Masters of Horror: The Screwfly Solution DVD review

For season two of the Masters of Horror series, Joe Dante directs an adaptation of James Tiptree Jr’s The Screwfly Solution. Jason Priestley and Elliot Gould star as two scientists involved with genetically modifying species of flies to help eradicate them and the problems they are causing. Seems like someone or something has seen it fit to do that same things to us humans. Some kind of disease is affecting all human males, turning them into murdering woman hating psychopaths. The plague spreads like wild fire and pretty soon woman are running for their lives as us crazy men do our best to hunt them down to help return our world to the “Eden” that it was before God created woman. Yikes! I don’t know about this “Eden” place but it sounds like one sausage party that I would rather not be involved in.

A little bit more science fiction than horror, Dante’s episode plays out like an homage to the Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, focusing on the suspense and the actual social effects and less on the blood and the guts. It still manages to dish out the gore and ample amounts of bare flesh which most have come to expect from MoH, but this does feel like an episode that is a little out of place among other recent episodes. That doesn’t make it bad, not at all, it just isn’t what you might expect from Dante and from the series.

Anchor Bay’s DVD release comes with the following features:

• Widescreen presentation (1.78:1) enhanced for 16×9 TVs
• The Cinematic Solution: A look behind the scenes of The Screwfly Solution
• The Exterminators: The solution to the special effects
• Audio commentary featuring director Joe Dante and writer Sam Hamm
• Still gallery
• Screenplay (DVD-ROM)

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