Pro-Life

Look I went into this with low expectations given things I've read within the internet community ... but I'll be damned if this isn't one of the more fun and MOH episodes. It is however the type you have to make sacrifices for. You have to switch of your logic and be willing to overlook some plot holes and cover your ears for the occasionally poorly delivered line- but man, this is definitely a Carpenter film. It has his trademarks all over it, more so than Cigarette Burns. This has the look, the sound, the gloss and grime of a carpenter movie. I love it because it has all the basic elements of other films of his and is basically an awkward cut and paste best of assembler, but what the hey! its a ball. It is funny, with a nice score (although I can understand why some may have issues with it), features some great effects (one of which is genuinely urn-nerving, towards the end- a combination of practical and CGI- trust me, you will know it when you see it) and with some nice acting from 60percent of the cast. Perlman is great, just as he was in Desperation- with another juicy scenery chewing role.

In terms of expectation, don't go into this with another Cigarette Burns in mind. Think of it this way:

Cigarette Burns = Halloween Pro-Life= The Fog, Prince of Darkness, Village of the Damned

Have some fun, the message is nicely done and is at times quite disturbing, so be warned. A mess, but an entertaining mess at that.

Not his best work - but watchable. John Carpenter shows traces of his ability to be a great director in this movie - but it is not enough. The idea behind the script is clever, but the movie is mediocre ...

On the surface, the set-up of the story is reasonable: a 15 year old girl at an abortion clinic is having a very unusual pregnancy and her father (a pro-life activist) is trying to remove her.

Since it's a John Carpenter movie, you can expect horror, monsters, killing, dramatic tone and more. The movie gets reasonably good marks on all those. Unfortately though - it never gets interesting or engaging.

What ruins this movie are the glaring mistakes. They are inexcusably bad. Body pieces are missing one moment, then are very clearly back the next. The father complains to 'God' about something important (won't spoil what it is), but that 'something' doesn't happen in the story! Almost as bad are some of the actions of the doctor involved in the pregnancy. Even a reasonable teenager would be more believable. After finally watching his response to a burning face, I gave up trying to make sense of anything.

It looks like Carpenter did this movie with one eye closed. Not a very good effort. Skip it unless you're a die-hard John Carpenter fan.

John Carpenter doesn't quite reach the comeback high he got last year with Cigarette Burns, the first in his entries in the Masters of Horror series. But it's definitely a showcase for him to display his storytelling panache on a typically grisly and hell-bound tale. He gets to also mix a few elements from past pictures with something that almost borders on being formula for some horror directors following Rosemary's Baby. The story starts out with the kind of weird, religious ambiguity of They Live, as we're thrust into a story that has implications that really are, at least at the start, beyond our thinking. But then we enter in Assault on Precinct 13 mode, as the 'good guys' (err, the doctors who just want to keep Angelique, played by Cailtin Wachs) away from her crazed, God-abiding father Dwayne (Ron Perelman, always a pleasure to see in a role as un-relenting grim and hard-edged as this), which then turns into a gun-blazing blood-bath. And finally, we get the element of the Thing, which, of course, is a 'thing' that baffles everyone, except for the audience.

I'm sure that even if I didn't know the basic premise of Pro-Life, I would've figured it out anyway after the first five, ten minutes. Part of the opening ambiguity is a little random- that Angelique happens to be picked up after running through the woods by doctors working at a women's medical clinic- but from there on it is pretty thrilling work done, and pretty graphic. The make-up and special effects from Gregoy Nicotero's team, per usual, are top-notch, and being on the 'anything-goes-type' of cable channel doesn't hurt either. If anything it also provides Carpenter- via his writers- to have one of the most cringe-worthy scenes Carpenter's ever done, which is Perelman's own 'abortion' on a certain doctor as penance for something that happened to one of his kids. Some of this, too, is quite funny, mostly with the demon baby and the circumstances around it (i.e. when Angelique's water breaks, it ain't exactly water), plus the baby itself. Whether it's meant to be funny or not I can't say, but there's no mistaking that underneath some of this terrifying and harsh subject matter, is Carpenter making his own satirical jab at the abortion issue (and what side he really takes could be anyone's call, though the reverse of the title is what I'm leaning towards).

Unlike Cigarette Burns though, Pro-Life is not without its liabilities- some major ones in fact. One of those is Cody Carpenter's musical score, which in spots isn't bad but in its repetitive mode (over half an hour of a rhythmic beat that only stops at a certain point), and it detracts at time from the total potential of the true excitement; his father has proved to be much better at maintaining this kind of score for the material. And the ending, while not a total disaster, is very strange to me, and had me with a look on my face like 'uh, OK'. I suppose it ends up fitting into a kind of twisted catharsis for Angelique's situation, but even for the amount of disbelief needed it's a big leap to take. But all this aside, I was very glad I got to see one of the masters of modern horror having his fun with the material, and giving some good screen time for such Perelman, who it could be argued gets to steal his scenes however in such a style that works for the demented, voice-guided character.

Not really very original, since clearly elements of both "Assault on Precinct 13" and "The Thing" are rather obvious. In addition, lots of plot holes get in the way. The effects are alright, but there are some annoying flaws, the most glaring being why no one has a cell phone to call police, after the phone lines are cut? Ron Perlman is in his comfort zone, as the psycho pro-life father, assaulting the abortion clinic where his daughter is being attended to by the rather naive staff. Another weak point in the script is why Perlman continues to torture the doctor, when his daughter is screaming at the top of her lungs just down the hall? "Pro Life" has lots of screaming, but not much meaning. - MERK

Of course, we are talking about a Masters of Horror episode here. It couldn't just be a simple "problem" we (and the characters) are facing here. Still, especially considering his Cigarette Burns episode, this almost feels like a step back. It's not a bad story, it's just pretty conventional and predicable.

Ron Perlman almost made me give this another star, I just like that guy, whatever role he's playing. And his character is most definitely the most complex one in this. The complete opposite to that is Emmanuelle Vaugiers character. She doesn't seem to be doing anything at all. And while looking good doing that (she always does), you wish she had something to say (not literally speaking).

There are quite a few other movie influences here that you will spot. Some are mentioned in other reviews, but all in all, if you are an avid moviegoer you will spot them yourself. That's not entirely a bad thing and even that a scene (you could call it "the inciting incident") is not really graphic, shouldn't be a problem. A more than decent episode than, but more action orientated than pure Horror (just saying in case you were expecting something like the Cigarette Burning episode)