Masters of Horror: Episode 20 The Screwfly Solution

The Screwfly Solution is based on a short story by James Tiptree, Jr (a pseudonym for Alice Sheldon, who wrote science fiction at a time when it was very much a Boy's Club). The episode really has two closely interconnected commentaries: the first is on violence against women, the second is on the competitive nature of life. I found the latter commentary to be excellent, but the former to be underwhelming. If you're going to talk about something as culturally influenced as domestic violence, making the violence a biological imperative ruins it.

The idea of humans as a plague on the rest of the Earth has been done to death, but here it's done so well and so literally that it becomes fascinating again. We're conveniently introduced to two researchers named Alan and Barney (Jason Priestly and Elliott Gould) who are attempting to wipe out a pest called the “Kane Fly” by introducing chemicals that affects the instincts of the males, causing them to forget the correct procedure for mating. We're told the story of the screwfly at the beginning, so apparently the Kane Fly is just another in a long list of pests we've dealt with in similar manners.

At the same time, a plague of misogynistic religious mania appears, somehow following airborne disease vectors. City after city undergoes an outbreak in which men begin murdering women. It's explained that the disease erases the distinction between sexual urges and violent instincts in men, so that their attempts to “mate” are replaced with attempts to murder potential child-bearers.

There are a number of things in this episode that don't make sense. Firstly, I could accept the religious aspects as a result of infected men trying to justify their violence, but on at least one occasion a man is shown developing a belief in it without having been taught. A religion that spreads via literal airborne pathogen?

My other major problem is the manner in which male pride dooms the human race. The disease's affects can be stopped via chemical castration, but our military leaders apparently lack the professionalism to allow that, even in the face of human extinction. Even as a card-carrying liberal myself, I've never met a soldier who I think would refuse such an option when the situation was so dire. This plot point seems to exist simply to drive the story forward. The only male we actually see use chemical castration on himself is Barney, whose basically a “gay best friend to women” stereotype.

The ending establishes that the plague was sent down by aliens. It's never made entirely clear if they're tree-huggers protecting the Earth, or if they simply want the planet for themselves. I prefer the latter interpretation, because it fits the metaphor of the episode far better: We destroyed the Screwfly because it killed livestock, but that was for our sake, not the sake of the livestock. I likewise highly doubt that the aliens give a rats ass about the precious Kane Fly or any of the other species we wiped out.

About halfway through the episode the perspective flips, because Allan is too stupid to accept the chemical castration, and realizes he's become infected. He warns his wife Anne (Kerry Norton) to get a gun and head North with their daughter Amy (Brenna O'Brien). From that point on, we follow Anne. It makes a degree of sense in terms of the narrative. We've passed the point at which the brave scientist can save the world, and entered the point at which the desperate woman has to try to survive.

The remainder of the episode is a tense thriller, but the inevitability of Anne's death is pretty clear. Amy manages to get herself killed fairly early, though, by trusting her now-deranged father. Anne's fate, however, is just freezing to death in Northern Canada, which is probably the best she could have hoped for in this world.

This episode does disturb me. We humans are, fundamentally, just another life form. How much could a few chemical affect our behavior? Do we really have any choice when it comes to our instincts? The idea that the violence is closely linked to the sexual instinct makes it all the more hard-hitting, because we can all relate to the struggle to resist our sexual urges, let alone resist them while an alien race is effectively drugging you. While I haven't read the original story, the idea seems quite timeless.

Masters of Horror: Episode 6 Homecoming

Looking back, I really do feel like I’ve been using too much plot summary up until this point. I’ve decided that I’m still not going to avoid spoilers, but I’m likewise not going to dwell on explaining things that don’t directly affect my opinion of the work. This is certainly an episode for which the ending doesn’t seem especially important, as it’s merely an exclamation mark on the themes of the previous hour.

Homecoming is like a time capsule, and it’s not easy to talk about a decade after it was made. It embodies the despair of the mid-2000s, and the backlash against Bush in the aftermath of the Invasion of Iraq. It hits pretty much every hot button topic of that era, including the Florida recount, the ban on photographing dead soldiers, Karl Rove existing and, of course, the WMDs that weren’t there. Practically the only moment of the episode that isn’t politicized is when a zombie is asked for his ID before he can vote, which I find retroactively hilarious.

David Murch (Jon Tenney), a presidential speech writer, who tells a grieving mother on national television “if I had one wish, I would wish for your son to come back, because I know he would tell us how important this struggle is.” This is picked up by the President as a talking point…until it actually happens. American soldiers begin rising from the grave, not to eat flesh, but to cast their ballots for the President’s opposition.

Naturally, this creates chaos in the President’s administration. It’s suggested that only soldier’s discontent with the war are rising, because if they died for a cause they believed in they would be at peace. So, they have hundreds of zombies walking the streets, many bearing obvious death wounds, shocking the American public, and telling everyone that they were “killed for a lie.”

It’s not really surprising that Joe Dante directed this. Gremlins is pretty light on actual scares, and wasn’t exactly subtle in its humor. While Robert Picardo is awesome as a fictional counterpart to Karl Rove, I seriously doubt the real Rove would actually brag to his coworkers that he sold a war on “horseshit and elbow grease!” Hell, the entire episode is full of pundits who yell loudly about how they’ve deceived the American people in the middle of their offices.

The only character who seems remotely believable is “Jane Cleaver” (Thea Gill), and she’s realistic mainly because she’s impersonating Ann Coulter. It’s kind of hard to go over-the-top with that. Hell, I’d actually be more surprised to find out that Coulter did believe the stuff she was saying.

It’s well made, certainly, but the biggest problem with this episode is simply the question of who it would appeal to. When it was made, yeah it was awesome to watch for anyone disgruntled with the Bush administration. I feel that today hating only one side of the political spectrum seems almost quaint to most people, and whether or not we should have invaded Iraq in the first place feels like a debate that’s played out.

For me, personally, the episode is like reverse-nostalgia. As a liberal, I remember the Bush years as a miserable time, and this episode is just a reminder of why I hated those years. I imagine someone who felt otherwise would likely just be offended by the material, and someone too young to remember just wouldn’t have anything to relate to, and would probably just take it as a black comedy.

So, all I really have is, if this sounds like it would appeal to you, awesome, watch it! Otherwise, it probably isn’t worth your time.