Masters of
Horror:
The Screwfly Solution
(2006)
(SPOILERS) Joe Dante
and Sam Hamm reteamed a year after Homecoming
for a less feted episode. One I think I actually preferred, even though it
indulges the kind of gore one might have expected but never materialised in its
predecessor. It’s also just as unsubtle in its socio-political commentary. The
key difference is that The Screwfly
Solution actually has a proper story to tell, albeit by way of some truly contrived
character motivation, and engages right up until the closing credits.
This is an
apocalypse tale, one in which man’s essential misogynistic urge is released
when an (engineered) virus causes him to commit wholesale murder of women.
Thrown into the mix, rather crudely, is religious mania, triggered by sexual
arousal. On top of which, Screwfly begins
with a conversation on the pestilence of men (“Women nurture, men destroy”).
However,
the conclusion, out of left field, that aliens (rather feminised, ethereally
glowing aliens at that) are responsible raises pertinent questions that are
left hanging. Presumably, like man’s treatment of the screwfly, they see humans
as an entirely lesser life form, also failing to draw any distinction between
the destructive behaviour of men as opposed to women. Their chosen method is
particularly twisted in this regard, since it has truly horrific consequences
for the female of the species (as opposed to a virus that merely sterilises
everyone, say).
The title
derives from the genetic manipulation of the titular insect species in order to
ensure its eradication, and Hamm’s teleplay is curiously offhand in the way it
makes its points. Violent men require women to respond hysterically or
incredibly stupidly (Brenna O’Brien leaves mum Kerry Norton stranded in the
middle of nowhere so she can spend some some quality time with murderous dad
Jason Priestley). Linda Darlow and Elliott Gould deliver accomplished
performances, despite Hamm’s strange brew of a script rather failing to offer
coherent characterisations.
Dante doesn’t
stint on the brutal material, showing that, when he wants to, he can expunge
all traces of the lightness and wit for which he is best known. The nonchalant
opening, with a husband cheerfully scrubbing up blood after killing his wife,
is chilling, and there’s more than a touch of a one-off X-Files t to the general sense of things going inexorably very awry,
random violence sparking off in suburban idylls. There’s a particularly
gruesome bottling incident(s) in a night club and some gruesomeness where a
storekeeper has a bag made from a woman’s breast. One is left with doubts over
the intent behind the message when the results indulge network imperatives regarding
female mutilation and nudity wherever possible (which takes us back to Dante’s
early career). And the logic; just dirtying one’s face and wearing a hat is an
effective man disguise, so I guess this virus doesn’t work on the basis of
pheromones or any direct, instinctive biological impulse.
The Screwfly Solution's conclusion with the aliens is rushed, and there’s a sense of a grasping at a
hotchpotch of hot button issues (the extremist religious views, be they derived
from Islam or Christianity) in Hamm’s adaptation of Alice Sheldon’s 1977 short
story. Which I haven’t read so probably shouldn’t decry, as it seems to be highly
regarded, as is Sheldon’s work on gender. But, since Hamm also invokes Richard
Dawkins in his conversations, it feels as if the religious fervour aspect has
been stapled awkwardly to the proceedings to make a further crass point, rather
than attempting to finesse the already OTT ingredients into something less
hyperbolic.
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