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The Screwfly Solution (Masters of Horror episode)
Encyclopedia
The Screwfly Solution is the seventh episode in the second season of Masters of Horror
. It is based upon the 1977 science fiction
short story of the same name
by Alice Sheldon under the alias Raccoona Sheldon, credited in the film as James Tiptree, Jr
. Many of the scenes in Sam Hamm's
script are expansions of single lines in this epistolary story. Director Joe Dante
read the story in the 1980s and had wanted to make a film version ever since. He presented the story as straight horror, eschewing his usual humour and without using his usual company of stock actors. Jason Priestley
and Elliott Gould
were the stars. When interviewed while shooting the film in Vancouver
, the director summarised it:
The film was screened at the 24th Turin
Film Festival
. The DVD was released on June 12, 2007.
for the first time. The director chose this experimental technique especially to give the film a different look.
Jason Priestley explained his interpretation of the motivation of the scientist Alan:
magazine, awarded the film three skulls for its "stinging mix of sociopolitical commentary and traditional horror mayhem". The political message was seen as a link between religious fervour
and misogyny
with special reference to Muslim fundamentalism. The effect of violent horror movies upon men within the story was thought to be witty self-reference
though the overall tone was considered "deadly serious". The lead actor, Jason Priestley, was thought to have been weaker than the role required while the performances of Kerry Norton
, as Alan's wife Anne, and Brenna O'Brien
, as her daughter Amy, were thought sympathetic and more effective.
Peter Brown of iF magazine felt that the presentation of the main feature was too rushed and would have been better at 1.5 to 2 hours rather than the 58 minutes allowed by the 1 hour format. Also the denouement was revealed too soon and so suspense was lacking in the second half. He thought that the DVD extras were interesting, providing Joe Dante's account of the conversion from the short story and details of the effects used for the aliens in the story. Overall, his rating for this DVD was C.
After an explanation of the title, documenting the extermination of Cochliomyia hominivorax
, the movie begins in the month of August, with a suburban house in Houston, Texas
where an average man has murdered his wife, daughter, and possibly mother because God had told him to "clean up". Over the next month, a series of femicide
s break out all over the world to the notice of Anne Alstein (Kerry Norton), whose husband Alan (Jason Priestley) is working alongside Barney (Elliot Gould) on the solution to an insect problem in the rain forest. They have a daughter, Amy (Brenna O'Brien), who is extremely excited to see her father again. Anne, Amy, and friend and epidemiologist Bella Sartiano (Linda Darlow) hold a dinner for the returning men. They discuss the methods of how the process will slowly eradicate the screwfly problem much to Bella's annoyance who would rather have all humans killed off before they kill all life on earth.
Bella then leaves for Jacksonville, Florida
where a large group of femicides took place, figuring that it was the result of some kind of epidemic
. She interviews an infected Army private, William Holicky (Steve Lawlor), who murdered a stripper
at a club that had already been assaulted by a preacher who was believed to be a martyr
by many of the infected men. The aggression is linked to sexual arousal and many of the men use religious reasons, even going as far as creating the Sons of Adam cult, to justify the murders. He tries to kill her and she departs, only to be later killed by the infected mayor.
Before her death, Bella informed Barney by phone of the strange occurrence involving the epidemic of murdering women: the disease-like condition spreads along a major disease route near the Equator. Barney and Alan head to Washington, D.C. to consult with officials on whether or not that the condition is of natural or bioterrorism
origin and that the only way to avoid it is chemical castration
. Barney takes the shot (despite the fact that he is a homosexual) but Alan refuses, stating that he'll be fine with pills -- until he begins to have dreams of killing Anne on the plane ride home. Alan becomes witness to two murders onboard the plane by a deranged passenger and a flight attendant, Alan realizes that every man on the plane is infected, himself included. Upon touchdown he calls his wife and daughter and says his goodbyes, telling them that the next time he sees them, he won't be himself.
