(Rob Zombie's) Halloween II

Zombie's first Halloween was so bad, it was almost funny. I mean, I can easily picture it winding up some sort of campy thing. This one surprisingly takes itself so seriously that it doesn't have the color of the first one, which opened it up and gave it a wacky life. There's actually a couple of things about the movie I find interesting, but it's just doomed in Zombie's hands, especially when his heart's just not in these Halloween movies.

But for anything interesting the movie might do, count on Pulitzer Prize-winning Robert Zombé to deliver more of the same shit that made the first one horrible; stupid dialogue, more F-Bombs per second (more F-Bombs than Scarface and Pulp Fiction combined!), lewd characters (complete with a coroner who goes on about how hot a young dead woman's corpse is), and yet again a nude Danielle Harris ending up a bloody pulp. (There's also a completely gratuitous scene of Michael chasing and killing a fully nude stripper. The whole point of the scene is Michael getting revenge on the people who ran the strip joint his mom worked at. Shouldn't he have taken pity on the stripper? If Zombie's goal was to make Michael more "realistic," wouldn't that have been an interesting turn to take, rather than have him killing everything that he shares a scene with, his usual MO?) But, hey, at least he cools it with the shaky cam, right?

The first 20 minutes is a fake-out, a dream sequence in which the only scare is the idea that this sucker's going to be a full-blown remake of the original Part 2, set in a boring hospital. That, thankfully, doesn't turn out to be the case. Although the filmmakers are under the impression that the rest of the movie is "original" material from Zombie, I think it's kind of a semi-remake of Parts 4 and 5 -- Laurie having a seemingly psychic connection to Michael the way Jamie does in 5, and the movie ending up teasing that Laurie will be the franchise's new killer, the way Part 4 teased with Jamie.

I like that Laurie is now living with Annie and her dad (it's pretty surprising that Annie survived the first one), and they're just trying to get back to normal after the trauma of the first movie. Laurie's having nightmares, Annie's become cold. Laurie's picking up those weird psychic vibes from Michael and having the same dreams as the visions we're shown Michael has, and she's fearing for her sanity, even having nightmares of killing Annie. Laurie finding out she's related to Michael gets her to fall over the edge. This is an interesting idea and direction to take the character, but it's an area of psychological drama and emotion that Zombie can't pull off. (And he's certainly not interested in making these characters people, people with heart and soul and emotion.) And it's delicate, tricky material for a performer to handle and I think it's out of Scout Taylor-Compton's reach. She gets to that point again where she's just bawling all of her dialogue (tearlessly) and you're annoyed with the performance rather than feeling for the character.

One of the huge problems Zombie has with writing is that he makes all of his characters be into the same things he's into -- '70s stuff, hillbilly stuff. Which, fine, writers are going to put themselves in their characters and writing, but you also need to be truthful to the characters you're creating. While teen girls obviously don't just listen to fluffy pop junk, how many teen girls do you think are into Zombie faves like the MC5 and Alice Cooper? How many teen girls who survive a trauma like Laurie and Annie are going to have posters of Charles Manson in their bedroom, with "WWCD" written above it? How many teen girls are eager to go to a Halloween party to see a psychobilly band that plays with strippers on stage? Do you think teen girls nowadays really greet each other with a "Hey, dick lickers," or "Wassup, ho?"

Not only do all of his characters act like him, but Zombie makes all of the characters look like him, too. Michael spends a big portion of this movie maskless, and while he remains in the shadows, you can see that he's the biggest dead-ringer for Zombie. It's hilariously ridiculous when he puts the mask on over that monstrous, Zombie-like grungy beard, and the beard's poking out. It makes those dumb neck flaps hanging out in Part 5 seem less stupid.

Another unintentionally ridiculous Michael moment in this movie: repeated scenes of him SLOWLY walking through massive fields. These scenes make it look like he's walking cross country to get to Haddonfield, but, no -- he's already in Haddonfield, and it takes him a year to find Laurie. (I guess because he got caught up in slowly walking through random fields.) It's also funny the way Zombie has Myers teleporting in these movies, it's like he's the X-Man Nightcrawler. He'll actually just appear out of nowhere and get the drop on people. We see a wide shot, an open area with absolutely nobody around but a single character, yet somehow in the next shot Michael just materializes without the character noticing. (In the first movie, a guy's lighting a smoke on the porch of his house, and in the next shot Michael attacks him from the front. The power of editing, because there's no way that guy didn't notice Michael.)

Much has been made about the dream/vision sequences in the movie. A lot of fans find it stupid, a lot of movie critics liked it. I'll give it points for being an original idea Zombie brings to the movie(s), and the questions it raises whether it's all supernaturally induced or a psychotic break. But, really, it's just a shameless way for Zombie to use his wife again, when her character died in the previous flick. He overuses the idea, though, and it comes across like a music video forced into the movie. (And, oddly enough, not a White Zombie music video, but a mid-90s Smashing Pumpkins video.) What I don't really understand is why Deborah Myers represents these visions of evil when...Deborah was pretty much the ONLY member of the Myers family who came close to being normal and kind. It might make sense for Michael to have a fixation on her, and sort of fuel him, but not Laurie.

The major source of life in this movie, though, is Brad Dourif. He not only brings some actual levity to the movie, but warmth and humanity...! The movie is so grim and mean, and while I think that's something that works in its favor and helps the atmosphere and its eventual bleak climax, it really helps to have some genuinely human, honest moments, and those mainly all come from Dourif's performance as Sheriff Brackett. He's an ordinary guy who wants to do right by everyone, he wants to protect Laurie and Annie (even after harm comes to Annie a second time, instead of resigning and placing blame on Laurie, as you can imagine another movie doing, he gets out to look for Laurie).

That he's the one guy in the movie that seems the most normal is something I pretty much attribute to Dourif. It's pretty shocking the amount of reliable character actors Zombie's able to round up for his movies, but guys like Dourif are pros who are pretty much always good and always elevate what they're in. Character actors are taken for granted. Dourif and Danielle Harris are really the main reasons you care about Annie's fate in this movie; it's tragic that she dies so violently after surviving a previous attack, but she's barely in the movie, and Zombie's writing just makes you not care.

