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The idea sprung from a series of dinners that Garris had held with other horror film directors, and the satisfying experience and the directors' admiration of each other's works lead Garris to create this series in 2005. The basic idea was a series of one-hour films, each directed by a well-known horror director. The series featured contributions from directors as diverse as [[Dario Argento]], [[Tobe Hooper]], [[John Carpenter]] and [[Takashi Miike]], and received wide critical acclaim.
 
The series ran for two seasons on Showtime. ''[[Fear Itself (TV series)|Fear Itself]]'', another [[Genre Anthology]] in the same format and created by the same team, premiered on [[NBC]] in 2008, and was cancelled after its first season. Another similar show called ''Masters of Science Fiction'' (again from the same creators) premiered on ABC in 2007, but only ran six episodes before being cancelled. ''Masters of Italian Horror'' is also in the works, [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|focusing solely on Italian directors]]. IDW Publishing is also adapting several of the episodes as comic books.
 
The episodes, in order of broadcast, and the tropes they contained were as follows:
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== Incident On and Off a Mountain Road ==
Directed by [[Phantasm (Film)|Don Coscarelli]] and based on a short story by [[Bubba HotepHo-Tep|Joe R. Lansdale]]. While driving in the night by a lonely mountain road, young Ellen (Bree Turner) suffers a car crash and comes across a deranged, monster-like [[Serial Killer]] nicknamed "Moonface" (John deSantis). In order to survive, Ellen must put in practice the lessons she received from her [[Crazy Survivalist]] husband Bruce (Ethan Embry).
 
* [[Action Girl]]: Ellen.
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== Dreams in the Witch-House ==
Directed by [[Re -Animator|Stuart Gordon]] and based on a short story by [[HP Lovecraft|H.P. Lovecraft]]. College student Walter Gillman (Ezra Godden) rents a room in a colonial house looking for a quiet environment wherein to study his grade on Quantum Mechanics. However, he soon begins to experience some weird and very vivid dreams till he is convinced that a 17th century witch wants him to sacrifice the baby of the woman next door (Chelah Horsdal).
 
* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: The [[Ominous Latin Chanting]] that is heard during the two apparitions of the witch is actually a Spanish song about [[Human Sacrifice]].
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* [[Shout-Out]]: [[The Shining|The witch acquires the image of an attractive naked woman to seduce the protagonist, and reveals her true old, hideous image when she has done it while laughing her ass off]]. Also, the [[Ominous Latin Chanting]] heard during this scene contains the line [[Cthulhu Mythos|"Iah! Iah!"]]
* [[Tome of Eldritch Lore]]: The Necronomicon.
* [[What Could Have Been]]: [[Re -Animator|Frequent]] [[From Beyond|collaborator]] [[Jeffrey Combs]] was Gordon's original pick for the role of Mr. Dombrowski, but was unavailable.
 
 
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* [[The Vietnam War]]: David's older brother Philip fought on it {{spoiler|though contrary to what he has always believed, he wasn't killed there}}.
* [[War Is Hell]]: Invoked in the final line of the episode.
* [[The War Onon Terror]]: Not directly named, but clearly set during it.
* [[Writer Onon Board]]: '''Duh.'''
* [[Zombie Apocalypse]]: Averted. The undead soldiers make it pretty clear they aren't mindless bodies there to eat people. They're entirely civilized (though a little grumpy for obvious reasons) and the only people they are shown killing did something to deserve it.
 
