{"id":1157,"date":"2005-11-30T02:03:56","date_gmt":"2005-11-30T07:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinemacrazed.wordpress.com\/?p=1157"},"modified":"2005-11-30T02:03:56","modified_gmt":"2005-11-30T07:03:56","slug":"masters-of-horror-chocolate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/30\/masters-of-horror-chocolate\/","title":{"rendered":"Masters of Horror: Chocolate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/C6F5aCH.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">This latest episode is not so much scary and frightening as it is often amusing and fascinating. For this week&#8217;s episode, director, writer, and creator Mick Garris brings to life one of his own stories. I was often thinking back to &#8220;Twilight Zone&#8221; for this installment as it deals with unknown identities and sudden powers that arise from circumstances. As little expectations I had for &#8220;Chocolate&#8221; it ends up as a very solid episode. Henry Thomas is very much in the vein of Norman Bates here as a prudish young man named Jamie who works as a scientist synthesizing smells and tastes for products. One night after a vivid dream he awakes with the strong taste of chocolate in his mouth and begins to wonder if the dream was an actual figment of his imagination.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\"><!--more-->&#8220;Chocolate&#8221; is the whimsical display of what happens when our senses go completely out of control, while the main character finds himself in a bit of a mystery. He inexplicably begins to take on the senses of someone, and he awakes with the taste of chocolate. He discovers he&#8217;s seeing life through the eyes of a beautiful woman (Lucy Laurier) gazing at her through a reflection in a vanity mirror and soon becomes infatuated with her. But things are taken to whole new levels when he can feel her orgasms especially in one instance when she&#8217;s having sex with a man. Jamie whose life revolves around his inability to enjoy the finer things takes a bit of a wrong turn once these sense begins completely overwhelming him. Garris has fun with this concept bringing this character&#8217;s mind in to the woman&#8217;s in all aspects, even experiencing her masturbation with utter disbelief. The senses soon become overpowered and ruin his basic social abilities especially when he brings a girl home one night, and he begins to seek out his mysterious love with somewhat disastrous consequences.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Thomas gives a very good performance here in both a creepy yet funny characterization, while Lucy Laurier is a great inadvertent femme fatale. Garris really does derive much of his story elements on noir with all the basic character arch-types, but really adds his own meta-physical twist. Though Garris does trade scares for all out camp, &#8220;Chocolate&#8221; does stand out among the series as a cheesy entry without a punch line. Like many other anthology series before it, every episode thus far has had a punch line, one defining moment be it ironic or scary that helps wrap up the story, but &#8220;Chocolate&#8221; is basically without one, and much of what it offers up is weak. Also, Garris doesn&#8217;t pull a believable performance from Thomas in spite of his dramatic capacities. Watching him miming being straddled by a man is pretty weak even when meant as humor. In spite of cheesy elements and the lack of a truly ironic ending to book end the episode, Mick Garris provides a more whimsical episode this time around with an examination of life&#8217;s senses suddenly bursting to life. Thomas gives a good performance for an entertaining installment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This latest episode is not so much scary and frightening as it is often amusing and fascinating. For this week&#8217;s episode, director, writer, and creator Mick Garris brings to life one of his own stories. I was often thinking back to &#8220;Twilight Zone&#8221; for this installment as it deals with unknown identities and sudden powers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[103,419,477,638,1008,1087,1132],"class_list":["post-1157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv-tomb","tag-anthology","tag-gore","tag-horror","tag-masters-of-horror","tag-supernatural","tag-thriller","tag-tv-show"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}