John Carpenter's Pro-Life

Here comes another Masters of Horror review. This time it’s John Carpenter’s Pro-Life. This is Old Carpenter Balls’ second attempt at a Masters of Horror film. Some dude from AICN and one of his friends wrote the script. It involves a pregnant teenage girl, an abortion clinic, some doctors, a religious nut and his three mentally-deficient sons, a man in a demon suit, and a lobster with a baby head. It stars Ron Perlman, everyone’s favorite Hellboy. What more could you want? This is John Carpenter, folks…the iconic director who brought us Halloween, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from New York, and the incredible flashback within a flashback within a flashback Ice Cube vehicle, Ghosts of Mars. He now gets credit for bringing to light one of the worst episodes in the Masters of Horror oeuvre, and that’s quite an achievement.

The overall story for the Pro-Life episode is actually a cool horror movie concept. The daughter of a pro-life religious nut job (Ron Perlman) gets impregnated by a demon. She wanders through the woods and stumbles out onto the highway in front of a car driven by two workers from the local abortion clinic. They take her to the clinic where she insists that they abort her demon spawn. Meanwhile, the girl’s father shows up in an ominous red van. A voice tells him to protect the baby. He thinks it’s God doing the talking; what a fool. He and his sons storm the clinic, shotguns blazing. Heads explode. Pulsating pregnant bellies and spewing, acidic amniotic fluid. The clinic director receives a taint abortion. The demon father makes an entrance. Rad stuff.

Given the above scenario, you’d think you have a great horror/siege film. So, why doesn’t it work? I’ll give you a few clues: terrible dialogue, atrocious acting, and poor pacing. The AICN dude and his friend wrote some pretty shitty lines. The worst lines are delivered by Ron Perlman’s teenage sons. Nearly every line is prefaced with an annoying “but daddy” whine. Daddy this, daddy that. A couple of these kids look old enough to be in their twenties. Ron Perlman tries to be menacing, I think. I’m not sure. Whatever he’s trying to pull off doesn’t work. The actor who plays the director of the clinic is terrible. There is another group of people in the clinic (an angry father, his wife, and their pregnant daughter) whose side story/innocent bystander bullshit is totally unnecessary. It must have been inserted as padding. Who needs padding in a 57 minute film? The pacing of the film is slow, slow, slow. I think the intention of the abysmally slow pacing is to heighten tension. It doesn’t work. It just makes the movie funnier. Why does this father, who is concerned about his daughter and her lobster baby, take so much time away from his goal so he can torture the clinic director? I’m not sure, but it’s hilarious. The shootout scenes are like nothing I’ve ever seen; glacially slow, botched, bungled, retarded, and laughably ridiculous. When one of the sons gets killed, it’s like “too bad, let’s move on”. The best parts of the movie involve the guy in the demon suit and the lobster baby. Absolute genius.

When I watched the behind the scenes garbage on the DVD I was hoping for some explanation as to why this movie didn’t work. Amazingly, John Carpenter and the writers stood by this trash. John Carpenter actually likes this movie, so no excuses about him phoning it in. After watching the special features, you would think you had been treated to an amazing sequel of The Thing or They Live or something. All I was expecting was an apology. Oh well.