Loomis' scenes all play out like something from another movie. Just scene after scene of him being an insufferable ass about his book, while facing a lot of ridicule for writing the thing. He's a little unnecessary to the movie, and has a last minute change of heart, which doesn't feel authentic because of the way the character's behaved for two movies and for how lightly Malcolm McDowell takes everything. Like I said, the movie is grim, and there's a doom hanging over it, and Loomis' change of heart, which costs him his life, COULD have had an impact, providing the character some pathos, but that's just not in Zombie's area of interest.

The ultimate doomed character is Laurie. Whether it's genetics or the trauma of what she went through -- or even supernatural interference -- she snaps and ends the movie institutionalized. She gives a Psycho-y smirk to the camera, as she sees the vision of Ma Myers, hinting that she'll be the next installment's killer. I think that's a pretty interesting idea. Friday the 13th and Halloween had hinted at something like that before, with the Tommy Jarvis and Jamie Lloyd characters, but they chickened out. And it wouldn't have had the same impact since they were kids. Scout Taylor-Compton's Laurie is old enough, and it would have been an interesting tragedy to have a character who was normal, decent, but went through hell twice and came out becoming the same kind of monster who ruined her life. It would be interesting to follow the story of a hero in one of the movies falling from grace and actually becoming a villain.

Not only are female killers rare in slasher movies, but it would have been interesting to see that kind of reinvention, a changing of guard in a long running franchise; a new face representing the franchise, and isn't that what the point of a true remake or reinvention should be? How different would Laurie as the killer have been from Michael? Would she try to fight some of the murderous impulses and deny her bloodline? How would Taylor-Compton play this version of Laurie? What would killer Laurie's look be -- would she have a variation of the Shatner mask? Well, Part 3 was kiboshed, but it wouldn't have mattered -- Zombie's not the writer to pull this off and, again, this stuff's not his area of interest. He just likes gore and F-bombs and extreme vulgarity and '70s references and overpopulating his movies so he can cast his favorite character actors.

John Carpenter has expressed regret at making Laurie Michael's long-lost sister in his Part 2 script. Zombie had the benefit of hindsight, and could have looked over the franchise's lore and history and made adjustments and improvements, creating a truly reinvented trilogy of films that culminated in an original idea of having the star heroine fall to darkness. I'm against remakes, but there was potential there! They could have been good movies! And for as much as he says he's a horror fan, it seems to me Zombie just doesn't have faith in the genre or its fans to try a serious attempt at making a dramatic movie or a movie with soul or a movie with human characters connecting. To put it bluntly: it was a *colossal* mistake to get him for these movies.

THE END...?

The franchise has been dead since Zombie's sequel, with no real sign of where it's headed -- they've announced a new movie and its falling through a few times already. (Sure enough, there's been an announcement recently about Carpenter producing a new one.) And what has this whole endeavor taught me? Not much I already didn't know. This marathon didn't respark my old love for the franchise. Weaker installments didn't seem improved, and I've actually come to like the original Part 2 less. It's still difficult to watch H20 without thinking of truly, terrible, awful Resurrection. I was left with a renewed frustration and anger at the turns this franchise took and the lows it hit. I truly feel like Halloween has the worst sequels of the big slasher franchises, and sequels so bad that they ruin the ones that WERE good or that you liked. I was about to buy Shout Factory's big Blu-ray box set for the sake of these reviews, and I'm glad I didn't.

Rob Zombie's Halloween (AKA Halloween: A XXX Parody)

This movie is so bad it would be laughable, if only it wasn't such a sad, sad abomination. I'd like to leave it at that, but I won't. Zombie's fortunate to follow Resurrection. He must have just had carte blanche -- "No worries about not being able to write dialogue, pal. It HAS to be better than Resurrection!" Well, just barely, and that's for the unintentional laughs, the disbelief you as a viewer experience, thinking "Jesus! Somebody not only MADE this, but they thought it was good enough to RELEASE! Un-fucking-believable!" Zombie thinks he's being edgy by showing Michael's childhood, but it's one horribly written Jerry Springer cliche after cliche, and then the movie becomes a bad cover tune of the original classic.

You watch this movie and can't believe anybody working on it thought it would be good. It's so stupid, they couldn't be taking it seriously, right? But, no, Zombie has plenty of interviews where he talked about making Michael "scary" again, and fleshing out why he does what he does. But, man, does Zombie miss the mark, unless he finds hillbilly cliches, shaky-cam and terrible dialogue to be the scariest things in the world. Everybody is so vile and vulgar in his movies. Who talks like the people in this movie? Who behaves this way? Does Zombie seriously think this is realistic dialogue? What the fuck goes on when he's out on the road, if this shit is what he considers to be a reflection of life?

The movie is full of over-the-top violence (for the sake of it) and trashy, foul-mouthed cliches. Nearly very female character in it acts like the worst example of a trashy groupie you can think of. (Which I guess is what you get when you get a rock star to write movies.) Not only do most of the female characters act like, I don't know, Stifler from American Pie, but Zombie has nearly every actress show skin and lingers on the nudity to the point where it all just feels lewd. Zombie's a fan of '70s exploitation movies, and this movie veers too far into that territory, lingering on the violence against women until it begins to slip into a I Spit on Your Grave level of discomfort. (You'll feel especially uneasy during a lengthy scene where Michael is battering around a topless and bloody Danielle Harris, especially considering her history with the franchise.)

It's like all of the things critics unfairly accused the 1978 Halloween of being -- sexist, misogynistic, trashy -- Zombie made sure his movie actually was, kind of to the detriment of the first movie's legacy. I wonder what the late Debra Hill, co-writer of the original -- who tried hard to make the women characters authentic and treat them fairly -- would have had to say about Zombie's remake.

The whole movie is just Zombie giving the finger to the franchise and its fans. From muddying its name to creating pretty obnoxious versions of classic characters like Laurie and Loomis (who here isn't a heroic modern Van Helsing, but a greedy, uncaring, opportunistic, unlikable shithat). I know Zombie claims to be a horror fan, but it seems to me he doesn't like Halloween, or doesn't respect it. (I think he thinks he's too cool to be doing Halloween movies, yet another problem with getting a rock star to write and direct the goddamn thing. Because P.J. Soles has a story about how hard Zombie was geeking out over a copy of her original Halloween script she gave him.) His two Halloween movies are proof enough, but just look at how he doesn't understand Michael.

