But it gets worse: Walter dreams about a rat with a human face that torments him at night with whispers of "She's coming for you!" When left to look after Francis's child while she goes for a job interview, he finds himself being seduced by a voluptuous, cowled woman who claws at his back with long nails! The visions, blackouts and sleepwalking spells escalate until poor Walter is utterly convinced that he has been targeted by an evil, three-hundred-year-old Witch, hiding in another dimension behind the walls of his room, who wants to force him to sacrifice Francis' baby as part of a diabolical occult ritual!

With a small cast and a shoot that mainly takes place on an atmospheric stage-set designed by David Fisher, "Dreams in the Witch-House" largely avoids the pitfalls of some of the other episodes: the plot is simple enough to carry off a fifty minute show, and the themes of the original story are well-exploited by Gordon's script adaptation, which adds a sympathetic female character to make the film's conclusion even harder to take! There is, of course, copious amounts of nudity and (fairly discreet, but still disturbing) gore and when we factor-in the strange undercurrent of humour threading through this bleak tale, we end up with an episode that actually comes the closest to recapturing the taboo-busting nature of Stuart Gordon's infamous debut.

Don Coscarelli had a recent revival in his critical standing after the engaging "Bubba Ho-Tep". The director of the cult "Phantasm" and its trio of increasingly tripped-out sequels, seemed to have found a new lease of life and inspiration in the work of idiosyncratic horror writer Joe R. Lansdale, and "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" is another adaptation of a Lansdale short story. Seemingly an odd take on the backwoods serial killer sub-genre, the film starts with its heroine, Ellen (Bree Turner), having a car accident on a remote mountain back road in the middle of the night. No sooner has she regained her bearings than she stumbles across a bizarre, white-faced serial killer (nicknamed Moonface) who's sole pastime involves kidnaping unwary travellers, taking them back to his rickety wood shack, and drilling out their eyes balls! As the creature hunts Ellen through a thicket of woodland, we see flashbacks to her past relationship with a survivalist boyfriend (Ethan Embry) who used to instruct the reluctant city girl in the art of defending oneself from attack. These skills are soon put into use one-by-one, as Ellen is forced to fight for survival. 

There are hints of the originality of Lansdale's work here: Ellen's resourceful attempts to kill her attacker soon start to go wrong and, after first accidentally trapping and injury another woman being pursued by Moonface (thus making the killer's objective that much easier), she rigs a makeshift bow & arrow that misses him and shots her in the shoulder instead. Back at Moonface's cabin, Coscarelli's totem actor, Angus Scrimm turns up as a dotty old man who Moonface, for some reason, keeps tied to a chair in his torture room. The relationship between Ellen and her ex-boyfriend gets progressively worse in flashback, leading to an unexpected twist at the end that puts rather a different spin on the whole story. The trouble is the whole thing seems somehow hollow; Angus Scrimm's role doesn't lead anywhere, and the '80s Heavy Metal album cover imagery of Moonface leaping against a backdrop of a painted moon is slightly affected and trite. The film ends up being a succession of sequences that trade on various modern horror movie motifs: torture and slicked-up, old-school '70s horror flicks, mainly — but none of it adds up to a great deal in the end.

Much the same can be said about Mick Garris's own self-penned and directed entry, "Chocolate". An initially enticing concept about a chemist for the food industry who begins to inexplicably experience the sensations (or "qualia", as philosophers would say) of an unknown woman. At first, just the taste of chocolate in his mouth; but then the sights, smells and sense of touch that this woman is experiencing, begin to intrude on, and affect his own life until he becomes obsessed with the strange woman. After glimpsing her in a mirror (from her own point of view) he falls madly in love with her, and determines to hunt her down and declare himself to her. Things don't quite turn out how he would have wished though!

This unusual idea soon descends into farce because of Garris's insistence on playing up the comic potential of the material rather than the sense of unreachable longing it seems to hint at. The nadir comes when the protagonist, Jamie (Henry Thomas), experiences a female orgasm just as his ex-wife and their young son let themselves into his apartment for a visit! The conclusion is suitably bloody, but even that has the air of a farce about it and one is left with a feeling of " ... and?" There really doesn't seem to be much point to it all — and Garris appears to have wasted an opportunity to create something truly unusual and unique.

