Deer Woman takes an utterly goofy premise and makes it work. How it does this . . . I’m not quite sure. I mean, it’s about a woman with deer legs. It makes no sense. A woman with deer legs comes out of the forest, has sex with men, tramples them to death, and then leaves. What pleasure she gets out of this is up for grabs. She is a deer woman, and she enjoys killing her lovers. Deer women are like that.
Unfortunately, she didn’t count on the efforts of grizzled cop Dwight Faraday (Brian Benben), who teams up with a wise-cracking black cop (Anthony Griffith) in the hopes of tracking down the deer woman (the beautiful Cinthia Moura). They don’t know it’s a deer woman initially, but they have room for suspicion. The first victim’s chest is covered in hoofmarks. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or a cop working the animal division) to realize that something is amiss, and, thank God, we are allowed to consider how this murder might have happened. A series of hilarious fantasies offer up possible explanations, each more ludicrous than the last (and, incidentally, closer to the truth).
So, the deer woman is being pursued by Riggs and Murtaugh, both eventually taken off the case by their superiors, go figure. When they decide to cool off at a casino, they run into a Native American who explains the mythology of the deer woman to the enraptured men. Thank God, the Indian shakes his head and laughs when they treat it seriously. It says something when a man intimately familiar with the legend of the deer woman thinks you’re on crack.
And then certain events transpire, in which there isn’t really any significant resolution, and then the story ends. I imagine it would be hard for two or three actors to keep a straight face while saying, “We finally caught the deer woman.” Then again, I’ve seen Manos: the Hands of Fate, so I can’t underestimate horror movie actors anymore. In this story, they treat the story as seriously as they can, which ends up working for the main reason that Landis never shows the deer woman in her full person. It’s all innuendo and possibility, until the very end. It’s the best way to play it. I mean, it’s a deer woman for God’s sakes.
So the characters are allowed to continually comment on how absurd the story is, and there are some amazing laughs, and, crazily, there’s some suspense that’s developed by the end of the story. Not enough that you’ll ultimately give a damn about who lives or dies, but enough that you’ll watch, wanting to see what happens next. I mean, come on. It’s about a fricking deer woman.
A small note: in the past six episodes, we’ve seen a woman get raped, a witch seducing a guy, dead women fellating someone, a disfigured girl having sex after killing people, a woman kill a lover, a dominatrix dripping candle wax on her lover, and, in this episode, a deer woman exposing her very human breasts. Am I imagining things, or did all these horror directors become nasty old horndogs who’re afraid of women? Or is there something inherently misogynist about the genre? Something to mull over after the show. That and the whole deer woman thing.
Checkout our review of Episode One: Don Coscarelli's Incident On and Off a Mountain Road
Checkout our review of Episode Two: Stuart Gordon's H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House
Checkout our review of Episode Three: Tobe Hooper's Dance of the Dead
Checkout our review of Episode Four: Dario Argento's Jenifer
Checkout our review of Episode Five: Mick Garris's Chocolate
Checkout our review of Episode Six: Joe Dante's Homecoming
