Masters of Horror - 103 - Dance of the Dead

Director: Tobe Hooper

Writer: Richard Christian Matheson, Richard Matheson

Tagline: Their wildest dreams are your worst nightmares.

Actors: Jonathan Tucker, Jessica Lowndes, Ryan McDonald, Marilyn Norry, Lucie Guest, Robert Englund

Original Air Date: November 11, 2005

Runtime: 59m

Category: Outbreak, War, Zombie

Synopsis: Peggy and her mother, Kate, run a local diner in town. Lately, Kate has been having nightmares about something that happened during Peggy’s birthday a long time ago. A chemical war broke out and the United States was hit with a skin-eating chemical agent which decimated most of the population. The agent broke out during Peggy’s birthday, killing most of her friends and their parents. Now America is crawling with half deteriorated humans scrambling to stay alive. One day, a group of four drugged-up teenagers waltz into the sleepy little diner. Jak, one of the miscreants, makes friends with Peggy and he ends up convincing her to sneak out late at night to join them on their meanderings. They head to The Doom Room, where Jak and his cohort must conduct some business with the M.C. They stay long enough for Peggy to find out that this dive is a horror house! The Doom Room’s main attraction consists of re-animating those who died in the war, and making them dance by way of electrified cattle prod. Peggy discovers something horrible and her and Jak leave, pursued by the M.C., only to bump into Kate! But Kate has a horrible secret and an unimaginable past with the M.C. Can Peggy ever forgive her?

Review: At first I was not sure what to think about this. I wasn’t bored, but I wasn’t enthralled. It was just mediocre. The concept was nice, something that hasn’t been done before. The dead at The Doom Room were not exactly zombies because they did not crave human flesh. But they were re-animated corpses that had no purpose at all. I thought that that was kinda boring; that the L.U.P.’s, as the M.C. called them, were nothing more than brain-dead humans. Not an interesting thing about them. But I guess that this was not about them, it was about what kind of society would thrive after a national tragedy like a nuclear or chemical war. Not a pretty picture. The acting was ok, and the plot was actually pretty solid. Unfortunately there was no gore or anything like that. The people melting alive during one of Kate’s dreams was kinda cool but I could have done with just a little more deterioration. I loved Robert Englund as the M.C., nice addition to the cast. He brought a sort of “horror charisma” to the film which added to it’s credibility. Just wasn’t thrilled though.

Rating: 13. I rate it like this for a few reasons: 1) I didn’t like the whole blood-selling aspect (as minute a point as it was). It just seemed hoaky. 2) I didn’t like how quick the relationship between Jak and Peggy progressed. It was just too fast and made the film seem rushed. 3) I did like the concept though. I liked how Mr. Hooper portrayed the “post-apocalyptic” world as a segregated melting-pot at the gates of Hell. The storyline was strong but the individual parts that made up the film seemed rushed and under-exaggerated. Not his best work, but not to be taken lightly. (13of25).