Homecoming - Masters Of Horror episode (2005) review

Homecoming - Masters Of Horror episode (2005)

Joe Dante is mostly known for directing the mega hit Gremlins, but he has also directed many other films of note.  Recently BAM (The Brooklyn Academy Of Music) did a retrospective of his films :

Joe Dante at the Movies

and TV work, plus offered to show some films that Joe Dante was a fan of, or that influenced him.  There were multiple double features, and some pretty great stuff was shown.  He even showed up for some screenings, did a Q&A after a showing of his work print of Gremlins, and introduced a couple of screenings as well.  I got to meet him and chat with him, and he is not only a great guy, but very down to earth, personable, and very aware.  Talking with him felt like talking with any of my other movie obsessed friends, except that he has been amazingly successful, unlike the rest of us!

Normally I would not review an episode of a TV show here, but since this was shown in his retrospective and I did bother to go to a theater to watch it (since it was free and I had already seen the last movie), I felt it appropriate to do a quick review on each of the 2 episodes they showed.  Homecoming was the 6th episode in Masters Of Horror, a Showtime horror anthology show that would bring in a horror director to produce a one hour episode.  This one in particular dealt with zombies and politics, and although that may seem a bit odd, many zombie movies have political and social issues being dealt with in a zombie crisis. 

The basic plot is that it is an election year (just like now!) and the George Bush type candidate has a new problem on his hands.  Soldiers have come back from the dead, and they want to vote.  It seems that something that a speech writer said on a talk show set this premise in motion, and the speech writer and an Ann Coulter type try and figure out how to deal with this. 

Watching this during an election year where Trump is running made the politics of this episode even more funny, and timely.  In fact, the whole thing was ridiculous in that way when the real world seems to mirror what writers wrote 10 years before. 

While this would not be up there in my must see horror or even zombie things, it was an entertaining hour which amused me in the way that Joe Dante tends to do.  I preferred this one over the other episode he directed, which I will review next. 

7 out of 10 stars. 

Location : BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) , theater 2, Brooklyn, NYC
Date and time : Thursday, August 23rd, 2016 at 9:30 PM
Format : DCP
Audience : 20 people