John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN is my favorite film of all time, of any genre. My favorite sequel, much to many a friend’s dismay, is the third installment. That’s right, haters, HALLOWEEN III – SEASON OF THE WITCH. The one everyone loves to hate (well, most everyone) for leaving out you know who. So in celebration of one of the most unfairly hated on films of the ’80’s, here’s a selection of poster images. Enjoy, you can leave your hate mail in the comment section!

Halloween is a chance to be a kid again.  It’s a chance to be whoever you want to be.  Dress up, play the part, have fun.  A few days before Hollow’s Eve this year, it was a chance for a handful of creative Athenians to put on their directing boots and recreate the classic horror film Halloween.  The result was an hour and a half of amusing, haphazard fun.

A friend and I weren’t sure what we were getting ourselves into when we heard of Halloween: Live!  It was kept pretty low-key around town, so I was particularly stunned when I met my friend outside and saw people pouring in from all directions.  Hipster college kids, townies and everyone in between were coming out of the woodwork to see this production.

We made our way inside, through the swarms of people, and hurried to find a seat in the Lab at Cine.  We were certainly one of the lucky ones, as more than 200 people squeezed into a room with probably 75 chairs (not sure how this event passed fire code regulations; claustrophobics need not participate). People flanked the walls and took shelter on the floor, all ready to watch the live version of Halloween.

As we all got comfortable sitting on top of our neighbors, the idea of Halloween: Live! finally became clear.  John Carpenter’s 1978 classic horror flick, where an indestructible Michael Myers bumbles around a sleepy town offing teenagers on Halloween, was projected in front of the audience with no sound.  A crew of 13 brave souls ambitiously attempted to recreate the entire soundtrack of the film– the score as well as the voices of the characters.

The cast of  seven sat at the front of the room facing a small television playing the film simultaneously with the big screen.  Fortunately, each had a script in front of them and a microphone. Impressively, most cast members dutifully orated more than one character’s voice.  Next to them were the four members of the pit orchestra and the two people handling sound effects.  They were a talented bunch of folks, tackling an enormous affair for the (free!) viewing pleasure of others.
The famous score sounded amazing in the hands of Jeff Tobias, Mat Lewis, Luke Fields and Robert Gunn.  It sounded flawless and perfectly in sync with the movie.  The sound effects were beautifully done as well.  Their detail was really impressive: footsteps on grass, rain on the windshield, birds chirping.  All of it came together brilliantly.  Of course, there were mishaps like a lack of thunder, a missing creak of an opening door or complete silence when someone was moving around.  But overall, the music and sound effects were tremendously orchestrated.

The characters’ voices were less exact than the sound, but considering the feat at hand that was to be expected.  Their mouths and the crew’s voices were mismatched a good amount, and if this were a boys versus girls contest, the girls definitely would have won in terms of accuracy.  A fabulous Amy Whisenhunt, who was barely off cue the entire movie, voiced main character Laurie Strode, and Erin Lovett did an equally stellar job as the voice of Annie Brackett.  Dr. Loomis, voiced by John O’Loughlin, and Sheriff Leigh Brackett, voiced by Ryan Lewis, were less precise.  It was awesome to watch the mouths match up perfectly with the film, but when they were seriously off it was comical.

One of the funniest parts of the reenactment was the voices of the kids in the movie.  The kids in the film were not more than 7 years old, but they were voiced by men and women in their 20s or 30s.  It was hilarious to hear an adult man’s voice in the mouth of a little boy.  The sole sex scene in the film ranked as the funniest moment of all (“I love how fast you are” was an improvised line.)

The climax of the film, when Mike Meyers tries to kill Laurie, was disappointing.  Whisenhunt just didn’t have the vocal chords for this series of attacks; too much quiet whimpering, not enough hysterical screaming.  Another cast member should have leaned over and said, “Someone’s trying to kill you!” Maybe the reminder would have encouraged more passion in the screams.

Halloween: Live! was a roaring trip through the 1978 classic horror movie.  The key to its success was the crew’s ability to take their bold mission seriously without discouraging the comedy of it all.  The night was full of laughs and it was the perfect predecessor to Halloween night.

-Maggie Summers

 

She's just seen her blind date...

HORROR WEEK at the LL-Publications Blog

Counting down to the release of THE HOLLOWS on Friday 20th November

What scares you the most? Which horror icon is the one that keeps you coming back for more? Who’s the King of Horror? Zombies, Werewolves, Vampires, even Aliens?

Or is there one character you’d definitely hate to meet in a dark alley, your dreams,  or a mist-shrouded graveyard? Perhaps it’s Freddie, Jason, Frankenstein’s monster, Michael Myers, Chucky, the IT clown?

Personally I recall watching the original Alien when it was released. Scared the utter crap out of me. I actually nightmared the whole movie that night and woke up bathed in sweat!

So who hits the fear factor for you?

Jim Brown

LL-Publications

HEIMLICH MANEUVER
You’re doing wrong.

(“Michael Myers”)

Picture by: dunno source Caption by: dunno source via Loldog Builder

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Last night, my girl and I watched the modern take on the ’80s classic horror flick, Halloween.  This new permutation of the Michael Myers tale, given life by the skillfully twisted mind of musician/director Rob Zombie.  I can honestly admit i had never listened to his music, and had previously refused to see anything he put to the screen.  This was simply out of some snobbish distaste for his seemingly whorish attention-getting behavior on stage, and what I perceived to be self-aggrandizing grotesquery in the brief trailers I saw for films like, “The house of a 1,000 Corpses,” and “The Devil’s Rejects.”

I was surprised to hear from many viewer reviews online, that ‘Zombie’ had remade one of the mainstays of 1980’s slasher movies into a laudable combination of a respectful homage and a fresh and uncomfortably lurid perspective.  I wouldn’t have paid theater prices for it, but for fifty cents at the rental store, I was pleasantly satisfied with the cost/return ratio.  We had dinner (fast food) and a movie for less than the cost of two matinee tickets, so any sort of successful entertainment on the behalf of the film was an added bonus.  I got far more than I bargained for, however.

The added gift of a rivulet of contemplation made the entire evening all the more profitable.  I adore movies that make me think, and though Halloween isn’t an intellectual juggernaut on celluloid, it does pose some very intriguing questions about how violent and socially deviant behavior incubates.  It also provokes deeper thought on the dynamics of family, both dysfunctional and overly Rockwellian, as well as the various incarnations that concepts of guilt and innocence may take in any given psyche.  Whether or not Mr. Zombie set out with these undercurrents in mind, his film delivers them nonetheless, to those who care to ignore the incessant presence of “fuck” in the script, and the metronomic quality of boob scenes.

*More psychological analysis to come, but it’s time to eat breakfast and read the paper with my girl…

Bom galera o Halloween já passou, muita gente já curtiu festas sobre esse tema que nada  tem a ver com nossa cultura, mas que sempre acaba se fazendo presente nos finais de Outubro principalmente por motivos comerciais.

Escrever sobre games de terror em épocas perto da comemoração do Halloween ou em uma sexta-feira 13 é bastante oportuno ou clichê. Mas aproveitei o embalo e também o fato de ter terminado a pouco tempo o excelente Silent Hill 3, para escrever um pouco sobre os games de terror, o gênero chamado “Survival Horror” que é composto por games que tem a intenção de assustar o jogador, assim como filmes já fazem a muito tempo.

Muitos gamers mais novos podem achar que o gênero de games  Survival Horror surgiu com o lançamento de Resident Evil em 1996. De fato  Resident Evil  foi um game que marcou, teve grande popularidade ajudou a definir um gênero de jogos. Porém o mundo dos games começou a explorar o tema “terror” desde o começo da década de 1980, ainda no Atari 2600, ou apenas Atari  nós brazucas.

A idéia desse especial é mostrar vários games que surgiram em diversas épocas  com objetivo dar sustos  e ao mesmo tempo entreter os jogadores. Então é hora conferir a primeira parte desse especial e encarar uma viagem por cemitérios,criptas,mansões esquecidas, cidades abandonadas e se preparar para encarar zumbis, vampiros , demônios e mais um monte de criaturas das sombras.

Produção: Wizard Games

Lançamento: 1983

Plataforma: Atari 2600

Pois é , embora os games de terror só tenham recebido uma classificação própria na geração 32 Bits ,  fato é que desde o Atari 2600, os fabricantes aproveitam para lançar games explorando esse segmento. Na minha pesquisa para esse especial , descobri coisas que nem esperava e uma delas é o game Haloween, lançado em 1983 para o Atari 2600, o jogo é baseado no filme homônimo de 1978, que tinha como destaque o assassino Michael Myers. O jogo foi produzido  pela Wizard Games, uma divisão da Wizard vídeo, empresa que possuía os direitos de distribuição em VHS das séries Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Massacre da Serra Elétrica) e Halloween.

Claro que com o crescimento da indústria de games e o Atari 2600 em alta, os  nossos amigos da Wizard Videos não poderiam deixar de capitalizar em cima do público que assistia aos filmes e o logo criaram um divisão da empresa para produzir jogos baseados nos filmes. Sim !  Mais de 20 anos atrás empresas já tentavam lançar games baseados em filmes e o resultados em geral  são como os de hoje,  games de medianos a ruins.

No jogo  você assume o controle de uma garota que trabalha como babá  e terá que salvar crianças que estão espalhadas pelas salas de uma casa, antes que nosso amigo serial killer Michael Myers acabe com elas. O game segue desta forma até que jogador perca todas as suas vidas, pois como vários games do Atari, a dificuldade aumentava e o game seguia infinitamente, assim como o clássico enduro.

Quando o jogador era pego, a garota tinha sua cabeça cortada e ficava com o corpo correndo e jorrando sangue (Sim a violência está nos games desde os primórdios!).

Por aqui o jogo foi chamado de Sexta- Feita 13(????????).  Não entendi como  colocaram o título dos filmes de Jason no game de  Michael Myers. Mas enfim, devido aos “incríveis gráficos” do game, não faria diferença se fosse Michael Mayers, Jason Voorhees, um carregador de mudanças ou qualquer mané de vestindo um macacão cinza.

Engraçado que mesmo nos Estados Unidos o game foi lançado de forma bastante sem vergonha, pois nem ao menos uma ilustração do game havia no cartucho, apenas havia  um papel escrito “Halloween” em um pilot cor de abóbora.  Mas sério a embalagem do game tão era safada  que parecia até aqueles DVDs/CDs que todo mundo já comprou no camelo pela grande oferta de 3 por R$ 10,00.

