Wow. Real honorable mention here. This is an anthology series where acclaimed directors (Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento, John Landis, John Carpenter) each directed a 1-hour horror film.
I found this one on Tubi, and for the most part, it’s actual horror cinema, not the TV “horror”-in-quotes writing exemplified by campy shows like “American Horror Story”, which use horror tropes with any edges safely blunted off to avoid upsetting anybody.
As an anthology, the quality is up and down, but season 1 at least for the most part finds these directors in top form and, in the best episodes, not watering their fare down for TV… this is something fans of actual quality horror movies might actually enjoy.
Director Takashi Miike’s episode, while not among my favorites, was actually pulled from the original run of the series by Showtime over concerns about the content being too extreme (for cable TV in 2006!) and, true to form, Dario Argento’s episode, characteristically both ridiculous and disturbing, had to be edited for violence in the original run, too.
And, happily, it doesn’t even lean very often into “horror comedy” or in-jokes, for the most part indulging in that only when it will actually work (I had a chuckle when John Landis’s episode has a policeman, speculating that a wild animal attack has improbably occurred in his town, mention that a wolf attack was reported in central London in 1981, an amusing callback to his own “An American Werewolf In London”, a childhood favorite of mine.)
The second season isn’t as good, it’s more dulled-down “tv horror”, although it still has its moments, and is, by and large, still often better than most other TV horror series I’ve seen. I was somewhat unnerved by the idea, if not entirely the execution, of Joe Dante’s season 2 episode “The Screwfly Solution”, in which something similar to pest control biotech, originally designed to reduce insect populations by chemically interfering with mating urges, finds a much broader use.
Tobe Hooper also is nice to see back in fine form in his season 1 episode “Dance Of The Dead”, but I’m not going to say any more than that about that.