Editorials
‘Mr. Brooks’: The Kevin Costner Horror Franchise That Should’ve Been
Kevin Costner is one of the few actors to spend a career almost entirely avoiding sequels. In fact, the only role he’s reprised from one movie to the next is that of Jonathan Kent, the adoptive father of Clark Kent/Superman. After a supporting role in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, he returned for a cameo in the controversial Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
It’s not that the actor/director has lacked opportunities to make sequels, though. Michael Blake, the novelist and screenwriter behind Dances with Wolves, wrote book continuations to Costner’s biggest hit as a filmmaker and reportedly long tried to get a sequel movie off the ground, but Costner never showed interest.
Hits like Bull Durham and The Bodyguard also had sequels in early stages of development at one point or another, but the star never jumped too hard on them. Even major box office successes like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves surprisingly came and went without followups.
There was one film, however, that Costner showed an uncharacteristically enthusiastic desire to franchise early on in its promotion — Mr. Brooks, a 2007 cult film that found Costner playing the role of a serial killer fighting his taste for ending human life.
The rare villainous role for Costner, Mr. Brooks was a play on the horror genre that was released across the country over a summer that included sharp competition like the third installments to the Pirates of the Caribbean and Shrek franchises. Perhaps if Brooks had debuted in a year like 2017, where mass audiences seem more open to horror movies that bend the rules, it would have found some modicum of success at the box office. In 2007, it did, well… just okay.
On a $20 million production budget, the film took in just under $30 million domestically. It had a worldwide total gross just below $50 million.
The film has since earned more of a following, but it never became the breakout success that Costner and company needed to justify two promised sequels to round out a trilogy telling the tale of Earl Brooks, a successful business and family man harboring an addiction to murder.
After decades of fictional serial killers like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger being embraced by audiences, screenwriters Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans (who also directed) delivered a horror film from the killer’s perspective. In a wonderful and kooky twist, Brooks’ killing is not something he takes major delight in, but rather a weight on his shoulders and an addiction he can’t kick – sort of like alcohol or drugs. Except way bloodier.
There’s even a scene of Brooks attending an AA meeting, so how can you not love this wacky movie?
Though the trilogy of Mr. Brooks films was touted by Costner, Gideon, Evans and everyone in between through press interviews, it just never came to be.
Entirely on its own, as it ended up being, Mr. Brooks is a one of a kind killer thriller starring some seriously great actors. There’s Costner as our titular killer, plus William Hurt as the id of Mr. Brooks, brought to life as an adult imaginary friend who has a surprisingly gripping emotional relationship with our main character.
Then there’s Demi Moore as the detective hot on the trail of Brooks, a criminal who is providing a nice distraction from her own personal turmoil, which includes a messy divorce and the possibility of losing much of her family’s considerable wealth. There is also Marg Helgenberger and Danielle Panabaker as Brooks’ wife and daughter, respectively. Rounding out the cast is a surprisingly strong Dane Cook as a young man blackmailing Mr. Brooks into an apprenticeship in killing.
The final product is lightning in a bottle. It manages to be darkly humorous in parts and surprisingly moving in others. It’s an absurdist concept molded in the hands of craftsmen looking to create a true character drama, no matter how out-there the twists and turns get.
“When the writers first presented the notion [of a sequel] to me, I said, ‘Oh, bullshit!,’” Costner told Entertainment Weekly in anticipation of the film’s release. “I haven’t done ‘Tin Cup 2,’ or ‘Bull Durham 2,’ or ‘Open Range: The Early Years,’ so you don’t have to try to hook me with that.’ But when they told me their idea, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. We’re hoping this little movie develops a following so we can play this story out the way it should.”
There’s no telling where Mr. Brooks 2 and Mr. Brooks 3 would have gone with this world. There is one thing we know for sure, though — the options were endless. Would Brooks have become some sort of anti-hero, helping Demi Moore’s detective solve cases? How would he have dealt with his daughter, a (spoiler!) killer the film suggests is far more disturbed than Brooks could ever be?
Costner’s Brooks was a truly original creation who could have only grown with sequels. He was Freddy Krueger or Charles Lee Ray, but with the twist of a moral conscience. He craved the same things those lunatics craved, but he was filled with regret over his desires. And we buy into all of this because Costner and the writers so deeply commit to the idea of realistic addiction and recovery at the center of this chaotic and unpredictable world. The first film presented a redemption arc for Brooks that would have been superb to see played out until the end.
Costner has never been a great admirer of the sequel in his career, which is what should make people even more disappointed that Mr. Brooks 2 and Mr. Brooks 3 don’t exist.
After all, they had to have been pretty special to get him excited.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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