Product Code Database
" Cigarette Burns" is the eighth episode of the first season of Masters of Horror. A supernatural horror story, it features a film-within-a-film subplot. It originally aired in North America on December 16, 2005. The episode was directed by John Carpenter, while the score was composed by Carpenter's son Cody Carpenter.
Fangoria placed Cigarette Burns at the top of their list of "12 Amazing Episodes of The Masters of Horror" series, describing it as "among the highest-rated episodes and a fan favorite."
Sweetman's first lead is reclusive New York Film criticism A.K. Meyers, who wrote a review of the film. Meyers, who has become obsessed with the film to the point of madness (he is still writing his review 30 years later), gives Sweetman an audiotape of an interview with the film's director, Hans Backovic. Sweetman listens to the tape and hallucination his fiancée's suicide: a junkie, Annie had slit her wrists in their bathtub.
The following day, in Paris, Sweetman meets with film archivist Henri Cotillard, who tells him that he was the projectionist at a Film screening of the film. He was spared death and insanity because he turned away as the film played. When he heard the audience screaming and smelled blood, he tried to stop the projector, but blacked out, waking later to find his left hand burned beyond use. He sends Sweetman to a contact, a filmmaker named Dalibor, who might know where the film is. Sweetman is seized, injected with an anesthetic, and blacks out, waking up tied to a chair. The woman who drove Sweetman there in her cab is also tied up and sitting across from him. The filmmaker explains to Sweetman (while Decapitation the woman) that an angel was sacrificed in the film, and the evil of that horror affects all who view the film. Sweetman experiences another vision, and, when he comes to, he finds himself holding a machete. The filmmaker's throat is slashed. Before Dalibor dies, he directs Sweetman to Katja Backovic, the director's widow.
Sweetman tracks down and speaks with Katja in Vancouver. She gives Sweetman the only remaining copy of the film. When he asks how the director died, Katja reveals that he died in an attempted murder-suicide that she survived. Sweetman brings the film to Bellinger and collects his payment. Bellinger settles comfortably in his private theater, pours champagne, and watches the film. Sweetman returns to his cinema, only to learn that Annie's father, Mr. Matthews, has chained it shut, despite having said that Kirby had two weeks to pay off his debt. Not realizing that Matthews is watching him from a parked car, Kirby receives a phone call from a distraught Bellinger and returns to the mansion. There, Sweetman sees Bellinger's butler Fung gouge his own eyes out after watching the film. Inside the projection room, Bellinger is concealed behind the movie equipment, gasping in apparent pain. He speaks deliriously, telling Kirby that he recommends the film, but that it is not a movie, only a trailer for what is to come. He gasps out that he has been inspired to create his own film. Kirby watches in horror as Bellinger loads his own intestines into the reels of another projector.
Matthews follows Sweetman to the mansion and is already being affected by the movie when Kirby re-enters the theater. Matthews, with crazed rants and giggles, pulls a gun and threatens to kill him. As they struggle, they hallucinate a burning-cigarette cue mark, which envelops the screen. Sweetman awakens to find he and Matthews, both bloodied, are watching the movie. The butler blindly frees the chained Willowy Being. The ghost of Annie steps out of the movie and bites her father's neck, which turns out to be a hallucination. Sweetman decides that he and Mr. Matthews both have to die because neither can truly let Annie go as long as they are alive. Sweetman brutally kills Matthews, shoves the wad of owed cash into his mouth with a curse, and commits suicide.
The Willowy Being takes the two film reels, walks into the theater, looks down at Sweetman's bloody corpse, and says, "Thank you for this", indicating the film reels, before leaving.
Location shooting took place in Vancouver, British Columbia, with stock footage establishing shots of Paris, France. The Vogue Theatre, at 918 Granville Street, stood in for Sweetman's cinema. Bellinger's Spanish Colonial Revival home scenes were shot at the Casa Mia heritage estate, at 1920 SW Marine Drive, also the filming location for other films with a fantasy and horror vibe. Katja Backovic's penthouse was filmed at 123 Davie Village.
Carpenter shot in the , since the film was formatted for TV, rather than his usual 2.35:1 scope photography.
Various instruments of murder include a knife, a straight razor, a gun, and a machete. Bellinger uses a movie projector to commit suicide. The Willowy Being's pair of angelic wings are mounted on the wall in Bellinger's house as Trophy hunting.