Michael was a normal kid from an average, middle class family, who just one night snapped. The unexplainable, unknown reasons he snapped is what's meant to be terrifying. (And I know Zombie's spoken derogatorily about how the original handles this, but he thinks his version is an improvement?!) Why'd Michael snap? It's something only Michael knows. Not even the patient and wise Loomis can break through, so his only conclusion is that Michael is evil. So, to not only give Michael this cliched trailer park background, but also depict him being a psycho well before that Halloween night? That alone misses the mark, in a movie that continuously misses the mark.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Halloween: Resurrection (aka Busta vs. Michael)

A cheap, pathetic, uninspired cash grab. This movie's doomed from the start. Bringing back the director of the dull Halloween 2 for one. And Busta Rhymes getting top billing is just a sign that the movie's going to be a joke, and it is. And not a good joke at that.

The first fifteen minutes of the movie does its best to completely ruin H20, what it had accomplished, and its stellar ending scene. Laurie had taken her fate into her hands and runs over Michael, the van crash resulting in Michael being pinned between the vehicle and a tree. Laurie approaches him and for the first time in his six appearances, we get a reaction out of Michael. Michael's confused, panicked. He doesn't know what to do, and reaches out to Laurie. For a split second, both the viewer and Laurie take a kind of pity on him. But just as quickly, Laurie lops off his head as the Halloween theme kicks in. It was a great way to wrap up her storyline, it was a great send-off for Michael. A brutal, but strong finish to the movie...

We're not fools, we know that the power of corporate greed will resurrect Michael, but I don't think you could come up with a stupider way to explain his return than what Resurrection offers, which is something that COMPLETELY -- COMPLETELY! -- ruins not only H20's final scene, but the entire movie (and the Laurie Strode character -- why break one thing when you can break a bunch of things is Resurrection's motto). Apparently, that crafty Michael, at one point in H20's final act, switched places with a paramedic. That's right, Michael crushes the guy's larynx and swaps outfits with him. Never before have we seen Michael concoct such plans and be steps ahead like this, but, hey... Meanwhile, this genius paramedic is just stumbling around. I mean, think of the end of H20. Michael's trying to attack Laurie, he ambushes her from the back of the van, he walks off flying through the windshield when she wrecks it, he survives the crash that only Michael could...but apparently it's just Bob, the stupidest paramedic who ever lived. When he's pinned between a van and a tree, larynx or no, I think he'd be doing more than holding his head and reaching out to Laurie, as she approaches him with an axe. But, hey, fuck logic when we can ruin a good sequel to pump out a shit one. Too bad they decided against having Michael call out Laurie's name in that last H20 scene, proving it's Michael, and maybe making the Resurrection writers come up with a less stupid retcon.

Laurie beheads Stupid the Paramedic and snaps as a result. She should have just shaken it off like Loomis. "Oh, well, that's the price for looking like Michael Myers, Ben Tramer." Besides this wonderful retcon, which is shat upon us with an extremely clumsy exchange between two Academy Award-winning actresses, Michael just happens to find this mental hospital Laurie's at. Despite the misleading ads -- when I saw the ads, I thought Laurie was going to be the franchise's new Loomis -- Jamie Lee Curtis only agreed to come back if she gets killed at the movie's start, so Laurie gets to look stupid and gets one of the most lackluster death scenes in the history of horror. Fans love Laurie Strode, they think she's a strong character. We've seen her survive for three movies now. Jamie Lee Curtis is a popular actress, one of the genre's biggest successes. I think the character deserved a little more than being suckered into a trick of Michael's, stabbed, and tossing off a super-generic "See you in hell" line before falling to a CGI doom. It's bullshit.

The movie thinks it's one of those slick '90s, Scream-y, WB-star studded slasher movies, but it looks like it has the budget of a Sega CD game, with the cheapness of Canadian cost-cutting to match. (The whole point of having it be a "reality" show, filmed on mini-cams, is cheapness and convenience on the filmmakers' part.) It wants to be timely, but it's instantly dated, with reality shows, internet broadcasts and chat rooms playing important roles in the movies. The characters are uninteresting, the kills are dopey, and the way they have characters distracted in order for any killing to go on in such a tiny location (the entire action takes place in the Myers HOUSE) is dumb. (Tyra Banks misses one of her cameramen being killed because she's too busy dancing while making an cappuccino.)

And the movie just keeps kicking you in the face with one stupid scene after another. (Like Busta Rhymes dressed like Michael "hilariously" dressing down the real Michael, who he thinks is a fake. Sides split, man.) Even if you disregard the insulting stupidity of the first fifteen minutes and how it desecrates a far superior movie, you're left with an incredibly weak, forgettable, bottom of the barrel movie with an ill-fitting gimmick.

The movie would have been better off not even including Jamie Lee Curtis or trying to explain Michael's surviving H20 -- the movie's so corny that they might as well have just made it Michael's spirit haunting the Myers house and terrorizing the contestants of Busta Rhymes' terrible reality show. A lousy premise is bad enough, but tanking H20 adds insult to injury; because even if you remove the first 15 minutes, you'd still be left with the movie that killed the franchise. It's that bad, judged on its own. Every one of the slasher movies has its own worst, horrid, unwatchable movie, and this one is definitely Halloween's, and a close race with Hellraiser: Hellworld for title of Worst of the Worst Sequels. It was a damn struggle to rewatch this movie to write about it. There's no redeeming quality to it, nothing but the pathetic death rattle of the franchise. It's boring. It's dumb. It's cheap. I mean, unless you're into following boring assholes around as they stumble through one location with Fear Factor cams strapped to them, with lame-ass jump scares and fake-out scares in pixelated quality that subliminally slip in shots of Michael, in case you've (understandably) forgotten what you're watching.

