One of my favorite shows

pninson

This horror/SF/fantasy/soft-porn series, produced by Ridley and Tony Scott, is a kind of Twilight Zone for adults. There were two seasons on Showtime, the first with Terence Stamp as the host, the second with David Bowie.

This show does emphasize style over substance and as with any anthology series there are a few clunkers in the bunch. Overall, the segments with the hosts (both Stamp and Bowie are superb) are reliably fascinating, at least visually. The stories vary from excellent to perplexing. As the series progresses the material becomes stronger and is frequently worthy of comparison to the revivals of Outer Limits and Twilight Zone, although there is more emphasis on horror...

...and there's plenty of rough-and-ready sex, which will be off-putting to some viewers. There are a few episodes in which the obligatory sex scene seems tacked on, but most of the time the sex has something to do with the story and is not gratuitous.

There are 11 DVDs with four episodes apiece, containing all 44 episodes. These discs are hard to find; I have never seen them for retail sale except on Amazon, although my local Hollywood video had some of the discs for rent. The first disc is so under-produced it doesn't even have a menu! I highly recommend tracking these down if you can. Even if you don't like the story, the host sequence is worth the price of admission... and the theme song is dynamite. I only wish I could find a soundtrack CD; I doubt that one exists for a series this obscure.

The Region 2 release features two season boxes, available on Amazon UK. If you're in Region 2 or have a Region 2 player, this is obviously the way to collect the series.

score 8/10

pninson 11 March 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1037592/