Masters of Horror: Episode 8 Cigarette Burns

When I realized I'd reached Cigarette Burns I leapt for joy...then I stared blankly, trying to figure out how I was going to talk about an episode dealing with such abstract concepts. While many of the other Master of Horror episodes are good, I would actually give this episode the distinction of being the single greatest work of John Carpenter's career.

This episode is clearly a follow-up to his Lovecraft-inspired Apocalypse Trilogy (The Thing, Prince of Darkness, and In the Mouth of Madness). Most obviously it deals with some of the same themes as Mouth of Madness. Where that film was about the hunt for an evil author, here our protagonist, Kirby Sweetman (Norman Reedus), is searching for an evil movie, Hans Backovic's Le Fin Absolue Du Monde (The Absolute End of the World).

The element that gives Cigarette Burns the edge over it's predecessor is that it doesn't make the film the point. In Mouth of Madness Carpenter attempted to show us reality being torn apart by simply having things happen that didn't make any sense. I'm not saying that didn't work, nor am I claiming that we don't get some freaky imagery here, but the primary focus is on the humans.

Kirby follows a fairly straight-forward series of leads, each of whom has been directly or indirectly exposed to the film in some way, and each having had a different reaction to it. When the film is eventually watched we're shown only a few brief glimpses of it, and what we see is creepy. But far scarier is the idea that these people experienced something that actually justifies their behavior. The most memorable of these is a film critic who wrote a review of the film. He felt that his original review was “a joke,” and has spent years locked in a cabin, typing his “new review” to explain the film to the world. His entire cabin is now full of stacks and stacks of paper, all composing a single review.

The story benefits from the fact that pretty much every line spoken about the film can be interpreted in multiple ways, and watching it three times I've come up with at least half a dozen versions of what Le Fin Absolue Du Monde actually is. The film appears to have been made, at least in part, by filming the desecration of an angelic being, but even the nature of that being is never made explicit. My personal favorite explanation is that God gave the Angel to the film's director, and the horror of the film is that God is evil and takes delight in torturing his creations.

Whatever the nature of the film, it's implied that most people are too frightened to seek it out, even if they claim to want it. In another story the events might seem unbelievably convenient. Kirby was able to talk to only a few sources before being told to go see Backovic's widow, who agrees to give him the film. But when Kirby arrives at the late Backovic's penthouse, he's told that no one else ever made it up the elevator. Any of the previous people to seek the film could have found it, if they really wanted to.

As he closes in on the film Kirby begins to see Cigarette Burns appear in his life. Whenever they happen, Kirby's life suddenly cuts away to something else. In their first appearance he experiences a flashback to his addict wife's suicide. Later, when Kirby's life is in danger the Cigarette Burns signal a skip in the action. This happens on two occasions, both resulting in Kirby miraculously coming out on top of the conflict off-screen, surviving what should have been his death.

Kirby himself is a perfect balance as a protagonist for this story. He has enough characterization to give his journey meaning, but not enough to distract from the film. While his back story is mostly implied, we can gather he's a cinephile with a reputation for finding rare prints. His life fell apart when he became addicted to heroin and married another addict. He got a loan from his father-in-law to open a theater, which makes very little money due to his obsession with obscure art-house fair. Then, his wife committed suicide, and his father-in-law demanded repayment, threatening to close his theater.

Kirby was hired by a man named Bellinger (Udo Kier), who is determined to see the film before he dies. Initially Kirby simply wants to clear his debt with his father-in-law, but becomes increasingly fascinated by the film. He's exactly the type of person who would be drawn into the film's web: a cinephile, an addictive personality, and a desire to know what happened to his wife's soul.

I don't recommend this as an episode of Masters of Horror, I recommend it as one of the finest pieces of horror ever filmed. It's probably the closest anyone has ever come to truly filming Lovecraft. I could probably write a volume just giving different ways of understanding it. Don't just read what I'm saying, watch this episode and make your own interpretation. Ironically, Cigarette Burns is probably the closest the real world will ever come to producing Le Fin Absolue Du Monde.