And so, the movie that had the gall to call itself Resurrection ended up destroying the franchise as we knew it. The death rattle of this franchise sounds a little like Busta Rhymes making Bruce Lee noises as he kung-fu fights Michael Myers. (Which IS something that happens.) It also sounds a little like the Curly Howard noise Michael makes when Busta Rhymes puts a jumper cable on his nutsack and sets him ablaze. (Which IS something that happens.) Dimension really should have refunded people's money and sent them notes of apology.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

I'm always surprised when I see horror fans diss this movie. To me, it's pretty much the only good sequel, the only truly well made sequel. Even though I could be accused of being biased, because director Steve Miner's two Friday the 13th sequels are two of my favorite movies of that franchise, he's come a long way since those movies -- H20 has a style and polish. People accuse it of being Scream-like, but...it has the gloss of that movie, the obnoxious kids-pulled-from-the-WB, but it's nowhere near as obnoxious and winky-winky. (It pushes the limits with the Psycho references, but those are mostly harmless. I could see people saying the recreations of bits from the first movie is too self-referential, but this was an anniversary movie, so some of those nods just had to be made.) My main problem with it is trying to ignore the idiotic retcon in Resurrection, and just trying to forget that dismal movie when watching this one, which is difficult.

The premise is simple, but good: we catch up with Laurie Strode after all these years, on the day of the year she most dreads. She tries to get by with numbing herself with drinks and painkillers, but as hard as she tries, the pain -- and Michael -- remains. And no matter how many times she tries to convince herself she's imagining things, she knows -- Michael is back and if she wants a shot at peace, she's going to finally have to settle things with him. The movie has a breezy running time, which makes me wonder if there's a lot of cut footage, but it wastes no time and doesn't bore you.

There are a couple of great moments in this movie, like when Laurie's trying hard to close her eyes and basically wish Michael away -- but, at some point, instead of vanishing as usual, his image keeps charging her way. Another of my favorite scenes is when her son and his girlfriend are pinned between Michael and a locked door, and as Laurie successfully opens the door, letting the two in to safety, she slams the door just in time from Michael, finally coming face to face with him and realizing her nightmare's come true. But my favorite scene is when Laurie sends everyone away from the campus, grabbing an axe, closing the gates and sealing herself in with Michael, with the Halloween theme song kicking on. It's such a badass moment, she's taking control of things, and there's such a finality to the movie from this moment on, it's a serious, damn, stinking, filthy, rotten shame that the horrendous diarrhea tsunami of a follow-up ruins it all.

If there's a weakness to the movie, it's that I often don't feel like I'm watching the past catch up with Laurie Strode. Instead, I feel more like it's Jamie Lee Curtis herself. (Like most Hollywood stars, Curtis reached a point where she just started playing a version of herself in most movies. Curtis is a cool, strong, gutsy lady, and that's what comes through most of her roles, and it's not a bad persona to have. She's a reliable performer.) I'll try to think of the Laurie Strode from the first two movies and just see Jamie Lee Curtis, and can't help but see her determination to be rid of Michael as representing Curtis' own ambivalence to the horror genre and its fans.

And it's this movie I was referring to before as having one of the stupidest decisions in a horror movie. Jodi Lyn O'Keefe's injured character decides to try to escape Michael by placing herself in a dumbwaiter. At least Jamie was just a kid when she made the stupid choice to hide in a laundry chute...

All in all, the idea for this movie is just brilliant, because things were looking grim for this franchise after ho-hum and flat out bad sequels, and this was a great way at getting interest and eyeballs back on the series. I have to wonder, though, if this movie would exist without Wes Craven's New Nightmare, as if Jamie Lee Curtis saw that movie and was like "Hey! For the 10th anniversary of Freddy, they got back the first movie's heroine and staff, let's do that with Halloween for its 20th!"

TO BE CONTINUED...

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

I can't imagine being a die-hard fan of this series, with it from the beginning, loving each installment, waiting that several year gap from Part 5 to Part 6, waiting for answers, and...having this turd pooped upon you. I was a relative n00b to the franchise when this movie was released and even *I* thought it was junk.

The movie is notorious for the problems which plagued production, so the theatrical cut is pretty sloppy and the work of many cooks. We're not given much in the way of explaining what happened at the end of Part 5, and if you hadn't already seen the movie or read about the producer's cut, chances are you won't be able to make much sense out of what they give you. Because this is the one that goes all-in with the Thorn cult stuff, a plot development everyone seemed to dislike in test screenings, so it's hacked and slashed and reshot and replaced, yet still lingers over the movie and...is a mess.

I never really liked when later (inferior) sequels tried to tack on explanations for everything. Michael in the first movie was a normal kid who one night snapped and never came back. He was institutionalized and escaped and ran around his hometown killing teen girls, just as he did his own sister. Part of the scare is not really knowing for sure what drove Michael, and Loomis' bombastic speeches just made you wonder. Obviously, that's not something that can be sustained for sequels, and people are going to want to know the whys-and-hows by a certain point, but...Jesus, come up with something better than Part 6 did. It's way, way too cute and on the nose. The Druid cult selecting someone to bear the curse of the Thorn rune, that person then devoting their life to wiping out their bloodline as a sacrifice to spare others, and the stars align making the Thorn symbol usually on Halloween, which explains where Michael goes in between the passage of shitty sequels. I mean...Jesus. This is like revealing Freddy Krueger was the son of Mr. Sandman and Sleeping Beauty, and he was an insomniac who was jealous of people sleeping and that's why he kills people in their sleep. Why don't you just add that Michael was upset that Judith didn't take him trick-or-treating while you're at it? (Oh, wait...)

Sad thing is, you have a weak storyline, but I don't actually think the actors or lead characters are that bad. Marianne Hagan is appealing and turns in a good performance, bringing a maturity to the franchise as Kara Strode; Devin Gardner, as her son Danny, is surprisingly good for a kid actor, when kid actors -- especially in horror -- are usually weak or grating. You care for Kara and Danny, and there's a sad and pathetic quality to the Tommy Doyle character. Traumatized from the first movie, he's become a recluse who's devoted to tracking Michael, half-praying Michael stays away, half-praying he comes back so he can settle the score of the past. The problem with Tommy is Paul Rudd, who just goes too far in making Tommy "kooky," giving him these tics and mannerisms and very bizarre reactions to situations which end up making Tommy actually seem more mental than Michael.

