I’ll just kick this one off by saying that it’s spectacularly rare to get a copy of the Masters of Horror season two box set.  There are only fifteen thousand of them made, so if you managed to lay hands on one of those skulls filled with DVDs then you can count yourself in a very small group.

The thing is, there’s a reason they made so few–at least I’m going to say as much.  This season–this LAST season–of Masters of Horror was so roundly panned by critics and former fans alike that it really can’t support very many copies.  Which is sad, honestly–I say people aren’t giving it a sufficient chance.

Okay, sure…Masters of Horror season two lost a whole lot of its masters from season one.  The list is just preposterous–Takashi Miike, Larry Cohen, Lucky McGee, Don Coscarelli, William Malone, and John McNaughton.  And their replacements are in a poor position to be called “masters”; Rob Schmidt’s major accomplishment–one of three movies he directed–was Wrong Turn.

But this doesn’t mean that Masters of Horror season two was BAD…it simply means that it was below the bar set by season one.  Season one was groundbreaking and visionary and all the other superlatives you attach to really good movies or tv instinctively.  That’s why a lot of reviews sound the same except for swapping out a few names and adjectives.  But Masters of Horror season two’s only true failure was not keeping up to the standard set by season one.  And you can’t blame season two for not being as good as season one.  Season two is good for its own reasons; it’s the little things like Jeffrey Combs in The Black Cat, or the entire concept behind The Screwfly Solution or the twist ending on Family that make season two worth watching.

I say Starz and company did the best they could with what they had to work with.  Season one was amazing, season two couldn’t keep up, and so far, no one’s really liking season three all that much–otherwise known as Fear Itself, the reviews are on the down side of mixed and look like they’ll average slightly worse than season two of Masters of Horror.

This makes me think that by the time Fear Itself hits season three or four it’s going to completely suck, as all the good will have steadily boiled out of it and we’ll be down to the worst directors and no-names handling this stuff.

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