Sunday 26 January 2014

Review: Masters of Horror: Haeckel's Tale (2006)

Haeckel's Tale
Masters of Horror
IMDB rate: 6,1
Genre: Zombie

Time to continue my Masters of Horror reviews again! It has been quite some time already, because I think it's unhealthy to watch all these ones in a row... they are very weird most of the time.
No, but in all seriousness, these are definitely movies that you need to be in a mood for, since they aren't too good most of the time, and they are often very strange.
Haeckel's Tale is the eleventh episode of the first Masters of Horror season, as I've explained before, my DVD's are in a different order than the episodes, so in total I still need to watch 4 movies I believe.


In the nineteenth century, a man seeks help with a necromancer, asking her to revive his beloved wife. The woman advises him that the process could be dangerous, since she can bring the body back, but not necessarily the spirit and proposes him to listen to Haeckel's story to help in his decision. Ernst Haeckel is a cocky medical student fascinated with resuscitation. When the illness of his father becomes terminal, he travels to visit him and in his journey he meets the necromancer Montesquino, who claims to have the ability to bring back the dead to life. While preparing to spend the night nearby a cemetery, the old man Wolfram offers him shelter in his home, telling him that it would be very dangerous to stay near the necropolis. Haeckel accepts the invitation and meets his young wife Elise Wolfram. He feels seduced by the sexy woman,  and sooner he finds her eternal love for her deceased husband.

Haeckel's Tale is not very much a predictable movie. The movies only one hour long but I can't say that I wasn't surprised by any of it. Surprised I was, and with that I was also a bit disgusted. It was a strange movie but it was also impressive because it crossed the moral line a few times.

Beware, there are some spoilers ahead. I normally would try to avoid spoilers, but it's very hard with this movie. Elise is the beautiful young wife of the old not very attractive Wolfram, everyone seeing this knows that something isn't right since it isn't a very usual combination. You suspect that Wolfram is some sort of woman abuser since he is commanding his wife quite a lot and isn't very nice to her. And this is where we were wrong. You see, this eternal love of her deceased husband isn't very standard with her, her love is that messed up that she brings her husband back from the dead, only to have sex with him. And her living husband knows of this, so actually you're feeling kinda sorry for him. Now, seeing that this woman is having sex with a zombie is already a bit messed up, but when you notice that there are many other zombies watching them and touching the woman too, it becomes... too much.
It's very disgusting that this woman has an obsession with having sex with dead people, but of course, this is what the story's all about so we'll have to deal with that.

The acting is quite decent. In some cases it's a bit over-acted but it's not too obvious or annoying. The special effects are, simply said, awful. We see this resurrected zombie dog and well, it's just plain awful how fake it looked. That being said, the half zombie baby wasn't very scary either.


The Masters of Horror movies aren't the most excellent movies ever made, most of them are very boring. Haeckel's Tale was not my favorite one, but it wasn't too bad either. It was quite disgusting, even though the special effects looked awesome. I think it's quite an achievement to make a movie disgusting with horrible special effects, so for that, thumbs up!

My personal rate: 6/10






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