Round up 13 of the horror genre's most dependable spookmeisters, give them a limited budget and absolute creative freedom, and let them rock for an hour apiece. As ol' Doc Frankenstein must have said, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Originally aired on Showtime, the first season of the much-hyped Masters of Horror series is now lurching its way to DVD, two releases at a time—and, well, they don't all work, to be honest. Still, for every half-hearted entry or errant morbid belch from the likes of Stuart Gordon or John Landis, a few dark goodies exist.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment is John Carpenter, a director for whom my admiration normally verges on slightly embarrassing worship. Initially, the premise of Carpenter's Cigarette Burns, concerning the search for a lost film reputed to be produced by the Devil, promises some of the same metatextual insanity that the director previously delivered with his In the Mouth of Madness. Here, though, it's all a sodden mess, with a first-act revelation that throws the entire structure out of whack. Infinitely more distressing, however, is the sense that Carpenter may have finally taken John Ford's old self-depreciating description about directing just being "a job of work" a little too literally. Save for a memorably gloppy curtain call for bad guy Udo Kier, there's nary a trace of Carpenter's trademark wit, economy, and yes, genius to be found. That he more or less admits this on the accompanying commentary track is worthy of some respect, I suppose.

Faring markedly better is Don Coscarelli, whose Incident On and Off a Mountain Road finds the director returning to the wild-hare source material of cult writer Joe Lansdale, previously responsible for Bubba Ho-Tep. This backwoods-survivalist slasher movie lacks some of the genuine what-the-fuckness of the duo's prior collaboration, but there are enough unexpected vectors to warrant a rental. Plus, a souped-up drill press makes whoopee with a variety of eyeballs, if you're into that sort of thing.

Thankfully, Joe Dante's political zombie opus Homecoming more than blows the curve, and offers some hope for the second season. Spinning the classic Monkey's Paw fable into Fox News territory, Sam (Batman) Hamm's script posits legions of Iraq war dead returning from the grave with an unceasing hunger, not for brains, but for voting the guilty party out of office. Dante, a director whose leftist subtextual rumblings have often been all but swallowed by his joyful pop-culture natterings (consider Gremlins, with its Reaganesque small town ripped apart by party-hearty id monsters) here lets fly with an exuberance that only accentuates his rage at the current state of the union. About as subtle as a kick in the nards, his fairly amazing contribution manages to justify this whole wobbly exercise. Here there be monsters, Dante yelps, and, brother, are they ever us. Especially that tasty sumbitch Karl Rove.