THE WASHINGTONIANS is the broadest MASTERS OF HORROR episode to date, with a consistently off-the-wall tone somehow inevitable in a season featuring Meat Loaf skinning himself and a male doctor being grotesquely abused with his own equipment at an abortion clinic. Veteran director Peter Medak’s genre work is limited largely to a subtle, old fashioned and very well regarded old-school ghost story (THE CHANGELING) and an over-the-top sex ‘n’ gore franchise flick (the unloved but often amusing SPECIES II). This is something different again : built around a deliciously mad conspiracy premise, it’s a gleefully subversive and wacky rewriting of history as entertaining as it is unsubtle.
Jonathan Schaech inherits his late grandma’s house in a peculiar community where the locals show an unhealthy interest in his pre-teen daughter. When he discovers a letter hidden in a George Washington painting that reveals Washington to have been a cannibal, Schaech and his family are pursued by “The Washingtonians”. This loopy bunch of self-appointed protectors of the Washington legacy boast powdered wigs and bad teeth and are not above indulging in extreme immorality and violence just like their forefather.
Schaech co-wrote this oddity, the penultimate episode to air in Season Two, though his own performance, fairly typical of the actor’s work overall, is peculiarly un-involving. He underplays in a movie where most of the cast are going so overboard that a cameo appearance from Martin Short wouldn’t seem out of place. The material is admittedly slight, but Medak has fun with it, sustaining a tone that frequently spills over into outright camp : the mood-juggling works better here than in WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM.
At heart, this is an engaging satire about how historians dictate who our past heroes and villains are without ever being questioned (in the present, tabloid newspapers and television do the same thing, so hopefully sometime soon a horror movie will reveal Julia Roberts to be a dwarf-molesting, baby-killing sociopath with secretly ugly feet).
It relishes its own gaudy gruesomeness, with severed fingers cluttering cereal bowls and flashbacks of George tucking into human body parts with glee. It also gives its silly villains lots of likeably daft punning dialogue (“We’re thrilled to have you for dinner”) and earns extra kudos for giving Saul Rubinek the line “They all like virgin meat” and someone else the signature line “George Washington was a cannibal, a child eater!”. The relishable punch line features a key character looking straight at the camera – stopping just short of winking at the audience – and the grim sight of George W Bush’s mug on a dollar bill. Oh the horror!
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
