MovieChat Forums > Masters of Horror (2005) Discussion > Dance of the Dead

Dance of the Dead

posted 14 years ago by Jay_of_the_Dead
28 replies | jump to latest

Personally, I absolutely loved it. Robert Englund was amazing, and Jonathan Tucker was amazing too. (I've been a fan of Tucker since Virgin Suicides.) My personal reason for watching this episode was the fact that it's based off a short story, written by Richard Matheson, which is probably one of the most interesting short stories I've ever read. The screen play for Dance of the Dead was written by his son, if I'm not mistaken, and even though it wasn't completely true to the story, I do think it stayed fairly true to what Matheson was getting at. The chaos of the future after the third World War. A sort of post-apocalyptic story. The short story seemed very retro-fifties (Which I think was when it was written) and portrays a young girl who's gone away from her family for the first time in her life, a sheltered college girl, who knows nothing of the real world. To have adapted the story straight to film would have ended within about five minutes, which explains some of the re-writes. I do thin they portrayed Jak as a little too much of a 'nice guy', compared to the written version, but hey, it was still amazing.

And did anyone else love that line about the loss of the letter 'c'?

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] Cube_Brick1138 14 years ago

I too really enjoyed Dance of the Dead. It had an other worldly feel to it. Very surreal. I watched with a friend late at night after a few beers. Definitely had the desired affect on me. I'm surprised a lot of people on the boards don't like it too much.

"I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness"

[–] Jay_of_the_Dead 14 years ago

They're probably disappointed in the lack of what most people consider 'horror', ie. cheap scares and gore, but even though it didn't hold any psychological sense of horror either, it still brought with it the 'creepy' feeling that I love, and small elements of the typical horror genre. I remember the first time I read the short story, I hoped it would be made into a film, because the concept was so different.

[–] sunezno (269) 2 years ago

I was sort of accidentally introduced to Masters of Horror; a friend put that and other stuff on a hard drive for me. I didn't watch it for quite a while, just because I assumed that it would be all jump-scares and unnecessary gore, which isn't really my thing.
Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I finally did start watching it.
I mean, in the first episode, I was kind of put off by the creepy bald badguy, as he seemed other-worldly, but I was glad that things turned around a bit with that one.

I also love the anthology aspect of the show. Each episode I went into blind, without any episode summary or anything, and I preferred that. There are many genres of which I'm not a fan, so I wouldn't intentionally pick some of these episodes to watch if I knew what they were about beforehand. But the fact that they're not super lengthy helps in that regard, too.

Anyway, yeah, I loved that it was more psychological than jump-scare.

[–] keeleevoncupcake 14 years ago

I completely loved it too! It was so dark and surreal. The frightening events of past and present being cut together so frenetically on the screen, the desolate post-apocalyptic world, even the driving industrial soundtrack really elevated the bleak, dreamy atmosphere of the piece. The little one off scene where you see what becomes of the zombies was simply chilling, really echoing Matheson's masterpiece (I Am Legend).

Absolutely agreed about Englund and Tucker, they were perfect in their roles. Englund made his announcer grossly fascinating, and Tucker's thoughtful, tormented romantic drew me in effortlessly. People have said the characters in this episode are unsympathetic, but I encountered the opposite. (Probably because I'm much closer in age and temperament to the bunch of alternative kids than the average reviewer, incidentally.)

Haha, and the dialogue was great. I love the loss of the 'c' too ("What if you need to say cat?"), as well as this little exchange: "I hope you animals die!" "Yeah, that'd be nice." Practically all of Jak's lines are fantastic.

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] linkinparkfreak69 13 years ago

It's funny, I just recently read that short story and then saw Dance of the Dead and I was like "Hey! That's familiar"

The story I think I was written in like the 50s or sixties, but it took place in the late 90s, so that makes it even more surreal to me.

[–] douces 13 years ago

it's actually one of my favourites and I think the most underrated episode. Plus Jessica Lowndes was extremely hot in this one and made me a fan.

[–] LoPanKnows 13 years ago

No, it was pure garbage. Terrible filmmaking, mind-numbing writing, revolting acting, Dance of the Dead was so bad that it became pure torture to sit through the entire episode. This episode is by far the worst episode in the entire series, and may in fact be one of the worst "films" I have ever seen in my life.

[–] ebartlett84 13 years ago

Easily my favorite.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] Jay_of_the_Dead 12 years ago

It's called Masters of -Horror-. Of course it's evil and repulsive. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be worth a damn.

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] Jay_of_the_Dead 12 years ago

This isn't meant to be comedy. Crypt was. Crypt was horror-comedy at its finest, but that doesn't mean it should be remotely compared to Masters of Horror as a whole. True there were comedy episodes to the series, but in general it was meant to be unsettling.

[–] 12 years ago

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