It would seem that Lionsgate and Mick Garris are prepping MASTERS OF HORROR as FEAR ITSELF for NBC.

I dunno. Between the censorship and relentless advertisements, it seems to be self defeating.


Fangoria Article

I hope it receives more respect than ABC gave to MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION, which--love it or not--put on network television literate, smart science fiction that relied more on ideas than action. Six episodes were filmed, but ABC aired only four with little (no?) promotion in a late Saturday evening timeslot in August. Talk about burying a show--there's nothing more ABC could have done to ensure nobody would watch it. And I'm not including the six commercial breaks and constant on-screen interruptions that are now the norm on broadcast TV. Excluding credits, each episode ran 39-40 minutes.

Hopefully FEAR ITSELF (awful title) will do what MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION (and TWILIGHT ZONE) did and MASTERS OF HORROR did not, which is to concentrate closely on the writing instead of just handing bad scripts to noted horror directors and hoping they could hang an earring on them.

Nice to see the show go from "no censorship" to NBC. ;)

Actually, it may be the best damn thing in the world for us, the potential viewers. Besides the obvious flaw in the MOH schema (bad writing/story choices), the majority suffered from an almost juvenille need to wedge in extreme violence or sexual material when it wasn't needed or would have sufficed at half volume.

Perhaps the restrictions will channel energy into the directions of story, suspense, pacing and character.

Then, the extended, "unrated" versions with 2 seconds of extra CGI blood will come out on DVD, anyway.

I'm certainly not opposed to graphic violence or sexual content when needed, but I agree with you. It seemed to me many episodes were going out of their way just to be explicit(or disgusting) for no good reason. I feel a big part of the problem simply lies with Mick Garris. Nothing against the man personally, but they need a producer with a nose for better material. An example would be "We All Scream for Ice Cream." Some stories may be fine as prose, but just don't work in a visual medium. That episode was just ridiculous across the board.

I think network TV is capable of producing potent stuff, but we're not likely to see anything like "Imprint" on NBC, quite obviously. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Don't (never) forget that THE NIGHT STALKER and TRILOGY OF TERROR and DUEL were all made for ABC!

Star Lee Tergesen aside (love him), I find I want to stand in front of the "Ice Cream" DVDs over at J&R and warn people away: "Go home and read IT instead! Same thing!