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{{quote| '''Every other character, including his partner:''' Shut up, Fuchs!}}
* [[Cute Mute]]: The Deer Woman (before she reveals her intentions).
* [[Death Byby Sex]]: The Deer Woman's MO.
* [[Fan Service]]: The Deer Woman always goes topless before she kills.
* [[For the Evulz]]: Just like in the [[wikipedia:Deer Woman|original legend]], the Deer Woman kills horny men for absolutely no reason. This is lampshaded by Faraday when he is first introduced to the legend.
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** {{spoiler|Bellinger, who cuts out his small intestines and inserts them into a film projector. We don't see him breathe out his last breath, but not much else could have come of it.}}
* [[Eye Scream]]: {{spoiler|Bellinger's butler cuts out his own eyes after seeing the film.}}
* [[Gorn]]: Quite possibly the most Carpenter has ever put into a single feature since ''[[The Thing (Filmfilm)|The Thing]]''.
* [[I'm a Humanitarian]]: When the film is presented at the end, {{spoiler|Annie emerges out of the theater screen. Her father comforts her, but she's "hungry", and takes a bite out of his neck. It's a hallucination.}}
* [[Jerkass Has a Point]]: Annie's father. Kirby treats him like an unreasonable jerkass, but Kirby did get his daughter killed by indulging her drug habit, abysmally failed to get her on the right track despite agreeing with him to do so, is still massively in debt to him, and just evades him whenever the topic of repaying the loan comes up. {{spoiler|It's only when he resolves to kill Kirby that he crosses the line into outright villainy.}}
* {{spoiler|[[Kill'Em All]]: The only characters to survive are Kirby's theatre assistant, Bakovic's widow, and Henri, none of whom were present at the climax.}}
* [[Only in It For Thethe Money]]: The search for ''La Fin Absolue du Monde'' starts out as this for Kirby, to pay off his enormous debts. Later on he becomes increasingly obsessed with the film itself.
* [[Our Angels Are Different]]: {{spoiler|In this case, angels are corporeal creatures and can be tortured, and the one seen in the episode is quite uglier than one would expect at first. It's heavily implied that the film's evil is the result of documenting the desecration of said angel.}}
* [[Snuff Film]]: Dalibor, one of the persons visited by Kirby while searching for the film is a Snuff director, while ''La Fin Absolue du Monde'' features the torture of {{spoiler|an angel}}.
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== The Fair-Haired Child ==
Directed by William Malone. 13 year-old Tara (Lindsay Pulsipher) is kidnapped by a couple of retired musicians, Anton (William Samples) and Judith (Lori Petty), and imprisoned in their run-down basement. While in there, she learns that she is to be sacrificed as part of a [[Deal Withwith the Devil]] in exchange of resuscitating the couple's teenage son, Johnny (Jesse Hadock).
 
* [[Decapitation Presentation]]: The monster keeps the heads of its victims in a drawer in the basement.
* [[Hair of Gold]]: Tara, to a T.
* [[Hoist Byby His Own Petard]]: {{spoiler|Johnny is so sick about the whole thing that he makes another [[Deal Withwith the Devil]] himself to take his parents in exchange of their latest victim}}.
* [[Human Resources]]: The garden corridor used during the ritual to bring Johnny back to life is made of human bones.
 
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* [[Boy Meets Girl|Girl Meets Girl]]
* [[Face Full of Alien Wingwong|Ear Full Of Insect Wing-Wong]]
* [[Girl-On-Girl Is Hot]]: Ida's partner Max constantly pokes fun at his colleague's sexuality and begs her to tell him everything about her dates in time for [[A Date Withwith Rosie Palms|the morning shower]]. He also keeps his hand in a "special place" while talking to her on the phone.
* [[Lipstick Lesbian]]: Both Misty and Ida.
* [[Soundtrack Dissonance]]: The happy music at the end.
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* [[Twist Ending]]: {{spoiler|[[Narrator All Along|Miss Carnation is Elise]].}}
* [[Ugly Guy, Hot Wife]]: Wolfram and Elise, as he admits himself. {{spoiler|Even moreso when he becomes a zombie.}}
* [[What Could Have Been]]: Both [[Dawn of the Dead (Filmfilm)|George A. Romero]] and [[Roger Corman]] were offered to direct this episode.
 