In September, Anne and Amy have continued onwards to Canada with other women in a Safe Home fashion, though Amy taunts some very aroused and disturbing construction workers, of which a burly one chases after her. Eventually, the two retreat to a cabin where they encounter Alan who is infected and almost sexually assaults his daughter until Anne shoots him in the legs. At Alan's struggling insistence , they escape, but Amy, not understanding the situation, returns to the cabin and Anne arrives too late to save her. Anne is next seen unconscious and it is presumed that she was forced to kill Alan.
Anne wakes up in a hospital where a rash of murders are being inflicted on the female patients, much of it the work of a priest, Barney ensures safe passage to Anne by quietly escorting her out of the building. The two escape to Canada where she wears a "man" disguise in order to hide herself from the various male citizens and hunters who are also infected. Anne overhears a conversation while in a supplies store to pick up medicine, in which the community is now "a liberated zone", indicating that the female population has been wiped out. This is further reminded when a young boy gleefully smiles at his mother's death with his father, then talks about seeing angels in the woods. Soon after, Anne tries to save Barney who becomes very ill. Barney encourages Anne to keep running as she's the only survivor of the female population. As the winter season continues, Barney falls victim to the elements and dies peacefully. Planning to run, she tries to escape hunters who discover her after she expresses shock seeing a bag made out of a woman's breast
in the same supplies store she's been shopping, which she also discovers that the young boy who was happy about his mother's death, is now dead, likely have been killed for inadvertently arousing the sexually frustrated men. As she flees, a bright and powerful light shines overhead and the source of the solution is discovered.
Bright aliens formed of light
are the culprits, using alien technology to create the femicide epidemic. They kill the two hunters that pursued Anne, apparently to take some of their brain matter, and she escapes into the woods, where she makes a wish on a shooting star.
By December, all female life on Earth is presumed to have been exterminated, leaving the infected men to slowly die off.
, which was not shown on American television.
While at the airport, Alan runs into a religious zealot played by Luke Wilson
in an uncredited role. Wilson and Priestly have worked together on Beverly Hills 90210.
Masters of Horror
Masters of Horror is an informal social group of international film writers and directors specializing in horror movies and an American television series created by director Mick Garris for the Showtime cable network.- Origin :...
. It is based upon the 1977 science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
short story of the same name
The Screwfly Solution
"The Screwfly Solution" is a 1977 science fiction short story by Raccoona Sheldon, a pen name for psychologist Alice Sheldon, who was better known by her other nom de plume, James Tiptree, Jr...
by Alice Sheldon under the alias Raccoona Sheldon, credited in the film as James Tiptree, Jr
James Tiptree, Jr
James Tiptree, Jr. was the pen name of American science fiction author Alice Bradley Sheldon, used from 1967 to her death. She also occasionally wrote under the pseudonym Raccoona Sheldon...
. Many of the scenes in Sam Hamm's
Sam Hamm
Sam Hamm is an American screenwriter, perhaps best known for writing the screenplay for Tim Burton's Batman and an unused screenplay for the sequel. As a result of his work, he was invited to write for the Batman comic. The result was Batman: Blind Justice, which introduced Bruce Wayne's mentor,...
script are expansions of single lines in this epistolary story. Director Joe Dante
Joe Dante
Joseph "Joe" Dante, Jr. is an American film director and producer of films generally with humorous and science fiction content....
read the story in the 1980s and had wanted to make a film version ever since. He presented the story as straight horror, eschewing his usual humour and without using his usual company of stock actors. Jason Priestley
Jason Priestley
Jason Bradford Priestley is a Canadian-American actor and director. He is best known as the virtuous Brandon Walsh on the television series Beverly Hills, 90210, a role which catapulted him to recognition in the early 1990s....
and Elliott Gould
Elliott Gould
Elliott Gould is an American actor. He began acting in Hollywood films during the 1960s, and has remained prolific ever since. Some of his most notable films include M*A*S*H and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, for which he received an Oscar nomination...
were the stars. When interviewed while shooting the film in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, the director summarised it:
The film was screened at the 24th Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
Film Festival
Film festival
A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...
. The DVD was released on June 12, 2007.
Techniques
The film was shot using a digital cameraDigital camera
A digital camera is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography...
for the first time. The director chose this experimental technique especially to give the film a different look.
