DVD Review: "John Carpenter's Pro-Life"

"Masters of Horror" is a series of one-off cable television movies that has been host to some of the horror genre's most famous directors. To be more accurate, the series hosts a lot of the most famous directors of yester-year. "Pro-Life" was my second venture into the series-- my first being Carpenter's "Cigarette Burns," which was atrocious. Turns out, I should have left well enough alone, because after this one I'm starting to think one of my favorite directors has lost his touch.

The story is about a young girl found running along the highway. The man who finds her happens to be a doctor who works at the local women's clinic. He brings her into his office, and upon an examination finds that she's pregnant. Meanwhile, the girl's father (Ron Perlman) arrives at the gates of the clinic, and just happens to be a militant pro-life demonstrator. He believes he is on a mission from God to protect his daughter's baby, and will stop at nothing to do just that. Turns out, he couldn't have been more wrong.

The story is interesting enough, especially in that it takes no particular stance on the abortion issue, and all of the characters are flawed in some way. Where the film falters is in it's murky explanation of the origin of the baby to be aborted/delivered. It's the spawn of some sort of demon-- or is it the devil? Whatever it is, it's left completely up in the air. And the message of the story, if that's what we are going to call it, is delivered through a few heavy-handed lines of dialogue instead of leaving it to the imagery and performances to bring home the point.

It should be noted, however, that the effects of the film (both digital and practical) are terrific. Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger developed the demon character into a fully articulated suit (above) that looked amazing on film. Overall, The story was interesting, and the effects worked well, but the film ended up feeling like exactly what it is-- a low budget, cable TV series. Let's just hope Carpenter's next feature project, L.A Gothic, gets him back on track.

Score: 1.5 out of 5