Plot
A detective investigates a series of bizarre murders where
the victims have seemingly been trampled to death by a deer. This leads him to
believe a Native Indian legend about a mysterious "deer woman" who seduces men
before killing them. But that's only a legend, isn't it?
Review
John Landis directs one of my favourite episodes from the
Masters of Horror TV series with Deer Woman, a horror-comedy episode
which reflects the less-than-serious tone of Landis' classic An American
Werewolf in London. He even manages to throw in references to that by
mentioning "events in Picadilly in 1981" which got a chuckle out of me. You'll
also see deer dressed in lumberjack shirts. You'll see characters attacked with
deer legs. I might also add that the deer looks ridiculously silly, almost as if
they found one of those mounted deer heads on someone's hunting lodge wall and
ripped it off to move it around the set with someone holding it. In one
hilarious scene, the detective dreams up three crime scenarios of what could
have happened when one of the truckers took the woman back into his motel room
and each ends in a funny deer-related attack (cue the aforementioned deer leg
bludgeoning). It seems that Landis, and his son Max who co-wrote, understand the
rather silly nature of the plot and, instead of going down the straight
route like so many episodes of this series have, opt to play it silly and it
works all the better for it. It's all bizarre enough to work wonderfully. There are more comedy elements involved here
than true scares but
the film is still gory and messy when it needs to be. After all, we're dealing
with trampled bodies. You forget how bloody the film is due to the silliness of
everything else.
It helps that Cinthia Moura is
absolutely drop-dead gorgeous as the "deer woman" and isn't afraid to show a bit
of skin. She hasn't got any lines but her smile and natural aura do the job of
making her this stunning but deadly creature. She's almost perfect and I'd like
to see more of her (in more ways than one I might add) in future. Although maybe
she can't act to save her life. Best stick to the semi-naked, non-speaking
roles. Brian Benben in the lead role is great and the script really helps him
create a likeable character for us to get behind. His deadpan performance isn't
funny in itself but he makes everything else around him funny - the sign of a
great straight man in a comedy film. If there is a problem with the script, it's
the unsatisfying ending but maybe that was down to the fact that they simply ran
out of time in the episode. Remember these are basically short films designed to
run as a TV series. In reality, I think that this episode could easily have been
stretched out another thirty minutes or so and turned into a full blown motion
picture. Landis shows enough here to prove that he'd have been able to hack it.
The pace is good, the episode is constantly entertaining and the time flies by a
little too quickly - another thirty minutes wouldn't really have killed that had
they been used wisely. I could imagine that this would have made a decent
X-Files episode without the comedy elements.
Verdict
Deer Woman is one of the best
Masters of Horror episodes and proves that sometimes horror doesn't need to
be scary to work. Sometimes you just need a good chuckle in the face of death.
If you want serious scares, most of the series is played straight. But if you
want a throwaway episode with laughs, goofing around, a seriously hot naked
chick and a deer dressed as a lumberjack then check this out. You won't be
disappointed!
