Masters of Horror: John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns (2005)

4 Stars (out of 4)

Cine-Files

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

John Carpenter's hour-long Cigarette Burns is one of the highlights of the "Masters of Horror" TV series. It's a letter to cinema, perhaps not a love letter so much as a poison-pen one, but it's steeped in the dark mysteries of the film world. Kirby Sweetman (Norman Reedus) runs a movie theater and works on the side as a rare film dealer. He's deeply in debt to his late girlfriend's father and is eager to free himself.

Opportunity knocks when he is summoned to the home of Mr. Bellinger (Udo Kier). Bellinger wants him to track down the Holy Grail of lost films, La Fin Absolue du Monde, which screened one time at the 1971 Sitges Film Festival and was presumably destroyed. Bellinger has obsessively collected props from the movie — including one of its "actors," a pale, alien-looking being — and has never seen it. Kirby hits the road, interviewing a film critic (who has filled a room with thousands of pages consisting of his review of the film) and a film archivist before meeting the late director's wife (Gwynyth Walsh).

It goes without saying that the film has an unnamable effect on anyone who watches it, leading to a horrifyingly satisfying climax. The title refers to the little marks on film prints that signaled the projectionist that it was time for a reel change. Kirby's assistant at the movie theater collects these frames of film — his latest find is one from Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso — leaving the prints free from warnings. The script was co-written by film critic Drew McWeeny.