Joe Dante's “Homecoming,” which he directed for the Showtime anthology series Masters of Horror, is a potent reminder of how the horror genre can be an effective outlet for political and social commentary. Jon Tenney stars as a world-weary political flack hired by a struggling Republican administration to put a positive spin on an unpopular foreign war and win an upcoming election. While on a nightly talk show, Tenney delivers what sounds like a conservative coup de grace: he wishes that the dead troops could return to America to tell the population just how proud they were to serve in this war. His moment of false piety is granted when the corpses of recently killed soldiers rise from their coffins and marches en masse to the voting booths to make sure that the president’s plans are halted for good. What follows is a black and bitter blend of Romero-esque zombie splatter and satire of Bush-era shenanigans, with spinmeisters refusing to count the votes of the dead and a venomous Ann Coulter clone getting her just desserts from the wrong end of a shotgun.

Dante, who is best known for his affectionate tributes to B-movie horror like The Howling and Gremlins, is no stranger to political satire – his 1997 TV movie The Second Civil War imagined a United States at the brink of internal conflict over immigration – and his barbs here are sharp and focused as they dig deep into the backroom politicos that encourage war for the sake of electoral votes. And the gore, while plentiful, isn't overwhelming – it’s safe to say that non-horror fans will be able to watch this without hiding behind their hands. “Homecoming” is about as perfect a blend of commentary and terror as we might expect from the genre in this prolific but not particularly profound period; it’s certainly the best that’s come from the otherwise woeful Masters of Horror. Let’s hope that their second season produces at least one episode as memorable and forthright as this one.

Anchor Bay's DVD of “Homecoming” includes interviews with Dante and Jon Tenney, a making-of featurette, commentary by scriptwriter Sam (Batman) Hamm, and the shooting script (in DVD-ROM).