Jason Priestley explained his interpretation of the motivation of the scientist Alan:
Reception
Michael Gingold of FangoriaFangoria
Fangoria is an American magazine devoted to horror and exploitation films, which has a number of associated brands:* Fangoria Comics* Fangoria Films* Fangoria RadioFangoria may also refer to:* Fangoria , a Spanish electro pop band...
magazine, awarded the film three skulls for its "stinging mix of sociopolitical commentary and traditional horror mayhem". The political message was seen as a link between religious fervour
Religious fanaticism
Religious fanaticism is fanaticism related to a person's, or a group's, devotion to a religion. However, religious fanaticism is a subjective evaluation defined by the culture context that is performing the evaluation. What constitutes fanaticism in another's behavior or belief is determined by the...
and misogyny
Misogyny
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...
with special reference to Muslim fundamentalism. The effect of violent horror movies upon men within the story was thought to be witty self-reference
Self-reference
Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding...
though the overall tone was considered "deadly serious". The lead actor, Jason Priestley, was thought to have been weaker than the role required while the performances of Kerry Norton
Kerry Norton
Kerry Norton is an English actress.- Acting career :Kerry had a small part on the American TV series, Sabrina the Teenage Witch in 1996. The episode, entitled "A Girl and Her Cat", saw Norton putting her years of gymnast training to the test...
, as Alan's wife Anne, and Brenna O'Brien
Brenna O'Brien
Brenna O'Brien is a Canadian actress. She is best known for voicing Rin in the anime series Inuyasha.-Career:She is also known for playing Meghan in Zixx: Level Two and appears in X-Men: The Last Stand as the girl in the car with her family during Magneto's displacement of the Golden Gate Bridge...
, as her daughter Amy, were thought sympathetic and more effective.
Peter Brown of iF magazine felt that the presentation of the main feature was too rushed and would have been better at 1.5 to 2 hours rather than the 58 minutes allowed by the 1 hour format. Also the denouement was revealed too soon and so suspense was lacking in the second half. He thought that the DVD extras were interesting, providing Joe Dante's account of the conversion from the short story and details of the effects used for the aliens in the story. Overall, his rating for this DVD was C.
Plot
When a virus overcomes the male population of the world and turns them into murderous psychopaths, a mother and daughter escape across a country where their safety is in question.After an explanation of the title, documenting the extermination of Cochliomyia hominivorax
Cochliomyia hominivorax
Cochliomyia hominivorax, the New World screw-worm fly, or screw-worm for short, is a species of parasitic fly that is well known for the way in which its larvae eat the living tissue of warm-blooded animals. It is present in the New World tropics...
, the movie begins in the month of August, with a suburban house in Houston, Texas
Houston, Texas
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...
where an average man has murdered his wife, daughter, and possibly mother because God had told him to "clean up". Over the next month, a series of femicide
Femicide
Femicide was first used in England in 1801 to signify "the killing of a woman." In 1848, this term was published in Wharton's Law Lexicon, suggesting that it had become a prosecutable offense. Another term used is feminicide.-First feminist definition:...
s break out all over the world to the notice of Anne Alstein (Kerry Norton), whose husband Alan (Jason Priestley) is working alongside Barney (Elliot Gould) on the solution to an insect problem in the rain forest. They have a daughter, Amy (Brenna O'Brien), who is extremely excited to see her father again. Anne, Amy, and friend and epidemiologist Bella Sartiano (Linda Darlow) hold a dinner for the returning men. They discuss the methods of how the process will slowly eradicate the screwfly problem much to Bella's annoyance who would rather have all humans killed off before they kill all life on earth.
Bella then leaves for Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
where a large group of femicides took place, figuring that it was the result of some kind of epidemic
Epidemic
In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...
. She interviews an infected Army private, William Holicky (Steve Lawlor), who murdered a stripper
Stripper
A stripper is a professional erotic dancer who performs a contemporary form of striptease at strip club establishments, public exhibitions, and private engagements. Unlike in burlesque, the performer in the modern Americanized form of stripping minimizes the interaction of customer and dancer,...
at a club that had already been assaulted by a preacher who was believed to be a martyr
Martyr
A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
by many of the infected men. The aggression is linked to sexual arousal and many of the men use religious reasons, even going as far as creating the Sons of Adam cult, to justify the murders. He tries to kill her and she departs, only to be later killed by the infected mayor.