Porém havia também uma  versão que possuía capa, embora depois de muito analisar não conseguir entender  do que se trata a imagem na capa do game, se alguém tiver uma idéia pode falar.

Mas brincadeiras a parte, o game até que funcionava bem para época que foi lançado, tinha a inconfundível trilha sonora do filme e também por ter uma das primeiras cenas de violência da história dos games e explorar o tema terror.

Review do Angry Video Game Nerd

Sweet Home

Produção: Capcom

Lançamento: 1989

Plataforma: NES

Agora vamos falar do game que segundo Shinji Mikami, foi a fonte de inspiração para o projeto  Resident Evil, no game o jogador assume o controle de 5 personagens vão até a mansão de um famoso pintor para fazer um documentário  sobre sua vida e  suas obras de arte que permanecem no local, mas acabam sendo pegos pelo espírito da esposa do pintor e aí que começam os problemas para os personagens.

O game apresenta uma visão aérea  é possível escolher  entre vários personagens, cada um com uma habilidade distinta que ajudará o jogador a encarar as dificuldades do game , como a enfermeira que carrega kits médicos que ajudam a curar o seu time ou ainda a menina carrega uma chave especial que pode abrir diversas portas especiais, os combates são feitos por no estilo RPG, por turnos com o jogador podendo selecionar opções como atacar , defender e fugir.

Interessante as semelhanças entre Resident Evil e Sweet Home, o fato de ambos passarem em uma mansão no meio da floresta, aqueles “loads safados” disfarçados de cenas de portas abrindo. E  claro zumbis também aparecem nos dois games, interessante  ver como  a Capcom quase 10 anos após o lançamento de Sweet Home usou muitas influências desse game antigo em Resident Evil , que foi o game qual definiu e popularizou o gênero Survival Horror.

Sweet Home nunca foi lançado fora do Japão, por isso quase ninguém conheceu o game, ainda mais aqui no Brasil. Mas se tem curiosidade vale a pena pegar um emulador de NES, pois hoje não é difícil encontrar uma ROM de Sweet Home traduzida para inglês.

Dê uma olhada em como é o game

Sexta- Feira 13

Produção: Galoob

Lançamento:1988

Plataforma: NES

Se games baseados em filmes de terror estavam ficando populares nosso amigo Jason, o apreciador de grandes facas afiadas não poderia ficar de fora disso. Pois se Michel Myers tinha um game, porque o assassino de Cristal Lake também não teria um? Toda a ação do game acontece no acampamento do Lago Cristal, morada de Jason, onde o jogador deverá andar por diversos caminhos do parque para salvar seus amigos do afiado facão de Jason.

O game tem uma jogabilidade 2D, dividida duas partes,em  uma delas em que o jogador anda  por várias trilhas do acampamento do Parque Cristal  procurando chalés onde possa resgatar seus amigos de Jason. Essa parte lembra um pouco o clássico Ghosts and Ghouls, porém com gráficos mais coloridos. Já a outra parte da jogabilidade acontece  dentro dos chalés onde a visão muda para as costas do personagem e o jogador resolve pequenos quebra cabeças antes de enfrentar Jason.  O jogo foi considerado por muita gente na época bem difícil, destaque para as aparições extremamente apelonas do Jason que muitas vezes surgia de repente e com uma velocidade 10 vezes maior que a de seu personagem.

Video

Nightmare on Elm Street

Produção: Rare

Lançamento:1990

Plataforma: NES

Nightmare on Elm Street é o título original de  “A Hora do Pesadelo”, série de filmes criada por Wes Craven, que tem como vilão e principal personagem o  vilão Freddy Krueger, imortalizado pelo ator Robert Englund.

Bom, se Michel Myers e Jason Voorhees tinham seus jogos,obviamente  Freddy Krueger como ícone de filmes de terror da década de 80 também deveria  também deveria ter o seu.

O game colocava o jogador na pele de um jovem que deve  encarar Freddy, para sair do pesadelo . O game tem a jogabilidade voltada para o gênero plataforma e ação porque é necessário ser bastante preciso nos pulos, principalmente para recolher os itens que muitas vezes ficam em lugares difíceis de alcançar e para terminar as fases era necessário coletar todos os ossos de Freddy espalhados pelo local. No início você conta apenas com socos para encarar  inimigos como aranhas gigantes, ratos, morcegos, esqueletos e zumbis , mas com o passar do game o jogador pode conseguir power ups que podem transformar seu personagem em feiticeiro ou ninja para tentar facilitar as coisas.

Nightmare on Elm Street mostrou alguns conceitos interessantes como em fases dentro das casas do rua Elm onde se sua energia , chegasse a zero o game iniciava o modo pesadelo, onde os inimigos mudavam e a fase ficava bem mais difícil, tudo bem que algo semelhante já havia sido feito em Castlevania II: Simons Crest, outra característica interessante era o fato de até 4 pessoas poderem participar das partidas.  O game tem alguns problemas principalmente ligados a falta de precisão nos saltos e poder muito ruin de encarar os inimigos sem os Power ups.  Mas caso tenha um emulador de NES no seu PC vale a pena dar uma conferida no game e encarar mais um pesadelo de Freddy.

Video

Alone in the Dark

Produção: Infogrames (Atualmente Atari)

Lançamento 1992

Plataformas: PC , MAC , 3DO

O primeiro game desta série é considerado o pioneiro do gênero survival horror por ter características como cenários pintados e personagens em gerados em 3D. Ok os personagens eram feios pra caramba, mas lembrem-se, estávamos em 1992 com PCs 386/486, então isso pode ser considerado um grande feito.

A história conta que Jeremy Hartwood cometeu suicídio na Mansão Decerto na Louisiana, você assume o controle de Edward Carnby, um detetive particular e Emily Hartwood , sobrinha de Jeremy , para tentar descobrir o que aconteceu  e desvendar os mistérios do local. Durante o game vários elementos  que se tornaram populares com Resident Evil e viraram padrão estão lá, como criaturas quebrando janelas, inimigos surgindo de repente, itens encontrados em um lugar e utilizados em outro lugar distante, câmeras colocadas em lugares estratégicos, além da parte sonora que funcionava muito bem, colocando músicas tensas nos momentos onde surgiam as criaturas.

Primeiro Alone in the Dark era baseado nos livros do escritor H.P Lovecraft e ainda teve duas continuações produzidas pela mesma equipe da Infogrames Alone in the Dark 2 que embora tivesse gráficos melhores,  não foi muito bem recebido pela crítica e por jogadores por causa de seus problemas de jogabilidade, principalmente com o sistemas de câmeras ruin.  Já Alone in the Dark 3 manteve os mesmo gráficos, porém com o game mais fluído e com mais velocidade, mas com poucas inovações apenas repetindo o que já havia sido feito nos episódios anteriores da série.

Alone in the Dark mais tarde ainda teve o episódio The New Nightmare lançado para PS1 e PS2 e uma nova versão chamada apenas Alone in the Dark, que foi lançada para PS3, X360 e PC, mas falarei dessas versões em outra oportunidade.

Vídeo

Isso aê , essa foi a primeira parte do especial galera, espero que tenham curtido e podem postar pra dizer o que acharam,  até a próxima.

by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Little critical or fan attention has been expended upon the Halloween franchise outside of the first and second titles of the series and the latter additions. The general consensus is that after the conceptual shark-jump of Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1982), with its brazen rejection of not just the Michael Myers plot but the entire subgeneric slasher framework altogether, little of real interest happened until Jamie Lee Curtis returned once again as Laurie Strode in Halloween: H20 (Steven Miner, 1998). Rekindling audience fascination with The Shape, the franchise’s contemporary regeneration continued with Halloween: Resurrection (Rick Rosenthal, 2002) and Rob Zombies’ surprisingly intelligent “de-imagining” in 2007’s Halloween, and the recent follow-up, Halloween II.

By the 1980s the sheer proliferation of sequels had riddled the decade with remakes and rehashes of successful originals, anywhere up to 145 by one count. By virtue of this bulk, an unspoken ‘quality versus quantity’ divide became increasingly instilled in both fans and critics: not immune to the law of diminishing returns, the more sequels there were produced, it seemed, the less likely those films would be viewed to hold any critical value.  The original Halloween had earned a place in the critical canon by virtue of both its surprise success and its landmark historical placement as the film that launched the US slasher cinema wave of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Halloween II (1981) also garnered some critical interest – while not directed by Carpenter, he was still involved with the production and scriptwriting, thus providing a certain sense of authorial validity to the project (the inclusion of the stars of the original film, Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance also branded it a ‘genuine’ product).  But as the subgenre upped its output and increased its sequel numbers, the interest sparked by the first Halloween film rapidly fizzled outside of attacks of its assumed reactionary backlash to the supposed (but debatable) liberal glory days of the genre’s more celebrated heyday in the 1970s. David Bartholomew typified this position when he stated that  “the Eighties horror film was, in fact, dumb, even driving the decades-dependable formulas into outdated nonsense…The modern horror film has become instead simply a test of stamina: can one sit through this film without throwing up?”. These films, Bartholmew claims, destroyed any capacity for horror to contain ethical or political meaning, sacrificing themselves instead to what he holds is the comparatively worthless visual spectacle of gore and tits.

It is perhaps surprising, then, that the fourth film in the franchise contained very little of either. But by this time, it was too late: the small amount of critical attention that Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers did receive still sparked near instantaneous denunciation almost solely because of its status as a sequel.  In 1989, Steve Biodrowski at Cinefantastique dismissed the film as a feeble regurgitation of the franchises stronger earlier offerings. But there are significant deviations from the first two films of the cycle that render accusations that Halloween IV was merely churning out what Biodrowski called “the same old story” grossly unfounded. In fact, I argue that it is the precise manner in which Halloween IV strays from not only the rest of the films in the Halloween series, but from the popular 1980s subgenre as a whole, that render a re-evaluation both fruitful and long overdue. Halloween IV challenges the nature of and desire for basic narrative-propelling melodramatic structures of good/evil and categories such as the final girl, highlighting the precise reason that these ethical structures need to be clear for the rest of the subgenre to ‘work’.  The always-abundant psychoanalytic readings of the earlier Halloween films may be satisfactory, but Halloween IV clearly invites a different approach through its ambivalent representation of one of the franchises main thematic concerns: evil.