Maybe the whole Thorn cult thing, and their attempt to groom Danny as Michael's replacement, could have worked with more time and effort. Who knows? I don't really like it, but I guess it's a kind of interesting way to show basically what happened to Michael without showing what happened to *Michael*, since it's a similar situation, but playing out with the Danny character. After six sequels, Michael's run out of family to kill (ridiculous plot point, anyway), so the cult is after a replacement, and they choose Danny. Danny being a normal kid, but one the same age as Michael when he first killed, one who begins to have disturbing dreams and visions and hear voices. See, Rob Zombie? We didn't need an hour of Michael's ripped-from-Jerry-Springer origin.

But we know Halloween fans want Michael Myers, not Danny Strode, so we know Michael's going to win (win?) in the end. (I assume that's why he kills all of the cult members in the disco operating room in that horribly directed scene with the strobe light. Michael seems pretty chill with being replaced in the director's cut. The whole final scene with the cult ceremony being performed and Michael just standing there is pretty silly. While it makes more sense with what the movie was setting up, I can see why people complained that there needed to be a new final act. Because Paul Rudd laying down some runes and Michael dropping dead? Anticlimactic compared to Paul Rudd beating the ever-loving snot out of Michael in revenge. Really, Michael's face gets covered in green goo -- snot, right?)

The supporting characters are thinner, but at least played by tolerable people. There are no Tinas here. (Well, the actor who plays Kara's dad is a weak link. He looks and acts like one of Tom Wilson's terrible Biff variations. I know we're meant to hate the guy, but did he have to be such a goddamn cartoon?) It sucks that Danielle Harris gets replaced, but it sucks even more that Jamie is just uneventfully killed in the first act. (I like that she survives her encounter with Michael in the producer's cut, but being killed in a hospital bed by a random goon is an even more uneventful death for the character.)

And for the most lackluster reveal in horror history we have...the revelation of the Man in Black! Oh, boy! Who could it be? I'm sure Halloween fans all over had a theory. (I still remember watching Part 5 with my horror-obsessed aunt and her shouting with certainty "It's Jamie Lee! It's Jamie Lee!" I had no idea who it could be, but I was puzzled as to how the fuck she came to that conclusion.) Who is it!? And it's revealed to be...Dr. Wynn? Who the fuck is that? And is his actor...Dickhead from Liar Liar? (Sorry, Mitch Ryan. You might have a career that goes back decades, and you might have played Riker's dad on Star Trek: TNG, but I'm always just going to call you Dickhead.) Wait, what? How the fuck does Dickhead fit into the picture? Who is he, even? Oh, a character briefly introduced at the start of this movie, some doctor friend of Loomis' who's secretly the head of the Thorn cult, Michael's protector, and also wants Loomis to join as a member.

Apparently Dickhead didn't watch any of the previous movies, because he should know Loomis wouldn't want to join his cult, but...hey, that's what you call a case of the Shit Sequel! Dickhead in a cowboy hat, the reveal nobody wanted! I know writer Daniel Farrands wrote the part of Dr. Wynn with Christopher Lee in mind, which would only have been cool by virtue of being Christopher Lee, because this flimsy character who popped up out of nowhere would have still been disappointing.

Anyway, I think a better choice for the Man in Black would have been...wait for it...Conal Cochran! Yeah, tie Halloween III into things! Cochran was at least a warlock who was into all of the old Samhain traditions, it could have worked to have him revealed to be the one controlling/watching over Michael. What's that? The first Halloween movie is shown to be just a movie in Halloween III? Cochran was killed? Well...who cares? That's something the fans could have debated for years and cooked up theories for. "Why's Halloween and Michael Myers just a movie in the world of Halloween III, and yet a character from Halloween III pops up in one of the Michael Myers movies?" "Maybe it WASN'T Halloween, but a movie based on the events of the first one that Dr. Challis was watching?" "How did Cochran return?" At least you know the Cochran character, at least Dan O'Herlihy is an entertaining performer, at least it would have made some sense. You might have even cared about the reveal!

Loomis update: after apparently losing his mind in the previous sequels, he's pretty relaxed here, just retired and living in the countryside, even though...c'mon, you know he wouldn't just mellow out like that. Because of Pleasence's declining health, he's not given much to do. And because of his declining health, Loomis is given two fates: in the producer's cut, he's selected by a dying Wynn to become the new Man in Black and be Michael's watcher, which I really don't like -- it doesn't make sense to me to doom the character like that, tying our hero to his worst nightmare. In the theatrical cut, Michael's body is seen vanished and you hear Loomis screaming off-screen, but I don't like to think of Michael just nerpling him to death, either. On one hand, this is a sad note for Pleasence to end on, but on the other, I guess at least Loomis was helpful and friendly in this one, not the jerko nutter he was in 5, so that's a plus. But, man, it would have been interesting to see if they would have included him in H20, and how he would have fit in there. I've always wondered if he would have been the one killed off in the first scene rather than Nurse Chambers...that movie plays like Jamie Lee's vanity project, with no room to share it with Loomis.

Unintentionally hilarious unscary scene: the movie tries not once, but TWICE to make an agitating washing machine scary.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

Halloween 4 ends with Jamie potentially a murderer and Michael Myers gunned down by the police like he's the Small-Town Twerp that ED-209 guns down in RoboCop. When this movie picks up from the previous one, what happened with Jamie is really swept under the carpet, and Michael swam away to safety to be taken care of by a hobo for an entire year. Even though these movies want to be (relatively) "realistic," we've seen Michael grow eyeballs back after having them shot out, so I guess a swim in a creek will heal about 3,247 gunshot wounds. Nothing like a good swim in a dirty creek, the care of a hobo, and a year-long power-nap to heal up them bullet holes.

The movie prefers you forget the bit about Jamie and her foster mother, which is written off as Michael's evil influencing Jamie, and the foster mother apparently recovering (off-screen). See, Jamie now has this almost psychic connection to Michael, barely speaks, and is in the care of a hospital. She gets visions of Uncle Mikey and writes really helpful notes like drawing a mouth to indicate that he's near her sister's house and just passed the dog, rather than writing "Michael is at Rachel's." You've got to hand it to Danielle Harris, though, because she really acts her ass off and makes all of this work even though, once again, the script is letting her down.