 
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** "[[Dracula|I do not drink... wine]]"
** The vampire is named Mr. Chaney, after Lon Chaney Jr., the [[Universal Horror]] legend.
** When Mr. Chaney first goes after the boys, his hand's shadow reproduces the trademark scene of ''[[Nosferatu (Film)|Nosferatu]]''.
* [[Sophisticated As Hell]]:
{{quote| Mr. Chaney: Anyway, he told me that your dad was a mean, evil, bastard, that he was a... (''to Kerry'') what'd you call him? Ah, a '''''dickface'''''! Yes, a dickface, how wonderful."}}
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* [[Be Careful What You Wish For]]: "Please! Make it stop!"
* [[Blessed Withwith Suck]]: Larry's superhearing makes him discover that his son has a cardiac affliction, but only too late to save him; it also makes him better at his job, but not good enough to meet his boss' expectations, while his subordinates hate him for it; and finally, it drives him crazy as it just keeps getting better, and better, ''[[Gone Horribly Right|and better]]''...
* [[Dead Little Sister]]: Larry's dead little son.
* [[Jerkass]]: Larry comes as this several times.
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* [[All Men Are Perverts]]: The plague explicitely switches the men's sexual urges to violent ones. The only way for men to resist it is by different types of castration (chemical and ''actual'', to be specific). Once all the women are dead they turn their attention to the younger boys with a man shrugging off the fact that he murdered his teenage son.
* [[Fan Service]]: The sex scenes and the strip club.
* [[The End of the World Asas We Know It]]: {{spoiler|Firmly on its way by the end. By December all women on the planet are either dead or dying, leaving the men to slowly die off one by one.}}
* [[Gendercide]]: Of the women.
* [[Hate Plague]]: A male-centered one, {{spoiler|engineered by aliens}}.
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* {{spoiler|[[Refugee From TV Land]]}}: {{spoiler|Valerie, The Beast and ''Rob himself'' are fictional characters created by the house residents.}}
* [[Self-Deprecation]]: Rob tells Everett that he is crazy, prompting him to reply "You too! We are writers"
* [[Tomato in Thethe Mirror]]: See [[Cruel Twist Ending]] above.
* [[WritersWriter's Block]]: After moving, Rob can't write beyond the first line.
 
 
== Right to Die ==
Directed by [[Wrong Turn (Film)|Rob Schmidt]]. The marriage of Cliff Addison (Martin Donovan) and his wife Abbey (Julia Benson) is going through dire times when the couple suffers a dramatic car accident. Cliff only gets minor wounds but Abbey is burned alive completely, losing all her skin and senses and falling into a coma. Resolute to end his wife's suffering, Cliff decides to disconnect Abbey's life support, only to discover that her ghost has come back with a vengeance.
 
* [[Amoral Attorney]]: Ira.
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* [[Bitch in Sheep's Clothing]]: {{spoiler|Cliff.}}
* [[Cruel and Unusual Death]]: Ira burns alive after being stuck to a supermagnet, Trish {{spoiler|is skinned and quarted while still alive}}, and [[The Un-Reveal|we can only speculate]] about what happens to Cliff in the end.
* [[Death Byby Sex]]: Trish. {{spoiler|In a twist of events, it is ''Cliff'' who murders her, not Abbey.}} And [[Gorn|not in a tame way]].
* [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]: It's hard to watch this episode and not think on the Terri Schiavo case.
* [[Eyes Are Unbreakable]]: Averted.
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* [[Nightmare Face]]: Abbey after the accident.
* [[Obnoxious In-Laws]]: Abbey's mother.
* [[Only in It For Thethe Money]]: Ira, {{spoiler|Cliff}}.
* [[Spooky Photographs]]: Trish sends some erotic photos to Cliff's cell phone, with Abbey appearing behind her.
* [[Strapped to An Operating Table]]: Trish.
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== The Black Cat ==
Directed by Stuart Gordon and based on a short story by [[Edgar Allan Poe]]. Set in Philadelphia around 1840, [[Edgar Allan Poe]] (Jeffrey Combs) is going through a bad case of [[WritersWriter's Block]] as he begins to hit the bottle more than usual and his young wife Virginia (Elyse Levesque) caughts tuberculosis. To make things worse, their pet black cat Pluto begins to act a lot [[Cats Are Mean|meaner than usual]].
 
* [[The Alcoholic]]: Poe.
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== Dream Cruise ==
Directed by [[The Ring|Norio Tsuruta]] and based on a short story by [[Dark Water (Filmfilm)|Koji Suzuki]]. Jack Miller (Daniel Gillies) is an American lawyer in Tokyo who is deadly afraid of water and has recurrent nightmares about the death of his brother Sean by drowning when they were children. He also has an affair with Yuri Saito (Yoshino Kimura), the wife of his colleague Eiji (Ryo Ishibashi). When Eiji invites Jack to a cruise on his yacht, he finds soon that Eiji already knows about the affair, but that's not the biggest of his and Yuri's problems.
 
* [[Can You Hear Me Now]]: One of the first signs that something's wrong is that the yacht's radio stops working.
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