Rewatching Halloween IV

These absences and deviations manifest in the first few moments of Halloween IV.  As a point of comparison, it is useful to remember how earlier films begin: Halloween opens with a black screen with the words “Haddonfield, Illinois”, which then fades to the words “Halloween Night, 1963”.  Halloween II continues this pattern of clearly specifying spatial and temporal information in the first few moments: it opens with only the slightest alteration to update the spectator as to where the narrative intends to pick up. The first screen (again) specifies location (“Haddonfield, Illinois”), the second, time (“October 31. 1978”).  Even Halloween III provides this same information in its first seconds: “Northern California/ October, Saturday the 23rd”.  But in Halloween IV, while the letters on the black background specify the time – “October 30, 1988”, the location is surreptitiously absent.  For viewers familiar with the series, a significant disturbance to the spatial/temporal patterns established in previous films has already irrevocably occurred, even before the action starts – we do not know where we are, but we do know when we are there. The similarity of titles at the beginning of Halloween and Psycho has not been ignored. But while in Psycho they create a documentary tone, in Halloween they are easily dismissed one of many cute, intertextual homages to Hitchcock’s film.  This comparison of opening scenes between the earlier Halloween’s and Halloween IV may seem simplistic, but it’s meaning cannot be underappreciated. By omitting half of the information traditionally supplied in the films’ opening moments, Halloween IV subverts the traditions of the earlier films even.

Halloween IV cuts from a black screen announcing the date, and over a low- frequency, electronic hum, sounds of nature and music are introduced over a series of images that suggest a regional location (one riddled with ratty Halloween decorations).  This is a strong contrast to the images of suburban Haddonfield in the first two films; not only is it rural, it is unidentified and continues to be so even at the film’s conclusion.  We are “nowhere”. The following events suggest (perhaps) we are near the Ridgemount Federal Sanatorium, but this is an assumption based on “where else could it be?” rather than factual information (such as the direct transfer of text-based information in the earlier films).  The musical contrast provided in the opening moments of the first two films (the children singing the “Halloween night” rhyme in Halloween, “Mr Sandman” in Halloween II) are replaced by atmospheric mood music in Halloween IV. The sound design emphasises the natural environment as much as the non-diegetic musical accompaniment.

It is over this sequence that the opening credits roll.  While the first three films open with overtly non-diegetic opening sequences (Halloween II and Halloween III offer slight variations to the famous “pumpkin eye” sequence in the original film), the opening credit sequence of Halloween IV alludes (but never confirms) that what we see is part of the diegesis.  This sequence is drenched with a deliberate ambiguity: we never find out where this space is, whether it is part of the film’s world or an externalised addition to it. Thus the initial moments of Halloween IV destabilize the earlier films: time here may be definable, but this time around, space is undetermined from the outset.

The credit sequence ends as night falls, and an ambulance weaves through a deserted road to arrive at the Ridgemount Federal Sanatorium.  Clanging gates and uniforms indicate brutal institutionalism, and it is announced that the two white-coated guests the ambulance has brought (a man and a woman) wish to transport killer Michael Myers to Smith Grove (a name of instant significance to those familiar with the series as it is from here that Myers escapes in the beginning of the first Halloween film to begin the rampage that provided the story for the first and second films).  With a guard helpfully reminding us of who Myers is and what had happened in the first two films, via the Smith Grove attendants, we penetrate deeper into the Sanatorium until Myers is shown with his face wrapped in bandages (he was, of course, badly burnt in the climactic scene of Halloween II. Michael’s death-like pose suggests classic horror monsters: mummies and Frankenstein’s come to mind as much as from the outset invites comparison with Halloween IV.  Both films open with those at rest (the corpse in Frankenstein and the institutionalised Myers in Halloween IV) are being disturbed by medical science.  During the journey to Smith Grove, Myers springs to life (and to violent attack) after overhearing his nearest living relative is a young girl.  The killing of the male attendant is shown – Michael uses his hand to do so – but the action scene is cut short by a dramatic shift to seven-year-old Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris, who turns up as a friend of Rob Zombie’s final girl in his recent de-make) looking out of a window in a suburban house.  In a moment of ambiguity, she looks at an ambulance on the street that suddenly vanishes (it cannot be the ambulance Michael is in, surely, but then why show it?). Her foster sister, teenage Rachel Carruthers (Ellie Cornell) enters, scolding Jamie for being awake so late, thus establishing her position as caregiver. Jamie follows with a series of probing questions – does Rachel love her? Eleven months after her parents’ death, Jamie is clearly disoriented and lonely, and feels like an outsider. Her mother, we later discover via photos Michael discovers in a shoebox in Jamie’s room, is the Final Girl from Halloweenand Halloween II, Laurie Strode (Jamie Leigh Curtis). In this box, Jamie also keeps a photography of Michael himself as a small child, wearing his famous clown outfit – not only, therefore, does Jamie know what Michael wore when he murdered Judy Myers, she also identifies him as “family”.  In what is soon exposed to be a dream sequence, Jamie says her prayers and goes to bed (after walking past her dressing table, repeating her image in its three mirrors, but is attacked by Myers – the literal boogeyman underneath the bed.  The plot information communicated in this sequence is vital to the film’s concluding ‘twist’: Jamie is clearly a troubled child who feels excluded and an inconvenience to her foster family.

Jolting to a cheery, festive outdoor suburban street scene, we are returned to the familiar location of the earlier series openings and the titles that were so notably absent from the film’s opening moments are finally shown, restoring a sense of balance: “Haddonfield/ 31 October/ Halloween”.  Finally, we now know both where we are and when. But what we knew immediately in Halloween and Halloween II takes over ten minutes to confirm in Halloween IV: these aspects of delay become increasingly crucial to the film thematically. It is this point that Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasance, returning to his famous role) discovers that Myers has escaped from the ambulance, he provides what has by now become Loomis’ trademark view on Myers Calling him “it”, he reminds us that Michael is no “ordinary prisoner, we are talking about evil on two legs”. Evil” as pronounced by Loomis with a heavy emphasis on the ”e” – as opposed to “evil” – is vital in the Halloween series (and arguably all slasher films). This “Evil” is pantomime morality, an excessive and arguably hollow signifier of a more complex ethical framework.

In a parallel scene to when Laurie Strode’s male babysitting charge Tommy is teased at school in Halloween, Jamie is teased by other children who sing, “The Boogeyman is going to get you!”.  The superficial motive for this attack is her blood ties to Myers: while Tommy is teased about being threatened by the boogeyman, Jamie is teased because she was aligned with the bogeyman (“Jamie’s uncle’s the boogeyman!”).  This harassment soon sets its sights on her mother’s death. Evoking the image of bandage-clad Myers in earlier in the film (and, more broadly, with more classical horror iconography), one boy states “Jamie’s mommie is a mummy!”.  Where Tommy trips and falls, Jamie instead runs to a lamppost where she consoles herself out loud, repeating “You’re ok” – and notably, she IS ok. While delicate, Jamie can clearly take care of herself, an element pivotal in defining slasher’s Final Girl character.  While Rachel’s age and role as caregiver suggest her for the position, Halloween IV indicates early in the film that this occupation may feasibly be shared between the two girls.

Loomis travels from Ridgemount to Haddonfield and confronts Myers at Penney’s gas station. We see Myers murder a haggard mechanic and discover with Loomis the body of a woman at the counter of the store and the hanging body of another man in the garage.  Loomis sees Myers in the kitchen through a doorway and shoots at him repeatedly, front on. But, in a peculiar shot suggesting more a hall of mirrors than anything else, Myers suddenly vanishes. His shifting prowess has been observed in past films, but here we have an added reason to doubt Loomis’ perception of events; Dr Hoffman has already stated his belief that Loomis “is the one who needs psychiatric help”, and Loomis’ manic behaviour does little to negate this.

Meanwhile, in another ominous foreshadowing of the film’s conclusion, Jamie chooses a costume at the store identical to the one Myers wore in the famous opening sequence of Halloween.  Jamie holds the outfit up to herself in the mirror, but it is a young Myers whose reflection she sees.  She is then attacked from behind by the adult Myers and falls, shattering the mirror.  Rachel runs when she hears Jamie scream, but dismisses Jamie’s declaration that the “nightmare man…is coming to get me”, telling the child she “probably just saw a mask” that scared her. The sequence ends with a shot of Myers’ reflection in numerous shards of broken mirror on the floor.

Determined to get to Haddonfield, the hitchhiking Loomis is mocked by a car full of boisterous cheerleaders and accepts a ride with alcoholic, self-proclaimed preacher Mr Sawyer, with whom numerous parallels to Loomis are drawn. Calling Loomis a “fellow pilgrim”, he identifies that both men share their occupation of “hunting the apocalypse”.  Clearly eccentric, the two men are allies: Loomis’ pursuit of Myers is not only futile (he refers to this frequently throughout Halloween IV), but by this stage it is an evangelical obsession founded on his belief of a Manichean moral universe, where Myers can only be understood on a near transcendental level as absolute evil.

As a medical doctor, science had failed and disillusioned Loomis: he cannot conquer (let alone ‘cure’) his boogeyman, deserting secular empiricism for a near medieval religious fervour.  Like Frankenstein and those in horror who follow this lineage, Loomis is a classic mad doctor.  In both Halloween and Halloween II, he literally saves the day (not to mention the girl). He is a dominant, strong figure in the first two films, and it his sense of the true threat of Myers and his drive to action enough to render him the closest the films have to an alpha male.  But this all but collapses in Halloween IV, rendering him as little more than a sad, obsessed old man chasing if not windmills, then a killer he himself admits is beyond redemption and unable to be contained. More importantly, Loomis’ identity has itself become just as inextricably linked with Myers as Victor Frankenstein’s was with his monster.  Loomis is defined through his opposition to Myers, and the simplicity of this relationship is near Cartesian: StompTokyo.com observes, Loomis “departs in pursuit of the killer, because that’s what he does”.

Halloween and Halloween II establish a simple binary opposition of good and evil are played out in a frequently violent and graphic battle.  But in Halloween IV, the increasing hysteria of Dr Loomis in the first two films is exaggerated to a point of insanity. Mr Sawyer’s spirituality is offered as a point of comparison – he may have “I believe the bible” and “I Heart Jesus” bumper stickers and sing hymns, but he is clearly an obsessive drunk rather than a spiritual crusader.  Loomis, as a “fellow pilgrim”, may speak of destroying evil, but like Mr Sawyer it is impotent posturing rather than actual moral or spiritual action that unites them.  Any potential of Loomis’ heroism exhibited in the final scenes of the first two films, as a figurative ‘white knight’, has vanished – rather, he is now a jester figure.

