The basement of the Harmon home on FX's American Horror Story is the last place you'd want to visit on Halloween. Dark, cavernous, and home to an overgrown, fanged monster baby dressed in a christening gown (more on that later), the cellar is the epicenter of all things evil on the wild new horror series. But Dr. Ben Harmon (Dylan McDermott) has descended to this hellish underworld, armed with a butcher knife, on the spooky holiday to confront a different basement dweller: the ghost of his mistress, Hayden (Kate Mara), who was killed in the backyard at the end of the Oct. 20 episode. ''Hayden, you have to leave,'' implores Ben. His ghostly ex tries to touch him but instead begins coughing and spits out blood and teeth. Through lips smeared in red, she whimpers, ''I'm rotting from the inside out...what's happening to me?!''
Blood. Murder. Ghosts. Sex. Those elements permeate the disturbed world of American Horror Story, the craziest new TV series of the fall season — and perhaps ever. Created by Glee's Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, AHS is a feverish, sexed-up reimagining of one of the most reliable tropes of the genre: the haunted house. ''I describe it as a horror show, but at the center is this incredibly provocative show about a family and relationships,'' says Dana Walden, chairman of 20th Century Fox Television, the studio behind both AHS and Glee. Adds Murphy: ''All my favorite horror movies were based in sex. Rosemary's Baby. Don't Look Now. Repulsion. Fatal Attraction. I think that genre has been taken over by the Saws and the Hostels of the world. It's become a much more violent snuff porn. This is not that.''
The saga follows Ben and Vivien Harmon (Connie Britton), who, along with their rebellious daughter, Violet (Taissa Farmiga, sister of Vera), move from Boston to Los Angeles to escape some grim and gruesome problems (she delivered a stillborn baby; he had an affair). They find a beautiful old Victorian-style home with a low price tag, thanks to its sordid history: The previous tenants, a gay couple, died in a murder-suicide...or so everyone was led to believe. Pretty soon, Vivien is having sex with someone/something in a rubber fetish suit, Ben is sleepwalking naked around the house, and Violet is encountering a basement-dwelling creature nicknamed the ''infantata.'' And that's just in the first 50 minutes.
Slowly, the Harmons begin to discover that the house they've purchased has seen even more death than they thought (it's on a local L.A. murder tour) and appears to have been cursed from the start. And an enigmatic man named Larry (True Blood's Denis O'Hare) warns Ben that the house drove him to kill his own family years ago. Through flashbacks, we learn the original owner was a 1920s doctor to the stars who performed abortions in the basement and who had a Dr. Frankenstein complex (hence the jars of baby parts in the creepy opening sequence). As more mysteries of the house are revealed, the overarching question is whether the Harmons will survive their new home — which, of course, they can't find anyone to buy.
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