Bent Out Of Shape

Year: 2021

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Wow. It's been a while since I've had reason to review a current movie on the blog proper (I do still do that occasionally over at Alternate Ending, when I watch bullshit that Tim doesn't want to cover). But we can't just sit with our thumbs up our asses when there's a new Halloween movie out in theaters and also everybody's favorite streaming service Peacock! The film's release (and the subsequent release of the trilogy capper Halloween Ends) was delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so let's see if time has muted by ambivalence toward 2018's Halloween.

Spoiler alert: It hasn't.

Halloween Ends picks up on the same night as Halloween 2018. Well, it spends about eight seconds there before launching into a wholly unnecessary flashback to the events of Halloween night 1978 which both serve as a revision to Halloween II which was erased out of continuity and delivers absolutely no material that is interesting in the slightest, though where would we be if we didn't have a dead-eyed doppelgänger of Donald Pleasence's Dr. Sam Loomis (Tom Jones Jr. in creepily accurate prosthetic makeup, with a spectacularly unconvincing vocal imitation by Colin Mahan)? Talk about a Halloween: Resurrection!

After that flashback gives us insight into two characters who have no major bearing on the plot, we again pick up in 2018. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is being rushed to the hospital by her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). Having smugly and gleefully erased Halloween II from the continuity, the screenwriters can now recreate it themselves by sidelining Laurie into a hospital bed for literally the entire film.

The killer Michael Myers (Nick Castle for the legacy value, but James Jude Courtney for anything that requires physical effort that they can't ask of a 74-year-old man, which is almost everything Michael does in the movie) was left for dead in Laurie's burning basement. Guess how that goes? He emerges and begins his rampage through Haddonfield anew. A mob gathers to take him down once and for all, led by survivors of his original 1978 rampage: babysittees Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall, taking over from Brian Andrews and Paul Rudd) and Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards), pisspants coward Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet, taking over for whoever the hell played that kid who Donald Pleasence hilariously scares away from entering the Myers house by shouting "Get your ass away from there!"), nurse and "Dr. Loomis' best friend even though I'm pretty sure they met for the first time that night in 1978" Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), and former sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers), whose daughter Annie was killed by Michael 40 years ago.

I know filming was wrapped before the pandemic shut down productions, but Dylan Arnolds cheekbones seem three years more prominent, so I'm not sure what happened.

Can you tell I hated the screenplay for Halloween Kills? I cannot stress enough how richly hypocritical it is that the 2018 film drooled all over itself for retconning the Michael Myers-Laurie Strode sibling relationship that many fans disliked and then proceeded to repeat the much worse mistakes of many other films in the franchise, almost beat for beat. I've already mentioned Laurie getting Halloween II-ed (this is also a result of this being the middle film in a trilogy, but could we not have gotten Laurie and Michael together in one shot, even?), but this film also emulates Rob Zombie's Halloween in presenting Haddonfield as a low rent white trash haven where every word out of a body count character's mouth is shrill and vexing. And no specific spoilers on this, but it has a Myers backstory that's nearly as bad as Halloween 6, to boot.

There is not a single returning character who is treated with anything resembling respect. Not that I necessarily need the film to respect Lonnie Fucking Elam, but this reboot series has consistently failed to recognize any of the actual ways human beings react to trauma or even remember things from 40 years ago. Laurie has always born the brunt of this instinct, being twisted into an unrecognizable gremlin of a woman, but Tommy Doyle doesn't so much go from 0 to 60 as start as 60 and rampage through every scene like Michael Chiklis playing a rabid caveman. It doesn't even do justice to the characters we just met, running Allyson through an absolutely inscrutable arc that doesn't square with anything we know of her from the 2018 film. And dear lord, at one point, Charles Cyphers even gets to trot out his classic "one good scare" line even though he has no reason to recall something he said offhand to a teen girl 40 years ago 12 hours before anything memorable happened that day - honestly it would have had more creative integrity if he had said "It's Halloween. Everyone is entitled to one good scare... motherfucker."

Now don't misunderstand me. I don't mind that some of these characters become bad people or have bad things happen to them. I'm not particularly devoted to the lady who drove Dr. Loomis to Smith's Grove 40 years ago. It's just that every line of dialogue is stiff and unnatural, every action is ill-motivated, and while every character is packed with personality traits rather than being one-note body count fodder, none of these traits resemble anything a person would actually do or say, dunking the audience into a surreal morass of nonsense that's impossible to claw your way out of. There's a gay couple in the film that I have heard criticized for being offensive stereotypes, but I take umbrage with that interpretation considering that you can't be a stereotype if you're not performing a recognizable human behavior.

