesse Haddock) hanging from a noose. She cuts him free, but soon she
and Johnny come across signs and start hearing noises that indicate Anton and
Judith have done this sort of thing before, serving up virgin flesh to a horrifying
and depraved evil. Determined to battle a curse and learn the reason behind their
kidnapping, Johnny and Tara necessarily form a quick, special bond and band
together to fight the unrelenting terror of their night in their captors’
basement.
series’ limited means sometimes shines through to the brief detriment of the
story. As penned, this actually isn’t a bad little horrific bon-bon, and some
of the effects work herein is actually pretty nice. The direction, though, is
slapdash and uninspired, and Malone constructs scenes (and elicits performances)
that are tonally incongruous. The project fancies itself a sort of foreboding anti-fairy tale, but the more twisted passages of Running Scared actually work much better in this regard.
Fair Haired Child comes with Dolby
digital 2.0 and Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks. Perhaps the best
news is that, as with other titles in the “Masters of Horror” series, the DVD
release possesses an impressive slate of bonus material — over three hours’ worth
— to complement its hour-long feature. In addition to on-set interviews with Lindsay
Pulsipher, Lori Petty, Jesse Haddock and William Samples, there’s a nine-minute
behind-the-scenes, making-of featurette, a separate 25-minute, laudatory/retrospective
featurette on Malone himself (one notable claim to fame is that he created the
mask used in the original Halloween) and
additional interview material with the filmmaker. An audio commentary track with
Malone and writer Matt Greenberg (Halloween
H20, and the sequel to The Prophecy)
dissects the creation of the film in anecdotal fashion. Finally, trailers, a
Malone text biography, a scene from his first short film, a Fair Haired Child still photo gallery
and DVD-ROM inclusions of a screensaver and a copy of the movie’s teleplay
round things out. C- (Movie) A- (Disc)