Before The Walking Dead, Norman Reedus Starred In A John Carpenter-Directed Horror Episode

Before he played motorcycle riding post-apocalyptic badass Daryl Dixon on the hit AMC zombie series "The Walking Dead," actor Norman Reedus had a few other fictional run-ins with the supernatural, some scarier than others. Many young actors take on horror movie roles early in their careers before moving onto other genres pretty exclusively, like Jennifer Aniston in "Leprechaun," but Reedus has played his fair share of characters in horror shows and movies and doesn't seem to shy away from the scares even now. While pre-"Walking Dead" audiences are most likely to remember Reedus as one of the two vigilante brothers in Troy Duffy's cult action film "Boondock Saints," he was also in quite a few horror flicks, including Joel Schumacher's "8MM" and Guillermo Del Toro's "Mimic" and "Blade II." His scariest role before he ever fought his first zombie, however, was actually in an episode of an anthology TV series. 

On the Showtime series "Masters of Horror," filmmaker Mick Garris brought in a different director for each episode, letting them go wild with one hour to really try and deliver the scariest story possible. John Carpenter, the absolute legend behind movies like "Halloween" and "The Thing," directed an episode called "Cigarette Burns" that starred Reedus as Kirby Sweetman, a struggling theater owner and rare films dealer. While it's not quite as nasty as the Takashi Miike-directed "Imprint," which went too far to even air on American TV, "Cigarette Burns" is one of the best episodes of the series and one of Carpenter's secret hidden gems. 

In "Cigarette Burns," which was co-written by Drew McWeeny and Rebecca Swan, Reedus's character Kirby is facing financial troubles and worries that he won't be able to keep his theater open, so he takes a job from an eccentric film collector named Mr. Bellinger (Udo Kier) who wants him to find the one and only copy of a film called "La Fin Absolue du Monde," which is French for "The Absolute End of the World." Bellinger also introduces him to a strange man with unhealed wounds on his back that are supposedly from the angelic wings now mounted to Bellinger's wall, and explains that the man is the star of "La Fin Absolue du Monde." It's truly wild stuff, and apparently anyone who watches the film goes completely mad, which makes things even more compelling. 

John Carpenter is one of the greatest horror movie directors of all time and has made so many bangers that "Cigarette Burns" is frequently omitted when people discuss his best work, but it's a truly disturbing little slice of horror entertainment that deserves more love. As Reedus discovers more and more about "La Fine Absolue du Monde," he realizes that finding the film might not be worth the $200k Bellinger is paying him, even if that means losing his theater. Kier is perfectly creepy, as always, and there are some superb creature and practical gore effects on a TV budget, so there's a little something to draw in every kind of horror fan.

Kirby's journey to find the film is a harrowing one, as he tries to track down various people who had something to do with it over the years, including the director's widow and an archivist who once worked as a projectionist at a secret showing of the film and was only saved from madness by looking away. He did, however, hear and see the carnage the film inspired as the people in the theater turned on one another, and that's just the beginning of the carnage unleashed by "La Fin Absolue du Monde." The nature of the film-within-a-film poses questions about how the spirit of a person can be captured in celluloid, and what becomes of audiences when they view real pain caught on film. It's weird, wild stuff that doesn't give any answers and features one of the nastiest onscreen disembowelments this side of Vince Vaughn got his guts twisted on a stick in "The Cell." 

"Cigarette Burns" is just one of the many great horror stories delivered to fans courtesy of Carpenter, but for fans who love movies about movies or those who want to check out some pre-"The Walking Dead" Norman Reedus, it's an absolute must-see.