Homecoming (Saturday, SCREAM, 10 p.m. on Masters of Horror) is the most astonishingly clever piece of American TV to arrive in ages. Masters of Horror is an anthology series. Here, Joe Dante (The Howling, Gremlins) uses the occasion to blend a zombie movie with vicious political satire.
Set in something like the present day, it features a nasty fruit loop of a right-wing political pundit named Jane Cleaver (Canadian Thea Gill in a stand-out, lip-smacking performance), who is clearly based on Ann Coulter. Cleaver is on TV pouring scorn on those ‘ugly, stupid, clueless’ people who turn up at the wartime president’s rallies to protest against the war. Later, a smarmy line used by presidential aide David (Jon Tenney) has a remarkable consequence. The president utters it: ‘If I had one wish, just one wish, it would be that the soldiers came back because they would tell us how important this struggle is.’
The thing is, they do. The dead soldiers come back, and they are seriously ticked off. They come back in the thousands, to haunt the living who sent them off to a war built on deception. Confronted and asked why they have returned from the dead, one says, ‘I was killed for a lie. We want one thing, we want to vote. We’ll vote for anyone who ends this evil war.’
Homecoming is a stunner. Written by Sam Hamm, who developed the first Batman movie, and adapted from a short story by Dale Bailey, this hybrid of zombie thriller and scalding political satire is a stroke of genius. So far, it has aired only at film festivals (it airs on Showtime in the United States this weekend) and been greeted with standing ovations.
http://citypaper.net/articles/2005-12-01/movies.shtmlThere is a pic at this review site, that you have to see. * is not the only one satired on this.
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