Halloween IV’s Haddonfield is also riddled with duplicity. The film is littered with mirrors and reflections, and – in the case of the ambulance and Myers in the gas station – of images that may or may not be real.  But there are further deceptions – Brady returns to the Meeker’s house to have sex with Kellie despite his pleas to Rachel that “it’s not what you think” (it is, in fact, precisely what she thinks).  Mr and Mrs Carruthers’ need Rachel to babysit so they can elicit promotion from Mr Carruthers boss.  And, seeing Jamie’s costume, the school children that had only hours before teased her now ask her to accompanying them on their trick-or-treating endeavours.

These themes of duplicity and disorientation are most dramatically represented when the separated Jamie and Rachel are reunited and placed in the police car by Meeker and Loomis. Michael Myers appears simultaneously three times, surrounding the car.  Loomis reflects the viewers’s confusion and panic, but as Meeker raises his gun it is discovered that these are merely teenagers skylarking in Myers outfits.  Laughingly they run away, but Loomis (and the spectator) remain shaken: in Halloween IV we cannot trust what we see.  As the three faux-Myers flee and Meeker’s car drives away, the ‘real’ Myers appears behind the car watching them as they leave.

Loomis and Meeker discover that there has been a massacre at the police station in their absence.  Peculiarly, in what could quite easily be the film’s visceral showpiece, the action of the (at least) three killings occurs solely off-screen.  We see the aftermath: there has obviously been mass destruction, but we only see one body.  Bereft of a police force, Loomis provokes a mob to find and kill Myers, with “Beer Belly” Earl in control. The mob sees Myers in a park and shoot, only to discover they have in fact killed Ted Hollister.  The crazed mob again draws parallels with Frankenstein – while on a rampage they adamantly believe morally sound (they as good versus monster as bad), their own criminal and immoral actions throw moral questions back onto society itself, inviting a reassessment of terms such as ‘monster’ and ‘evil’.

Sheriff Meeker’s house failure as a makeshift fortress is twofold, as not only is Myers already in the house, it is not just he who poses a threat inside the walls.  As Rachel confronts Kellie in the kitchen about Brady, an angered, Rachel throws hot coffee on Kellie’s crotch.  This sequence initiates the climactic sequence of killings. Kellie takes coffee to Logan but instead discovers his body (again, murdered off-camera – we see his head which appears to have been decapitated). The figure she talks to as Logan is Myers sitting in Logan’s chair: Kellie is attacked by Myers with a gun, but instead of shooting her she is impaled through the stomach by the barrel. This is shown on-camera.

As Myers makes his way upstairs to find Jamie, he encounters Brady. Brady attempts to shoot Myers, but cannot use a gun – he instead (like Myers) uses it as non-firing weapon, hitting Myers with the handle.  When the gun is taken from him he resorts to fisticuffs.  Myers kills Brady with his hands, breaking his neck on camera. Myers continues to follow Rachel and Jamie to the attic – it is here at this late stage that we see Myers first reach for his traditionally signature butcher’s knife, significantly over one hour into the film.

The girls climb onto the roof, where Rachel tries to save Jamie by tying electrical cord around her and delivering her to the ground below, but Myers pushes Rachel off the roof before Jamie is safe. Jamie makes her own way to the ground (notably she does not even need Rachel’s protection, undermining Rachel’s assumed position as solo Final Girl). Jamie cries “Come alive, Rachel”, but Rachel does not “come alive”, so Jamie runs decides in true Final Girl fashion to take action into her own hands.  She and Loomis flee to the schoolhouse, where Myers appears and attacks Loomis. But Rachel also appears (‘magically’, seemingly blessed with the same shifting skills as Myers himself) and attacks Myers.

Myers’ final scene in the film shows him appearing from under the truck that carries the mob gleaming knife first and escaping girls to attack the three men standing in the back of the truck. He then pushes Earl through the driver’s window. Notably, he uses not the knife but his other hand to kill Earl (again, he kills using his own hand, literally ripping at Earl’s throat, shown on camera – unusual considering he is actually holding a knife at the time). After Rachel has flung Myers across her bonnet, he rises to stand in front of the car (knife clearly visible in the headlights), and Rachel slams on the breaks. Continuing with the references to Frankenstein, unseen to the police and Rachel, Jamie has moved to Myers’ body, where she touches his hand in a moment evocative of the Monster in Frankenstein first meeting the little girl Maria. Various issues concerning virtue are raised by this moment of comparison – not only concerning the nature of monstrosity but also, by association, the nature of innocence.  A hysterical Rachel screams for Jamie to move as Myers reanimates, but he is again gunned down by the police and falls into an unused mine that lies just behind him.

The final sequence of the film cannot be undervalued in terms of this location of virtue and monstrosity. As Mrs Carruthers runs a bath for Jamie, the opening sequence from the first Halloween is repeated: first-person camera takes over walking through the house, the field of vision divided again into three sections – a predominantly black screen with two circles (eye holes) of vision, as if seen through the eyes of the mask. Scissors are picked up and Mrs Carruthers is attacked. Both narrative and technical aspects indicate that this is meant to be Myers.  Mrs Carruthers’s scream draws the gathered crowd from downstairs to the bottom of the stairwell where they meet not Michael, but Jamie in an identical pose (and identical, heavily blood-stained clown outfit) as young Michael in the first film.  In the most significant moment in the film (and arguably of the entire series), Loomis screams “No!” repeatedly, and aims to shoot Jamie only to be restrained by Meeker.  The film ends with Loomis’ repeated screams fading into the credit music, Jamie standing in tableaux just as Michael had in the original scene.

Rethinking Halloween IV:

In slasher, the scream functions most commonly in two ways; it operates in terms of a reaction (such as seeing a dead or maimed body), or it operates as a primal utterance of fear of bodily harm to the self.  Dr Loomis’ final scream in Halloween IV, however, is neither of these.  Rather, it punctuates the precise crisis of the film; it is an existential scream.  Increasingly questioned throughout Halloween IV is Loomis’ determination to protect innocence from monstrosity, and the instant that innocence becomes monstrous the collapse of the moral universe in the film is complete.  It has been frequently threatened, challenged and weakened throughout the film, but it is Loomis’ scream and the negation “No! No! No! No!” that capsulates the angst of realising the ethical framework has collapsed.  It is this moment in Halloween IV where the patriarchal dominance of defining the moral universe ceases to control the narrative; not only has Loomis failed to protect virtue, but that the symbol of virtue itself is monstrous.

In the little that has been written on Halloween IV, few have offered an insight into the significance of this ending, seeing it primarily as existing primarily as a curious but hollow twist on the famous sequence from the first film.  Fangoria’s Michael Rowe suggests that Myers has ‘possessed’ Jamie, and while in the context of a horror film this would not be inconceivable, there is enough evidence in the film to suggest that troubled, lonely Jamie has other reasons to mimic her uncle’s behaviour.  Kim Newman writes in the Monthly Film Bulletin in 1989, it is only “in the last few moments, replicating the first moments of Halloween, does the film even try to come up with new twists on the old themes, and even here it is crippled by essentially dull film-making”. Again, this reading views the sequence as twist-for-twist’s sake, and apparently what is deemed poor execution ultimately defeats any search for further meaning.  But fans see these technical aspects quite differently.  Providing a curious model for comparison, StompTokyo.com judges the film an ultimate success based on its placement as the fourth sequel in a series: For example, instead of being compared to earlier Halloween films, Halloween IV thus competes with titles such as A Nightmare On Elm Street IV: The Dream Master (1988), Friday the Thirteenth: The Final Chapter (1984), and Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil. PitOfHorror.com says “it’s beautifully shot and competently performed…Halloween IV’s conclusion, had they run with the concept, would have altered the course of the entire series.”

But obviously Halloween V did not “run with the concept”.  According to Adam Rockoff, the motives for this were based on broader fan agitation making Stomp Tokyo and Pit of Horror’s  responses unrepresentative of broader contemporary fan responses. But despite Rockoff’s suggestion that  Halloween V ‘fixes’ the errors of its predecessor, the box office statistics he offers suggest this may not be quite as simple as he claims.  According to Rockoff. Halloween IV was made for US$5.5 million and grossed US$17 million, topping the box office for the first fortnight weekends following its release. Halloween V: The Revenge of Michael Myers, however, grossed only $11.5US million (Rockoff 172).  It is possible, as Rockoff alludes, that fans were so disappointed with Halloween IV that they simply did not have interest in seeing Halloween V. But perhaps the thought of sweet little girl Jamie as a killer, while “distasteful and ridiculous”, was simultaneously titillating, or at least intriguing.  That the series itself denied the possibility of Jamie as a killer in the following film – and that that film ultimately was less successful – suggests the possibility that the image of Killer Jamie as opposed to Virtuous Jamie may have contained more pleasure than Rockoff admits.

Past critical readings regarding the feminisation of the killer such as that by Carol J. Clover could be incorporated into a reverse Oedipal understanding of the relationship between Michael and Jamie.  But Jamie’s crisis is most immediately a moral one – the one thing she can find solace in (her family) is the one thing that literally threatens her. She is fascinated with Michael (she approaches his apparently dead body after he has been shot), but she cannot connect directly with him for fear that he will kill her. She can, however, connect symbolically – by wearing his clothing and by mimicking his actions.  Jamie is searching for a security she has not found it with the Carruthers’, despite their efforts, and as her immediate family, Michael is her only other available option.  As she cannot make a traditional connection with him, she finds another way: she shifts her moral allegiance from that of her unsatisfactorily “innocent” girl-victim protected by the insane Loomis, the genuine but still immature Rachel, and the murderous “beer belly” mob, to that of her powerful, undefeatable bogeyman uncle.

