Deer Woman (2005) - Landis and son's solid Masters of Horror entry

♥♥♥♥

+ Best TV movie of the Year

Here's a reasonably well-made, presumably DVD cover for John Landis' Deer Woman

QUICK REVIEW:

Somewhere in Northern America, a beautiful woman is roaming bars, where she seduces men and beats them to death with her hoofs! A burned-out policeman now begins to investigate the murders despite the ridicule of his colleagues.

Deer Woman is the 7th TV movie episode of the first (of two) seasons of Mick Garris' (Sleepwalkers (1992)) Masters of Horror Showtime TV movie series. It is the first of two (the other one being Family (2006)) entries by Chicagoan master filmmaker John Landis (Blues Brothers (1980)).
Landis is a damn skilled director, which is why it is such a shame that his capacity as such has fizzled out since the 90's and apparently ended in some TV projects completely unworthy of him in recent years. Deer Woman, however, is a bright hour, (also literally, as it runs 57 minutes), in his latter years.
The film presents no real surprises despite its original 'monster', but the fact that Landis wrings an entertaining and in the end somewhat exciting film from the tongue-in-cheek-heavy story, which he devised together with his son Max Landis (Chronicle (2012)), is something of an achievement.
A lavish amount of self-irony as well as Brian Benben (Private Practice (2008-13)) giving a great performance in the lead contribute to making Deer Woman among the best entries in Masters of Horror.

Related reviews:


Masters of Horror: Chocolate (2005) - Flavors, visions and eroticism in Garris' TV movie thriller
Cigarette Burns (2005) - Carpenter burns out in weird, tiresome TV movie 
John Landis: 2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Coming to America (1988) - Landis and Murphy's second amusing but less well-constructed collaboration
The Twilight Zone (1983) - Fear takes many forms in tragedy-struck anthology
An American Werewolf in London (1981) - Landis' great, funny, scary wolf
The Blues Brothers (1980) - Try to sit still to this one!

Here's John Landis' Deer Woman's titular femme fatale, played by Brazilian beauty Cinthia Moura

Watch the trailer for the movie here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: None
= Uncertainty
[But though Masters of Horror's quality was wobbly at best, Showtime ordered a second run of the anthology series, indicating that it was good business.]

What do you think of Deer Woman?