Pro-Life Year: 2006 Director: John Carpenter Written by: Drew McWeeny, Scott Swan Threat: Demon Weapon of Choice: Scalpel Based upon: none Color/B&W/3D: Colour Language: English Country of Origin: USA IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
Please see the Masters of Horror series page.

The tyranist's thoughts
Masters of Horror is such a good idea. It is mostly to be expected that it would be a little uneven in its execution though. Very few TV series manage to be good every single episode. And when you pull in a lot of different creators as they do for MoH, you're bound to get a few that really aren't that good. For Pro-Life though it was sort of surprising. For one thing, John Carpenter had one of the strongest entries in season 1 and to follow it up with this just doesn't make sense.
A desperate young woman is running from her family. She happens to encounter a couple abortion clinic workers on their way to work. They take her in and do their thing. Her father shows up and suddenly things get violent, and then weird, and then lame.
I was disappointed with this to say the least. It was inconsistent and difficult to read. I really liked Caitlin Wachs who played the young woman in trouble, but she was about the only bright spot. The script was sort of weak and the pace not really what I would have hoped for. And when it was all said and done, the monster was just kind of odd.
I think what really bothered me here, though, was that they used a pretty controversial issue as a backdrop without really coming down on one side or the other. Abortion is a pretty hot button topic and they mostly sort of waffled. Neither side was particularly good and when it all ended, I had to wonder how the whole thing fit in. I don't think it was absolutely necessary to the story for them to take a stand, but in choosing to set it in the environment they did, it sort of drew attention to itself in a way that I found obtrusive.
Now that I've said it, however, I realise I'm doing something I sort of abhor in other people by putting a bit too much of my own frame of reference onto the movie. Other people may not be bothered in the least. If I'm going to explain why I didn't like the movie, it should be mentioned. So take it as you will and know that I won't recommend the movie, but you may enjoy it.
Posted: September 3, 2007

Rish's Reviews
The last couple of "Masters of Horror" we've watched have been pretty unpleasant. I didn't really love Pelts, didn't really like Family, and outright disliked Pro-Life. My three favourite episodes of the first season of "MoH" were directed by Dario Argento, John Carpenter, and John Landis, and the three we've watched from season two, coincidentally by those same three directors, have all been inferior to their predecessors.
I try not to put any political or religious bias into my reviews (except for Silent Hill and the rant that followed), and I don't want to do that here either, but you can't make a movie like Pro-Life and not bring up the abortion controversy. I grew up in one of those places where abortion was considered a true evil with a capital E, and remember being embarrassed in junior high when my English teacher had to correct my belief that abortion was illegal.
I know the writers were trying to show both sides of the argument, but you can't have the Pro-Lifers blowing people's heads off at an abortion clinic and a girl begging to terminate her satanic pregnancy without looking a little on more one side of the fence than the other. Maybe it's just me.
And tyranist mentioned, rightly so, that revenge motivated the Ron Perlman character a hell of a lot more than righteous indignation when he tosses away his noble goal of saving his daughter to torture an abortion doctor to death rather than go into the next room and help the girl.
On the plus side, the monster is well-executed and the crablike infant was especially good. I even like the title.
Still, I felt like they were deliberately looking for inflammatory and shocking material here (such as the aforementioned revolting torture scene) rather than trying to be scary or create memorable or likable characters. You can do that in an hour long movie too, so that's not an excuse.
The ending was unsatisfying, with too much stuff left unexplained, and way easier than was believable. That same ending could have worked, though, had the movie earned it. This one did not.
I'd Recommend It To: I was initially tempted to put a closing line about recommending someone use a coat hanger on this movie, but I decided that would be in pretty bad taste. Don't you think?
Posted: October 21, 2007

Total Skulls: 13

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?