This simple equation may explain Jamie’s actions within the context of her character development, but when incorporated into the broader framework of the film it becomes far more complex.  Jamie’s moral classification is not a simple allegiance shift from one binary (good) to another (evil).  Halloween IV literally opens in No Man’s Land, and throughout the film nothing is ever as it appears to be.  Halloween, Halloween II and Halloween III all include direct footage of other horror films, a postmodern wink that indicates these films are knowingly aware of their status as horror films themselves. There are no such moments of postmodern smugness in Halloween IV; the comparisons to Frankenstein are thematic, not textual. There are killers, there are deceivers, and there are people beside Myers that can shift mysteriously.  There are doubles, triples, illusions.  Loomis is obsessive, mad, an impotent patriarch – little more than a drunk preacher ranting about evil.  In Halloween and Halloween II there is some potency to his urgency, the spectator has some investment in his desperation trying to convince the town how much of a threat Myers poses to them. But Haddonfield of Halloween IV needs little convincing: Loomis is at best superfluous. In generic terms, this redundancy can be compared best to John Wayne in The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), but as a lowly 4^th sequel in the franchise, little critical attention has been paid to this fact.

For Biodrowski, Halloween IV offers nothing new or significant because ultimately it shows no deviation from the traditional narrative core where “the virginal baby-sitter will survive; the promiscuous slut will die”. And since the original Halloween this model is frequently listed a defining aspect of the subgenre. True, ‘virginal babysitter’ Rachel does not get murdered, but considering Rachel’s goal was not to defeat Myers per se, but to protect and defend Jamie, it is arguable whether she has achieved anything at all.  Kellie is killed, and while the ‘promiscuous slut’ of the film (the only nudity and sex in the film is a short sequence with Kellie and Brady), the demographic breakdown of the ‘body count’ of Halloween IV suggests a far more complex situation than the puritanical crime-and-punishment model of earlier slasher  films.   Unarguably, Brady and Kellie engage in illicit sexual activity, and are murdered.  But their deaths are anomalous within the context of the film itself and the nature of the other killings.  It is established at the beginning of Halloween IV that Myers murdered sixteen people on Halloween night 1978 – the night that consists the bulk of Halloween and Halloween II.  Including Judy Myers the total is therefore seventeen across the first two films.  Virtually all of these murders are shown in frequently graphic detail, the rule of thumb being the younger (and more female) the victim, the more detail shown, the more intimate the camera work. Myers also stabs – most often with a knife, but often getting creative (such as the medical motifs in Halloween II).  Halloween IV, however, deviates drastically from these patterns on a number of levels.  The first murder shown is that of the male attendant in the ambulance – Myers kills him with his own hands, literally inserting his thumb through the man’s forehead (shown close up and in great detail).  But when Loomis and Dr Hoffman arrive at the scene of the ambulance crash, it is stated that there were four people aside from Myers in the ambulance – it is not clear how many bodies are found (“It’s hard to tell – they’re all chewed up”).  While it is the one body we have literally seen killed, in all probability it is meant to signify all four.  The next murder scene is at Penney’s gas station – the on-screen murder of the mechanic under the car is shown (impaled with a crow bar), but the bodies of another mechanic (Garth, hung by heavy chains from the roof of the garage) and an older female inside at the counter are shown – this is another three bodies.  There are, therefore, anywhere between four, and probably seven, corpses in Myers’ wake before he gets to Haddonfield. Loomis and Meeker discover the body of Jamie’s dog, Sunday, in a closet (the killing is not shown on camera but the body is shown).  Bucky, a worker at the power station, is picked up and physically thrown onto live electrical wires by Myers – his death is shown in graphic detail. The next murder is significantly not committed by Myers, but by Earl and the mob of “beer bellies” – they believe they are shooting Myers, but the figure is obscured (to them as well as to us), and the body is in fact that of Ted Hollister.  Not including Sunday, the body count currently stands at minimum six, probably nine – but only five, probably eight, committed by Myers.  The carnage at the police station is ambiguous and it is impossible to glean actual statistical information as the entire sequence happens off-camera.  There is a lot of blood and chaos, but only one corpse is shown.  There were previously three policemen (not including Meeker) in the station earlier in the film, but according to Loomis the bulk of the police was wiped out (“You haven’t got a police force!”).  Myers’ killing spree in Meeker’s house begins with Deputy Logan. His murder is not shown, but his body is.  ‘Promiscuous slut’ Kellie and transgressor Brady both have their deaths filmed completely on camera and in great detail.  After finally grabbing a knife, Myers attacks three “beer bellies” in the back of the truck and throws all of their bodies from the truck (these are shown as scuffles – it is unclear whether they have been stabbed or whether they have been just thrown from the truck).  Earl’s throat is literally ripped out by Myers.  This is Michael’s last murder in Halloween IV, but the final death (despite being “undone” in Halloween IV) is that of Mrs Carruthers, stabbed by Jamie.

Simply put, many assumptions about Halloween IV are unsupported by the text itself.  While Biodrowski’s narrative equation “the virginal baby-sitter will survive; the promiscuous slut will die” may be supported by Halloween, Halloween II and some other slashers, in Halloween IV to reduce the complex demographical information of the body count to this equation is glaringly ignorant of the film’s deeper structures.  Not including the massacre at the police station and Sunday the dog, there are seventeen murders in Halloween IV – the same body count as both of the first two films combined.  Including the police station victims, however, the body count is substantially increased.  Of those seventeen, only two victims can be considered to fall under the category of ‘punished’ teen, the same number that were murdered at the hands of people other than Myers himself.  There are also seven potential teen victims offered in the film; Rachel’s friend Lindsay, the two cheerleaders and their two male companions and Brady’s two friends in the store.  Traditionally, these would all be disposable victims, ripe for the proverbial slasher picking – teens of dubious morality that are given only the barest bones of character to indicate their status as little more than ‘slasher fodder’.  But all seven disappear from the film undeveloped and unscathed, blood red herrings.  What is of significance with the higher body count is that the number of on-screen killings is substantially less than the total number of corpses: even accepting the minimum deaths at the police station as three (the number of police shown in the building earlier in the film, minus Meeker who we see later), there are eleven killings shown on camera, four bodies shown on screen (while the murders were committed off camera) and at least two more policemen who we are only told have been murdered.  For a slasher film it is unusual that half of the killings have been committed off-screen, and the slasher himself does not commit two of those shown on-screen.  Nor, interestingly, are they committed by his traditionally signature knife – even in the sequence where he literally has a knife (the phallic darling of psychoanalytic readings) in his hand, he opts to use his other hand, committing what for all intents and purposes are ‘weaponless’ murders.

Halloween IV may prove unsatisfactory in this regard, as Myers’s frequently off-camera execution of evil is narratively and visually less dominant than we are traditionally used to it seeing in the slasher film.  But this confusion is part of what the film is about: we are meant to be confused, and our ability to identify familiar ethical structures is obscured by literal double vision. We see Myers everywhere – his reflection in a broken mirror, in the doorway of the gas station, we see three Myers surround Meeker’s car.  We see three Jamie’s in her bedroom mirror, we see Rachel die and spring back to life, we see Jamie morph into a young Myers not once but twice.  What we see in Halloween IV and what know in slasher to be good and evil collapse under the pressure of the films own ambiguities. Transcending the usual reversal of good and evil, in Halloween IV it is not a question of melodrama providing the twist, it is that it vanishes altogether as a viable moral framework for the Halloween universe.

In Halloween and Halloween II, pleasure (albeit titillating and/ or perverse) is gained through watching Myers kill.  By being denied these scenes, his position as evil is impacted more through what we believe about him rather than what we have actually witnessed.  The absence of these scenes does not lessen our indirect cognitive understanding of Myers as the killer, but it does remove our direct sensory experience of his crimes. While narrative indicates his body count in Halloween IV is numerically greater than his past spree, it simply does not feel like it; aside from being forbidden to actually see a large number of these murders, there are other, more ethically complex murders in the film such as those Myers himself is not responsible for (Ted Hollister and Mrs Carruthers).

Halloween IV highlights its own ambiguities. It is a film of gaps, of absences, of things unseen and familiar patterns suggested but ultimately unfulfilled.  Murders are committed but we are denied witnessing them. Halloween IVoffers a trail of breadcrumbs of pathos (poor Jamie!) and action (the violence!), but that path does not take us where we expect – to a morally legible conclusion where the killer is, if not killed, then at least suppressed until the next sequel arrives. The significance of Halloween IV lies in its ability to not only the lines between good and evil (and how we identify them within the context of a horror film), but to eradicate them completely. The symbol of virtue (Jamie) is ultimately exposed as aligned with the exact evil that her peers have struggled to protect her from.   And those peers – Rachel, Dr Loomis, Earl and the “beer bellies”, Mr and Mrs Carruthers – are far from clearly legible themselves, and at best redundant.

Halloween IV may reflect a broader crisis of moral uncertainty. Good and evil did not vanish from the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but the traditional mode of its representation (one that had been maintained for decades) was changing.  “Who is the villain now?” asks Halloween IV, and the answer is not simply a case of “Michael”, “Jamie”, or even “Jamie and Michael” (Michael is still a killer after all, but – again – the moral legibility of everyone else in the film is also questionable). Rather, the answer is perhaps more rightly, “I don’t even know what a villain is anymore”. Morality and ideology are not interchangeable, but nor are they mutually exclusive.  In the specific instance of Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers – and, indeed, Halloween V: The Revenge of Michael Myers – readings pertaining to the impact of the end of the Cold War to American popular fictions would be possible, the effect of this moral panic upon film certainly warranting further investigation.

Perhaps inadvertently, Halloween IV picks up on a broader cultural crisis active at the time of its production: in the face of a rapidly vanishing enemy with the close of the Cold War, it is unclear quite what concepts like innocence and virtue can mean without an Other to define itself against.  This crisis within the moral occult is of fundamental value not only to melodrama, but also to broader critical discourse that dares to venture outside of traditional investigative paths.  While later 1990s slashers (such as 1996’s Scream and 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer) seem to consciously invite postmodern readings of slasher film, late 1980s slasher almost disappointed critics for not providing the same insight as those examined by the predominantly psychoanalytical model that was so enthusiastically applied to films of the 1970s. While approaches like these are not to be rejected, that their wholesale dominance of horror studies appears to be slowly grinding to an end may allow a continuation of long-overdue analyses of films like Halloween IV.

Mimpi buruk kota Haddonfield ternyata tak berhenti saat munculnya Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) dan menghabisi banyak nyawa yang ia anggap bertanggung jawab pada apa yang ia alami saat itu. Beberapa tahun kemudian pembantaian di malam Halloween itu kembali harus berulang karena Michael masih punya urusan yang belum terselesaikan.