The characters are even less memorable than Part 4's, though. It was a pretty stupid decision to kill Rachel off so early -- or at all, really. Harris and Cornell were the only two things to help get you through the last one, and without that bond, there's not much of anyone to care about. I don't know the story of why they kill her off, but it unfortunately makes room for the Tina character. I've always just assumed that Rachel's replaced by Tina because Wendy Kaplan is related to one of the filmmakers and that's the only reason she hijacks the movie and is featured in so much of it despite being obnoxious as crap.

Really, how much coke is Tina on? She won't stop moving (she walks the way Adam West runs as Batman, arms jutting out with elbows locked inward) and she either sing-songs all of her dialogue or extends the last syllable of her line. There's no reason for her to survive as much of the movie as she does -- SHE should have been the one killed 20 minutes in, not Rachel. But, hey, why have someone you might like and care about in this movie, right? (I didn't remember that Tina does end up getting killed in the movie, so I kinda felt bad when she did but not for the reasons the filmmakers think you should feel bad, though. She wasn't a good character or likable or tolerable. You don't care about her, but you care that your dislike for her character essentially got her killed.)

Loomis is a real mess in this one. Pretty unlikable. He's always bullying and yelling at Jamie to help him track Michael, like he's able to do anything if he found him. He more than once uses Jamie as bait. I guess you might be able to chalk it up to Loomis finally just going mad in his quest to find Michael, but he just feels so far gone from how he is in the first movie. Pleasence deserves better than a lot of the sequels give him, even if he always somehow manages to rise above it all.

One thing I'll give this movie is that I do think there are at least a couple of tense scenes. While I think it's odd for Michael to add vehicular manslaughter to his M.O., that scene in the field where he's trying to run over Jamie, Billy and Tina always made me nervous when I was a kid, and the whole laundry-chute scene at the Myers house is nerve-racking. (You have to forgive Jamie for being a kid and thinking that hiding in the laundry-chute was a good idea, because it's one of the worst ideas in horror history. Not so forgivable is a tactic of another character in one of the later sequels, which I'll get to.) Despite the Myers house in this one looking NOTHING like it does in any previous or subsequent movie, I kind of like that final segment set there. Because, damn, how did it not screw Jamie up to be trapped in the attic with Rachel's corpse, and the corpse of her dog, and a coffin Michael made just for her?

Another thing I'll give this movie is that it TRIES to tone down Michael a bit. Sure, he heals from thousands of gunshot wounds received in the previous movie, but Loomis' speeches are more restrained. If Carpenter's intention with the first movie was to just be scary by depicting a mental patient's escape and randomly terrorizing a neighborhood, then I feel like Part 5 tries to paint Michael more as just an almost average sounding killer from the way Loomis talks to him, the talk of Michael being driven by rage that he hopes to extinguish by killing. (Loomis mentions the idea of Jamie being able to help him, which Michael kinda considers, until he's like "Fuck that. Rehabilitation doesn't get sequels. Ask Norman Bates and all of those awful Psycho sequels.") And, whereas bullets couldn't stop him, in this one, some chains, some tranqs and a beating by Loomis with some 4x4s takes Michael down.

Now, here's a problem with the movie. It's starting to set up the whole Thorn cult stuff, with the symbol being on Michael's wrist and the appearance of The Man in Black. I kind of question where these particular writers were thinking of going with that, but I know it only ends up in disappointment with Part 6. How weak is the final scene, though, an incarcerated Michael broken out by The Man in Black, who we only see as a shadow gunning down cops with a tommy-gun, looking like The Blank from Dick Tracy, with Jamie stumbling upon the aftermath, the movie fading out like there's a lost reel? Part 5 was released in 1989 and Part 6 in 1995. That's quite a gap for such a disappointing final scene, and an even more disappointing attempt following it all up and "answering" what happened.

And Michael's mask flat out sucks in this one. He has a five-head, his hair's slicked back, and I don't know why they decided to leave such long neck flaps hanging out the way they did. Equally bad? The music, which sounds like it was performed on a Fisher Price piano.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

For some reason, I notice a lot of Halloween fans think rather highly of this one. I never really understood why. I assume if you're just a fan of Halloween, maybe it was nice to get Michael and Loomis and Haddonfield back after Part 3's weirdness, but I think this movie is overall lacking. It's style-free, tension-free, scare-free, drama-free, and practically gore-free. (And what's with the excessive slow-mo all throughout?) You're never given a real reason to care for the characters, other than Jamie and Rachel, and that's only, completely 100% because of actresses Danielle Harris and Ellie Cornell, who share a sweet bond and make everything work even though the script is really letting them down.

It's only the third true Myers sequel, but it's already smelling of barrel-scraping desperation; the filmmakers want you to forget about Part 3, dammit, so we're bringing Michael and Loomis and Haddonfield back no matter what cockamamie bullshit we concoct! Loomis lit a match in a room filling with gas? No problem, he somehow got away with just a couple of crappy prosthetic burns on his hand and cheek. Michael went up in flames, after having his eyes shot? No big deal, he's just in a bit of a coma. Laurie Strode (and Jimmy Lloyd) is unceremoniously killed off-screen to make room for her newly introduced daughter, Jamie. Michael, who has been a comatose brick for a decade, is brought back to consciousness by just hearing a background conversation between Smith's Grove van drivers that he has a niece. It's...pretty stupid. Michael Myers, being what he is, decides it's a good time to escape and go kill the niece he doesn't know...just 'cuz!

So the movie just meanders through a bunch of low-grade slasher kills until the final act. If you try to transcribe the actions in this movie, it's moronic. Michael is teleporting all over town in order to cause blackouts and kill every diner and policeman and walk-on extra he can find for the sake of upping the body count. Meanwhile, Loomis pisses away the running time by hitching a ride to Haddonfield and running around making his grandioso nonsense speeches instead of being like "It's the fourth fucking movie, you know what Michael does, let's get this over with."

This movie also begins a trend in the series of having what I think of as these lame little laugh moments, these pre-Scream types of cutesy, self-referential moments that they think are cute, but are really infuriating in how they underestimate the audience's ability to be scared or amused. Loomis et al. are surrounded by many Michael Myerseses, only to realize it's a bunch of kids playing a prank. Ha-ha. It's filmed like a scare scene, but ends up a laugh. Well, it's neither.

