Sick Girl

"Sick Girl" is a 60 minute episode of the Showtime series "Masters of Horror" and like "May" was also directed by Lucky Mckee. "Sick Girl" is a bizarrely funny romantic comedy surrounded by bugs and small doses of horror that make it really fun.

Starring Angela Bettis, as Ida Teeter, an entomologist who is looking for a woman who's not disgusted by her obsession with the creepy crawly things she keeps all over her apartment. As a character Ida seems to have been transported from the 1940s. She has the period hairdo and talks in a sort of way that is hard to describe. Erin Brown AKA Misty Mundae plays Ida's love interest Misty Falls, yeah sounds kind of confusing. Misty spends her time drawing fairies and pixies in the lobby of where Ida works. Ida works up the courage to ask Misty out and their whirlwind romance begins.

The episode opens with a guy capturing a big exotic bug and mailing it to Ida, who is excited about the mysterious and very aggressive specimen. This bug eventually does escape and makes a home for itself inside Ida's pillow. Talk about your bedbugs. Misty is bitten by the nasty thing that starts a gradual transformation in her. The whole episode is B-movie-ish and campy but is also fun and horrific. Like in "May" Ida is a lonely soul who surrounds her self with surrogate friends in the bugs. She is anxious and nervous of what people think of her, afraid of rejection. She finally finds a kindred spirit in Misty, who accept her for who she is, but Ida's bug obsession comes back to literally and fugitively bite her back.

Their relationship is put to the test as the bug starts to take over Misty and culminates in a pretty insane ending. Ida and Misty do end up together but under some pretty strange circumstances. "Sick Girl" is available as a stand alone DVD packed with special features and is pretty cheap.

This is the tale of two rather off color people finding each other and staying together under very unusual and perverse conditions. I wouldn't label this as strictly a horror short...it borders more on black comedy and quietly pays tribute to the B-movies before it's time. The main thing it has going for it is that the two main characters (played by the fabulous Angela Bettis Misty Mundae) are extremely endearing and fun to watch go through the twisted hand fate dealt them. This is a very intimate, often hilarious and soulful film with a few solid creepy segments and an absurd storyline. Bottom line, it's enjoyable, quirky as hell and definitely worth watching.

Sick Girl is the tenth episode of Masters of Horror and is directed by Lucky McKee (a director I have zero familiarity with) and written by Sean Hood. This is one of the most bizarre stories the series has told this far. It follows Ida Teeter (Angela Bettis) who studies bugs. She struggles to maintain a relationship due to her strange fascination with bugs, and one day gets a big praying mantis looking bug that- Oh My God, I feel like I'm going insane even describing it.

And, I'm not going to lie. I kind of love the first half of this short. It's not scary at all, but it is ridiculously funny to me. Angela Bettis is giving this bizarrely mannered performance that is just so weird and charming, and Ida is a very endearing character. The first scene we see her in, she's talking about how her girlfriend dumped her because she's too obsessed with bugs. Like...WHAT? The acting is not very good per se, but it is very "Masters of Horror" I have noticed that with rare exception, the performances in these films have been very over the top, and you either accept it as the style or you don't. Jesse Hlubik as Max Grubb has really charming chemistry with Bettis, and their scenes do have this super likable energy. Same thing with Erin Brown as Misty, the romance is rushed, but I buy it cause it's just so sweet and bizarre. There's a romantic montage of them eating bugs together, how can I not just giggle.

My favorite performance is Chandra Berg as Betty or "The Ladybug" because she's really not good (she's a little kid), but damn is she committed to whatever it is she's doing. She also reminds me of what I was like as a kid, so I'm partial.

This reminded me a lot of the movie "Idle Hands" because it doesn't really work as a horror movie, because of how broad everything is played, but it is pretty charming. It's not without its faults though, there's this annoying mid 2000s, MTV music video filter over the Bug POV shots that are really irritating to my eyes, and with the tone it's going for, there's a rate of diminishing returns. Sometimes the intentional hokeyness can lose its charm.

And the overall problem I'm noticing with this series is that the show is called "Masters of Horror", but more than half of these films have fallen into broad comedy and satire. I'm a fan of horror comedy, too, but it takes a deft hand to execute it really well. This isn't quite Eli Roth levels of annoying, but it gets there. Especially when close to the end, we get this super dramatic turn with the landlady and it's like, where did this come from? It's also slow as hell, we hit the halfway point and so little has actually happened that I found myself skipping ahead a few seconds just to feel something. That's not a good sign.

So, on the whole, I did enjoy just how weird this film was, but it kind of falls just short of the mark of being great.

This was without a doubt a bizarre episode lol but it was different than other episodes of Masters of Horror and I liked it. It had comedy and creepiness nothing really scary about this episode but the women were both strange to say the least, both were beautiful and both were good actors. It started off kinda slow but started getting more interesting midway through. I know people have mixed views about this episode being stupid but i actually enjoyed it. It's ashame I've never seen either of these women in any other shows or movies, I thought they were great in this show and they definitely made this episode more enjoyable to watch.

The lonely, shy and lesbian etymologist Ida Teeter (Angela Bettis) of The McNaughton Museum of Natural History is obsessed by her "pets", actually her collection of insects. She works with her colleague and friend Max (Jesse Hlubik), also her adviser in sexual behavior. Ida receives an anonymous package from Brazil with an unclassified insect but the weird bug breaks free from the box. Meanwhile Ida falls in love for the gorgeous Misty Falls (Erin Brown), who is bitten and infected by the bug and moves to Ida's apartment. When Ida receives letters from her former Professor Malcolm Wolf explaining how the insect reproduces and transforms the animals he bites, Ida is apprehensive about Misty.

"Sick Girl" is one of the best episodes of "Master of Horror" show. Directed by Lucky McKee (of "May") and with Angela Bettis performing another weird and eccentric character, the story recalls the sci-fi / horror genre of the 50's or 60's with eerie monster and lots of black humor. I was surprised with the extensive filmography of the good and beautiful actress Erin Brown, who is completely unknown for me. I believe most of her movies have not been released in Brazil, and this is certainly the first film that I see her. Surprisingly there are bad reviews in IMDb of this episode. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Criatura Maligna" ("Evil Creature")