Michael Myers memang tumbuh dalam keluarga yang berantakan. Sejak kecil ia sudah menunjukkan gejala kelainan jiwa. Michael punya hobi menyiksa dan membunuh binatang. Suatu hari di malam Halloween, Michael menghabisi nyawa kakak dan ayah tirinya dan karena itu ia harus menghabiskan hampir seumur hidupnya di rumah sakit jiwa dalam pengawasan dokter Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell).

Suatu ketika Michael berhasil lolos dari rumah sakit dan ‘pulang’ ke Haddonfield untuk menebar teror pembantaian di sana. Ketika semuanya berakhir, semua orang mengira bahwa Michael Myers telah tewas. Tak ada yang tahu bahwa Michael masih menyimpan dendam lama dan bermaksud menuntaskan masalah di malam yang paling ia sukai, malam Halloween.

Sepertinya Rob Zombie tak berusaha menutup-nutupi bahwa ia sedikit terobsesi dengan karakter Michael Myers yang ada dalam franchise HALLOWEEN. Kalau dalam proyek pertama Rob belum terlalu berani bereksperimen, kali ini Rob sudah mulai menunjukkan sisi ‘kreatif’. Ada beberapa hal yang bisa dibilang menyimpang dari pakem HALLOWEEN yang digagas John Carpenter di tahun 1978.

Rob mulai memasukkan latar belakang psikologis Michael Myers yang tidak terlalu diperhatikan oleh John Carpenter. Michael Myers yang semula digambarkan sebagai sosok yang murni kejam dan jahat kini diolah lagi oleh Rob Zombbie, sang sutradara, dan terkesan bahwa masa lalu dan lingkunganlah yang membentuknya menjadi begitu. Rob juga memasukkan unsur sureal dalam bentuk penglihatan yang dialami Michael hampir sepanjang film.

Secara visual pun karakter ini mengalami transformasi. Topeng tak lagi jadi trademark dan hampir setengah jalan cerita tokoh utama ini tak mengenakan topeng lagi. Saat membunuh pun Michael mengeluarkan suara dan tidak lagi jadi pembunuh yang ‘pendiam’ seperti pada versi awal. Penafsiran yang berbeda ini mau tak mau sedikit berdampak pada mereka yang sudah kenal Michael Myers sejak dulu.

Selebihnya, film yang sempat diberi title H2 ini masih tidak jauh dari karya Rob Zombie HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES dan THE DEVIL’S REJECTS. Kalau Anda suka darah, mayat dan adegan pembunuhan, Anda pasti sudah kenal Rob Zombie.

Sumber: http://www.kapanlagi.com

Debo confesar que, aunque nunca he visto completa la versión original de Halloween, me declaro fan de la versión de la misma cinta pero dirigida por Rob Zombie. Creo que está bastante bien trabajada, sobre todo en la parte psicológica de los personajes. El tener que entender por qué Michael Myers es como es y darse cuenta que es un hombre trastornado cuya única finalidad es encontrar a su hermana para sentir que tiene de nuevo una familia es, por mucho, majestuoso. En la secuela, ahonda mucho más en estos sentimientos, de hecho se nota que Rob Zombie se puso a leer libros de psicoanálisis para ello, baste decir que lo primero que vemos en pantalla es un texto acerca del significado de un sueño donde se ve un caballo blanco. A partir de ahí, uno se da cuenta que el mentado caballo blanco tendrá un peso importante en la historia… y es correcto, el problema es que abusó del recurso para meter con calzador el personaje de su esposa, Sheri Moon Zombie, actriz que no ha faltado en una sola de las películas de este metalero director.

La cinta -Halloween 2- está llena de elementos positivos, como son el darle un matiz mucho más ermitaño a Michael Myers, que ahora usa una barba muy crecida, cosa que tiene lógica porque en el hospital psiquiátrico de donde se escapa en la 1, con seguridad lo mantenían pulcro, pero en esta segunda parte, él vive solo, cazando su propia comida y sin conocer lo que es siquiera un baño, mucho menos un rastrillo. También es notable la psicología de Laurie -mejor conocida como Ángel Myers, hermana de Michael-, que si bien, en la primera parte era niña fresa, ahora habiendo pasado por experiencias tan sombrías, se refleja en su indumentaria, pues ahora se muestra como chica fan de Alice Cooper. Por último, pero no menos importante, me agradó el seguimiento que Rob Zombie le dio a elementos pequeños que sólo los que somos fans recordamos, como es el hecho de culminar la cinta con una canción que fue icónica en la primera parte: Love Hurts de Nazareth. En esta ocasión, interpretada a manera de balada, refleja el sentimiento de Michael Myers de niño, argumentando el porqué, si amaba a su familia, ésta lo tuvo que dejar solo.

Los elementos negativos de esta secuela también son importantes: reitero, el meter con calzador el personaje de la madre de Michael Myers ahora como un fantasma que le va diciendo a quién matar… cuando en realidad, la mamá de Myers nunca fue mala, en la primera cinta la plantean como la única persona que Michael ama en el mundo. También, el abuso de elementos cliché como escenas donde ocurre algo que, en realidad, termina siendo un sueño. Vaya, hasta el personaje del Dr. Loomis lo transforman ahora en una diva de los medios de comunicación, interesado no en la ciencia, sino en vender su libro.

Lo magnífico de esta cinta, pero que casi nadie en México entiende, son esos pequeños chistes de nicho, como el hecho de que salga en la cinta Weird Al Yankovich, cantante muy reconocido en EU por parodiar melodías famosas y burlarse de todo el mundo, que hasta termina por hacer un chiste comparativo acerca de Mike Myers y Michael Myers.

Irónicamente, Rob Zombie no planeaba hacer una secuela, de hecho firmó para escribirla y dirigirla porque no quería que nadie arruinara su visión original, y logra convencer, sin embargo, los productores le cambian tanto a esta película que Zombie termina por renunciar a hacer la tercera parte, misma que ahora hará Patrick Lussier, que dirigiera Sangriento San Valentín 3D, esto porque la idea es hacer esta tercera parte en tercera dimensión… o lo que es lo mismo, van a hacer justamente lo que Zombie no quería que pasara… cosa que será sumamente triste. Lo único es que el lanzamiento de la misma va a tardar, pues apenas el  pasado 25 de septiembre, los productores cancelaron esta cinta hasta mediados del año entrante debido a que se les acabó el presupuesto para la misma (y eso que aún no comenzaban a filmarla).

Por lo pronto, esta es una cinta que sí recomiendo ver, jamás me había pasado escuchar a una chica del público llorar de tanta violencia que hay en una película, y aquí pasó, pero lo que sí les sugiero es que vean antes la primera parte, pues hay muchas referencias que, de no tenerlas frescas, será difícil que capten en la secuela.

Halloween II (2009)
★ / ★★★★

Written and directed by Rob Zombie, “Halloween II” is a complete waste of time. What I really liked with Zombie’s 2007 interpretation of the 1978 classic was that it really tried to tell a story. The 2007 film spent a third of its time explaining Michael Myers’ psychology as a child–something that other “Halloween” movies that came before did not do. With this 2009 sequel, we’re back again on the level of wait-and-kill without any sort of plot to drive the story forward. Basically, Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) wanted to hunt down Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) a year after they had a showdown in Haddonfield. Meanwhile, Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), Michael’s ex-psychiatrist, wrote a book about the killings and tried to wrestle with the media’s barrage of questions and his conscience (or lack thereof). In my opinion, Dr. Loomis’ storyline should totally not have gone in that direction. Instead, we should have followed Dr. Loomis’ mission (or downright obsession) to hunt down Michael and protect Laurie from him. That’s much more interesting (and relevant) than scenes of him signing books and being interviewed on some television shows. As for Michael’s rampage, although I still thought that the stalking and violent scenes were very gruesome, none of it was particularly scary. Well, except for that scene in the hospital which occured during the first twenty minutes (the only effective scene in the whole movie). I also hated the fact that Zombie decided to inject Deborah Myers’ ghost (Sheri Moon Zombie as Michael’s mother) into the storyline. Not only was such a decision poorly executed, the scenes were downright laughable. If I wanted to see a ghost story with a psychological aspect to it, I’d watch “The Others” because that one was actually chilling to the bone (not to mention clever). Slasher fans simply do not pay ten bucks or so to watch a slasher flick with ghosts roaming about and supposedly instigating the broken mind of a killer. I went into this movie with an above average expectations because the 2007 version was very enjoyable. But after watching this movie, I think Zombie should just stop. He doesn’t quite grasp the idea of the brilliance that comes with simplicity and a truly terrifying soundtrack, which defined John Carpenter’s 1978 “Halloween” classic.

I consider myself a fairly avid horror fan. Ever since watching “Shaun of the Dead” in high school, I’ve slowly learned to enjoy the genre more and more. I love movies from every subgenre, from slashers to zombies (my personal favorite) to good old-fashioned ghost stories. I love ‘em all.

But one thing that’s always baffled me is franchise movies, particularly those of the “torture porn” variety. I was inspired to start doing some research after noticing the release of “Saw VI” a couple of weeks ago. I remember pretty vividly seeing “Saw II” and the remake of “The Hills Have Eyes” in high school, and realizing (with some relief) that, in fact, I did have a standard when it came to horror. I don’t stand for mindless stuff. If something horrific is going to happen to someone, as a viewer (and, I think, as a human being) I need to have some kind of justification for it. Otherwise, it just isn’t worth my time. I need a moral dilemma, a killer with a background, something other than random acts of violence that don’t send a message.

From my perspective, it seems like franchise horror movies are the epitome of what I consider “the wrong kind” of horror movie. The original films, the ones that start off the franchise, like “A Nightmare on Elm Street” or “Halloween,” even the original “Saw,” have some kind of message or some creative spark that stokes the interest of audiences enough to keep them coming. But whatever the original movies had going for them, it gets lost with every subsequent sequel or remake.

I wanted to get a professional opinion on this, so I turned to Eric Melin, who runs the movie review site Scene-Stealers.com. He told me the popularity of franchises comes from, in the case of Freddy, Jason and Michael Myers, a cult of personality and audiences who want to be scared, but don’t want to have to think about it too much.

“I worked in a video store for a while, and I used to see this every Halloween, when people would come in, because they’re so desperate for scary movies, and they want a new scary movie, so they go straight to the franchises,” Melin told me. “It’s just easier for people to say ‘This weekend we’re going to watch all the Children of the Corns.’ Why not watch something else?”