Before her death, Bella informed Barney by phone of the strange occurrence involving the epidemic of murdering women: the disease-like condition spreads along a major disease route near the Equator. Barney and Alan head to Washington, D.C. to consult with officials on whether or not that the condition is of natural or bioterrorism
Bioterrorism
Bioterrorism is terrorism involving the intentional release or dissemination of biological agents. These agents are bacteria, viruses, or toxins, and may be in a naturally occurring or a human-modified form. For the use of this method in warfare, see biological warfare.-Definition:According to the...
origin and that the only way to avoid it is chemical castration
Chemical castration
Chemical castration is the administration of medication designed to reduce libido and sexual activity, usually in the hope of preventing rapists, child molesters and other sex offenders from repeating their crimes...
. Barney takes the shot (despite the fact that he is a homosexual) but Alan refuses, stating that he'll be fine with pills -- until he begins to have dreams of killing Anne on the plane ride home. Alan becomes witness to two murders onboard the plane by a deranged passenger and a flight attendant, Alan realizes that every man on the plane is infected, himself included. Upon touchdown he calls his wife and daughter and says his goodbyes, telling them that the next time he sees them, he won't be himself.
In September, Anne and Amy have continued onwards to Canada with other women in a Safe Home fashion, though Amy taunts some very aroused and disturbing construction workers, of which a burly one chases after her. Eventually, the two retreat to a cabin where they encounter Alan who is infected and almost sexually assaults his daughter until Anne shoots him in the legs. At Alan's struggling insistence , they escape, but Amy, not understanding the situation, returns to the cabin and Anne arrives too late to save her. Anne is next seen unconscious and it is presumed that she was forced to kill Alan.
Anne wakes up in a hospital where a rash of murders are being inflicted on the female patients, much of it the work of a priest, Barney ensures safe passage to Anne by quietly escorting her out of the building. The two escape to Canada where she wears a "man" disguise in order to hide herself from the various male citizens and hunters who are also infected. Anne overhears a conversation while in a supplies store to pick up medicine, in which the community is now "a liberated zone", indicating that the female population has been wiped out. This is further reminded when a young boy gleefully smiles at his mother's death with his father, then talks about seeing angels in the woods. Soon after, Anne tries to save Barney who becomes very ill. Barney encourages Anne to keep running as she's the only survivor of the female population. As the winter season continues, Barney falls victim to the elements and dies peacefully. Planning to run, she tries to escape hunters who discover her after she expresses shock seeing a bag made out of a woman's breast
Breast
The breast is the upper ventral region of the torso of a primate, in left and right sides, which in a female contains the mammary gland that secretes milk used to feed infants.Both men and women develop breasts from the same embryological tissues...
in the same supplies store she's been shopping, which she also discovers that the young boy who was happy about his mother's death, is now dead, likely have been killed for inadvertently arousing the sexually frustrated men. As she flees, a bright and powerful light shines overhead and the source of the solution is discovered.
Bright aliens formed of light
Light
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...
are the culprits, using alien technology to create the femicide epidemic. They kill the two hunters that pursued Anne, apparently to take some of their brain matter, and she escapes into the woods, where she makes a wish on a shooting star.
By December, all female life on Earth is presumed to have been exterminated, leaving the infected men to slowly die off.
Trivia
In the scene in which soldiers are shown various programs, one of them is shown a scene from the Masters of Horror episode ImprintImprint (Masters of Horror episode)
Imprint is the thirteenth episode of the first season of Masters of Horror. Directed by Takashi Miike, the episode was scheduled to premiere on January 27, 2006 but was shelved by Showtime over concerns about its extremely graphic and disturbing content...
, which was not shown on American television.
While at the airport, Alan runs into a religious zealot played by Luke Wilson
Luke Wilson
Luke Cunningham Wilson is an American film actor known for his roles in Old School, Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, Legally Blonde, Idiocracy and Death at a Funeral.-Early life:...
in an uncredited role. Wilson and Priestly have worked together on Beverly Hills 90210.