John Landis's "Deer Woman" was dealt the lion's share of critical animosity upon the series' first airing, but a re-viewing of this gory, quirky, horror-comedy has been considerably kinder to it. Co-scripted by the director's son Max, this light-hearted romp recalls the Pacific North West setting and offbeat humour of "Twin Peaks" — and also involves a murder investigation that leads to unusual revelations. Washed-up cop, Faraday (Brian Benben) has resigned himself to a humdrum existence on the 'lost pets', desk when he is called out to a crime scene where a truck driver's body has been found in a minced-up state — with the hove prints of a deer all over it! The victim was last seen in the company of a beautiful woman. Soon a succession of bodies turn up; all of them turned to bloody mush, and all of the victims last seen in the company of the same woman shortly before their demise.  Is there a giant mutant deer on the prowl; or is there a female serial killer at-large who uses a deer leg as a murder weapon? Faraday and his rookie assistant begin to suspect something even more bizarre: that an ancient Native American myth about a woman with deer legs who seduces men and then murders them, is actually a reality!

Aside from the offbeat humour and the quirky characters (a post-mortem conducted by a "punk" mortuary attendant with piercings) that are a blatant reference to "Twin Peaks", Landis seeds the film with many nods to the work of Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur. The title, of course, is a quirky reference to such Lewton/Tourneur classics as "Leopard Man" and "Cat People"; but Landis also furnishes the film with its very own 'Lewton walk' ending in a classic 'bus' scare (the sudden sound of a bus's doors opening was used at the conclusion of a sequence where a character was pursued through the streets as she walked home in "Cat People" - the sudden jump-out-of-your-seat moment was, consequently, termed a 'bus' from then on). Tourneur's device of suggesting Simone Simon's duel identity in "Cat People" by framing her against catlike images or shadows is also parodied when the Deer Woman, Lucie Laurier, is framed in front of a pair of comedy antlers which seem to protrude form the side of her head! Not content with the referencing of other people's work, Landis also works in a sly reference to his own, when Faraday refers to a case in London where a wolf is known to have went on the rampage in 1981! Although the ending is a bit of a let down, there is a lot of energy and wit in this enjoyable little film — it revels in its own absurdity and displays a great deal of inventiveness in the process.

Lucky McKee may have only produced one film that anyone may have seen; but it was a damn good one and "Sick Girl" more than justifies his inclusion (as a last-minute replacement for Roger Corman) as a master of horror. Angela Bettis is Ida Teeter: a scientist who works in the Insect department at the Museum of Natural History but has trouble holding on to girlfriends because of her obsession with bugs. One day she meets Misty Falls (Erin Brown): a strange girl who sketches pixies in the Museum reception area! Eventually Ida plucks up the courage to ask her out, and the two — both being rather shy, awkward and goofy — hit it off straight away. The problem is, someone has sent Ida a very peculiar insect in the post. The thing escapes and bites Misty on the ear, after-which the previously likeable girl starts to act provocatively — and the escaped insect turns out to have a taste for Ida's landlady's dog.

There is certainly nothing else like this in the entire series. McKee once again employs the welcome services of the terrific Angelia Bettis who commits to a brave performance as incredibly strange Ida; a performance that spills into the realm of outlandish caricature, but still somehow manages to bring emotional believability to the role and induces sympathy in the viewer. For most of its running time, the film plays like an outlandish character piece that allows Bettis full reign and indulges McKee's feel for oddball characters and quirky comedy set-pieces. Only in the final quarter does some rather unpleasant horror come into play when Misty starts to transform into a a squirm inducing insect-like creature; simultaneously recalling both the Vincent Price version of "The Fly" and the Cronenberg remake. This is one of the best episodes in the series.

The final film in this set is the justly acclaimed "Homecoming", directed by Joe Dante. The zombie genre has always seemed uniquely suited to political and social commentary since "Night of the Living Dead" but this satirical comment presses more buttons than Romero's disappointing recent action-fest "Land of the Dead"! As the US presidential election kicks into gear, the nation is shocked and bemused by a spate of zombie sightings. It seems that servicemen, killed in action during a current overseas war, are returning from the dead in order to vote, with the intention of removing the current administration! The bulk of the film is a savage indictment of American politics with some cutting-edge humour helping the medicine go down: as the dead soldiers continue to return, it seems nothing can kill them — they only drop dead after casting their vote! A witty, acerbic script adds to the joy of this clever zombie variant ("Only several hundred serviceman killed in action have returned from the dead. That means the majority of dead servicemen support the war!") and there are some satisfying gory moments along the way too. Even if you don't agree with the overcooked politics, it's hard not to enjoy this extremely inventive piece of television.

This set is crammed to bursting point with extras on each disc: "making ofs", interviews with the casts, career overviews of each director, behind the scenes featurettes, script to screen comparisons, biographies, the complete screenplays for every episode and the original short-stories for three episodes. Not to mention commentary tracks for every episode (sometimes more than one!). There is more than enough here to keep you going 'till the next set gets released. If you're a fan of any of these director's works you're bound to enjoy this set, if only for the fantastic extras.