“Masters of Horror” John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns Movie Review
Article by FisterRoboto of lefthandhorror.com
Written by Mick Garris, Drew McWeeny, and Scott Swan
Directed by John Carpenter
Starring Norman Reedus, Udo Kier, and Colin Foo
With a torrid past that haunts him, a movie-theater director is hired to hunt for the only known print of a film so notorious that its single screening caused the viewers to become homicidally insane.
“Le Fin Absolue du Monde” (The Absolute End of the World) is an enigma wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a burrito, wrapped in an “I don’t care.”
The original Halloween film is my all-time favorite movie in the world, so it’s safe to assume I had high hopes for this John Carpenter film. While it’s directed well, in a true JC fashion, and portrayed very well by The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus, this is just a lame entry.
Cheesy story + blood for the sake of blood = cliche and bland horror. The beginning of the film got my attention and I hoped it would go in the right direction. Yeah, it didn’t. I don’t expect everything I watch to be wrapped up in a tight little package in the end. I do, however, expect a slight hint at the origin of something as evil as a film that causes murderous violence for anyone who watches it. If anything, more questions were raised.
Cigarette Burns was made for television and it felt like it. Filmed in 2005 it sure feels like a cheesy 80’s horror flick…and not in the good nostalgic way. Thankfully it clocks in at just under an hour, so the mediocrity doesn’t last too long.
Carpenter’s son, Cody, wrote the music and it has a certain reminiscent quality to it. The make-up effects are surprisingly cool for a low budget made-for-tv movie. You probably won’t forget a guy disemboweling himself and feeding his guts through a movie projector. Sadly, that’s what’s you’ll probably remember as the high point of the film.
Skip it unless you’re like me and want to make sure you’ve seen all of Carpenter’s work. Yawn.
I’m a huge Carpenter fan but I was thoroughly disappointed with this movie. It started off really strong or at least I thought so, but then it wound down and the story itself just became weak and really confusing. It felt like he tried to cram 2 hours of movie into 56 minutes and couldn’t get done what needed to be.
That’s exactly how I felt. So anti-climatic.