Why not watch something else, indeed? Why would people willingly choose a formulaic, predictable, meaningless horror movie when there are so many other great ones out there? Why watch “Freddy Vs. Jason” when you can see “The Orphanage?” According to Mark Kermode, a movie critic for BBC Radio 5, it’s precisely because of the formula that franchises are so popular.

In an essay he wrote for the Independent, called “Horror Will Eat Itself,” Kermode writes that familiar elements are exactly what many people like about horror movies. He uses Wes Craven’s “Scream” movies as an example, noting that the director’s simultaneous celebration and skewering of horror tropes were what made that particular franchise so popular.

Taking these opinions into consideration, what I’ve come to decide is this: familiarity is popular in horror, as in many other genres, but it’s popular for a unique reason, which is fear of the unknown. Consider the way you feel going into a horror movie you know nothing about: the uneasiness, the idea that you don’t know what to expect. All you know is that it’s going to be scary, and it’s going to be uncomfortable. Say the first “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie really scared you. Then, a while later, the second one comes out. You decide you want to go to a scary movie, and that’s the one you pick because now you know what to expect. Most of the uneasiness that you had with the original movie is now gone. You know how the killer operates, how and why he chooses his victims. Thanks to that formula, you can satisfy that bloodlust without having to be bothered by it.

Without the unpredictability, the only factor franchise horror movies have left to impress their audiences is what Melin refers to as “the creativity of the kill,” which is where torture porn comes in. With that, the movie loses its soul.

“I’ve had a lot of horror enthusiasts tell me that I can’t review horror movies the way I review another movie, in other words, I can’t apply the same criteria of wanting well-developed characters and story and stuff like that,” Melin said. “And to a certain extent, I kind of agree with that…But when there’s movies out there like Drag Me to Hell, and Slither and Frailty that do everything so well and also manage to be campy and fun at the same time, I think that I’m not really going to want to forgive a movie like the Hills Have Eyes remakes…I’m just not interested in what they’re doing, because they’re not doing anything interesting.”

Horror isn’t an easy genre to love. Fans probably get disappointments and cookie-cutter studio releases more often than legitimately good, creative movies. And it takes a certain kind of psychological toughness to go for the unfamiliar stuff over the movies you already know. But, in my mind, it’s worth it. “Jason Goes to Hell” might be fun, but “Shallow Grave” has meaning and thrills. That, to me, is more valuable than any number of Leatherfaces, Freddy Kruegers or Jigsaws.

Related Link:

Mark Kermode’s essay, “Horror Will Eat Itself”

Halloween (1978)
★★★★ / ★★★★

“I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes… the devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply… evil.”

John Carpenter’s 1978 independent “Halloween” masterpiece will forever be one of my favorite films. With such a microscale budget, Carpenter, the production team and the actors managed to accomplish so much. “Halloween” stars Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode who, among with her friends Lynda (P.J. Soles) and Annie (Nancy Loomis), was stalked by a masked killer named Michael Myers (Tony Moran). Michael killed his sister when he was six years old and was sent to a psychiatric hospital under the care of Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence). Michael’s madness became much worse over the years and he escaped the night before Halloween 1978 to return to his hometown in Haddonfield, Illinois.

This picture invented the slasher flick that plagued the 1980’s because of its craft. The first scene of this film was an absolute milestone because we saw Michael kill his sister through his eyes as he wore a clown mask. The way he grabbed the knife from the kitchen drawer, walked up the stairs, and went for the kill was terrifying because it was done by a child without any sort of reason (or emotion) behind his actions. After the murder, when his parents discovered him with the knife, it looked as if he had no idea what he had done, like he was possessed by the devil.

Fast-forward to 1978, we got to meet Laurie and two of her friends. Laurie, obviously different from the other two because she’s actually interested in books and not so much interested in boys (or maybe her shyness often got the best of her), was established as the protagonist. She cared about the children she babysat (unlike the other two) by letting them have fun on Halloween, such as carving pumpkins, making popcorn, and watching scary rated R movies on TV, as long as they remained safe and refrained from scaring each other. In broad daylight, we were able to see Michael following them around–appearing in an area one minute and disappearing the next–something that slasher movies of today rarely do. (Not all stalkers only come out at night after all.) There were also very amusing scenes between the three friends, which I thought was a good move from Carpenter because it made them very relatable. That was important because we all know that Michael would eventually go after them. Why was he obsessed with the three girls? We don’t exactly know. Maybe he saw qualities of sister in them or maybe not. To me, that’s why I thought the picture worked: it retained elements of mystery and it was up to us to draw our own conclusions.

The soundtrack was something I would never forget because it was downright creepy and it set the tone of certain scenes. A particular track was specific to an event that was about to transpire so we came to know what to expect (a stalking scene, a false alarm, or going for the kill). However, the brilliance of it was we don’t know when exactly the scare or “Boo!” moment would happen. When they finally do happen, they come with maximum effect due to excellent timing. Unlike most modern horror films, the soundtrack in this movie was used as little as possible. It also means that Carpenter knew when to use silence. Sometimes silence meant nothing but sometimes silence meant something really bad was about to happen.

My absolute favorite scene was the showdown between Laurie and Michael in the last twenty minutes. It still gives me the chills whenever I watch Laurie crossing the street to go into the house where two of her friends were murdered. Since the lights were all off yet she was getting phone calls from the house pretty much all night, at first she thought they were playing a joke on her. But when she finally reached the bedroom, she realized that none of it was a joke. While she was busy entertaining the kids across the street, Michael was busy with the body count. There was also that scene when she finally got out from the neighbor’s house (not an easy feat considering Michael blocked the exits) as she tried screaming for help but no one would open their doors to offer her refuge. She then had no choice but to go back to the house where she was babysitting… but she couldn’t find the keys in her pocket.

There’s a plethora of social commentaries that could be drawn from this film, which were immortalized as clichés in future slasher flicks like “Friday the 13th,” “Prom Night,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and the like. However, I’m not going to mention them all here because I think it’s best for you to try to see them yourself. But I do want to mention how impressed I was with how the concept of the “boogeyman” evolved from a simple folklore (when the kids tried to scare each other) to a personification of evil that one cannot kill (when Laurie tried to kill Michael time and time again but he always managed to “return from the dead”). The concept of the boogeyman finally culminated in the last minute of the film when Laure conceded, “It WAS the boogeyman” and the movie showed us familiar places with Michael breathing in the background–places that have been touched by evil and would never be the same again.

For those who have seen a plethora of movies, “Halloween” is almost always on their list of being one of the best horror films ever made. It’s not difficult to understand why considering how much it impacted the collective media unconscious. I consider it one of the best movies I’ve seen, not just in the horror genre, because of how it made me feel when I first watched it. There was a certain darkness to it that shook me to the core and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days. And when I see it again from time to time on television as Halloween nears, I may smile during certain scenes and not look as scared as before. But the same thoughts regarding “What if I was in her shoes?” quickly flood my mind and I can’t help but feel affected. Though it may not scare you because you’re used to seeing blood delivered in gallons in modern horror movies (personally, I think blood is just gross and not at all scary), it would most likely earn your respect for being well ahead of its time in terms of craft and context.

Pour la conclusion de ce fantastique Horreur-o-thon, j’ai visionné ma “trilogie” d’horreur préféré soit Halloween, Halloween II et Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later. Oui, je sais qu’il y a 4 films qui séparent les deux derniers, mais pour une expérience optimale de frissons, de satisfaction et de résolution, ceci est mon choix. J’ai bien aimé regarder tous ces films, j’ai fait de belles découvertes. Par contre, je vais définitivement splitter la job avec mes collègues Bipolaires l’année prochaine!  Joyeuse Halloween!

15 ans après que Michael Myers âgé de 6 ans ait tué sa grande soeur le 31 octobre ‘63, il s’évade de l’hôpital psychiatrique où il était et revient à Haddonfield où il traque une jeune fille nommée Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).  Seul son docteur, Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), semble pouvoir l’arrêter.

Il est inutile de dire que ce film de John Carpenter est un classique. En effet, il a pavé la voie au slasher movies, mettant en vedette une brochette d’adolescents se faisant trucider par un maniaque masqué.  Par contre, ce qui différencie ces imitations de l’original Halloween est le suspense constant, l’atmosphère d’inévitabilité et le minimum de sang.  Ainsi, l’horreur vient du momentum qui s’installe tout au long du film, accompagné d’une musique inquiétante instantanément reconnue.  La cinématographie est superbe, les personnages attachants…mon film d’horreur préféré.

Note finale: 10/10

————-

Meilleure citation: “I met him, fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes… the Devil’s eyes.” (Dr. Loomis décrit son ancien patient. Mr. Pleasence est hypnotisant.)

Meilleure mort: Bob (le gars avec les plus grosses lunettes du monde) empalé sur un mur de cuisine.

Y’as-tu des tits?!: Oui, dans la célèbre scène “See anything you like?”.

Saviez-vous que..: Le masque de Michael Myers est un masque de William Shatner (Capitaine Kirk!) modifié? C’étaitle plus cheap.

Commencant tout de suite après les événements du premier film, Laurie Strode est amenée d’urgence à l’hôpital. Mais elle ne sait pas que Michael Myers la poursuit toujours…

Écrit par John Carpenter, Halloween II bénéficie d’avoir largement la même équipe de tournage que le premier, permettant une presque parfaite cohésion.  En effet, j’ai “collé” les deux films ensemble à l’aide d’un peu de montage et cela donne un mega-film Halloween de 3h.  Par contre, malgré une atmosphère tout aussi sombre, Laurie passe la majorité du temps dans le coma et les autres personnages sont plutôt 2 dimensions.  Le gore est aussi augmenté pour compétitionner avec les autres slashers de l’époque.

Note finale: 8/10

———-

Meilleure citation:

Voisin: “Is this some kind of joke? I’ve been trick-or-treated to death tonight!”
Dr. Loomis :”You don’t know what death is!”

Meilleure mort: Une infirmière se fait noyer dans un bain d’eau bouillante. Ouch.

Y’as-tu des tits?!: L’infirmière qui se fait noyer dans un bain d’eau bouillante (et ils sont assez excellents permettez-moi de dire.)

Saviez-vous que…: Le seul film de la série à montrer le matin du 1er Novembre. Les autres se terminent pendant Halloween.