Cody Carpenter composed theme music for the characters Bellinger, the Willowy Being, Kirby Sweetman, A.K. Meyers, Henri Cotillard, Dalibor, Katja Backovic, and Annie. Added themes were written for the locations of the Vogue Theatre, the Paris Archive, the Elevator Vision, and the projection booth.
The Le Fin De Mond Theme music was written by John Roome, and the main title music was composed by Edward Shearmur.
A reviewer for the DVD Review & High Definition website wrote,
The release includes a commentary track by John Carpenter; another featuring writers McWeeny and Swan; "Celluloid Apocalypse," an interview featurette with Carpenter; "Working With A Master"; "The Making Of Cigarette Burns" featurette; an on-set interview with Norman Reedus is available as a separate feature on the disc. Other features include a John Carpenter Biography, Trailers and a Still Gallery. With a DVD-ROM drive, the movie's screenplay and a screen saver are accessible.
Nich Schager of Slant Magazine wrote that the film lacks Carpenter's "trademark cinemascope cinematography" and is too overt, but it is "something of an atmospheric semi-return to form". Steve Barton of Dread Central rated it 5/5 stars and called it "vintage Carpenter": "gory, disturbing, and at times beautiful to look at". Michael Drucker of IGN rated it 8/10 stars and described it as "fun, exciting, and horrifying", though he criticized the scenes of La Fin Absolue du Monde as poorly done. Ian Jane of DVD Talk rated it 3/5 stars and concluded that it is a "nice return to form from Carpenter that, despite some flaws, makes for an unsettling and atmospheric viewing".
In a laudatory 2018 retrospective review, the Daily Dead website said that the installment is "the darkest and most intense episode" of the series and called it "a cool, imaginative story – one that draws us in and fills us with dread: we're never sure where it's going, but we know it's nowhere good. The stylization of Carpenter's direction never leans into film noir, but it's impossible to watch 'Cigarette Burns' and not be reminded of other horror noir like Alan Parker's Angel Heart and, in particular, Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate." The reviewer said admiringly, "There is a nightmarish inevitability to the mystery at the center, in that we want to see it solved to satisfy our own curiosity about the resolution, but at the same time don't want to see Sweetman getting closer and closer to the truth because we know some form of Hell awaits him at the end of the trail. And boy are we right. There is an image near the end of 'Cigarette Burns' – involving Udo Kier and a film projector – that has stuck with me for the 13 years since I first saw the episode. It might be the most striking and horrifying image yet in all of Masters of Horror."
In 2020, the pop-culture website The Avocado praised the cast, calling Reedus "impressive" with "a wonderfully reactive presence," and Kier "terrifying" and "so charismatic onscreen that his sudden shifts in demeanor are as shocking as a murder in a slasher film." Overall, the reviewer called it "an incredibly theatrical work." Guido Henkel of DVD Review lauded Carpenter as "the master of suggestion, creating horror in the viewer's mind by not showing us details." Here, however, "he sidestepped this technique and gives us remarkable graphic shots and one of the most memorable death scenes of any horror film," producing "a surprisingly gory and overtly violent film for John Carpenter." Describing the movie as " In the Mouth of Madness meets Ringu," Henkel deems the episode "dark, disturbing and unsettling," highly atmospheric, and "a thoroughly enjoyable and suspenseful film."
"A standout from the first season of Masters of Horror," Sam Reader of Tor Nightfire wrote in 2022, before focusing on the film-within-a-film aspect. "Rumored to cause insanity and death at every screening, La Fins presence is felt throughout the movie, as even searching for it or seeing it at a distance causes hallucinations, nightmares, disfigurement, and death. Carpenter's always been good at making things seem ominous and sinister even at the best of times, and the way the film alters anyone who's ever heard of it — from the crazy fan who directs Snuff film to the film critic who's writing a House of Leaves-style review to correct a perceived mistake — plays on this wonderfully, giving La Fin a sense of doom even before the movie shows up." Analyzing what he sees as a Metacinema style, Reader wrote, " Cigarette Burns also seems at times like a Parody, playing with the Art film/Horror noir touches while pushing them just far enough (blood sacrifices being an important ingredient in filmmaking, some effects that seem to blur the line between film artifice and "reality") that it plays on the border of Surreal humour. However you interpret it, it's a tight, twisty suspense film from one of the best genre directors out there, and worth the short time it takes to watch."
|
|
