The Damned Thing

Infobox Television episode
Title = "The Damned Thing"
Series = Masters of Horror


Caption = Sean Patrick Flanery as Sheriff Kevin Reddle
Season = 2
Episode = 1
Airdate = October 27, 2006
Production = 201
Writer = Richard Christian Matheson
Director = Tobe Hooper
Guests = Sean Patrick Flanery Marisa Coughlan Ted Raimi Brendan Fletcher Brent Stait Georgia Craig
Episode list =
Prev = Imprint
Next = Family

"The Damned Thing" is the first episode of the second season of "Masters of Horror". It originally aired in North America on October 27, 2006.

Plot

The Damned Thing, inspired by Ambrose Bierce's classic short-story, is the apocalyptic tale of a monstrous force that devastates Sheriff Kevin Reddle's family and his small Texas town of Cloverdale. As a child, Reddle's father goes berserk, guns down his wife, and almost kills Kevin before being disemboweled by an invisible force. Before he dies, Kevin's father says the "damned thing" has found him.

In the present day, Kevin (Sean Patrick Flanery) is now the town sheriff and insists on living in his childhood home. He has mounted surveillance cameras around the house. The mental strain has driven away his wife, Dina (Marisa Coughlan), who has taken their son Mikey with them.

A rash of violent deaths plague the town and Kevin begins to realize that the same force that drove his father to murder, the Damned Thing, is still active. He discovers that decades ago a neighboring town was plagued by the same madness after opening a new oil well that subsequently dried up. Many of the citizens were possessed and killed each other and Kevin's parents were among the survivors. Kevin believes that the same force sought out his father and killed him, and is now after him.

Madness sweeps over Cloverdale and even Dina isn't immune: only Kevin's intervention stops her from killing their son. However, he is soon swept up in the madness and his wife and son are forced to escape. A furious Kevin shoots the possessed town priest (Ted Raimi), who was going kill Kevin's family first and believes that Mikey has inherited the same evil.

As the possessed Kevin prepares to kill Dina and Mikey, the Damned Thing rises from the earth: a giant semi-solid creature of oil. Kevin regains control of his body only to have time to tell his family to escape before sacrificing himself to the Damned Thing, who swallows him whole. Dina and Mikey then flee in their vehicle. However, they run out of gas down the road and the creature attacks and presumably kills them.

External links

*imdb title|id=0805419|title=The Damned Thing