Masters of Horror is a horror anthology television series created by director Mick Garris that aired on Showtime from October 28, 2005 to February 2, 2007.
Contents
Origin
In 2002, director Mick Garris invited some director friends to an informal dinner at a restaurant in Sherman Oaks, California. The original ten "masters" attending were John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Don Coscarelli, Joe Dante, Guillermo del Toro, Stuart Gordon, Tobe Hooper, John Landis, William Malone, and Garris himself. Subsequently, Garris organized regular dinners with the group and invited other horror and other genre directors to attend, including Dario Argento, Eli Roth, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, Tim Sullivan, Rob Zombie, Bryan Singer, Fred Dekker, William Lustig, Lucky McKee, Ernest Dickerson, Katt Shea, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, James Gunn, Mary Lambert, Tom Holland, Peter Medak, Ti West, Lloyd Kaufman, and others.
In 2005, Garris created and produced an original anthology television series of one-hour movies, written and directed by many of the "masters," which was originally broadcast in the United States on the Showtime cable network. In several international territories, the films were released theatrically.
The series debuted to excellent reviews in the U.S. on October 28, 2005, with the premiere episode "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road," co-written and directed by Don Coscarelli, based on the short story by Joe R. Lansdale. New episodes premiered every Friday at 10 p.m. EST throughout the series' two seasons. The show followed an anthology series format, with each episode featuring a one-hour film directed by a well-known horror film director. In 2009, Chiller began airing the show on their Sunday evening line-up of shows, and in 2010, Reelz Channel began airing episodes of Masters of Horror edited (despite keeping its TV-MA rating) and with commercials.
Episodes
Season 1 (2005–06)
Episode 4, "Jenifer", was accidentally made available on-demand to a select audience at the same time as episode 2, "H. P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House". The episode was cut for graphic violence during its initial television broadcast, and the cut scenes can only be viewed in a featurette separate from the film on the R1 DVD release.
Episode 13, "Imprint", was scheduled to air on January 27, 2006, but Showtime withdrew it over concerns about its content. Garris, the series' creator and executive producer, called it "the most disturbing film I've ever seen". It became the only episode of the series not to air in the United States. It was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on Bravo on April 7, 2006, and was released on DVD in the United States on September 26, 2006.
Related series
Fear Itself
Garris stated that Showtime had chosen not to renew the series for a third season and that Lionsgate had begun funding it. Instead of a third season, NBC ordered 13 episodes of a new anthology series, Fear Itself, from Lionsgate and Industry Entertainment, with Garris, Andrew Deane and Keith Addis as executive producers. It used the same format as Masters of Horror and premiered on NBC in June 2008.
Soundtrack
A two-disc soundtrack was released for the series in October 2005 on Immortal Records. The album features heavy metal and hard rock acts with a few acoustic pieces. A second volume was released a year later.
Comic adaptations
IDW Publishing produced a series of comic book adaptations of several episodes from the series. The first four issues are two-parters, adapting "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road", based on the short story by Joe R. Lansdale, and "Dreams in the Witch-House". The first two comic covers were painted by the award-winning artist Jeremy Caniglia.