20 après la nuit fatidique du premier film, Laurie Strode vit maintenant sous le nom de Keri Tate, directrice d’une école privée de Californie.  Elle tente tant bien que mal de laisser son ancienne vie derrière elle, mais son frère psychopathe la retrouve pour une dernière confrontation…

Notez bien que dans ma tête (et celle de plusieurs fans), Halloween: Resurrection n’existe pas.  En effet, la fin de H20 où **SPOILERS**

Laurie prend enfin le dessus sur ses peurs, confronte Michael et le décapite

**FIN DES SPOILERS**

est une fin sublime est parfaitement satisfaisante.  Ca boucle la boucle comme on dit.  La transformation de jeune adolescente apeurée à mère divorcée,  alcoolique et névrosée à héroine courageuse est très intéressante à voir. Quant au film, bien qu’inspiré par le succès de Scream sorti l’année d’avant, H20 réussit tout de même à rendre hommage au film de Carpenter (moins de morts, lente montée dramatique, etc).  Une fin très forte à MA trilogie d’horreur favorite.

Note finale: 9/10

———

Meilleure citation:

“Oh. Miss Tate. I didn’t mean to make you jump. It’s Halloween. I guess everyone’s entitled to one good scare.”

“Oh, I’ve had my share.”

Meilleure mort: Michael s’acharne sur Sarah! Poursuivie dans un monte-charge, il lui tombe sur la jambe et il finit par la poignarder 3-4 fois!

Y’as-tu des tits?!: Nah…

Saviez-vous que: Janet Leigh, qui incarnait Marion Crane dans Psycho (et un rôle dans h20), est la mère de Jamie Lee Curtis? Ca reste dans la famille.

Well, sure, it’s Halloween. It was always going to be Halloween. The whole point of this month of horror DVD reviews was building up to this moment. I plan things out, people.

Maybe you take John Carpenter’s 1978 classic film for granted, because you’ve seen it so many times. Maybe you’re pretty young, and you saw it on DVD for the first time last year, and you said “This is just like every other slasher movie.” You’d be wrong.

When Halloween was released, it was part of a fairly new genre of films. It isn’t the first slasher movie, despite what a lot of people think. Black Christmas, the seminal Canadian film, has more of a claim to that title than Halloween. What Halloween did do, though, was define the next 30 years of horror movies, and define it well. Every horror movie made since owes a debt to John Carpenter.

Plot: Laurie has to babysit on Halloween night. Meanwhile, a killer named Michael Myers is stalking her. And that’s it. That’s all. It’s perfect in its minimalism. The later sequels would try to attach more reason, more explanation, to the story, but it wasn’t necessary. Halloween works because it is brutal and honest and frightening as hell.

I came to this movie in a weird way: I read the book first. Not that this is based on any real novel; someone smuggled me the knockoff paperback adaptation when I was about 11, and because it had murders and a couple of sex scenes, I thought I’d struck bloody gold. I didn’t see the movie for a few more years, when Betamax came out, and boy, was I hooked. There’s a clarity to Halloween that sets it above and beyond all the other slasher films that followed it, and that’s what makes it work.

The sequels are crap. I’ll just come out and say that. Ted, Tony and Doug at the Horror Etc. podcast just spent three episodes dissecting the Halloween series beautifully; I recommend you listen to those shows. I agree with them completely: some things should be left alone, and later attempts to graft the supernatural onto the Halloween series were a mistake.

Rob Zombie remade the original film a couple of years ago, and made a terrible, terrible sequel called H2 this year. I didn’t mind Zombie’s first movie, but it didn’t come close to the original film. If you haven’t seen them, go ahead and skip them all. Just watch the original.

I’ve spent the last month watching and reviewing movies from my DVD’s horror shelf. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and I hope you’ve found at least one movie you didn’t know about. But if you aren’t a horror movie fan, you should at least watch Halloween. Especially tonight.

Update: Simply Syndicated’s Movies You Should See podcast takes a look at Halloween in its latest episode. Great minds think alike, and so do ours. Here it is.

Remember, I generally hate movies.

Since today marks the greatest day of the year, I thought it only appropriate to celebrate that day by decrying the awfulness of the movie that shares its name.

In many ways, Halloween exemplifies several of the things that I generally don’t like about movies.

As I’ve mentioned before, one reason I hate movies is that they set me up for disappointment, and Halloween was no exception.  In addition to being named after my favorite holiday, the movie also gets off to a tremendous start – we get a first person perspective of a murder, only to eventually learn that we’ve been looking through the eyes of a young boy; a young boy who hacks people to death with knives.  Even I will admit – that’s good cinema.

But after such a promising start, the movie quickly goes downhill.  Of course, after starting with momentum, the movie has to slow down and catch its breath for a while.  However, over the course of the next hour or so the movie manages to catch its breath, lower its heart rate, and eventually take a nap on the couch (which is what I ended up wanting to do).  Cars driving down the street slowly and young women looking nervous and peering over their shoulders doesn’t build tension, it isn’t interesting, and it isn’t scary.  It’s boring.  For most of this movie I had to fight the temptation to grab the remote and just fast forward.

When the movie finally does start to pick up, another of my pet movie peeves rears its ugly head.  When Jamie Lee Curtis is running away from the incredibly slow, plodding psychopath, does she bolt down an open street, looking for crowded places with people who might be able to help her?  No, she runs to her own empty home, goes upstairs, and nullifies her greatest advantage: speed (of course, she does finally do the sensible after she’s fallen down the stairs and hurt her leg, thus nullifying the one thing she had going for her).  Then, when she still somehow manages to survive the attack by Michael Myers, and ends up stabbing him a few times, does she do the sensible thing and make sure he’s dead and take the knife with her as a precaution?  Of course not.  Instead, she walks away and lays the knife down next to the still living body.

When I point these things out to fans of the film, though, I tend to get one of two responses: either “you’re missing the intentional silliness of the film – it’s supposed to be a little ridiculous” or “those things seem stupid now because they’ve become horror movie cliches, but this was the film that started them.”  As I’ve said before, these excuses just don’t fly with me.  I am a huge fan of ridiculousness, but, as I pointed out long ago, there is a big difference between the ridiculous and the inane and Halloween is definitely an example of the latter.  If this movie is supposed to be a little bit awful, then shame on it for accomplishing its goal.

And to claim that we should forgive Halloween for using these inane, contrived devices because it was the first to do so is equally absurd.  After all, the Beatles introduced plenty of musical ideas that have, over the years, become cliches.  But, in those old Beatles recordings, these ideas really work – only after years of repetition in the hands of lesser musicians have these cliches become annoying and tiresome.  And even then, when I go back and listen to those old Beatles recordings, those ideas still feel fresh despite the baggage that now accompanies them.

But after watching Halloween I didn’t feel that I was witnessing the inspired birth of a set of conventions that have devolved as a result of over use by lesser artists.  Instead, I felt that I finally knew who to blame for inflicting a bunch of contrived nonsense on horror audiences for the past few decades.  I think no more highly of the creators of Halloween for introducing these stupid contrivances than I do of early American settlers and slave traders for setting the tone for centuries of racism.

Instead, like racism, I wish this movie had just never existed.

“Trick ‘r Treat”
a review by Darby O’Gill

It’s Halloween night, a night full of tricks and treats. Well, mostly tricks. But, the real treat is finally getting Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat released. I know it’s not the theatrical release we were all hoping for, but it is finally out on DVD. In the spirit of Creepshow, Trick ‘r Treat takes four tales from one Halloween night and intertwines them into one fantastic story. It’s like Robert Altman and Wes Craven had a baby, and named it Trick ‘r Treat. Take a high school principal moonlighting as serial killer, a young woman searching for the perfect date, a childish prank that ends with disastrous consequences, and an old man that learns the true meaning of trick-or –treat, and what you have is one hell of a ride. Trick ‘r Treat was made in 2007, and spent two years just trying to get into theatres. It was receiving rave reviews at all the horror festivals, but for some reason Warner Brothers just didn’t believe in it enough to put it in theatres. It’s sad really. Great movies like this have to fight to see the light of day, but pieces of shit like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, have no problem finding their way into theatres. You know, there was another little horror film that was made in 2007 that couldn’t seem to find distribution. It was a little movie called Paranormal Activity. Ever hear of it? Maybe this will finally make Hollywood wake up. Most likely not, but it would be nice if other little movies like these would finally be given the chance they deserve, and not have to fight for two years just to see the light of day. I know. I know. It’s never going to happen. But, let’s get back to subject at hand. Trick ‘r Treat is a must see. With an amazing story, some brilliant cinematography, and fantastic performances, Trick ‘r Treat is a guaranteed Halloween classic. Oh, I haven’t even mentioned little Sam, the trick-or-treater demon that oversees the night’s events. He is a greatly welcomed addition to the Freddy and Jason’s of the horror community. I really hope they make more of these. I can’t wait to see Trick ‘r Treat 2! I just hope next time it’ll be in theatres on Halloween night, and not just a straight to DVD blow-off. Warner Brothers is sitting on a goldmine. They could make a new Trick ‘r Treat movie every year like the Saw franchise, but I guess we’ll just have to wait for them to realize that on their own. Until then, we’ll just have to keep fighting the good fight.

Rating:

DVD Special Features:

• Original Animated Short: “Season’s Greetings” with Optional Commentary by Michael Dougherty

Sadly, that’s it. One bonus feature, if you can call it that. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool to see the animation short that became this movie, but come on! This movie had an incredible journey for two years, and you’re not going to do a commentary track for the feature film?! How about some behind the scenes footage, or maybe some deleted scenes? Hell, I’d be happy with even a trailer at this point! My only guess is that Warner Brothers was really on the fence about putting it in theatres, but at the last minute pushed it to DVD, and wanted to get it out before Halloween. If that is the case, we’ll hopefully get a Special Edition DVD at some point, but until then it’ just sad.

DVD Special Features Rating:

i met him fifteen years ago. i was told there was nothing left, no conscience, no reason, no understanding, in even the most rudimentary sense, of life or death or right or wrong. i met this six-year-old boy with a blank, cold emotionless face and the blackest of eyes, the devil’s eyes. i spent eight years trying to reach him and another seven trying to keep him locked away when i realized what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely, simply evil…

happy halloween fuckers.

• the mountain goats: michael myers resplendent
• the cramps: zombie dance
• john carpenter: halloween theme
• sonic youth: halloween
• the frantics: werewolf
• daniel johnston: casper
• the shaggs: it’s halloween 
• the misfits: ghouls night out
• scratch acid: monsters
• dead kennedys: halloween