Also: Michael's mask in this movie is terrible. He has this really dopey expression on his face, really bemused-like, like he just farted and is waiting for it to hit the rest of the room.

The one interesting thing this movie does is end it by having Jamie crack and stab her foster mother, as Loomis looks on in horror at history apparently repeating itself. The Friday the 13th movies did the same thing with Tommy Jarvis, where they hint at the end of The Final Chapter that he's cracked and will become the series' new killer. Neither Friday the 13th nor Halloween had the guts to stick to that plan. Tommy at least becomes the red herring of the follow-up sequel, though, which is more than Halloween bothered to do.

TO BE CONTINUED

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (The Underrated One)

Each horror franchise has its hated bastard step-child, and this is Halloween's. It's the sequel that Michael doesn't appear in because Tom Atkins is too much of a bad-ass. I know I shouldn't, but I kind of like this movie. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty goofy, it's verging into the "awesomely bad" category, but it's a fun movie. It's so damned weird, it has a couple of effective, disturbing gore scenes, a couple of likable performers, and a pretty neat idea that deserves to be in a more solid movie.

That idea? That some ancient warlock, posing as a toy manufacturer, is getting back at the world for the commercialization of the holiday, making the day mean nothing but kids in costumes begging for candy. He's going to teach 'em a lesson about what Halloween really means to his people, by bringing back some old fashioned sacrificin', which he plans to accomplish by turning the commercialization of Halloween against everyone; his cursed masks are the hot Halloween costume of the year, which will kill kids when a subliminal signal transmitted in a giveaway commercial airs on the 31st. The Silver Shamrock company's persistant commercial is hilariously irritating, to both viewers and characters, and it leads to a pretty tense final scene of the movie.

But so much of the movie is just so damned goofy, there's a lot of logic problems, and I honestly can't tell if it's supposed be taken seriously and has just aged poorly or what. But, like I said, the movie is fun and does have some things going for it. Even though the main character of Challis is a bad father, bad husband and bad doctor with major weaknesses for booze and women, you can't help but like the sonuvabitch because he's played by Tom Atkins. I think the character is meant to be more of a sad-sack screw-up, a flawed guy whose hands the fate of millions lies in, but Atkins makes him cool and, like, James Bond. It is a little strange that he's a doctor who's so intrigued that he's investigating all of this, though -- I've wondered if the movie would play better if he had been a P.I. hired by Stacey Nelkin's Ellie character to look into her father's death and the Silver Shamrock company. That would have given it a neat, noirish feel. Another bit of great casting is Daniel O'Herlihy as Cochran, who is having a blast making the character at turns charming and sinister.

In the absence of Michael Myers, the main physical obstacle faced by our protagonists is an army of blank-faced men in suits, who turn out to be androids created by Cochran. Kind of funny that Michael Myers always moved android-like and here his replacements are actual androids. I can't say I find them that scary, save for the one scene where there's several standing in a line outside of Challis' motel at night, staring.

It's a very flawed movie, but entertaining, and I don't find myself bored by it the way I'll be with most of the other standard Halloween sequels.

Halloween II (The Search For More Money)

As long as I've been into the franchise, there were only three Halloween movies that mattered to me -- 1, 2, H20. The Laurie Strode Trilogy. I used to enjoy a couple of the sequels, like 4 and 5, but even before I turned on them, I always knew they were nothing compared to The Laurie Trilogy. That said, I always liked Halloween II the least of the three. When I'll think back on the movie, I'll always just feel a negative dislike, so I was surprised when I just rewatched it and found myself enjoying it. But I realized the problem -- I'll enjoy the first half hour, which is tying up the events of the first movie, but the movie comes to a screeching halt when all of the action moves to the hospital. To say it drags is an understatement. I find this section, which is most of the movie, to be interminable.

Even though John Carpenter and Debra Hill returned to script the movie, it's in a weaker director's hands, and it just always seemed to me like Carpenter and Hill didn't really know what to do with a follow-up. Michael Myers kills a lot of people he doesn't need to, but he also kills a lot of motherfucking time. Segments, which I suppose are meant to be suspenseful, just DRAG, and you don't care about most of the people featured, and the man behind Michael's mask in this movie (Dick Warlock) is the slowest Michael of all -- it's like watching slow-motion footage of a mime performing on the moon -- so the movie becomes even MORE sluggish seeming. It's torturous!

And it's just too similar to the first one -- albeit diluted and excised of what made the first one good -- that if you watch it too close to the first one, it becomes even more torturous for its similarity, especially the soundtrack. Yes, I know Carpenter's music is classic, but it's practically the same three pieces that plays throughout the movie, and here it's the same three pieces again. (The music in II is even worse, though, for sounding about as the same quality as the Atari game's music.)

It's a mistake to have Laurie be so incapacitated for the movie (it's practically a silent performance on Jamie Lee Curtis' part), and Loomis is already descending into parody. Rather than the driven Van Helsing of the first one, here he just sounds like an idiot or a lunatic in his obsession, ready to gun down or kill anything that he thinks looks close to Michael Myers. (Indeed, he gets Laurie's crush from the first film, Ben Tramer, killed for wearing a Michael-like mask. Laurie just can't catch a break. And, besides, Ben was swinging a trick-or-treat bag. Really, Loomis? You thought Michael was walking around Haddonfield with a trick-or-treat bag he was swingin' around? And you didn't notice that this "Michael" was a good two feet shorter? And walked FAST?!)

Then the action moves to the hospital, filled with characters we don't give a shit about, as we're forced to watch Michael pick them all off. Now, the first movie's victims seemed randomly picked, but there was a weird kind of logic to their selection. Michael saw and heard Laurie and little Tommy Doyle at his house, so that put them on his radar. He sees Laurie and her friends taunt him as he passes by. He kills a guy for his clothing, and Linda's boyfriend for possibly being an obstacle; he kills one dog for food and another because it was drawing attention. In Halloween II, he's just killing anybody who has the misfortune of being in the script, and it's just dull and becomes one of the lesser, routine slasher movies. (The most unnecessary kill of the entire movie is the teen on the phone at the beginning; there's absolutely no reason for Michael to kill her, and his springing into frame as if just launched from a jack-in-the-box looks silly as shit.) The movie is inconsistent with Laurie's state of recovery, Loomis is lost twiddling his thumbs until it's time to wrap the movie up, and characters have random Bouts of Stupid happen to them that makes Michael's job easier. Why is the hospital so damned empty anyway? Just Laurie, an infant and the kid with the razor in his mouth as patients, but way over-staffed in favor of Michael's kill list.

