This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Awesome Movie

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

For the second season of the show, John Carpenter reunited with the writers of his season one "Masters of Horror" episode. Angelique is a young teen found stumbling along the side of the road by two doctors on their way to work at an abortion clinic. Wanting an abortion, they take her with them. Once at the clinic, it isn't long before her deeply religious father, Dwayne Burcell (Ron Perlman), shows up with his three sons to get her out of there and save the baby by any means necessary. Having had run-ins with him in the past, the head doctor of the clinic even went as far as to have a restraining order taken against Burcell. Meanwhile, Angelique claims that she wants to abort the baby because it's the hell-spawn of a demon that raped her. They don't believe her, but the pregnancy is clearly abnormal.Having not done a film since 2001's "Ghosts of Mars", Carpenter returned with a vengeance with "Cigarette Burns", one of the best episodes of this show's initial season. As such, his season two contribution was one of my most anticipated. Unfortunately, "Pro-Life" was a crushing disappointment. The story had potential, but didn't live up to any of it due in large part to horrible writing. Perlman is in a big hurry to find his daughter before something happens to the baby. So, why doesn't he just shoot through the clinic doors right off the bat? He's killed a guard, yet he's worried about ruining the clinic's doors? Why waste time looking for another entrance? Oh, that's right, so the girl can tell her rape story. Later, he further wastes time by giving the head doctor a taste of his own medicine. As for anyone looking for thoughtful commentary on the abortion debate, look elsewhere. You'll get none of that here.Aside from Perlman, nobody in this episode can act worth a damn. The characters aren't at all likable either. For example, look at the main doctor character and his girlfriend. When demon baby shows up, they save their own asses by locking themselves in the next room while leaving a drugged and defenseless Angelique to fend for herself. How noble! Speaking of the demon baby, it looks more like one of the mutilated toys from the first "Toy Story".We get some horrid CGI head-shots too, which lead to continuity problems. Watch how the side of the guard's head is blown off when he's shot. Well, later, when the nervous kid looks at his body, he only has a hole in the middle of his head. What I liked about the episode - Perlman's performance, the music during the birthing scene and Perlman's reaction to the demon's revelation. Other than that, there's nothing here. The episode hints at better ideas, but ends up delivering only the most ridiculous and unsatisfying. Carpenter is one of my three favorite filmmakers, and this is the first thing he's done that I've flat-out hated.

Of course, we are talking about a Masters of Horror episode here. It couldn't just be a simple "problem" we (and the characters) are facing here. Still, especially considering his Cigarette Burns episode, this almost feels like a step back. It's not a bad story, it's just pretty conventional and predicable.Ron Perlman almost made me give this another star, I just like that guy, whatever role he's playing. And his character is most definitely the most complex one in this. The complete opposite to that is Emmanuelle Vaugiers character. She doesn't seem to be doing anything at all. And while looking good doing that (she always does), you wish she had something to say (not literally speaking).There are quite a few other movie influences here that you will spot. Some are mentioned in other reviews, but all in all, if you are an avid moviegoer you will spot them yourself. That's not entirely a bad thing and even that a scene (you could call it "the inciting incident") is not really graphic, shouldn't be a problem. A more than decent episode than, but more action orientated than pure Horror (just saying in case you were expecting something like the Cigarette Burning episode)

