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The cancelled NBC horror anthology series makes its way to DVD with the unaired episodes intact.

There was a time not too long ago when horror anthology shows were all over TV.  Following the likes of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits in the 60s, new anthology series were created with more of a horror spin.  One of the first big ones to hit was Tales from the Darkside in 1983 and had a decent four season run.  Soon the market became flooded with others like Monsters and Tales from the Crypt, and even knock-offs of major films such as Friday the 13th: The Series or Freddy’s Nightmares.  These had very little to do with their source material.  It was always fun to have a new half hour or hour show each week with a brief scary story to watch, so a few years back director Mick Garris decided to give it a shot.  In Showtime’s Masters of Horror different big shots in the horror industry would get a chance to tell a scary story uncut and their way.  That lasted two seasons and went in the garbage.

Garris was not going to give up there.  He went on to shop a similar idea for network television and NBC took the bait.  The same basic thing would happen here, though the uncut part was now out the window.  Even with the constraints of a major network during prime time - as prime as Friday night before the local new can be - Garris managed to get a few good directors and stories out of his series Fear Itself. 

There were to be thirteen episodes in the first season, each one by a different director.  Some of the big names were John Landis (An American Werewolf in London) with his episode “In Sickness and in Health” where a bride gets a note on her wedding day saying that she is marrying a murderer; or Stuart Gordon’s (Re-Animator) entry “Eater” revolving around a cannibalistic Cajun serial killer.  Not all of the stories were winners, but there were a couple good ones.  Darren Lynn Bousman’s (Saw II/III/IV) episode, “New Year’s Day,” took place in the mind of someone waking up after the New Year’s partying with quite a hangover while sirens blare all around her.  The majority of the population are now ravenous zombies and as she wanders the city she slowly recalls the events of the night before.  Another week had an episode called “Family Man,” directed by Ronny Yu (Freddy vs Jason), where a devoted husband and father is in a horrible car crash with an on the run killer.  In the hospital their souls switch bodies and the wonderful family man finds himself behind bars while this criminal is in his body is with his family. 

Fear Itself did not make it through the full thirteen episodes produced, after eight it went on hiatus for the Summer Olympics with a promise to air the rest afterwards.  They never saw network airtime.  Now that the DVD has been released with no plans for anymore episodes in the future, for some odd reason the packaging reads “The Complete First Season,” instead of “complete series.”  I guess it’s always possible that SyFy (hate the new spelling), who are owned by NBC/Universal, could opt for more episodes but very unlikely. 

On this new DVD the remaining five episodes are there, along with “director’s cuts” of some of the episodes.  Don’t think these shows are going to get too out there, it is just a little extra that was axed for time or a little too much gore for NBC.  The only features for the set are brief interviews with each director talking about the making-of their respective contributions.

The biggest downside to this has nothing to do with the content, but how it is delivered.  Instead of a standard DVD case, or TV Series thick case, they opted for a 3D tombstone case brandishing a skeleton (as you can see in the photo above).  This isn’t too bad, it’s not that much of an embellishment that it won’t fit on the shelf, but the discs inside are the main problem.  There are three discs, two of which are two-sided, and two of them are placed on top of each other.  Not staggered like most sets, but resting right on the top.  I guess it’s not too bad, but double-sided DVDs are hard enough to care for without the added aggravation of stacking them.

The set isn’t great, but I’ve definitely seen worse.  Horror fans might want to rent this to see some of the directors’ work or to watch the unaired episodes. 

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