If there's one segment of the first movie I don't like, it's the scene(s) with Annie babysitting. They just linger on too long, her talking on the phone, locking herself in the laundry and so on, all while Michael walks back and forth in the background. It's meant to be suspenseful, but it's not interesting enough to maintain your interest and you're just bored. Well, Halloween II is practically that scene stretched for an entire movie. Take the scene with the security guard, where we're following his every move as he's supposed to be investigating the source of the dead phone-line. (We're even treated to him searching the dumpster -- searching the dumpster? -- and a ZINGING JUMP SCARE as a cat jumps out at him. The old cat jumping out and scaring a character/not scaring the audience was a cliche even in the '40s.)

One last thing: the character of Jimmy Lloyd, who takes an interest in Laurie even though she's a teenager and he's well out of college and it's OK. We know nothing about this guy, but we're meant to care about him. He's also a total bonehead and later on gives Laurie's location away to Michael by passing out and falling onto the horn of the car Laurie's hiding in. That's the last we see of old Jimmy in the movie, folks. Well, unless you've seen the movie on TV with the alternate ending where he joins Laurie in the ambulance and a budding romance is hinted at. That's weird and all, but not as weird as Halloween 4 picking up on this alternate/deleted scene and having Danielle Harris' Jamie Lloyd be the daugher of Laurie and Jimmy, something you'd NEVER know if you hadn't seen the alternate ending or heard about it. Why'd they do that? Reminds me of the way Superman Returns was built off of the then-unseen Richard Donner cut of Superman II.

TO BE CONTINUED...

John Carpenter's Halloween (aka "The Good One")

In the 1990s, I was fairly obsessed with the Halloween franchise. I owned the tapes, watched them a bunch. I made my mom reserve this lifesize cardboard cutout Michael Myers VHS display from Blockbuster, which she will probably still complain about what a pain it was fitting it in our car if reminded about it. I had a pretty pricey Don Post Michael Myers mask and went trick or treating as Michael Myers quite a few times. (I did my best George Wilbur zombie waltz. Why Wilbur? No particular reason. Wilbur was the latest Myers, it's not like he was my favorite.)

I was never as into the Halloween series as I was the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, but I was still snobbish at that point about the Friday the 13ths and those types of movies, and thought Halloween stood well above those. The franchise had been in a dry spell when I got into them. It was a pretty lengthy amount of time between Part 5 and Part 6, and I remember being SO excited to see Part 6 in the theater and just sitting there in horror at how goddamn terrible it was. But, for as bad as that movie is, my love for the franchise remained. Believe it or not, even worse entries would come along and finish the job that not even the truly terrible Part 6 could manage -- kill my love for the franchise. Kill it dead. Kill it to the point where I not only feel nothing for the franchise, but I became a bigger Jason Voorhees fan over time. (Yes, at this point, I'd probably pop in a turd like Jason Takes Manhattan over even the best of the Halloween franchise.)

So, the Halloween franchise hasn't been on my mind for a while. But I recently picked up the producer's cut of Halloween 6 on Blu-ray because I've heard so much about it over the years (and didn't care enough to sit through the bootlegs that had been the only option to see it until now). And then I watched H20, which I used to think highly of, but the vicious killer known as Shit Sequel has even diminished my love for that one. (And Shit Sequel has had quite a way with the Halloween franchise. Quite a way.) I used to love these movies, think so highly of them, have such fun with them. With the pain and embarrassment of the remake a fading memory, could I again find enjoyment in the original movies? So, I decided to revisit the franchise. Would I feel a flicker of my past feelings? Would I manage to not enjoy the movies even more? Let's find out in part 1 of a 10-part entry.

JOHN CARPENTER'S HALLOWEEN (None of this "Halloween 1978" shit. There's only one first Halloween movie, and that's John Carpenter's.)

The classic, the one with the most genuine scares. Being a classic, being synonymous with the actual holiday, it's one of the most-killed horror movies, so over-familiarity puts some shackles on it. It's not the deepest movie, but it's good at what it does, it features some iconic performances and some fun, relatable teen characters. (I feel like the only fan who appreciates Nancy Loomis' droll performance as the jaded Annie.) Carpenter is good at squeezing out suspense, but squeeze it he does -- there's a couple of segments that go on just a little too long, in my opinion, but not enough to damage the movie. (No, no. That's a job left to the sequels.)

Nick Castle's Michael Myers is also the best Myers. He's slow, as the role requires for whatever reason, but he moves quickly when he needs to. His Michael feels the most "normal," seeming angry and frustrated, just lashing out in attack, rather than some of the other Michael's calculated robotic movements. Castle's movements and body language makes for a Michael you can be scared of, not one you laugh at because his victim is two states over by the time he crosses the street.

I also think Donald Pleasence comes across best in this movie. Loomis here is all determination and urgency, but also a bundle of jittery nerves. Everything we know about Michael Myers comes from Carpenter's creepy yet dressed up speeches made by Loomis, and Pleasence always knows how to deliver those and more. The "Loomis Speeches" here are effective at how they convey Michael's viciousness, but also Loomis' terror at failing to ever get through to or hold onto his patient. A lot of the sequels don't quite get the Loomis Speech right again, they just become watered down riffs of his dialogue here, and they're never quite as effective and they really push Loomis and his whole Loomis Speeching into self-parody, which unfortunately backwashes even onto this one.

One last thing I'd like to say is that when I just rewatched this movie, I chose to watch it on VHS. The coloring is murky -- sometimes TOO damn dark to really see anything -- but, man, it really helps sell the atmosphere of the movie. When Laurie's walking around Haddonfield, it looks like a grey, gloomy fall day. When I've seen this movie on DVD or on TV, it's a crisp, restored version that makes Haddonfield seem constantly sunny. The crisp picture is nice and all, especially being able to see more moments of Michael looming (I never knew until the DVD that he's staring at Laurie and her friends as he drives by them), but not at the expense of atmosphere.

TO BE CONTINUED...