So...are all pro-choice advocates just bloodthirsty liberal baby-killers, who just can't wait to pull apart live fetuses in their spare time? And are all anti-abortionists just unmedicated wack jobs who hear "God's" voice and believe in doing 'His' will, even if saving the life of an unborn child means sacrificing anyone, including the child's mother?Don't ask John Carpenter. You're not going to find a whole lot of concrete answers here, but with a script by CIGARETTE BURNS' authors Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan, Mr. C. certainly explores at least some of the aspects of the argument at their most absurdly extreme in his second outing for MOH, PRO-LIFE.The story kicks off as two doctors who work at a local women's health clinic (Mark Feuerstein and Emmanuelle Vaugier) nearly run over a frightened young girl (Caitlin Wachs). They take her to the clinic to check her out, not realizing that she is actually Angelique Burcell, the daughter of a violently militant pro-lifer, Dwayne Burcell (the always excellent Ron Perlman from HELLBOY and other genre favorites.) It's already bad enough that the clinic has been fortified for protection from some of the less-than-peaceful overtures from Burcell and his 'associates.' But it's even worse that now he wants his little girl back, and that Angelique is pregnant and wants to have an abortion.What finally ensues is a cross between ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and THEY LIVE, as Burcell and the clinic's head doctor, Dr. Kiefer (Bill Dow) have a .45 caliber debate about pro-choice vs. pro-life, with some innocent bystanders paying the price even though they're not taking a stand on either side.Then, because this IS MOH, after all, Carpenter revisits PRINCE OF DARKNESS/THE THING territory, when it becomes pretty clear to the audience why Angelique really does need to have this abortion, and her father's zealous efforts to stop her are even less well- intentioned or accurate than he realizes.First, the cons, and there are a lot of them. The gore effects are pretty decent when they show up, but the "big reveal" of the father of Angelique's baby - not to mention the 'infant' itself - are about as downright cheesy as anything you can dredge up from the grade-C flicks that Roger Corman used to produce for his New Horizons/Concorde Pictures outfits back in the '80's. Except for Perlman and Wachs (whose Angelique doesn't look a day over twenty-five when she's supposed to be fifteen), the acting on display here is pretty much non-descript. Everyone's a stock character cliché, and Perlman barely saves his Dwayne Burcell from becoming a caricature of malevolent insanity, especially in one particularly gruesome scene in which he and his son allegedly give Dr. Kiefer his 'just desserts.' (Thankfully, most of that scene is left to the imagination).McWeeny and Swan's script doesn't attempt to take sides, or to evenly balance the views either way, although I can cautiously guess that director Carpenter does not share the political view expressed in this episode's title. The ambiguity doesn't help the story much, where at least in a previous episode like the controversial HOMECOMING, you knew where both the writer and the director were coming from.Cody Carpenter's scoring work here won't be to everyone's liking, though I thought it was very reminiscent of his dad's musical stylings from back-in-the-day, and much more complementary than it was in CIGARETTE BURNS. Biggest pet peeve: Dwayne and two of his sons, after doing some pretty heinous things, just disappear from the movie entirely. There's absolutely no payoff when it would have been really satisfying, so that aspect takes a lot of the starch out of the story (and especially the ending.)Now for the pluses: Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger's FX work really rocks, though I would've like to have seen more practical stuff. (The CG shots look really fake - and you'll see what I mean). Also love the quick homage to Rob Bottin's groundbreaking work on Carpenter's THE THING (you sharp-eyed fans out there will know it when you see it.)Caitlin Wachs brings in a decent performance as Angelique, although it's more than a little tough to suspend your disbelief when you realize what age she's supposed to be playing. And say what you will about Perlman's Burcell, but he is a man of unshakable faith, no matter how insane his deeds are. So it's doubly devastating for him in the end when he learns how badly he's been 'punk'd' (and by who).Bottom line: PRO-LIFE is a return to the more "classic" Carpenter form. A little bigger budget and a lot more fine tuning on the script could've made this a MOH episode that I would highly recommend. As is, though, I would steer only die-hard Carpenter fans into PRO- LIFE'S direction. And the acting scores here are mostly for Perlman's performance.

What happened to you Johnny-boy? John Carpenter never used to rely on special effects (and bad ones at that) to make things entertaining. He used them judiciously to add to the story, but not to fall back on because there is nothing else in the script. The effects in this are terrible, ranging from lame CGI (added in at the last minute to "pump-up" some of the gore) to a cheesy guy-in-a-rubber-suit demon. Gah.Remember Prince of Darkness, John? The huge black hand - the only part that we see of the Anti-Christ - that was scarier than anything in Pro-Life. Much. much more frightening than a rubber monster. I realize that if you just had a big, shadowy figure roaming the halls in Pro-Life, many viewers would think it was a cop-out, but your fans wouldn't. Instead, most of us probably think that showing us everything was the cop-out. Whatever your next budget is, cut it in half so you make a good movie.