Also these films have an asshole problem. In that every character is one. 

But here's the thing. I don't hate this movie. I would, I really would, if it weren't for two things. First, the kills are generally pretty damn solid. They're a little too brutal to call "fun," but in terms of squeamish slasher movie joy, they deliver on all fronts, more than a typical Halloween outing. The creative weaponry is more Jason's milieu, but in this film, any object in Michael Myers' hands can become a deadly weapon, whether it's a light bulb, a car door, a stairwell, or his own thumbs. There are also some unique angles to the proceedings (when's the last time you saw someone get stabbed in the armpit?). The effects are terrific, the sequences are visceral and gut-jangling, and while they fail to capture the elegance of the violence of the Carpenter original, that is something I am fully willing to forgive for the 12th movie in a slasher franchise. I'm not a monster.

Also, the score is straight-up terrific. John Carpenter, his son Cody, and his godson Daniel Davies have assembled a superb collection of variations on the original electronic score. They have let themselves off the leash this time, no longer tying themselves to amplified versions of the classic Halloween themes, but really creating a minor key fantasia on what Halloween might have sounded like with several more million dollars and the piano was on fucking fire. Nothing reaches the heights of "The Shape Hunts Allyson," which was the standout track of the 2018 film (and is brought back in such a way that the filmmakers clearly figured out what they had after tossing it off in a 50-second scene the first time around). However, this score would have a much harder time giving us a standout, because every new composition is a bone-vibrating success.

Good music and good kills really do elevate a slasher movie. Hell, those two things are the only reasons Friday the 13th is remembered fondly. It doesn't make the horrible script that actively avoids having a plot or accomplishing anything satisfying with even a single character any less crushing. But it is somewhat of a balm for the pain of sitting through the worst scenes of the film, which are largely relegated to anything in the hospital or involving Tommy Doyle (AKA most of the scenes).

TL;DR: Halloween Kills is a sequel that learns all the wrong lessons from the franchise it's attempting to resurrect.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1401

Reviews In This Series

Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)

Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)

Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)

Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)

Halloween (Zombie, 2007)

Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)

Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

The Shape Of Things To Come

Year: 2018

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I've already done some revisiting of previous franchise marathon entries this October, so it's only appropriate that the fun should continue with an actual movie in theaters! What a treat! We haven't seen good ole Michael Myers on this blog since we concluded our marathon with Rob Zombie's Halloween II a year late in 2016 because I could not convince myself to watch that one. And we haven't seen that pale blank face in theaters since the very same film when it was released in 2009, almost a full decade ago.

Well, here we are at a new entry that has already made so much money I wouldn't be surprised if the sequel is being rushed into theaters next weekend. That is unequivocally good, because if there's one thing I love it's a sprawling horror franchise. But as for the movie itself? Well, let's take a look.

At the very least, I'm glad Michael and Laurie are getting in on the ABBA craze.

It's Halloween, 2018. It's the only Halloween that matters other than the one back in 1978, when Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) was stalked by masked murderer Michael Myers (Nick Castle) while she and her friends were babysitting. Nothing else happened in between then and now, we promise.

Laurie Strode is now a reclusive shut-in at her survivalist compound in the sticks of Haddonfield, IL. Her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) has gone ahead and had her own daughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak). But having a teenage child in Haddonfield is never a good idea, because Michael escapes imprisonment while being transferred to a different facility (which he's already done twice before, once in this very timeline) and immediately begins stalking around town in his good ol' Shatner mask mowing down as many passersby as he can in the process.

Laurie, Karen, the cops, and Michael's new caretaker Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer) run around Haddonfield in a state of general distress while Michael wreaks as much havoc as one might expect after being cooped up for so many years.

Oh, how we've missed the big lug.

So, this is the third film in forty years to be titled Halloween. Those are some big shoes to fill, but at least the presence of Rob Zombie's remake means that it could never be the worst one. Unfortunately, this entry barely rises to the middle of the franchise ranking at large.

Halloween has certain good ideas it's working with, but it doesn't seem to have found its own personality. It's actually a lot like Halloween H20, which is now as old as the original Halloween was when it was released: We finally have Jamie Lee Curtis back to play one of her most iconic roles, but this is still a Halloween movie and we need a slate of nubile teens to be offed in the background while she does her thing. H20 very clearly had two different plot threads like this, but it wove them together with reasonable success and cemented the whole thing with a heavy dose of Kevin Williamson snark. 

In Halloween, unfortunately, the threads just unravel before your eyes. The movie can barely maintain its focus on Allyson, let alone her slate of friends, who exist in disjointed scene fragments usually in pairs but never all together. This slasher movie is really missing a unifying element, and the Halloween dance setpiece they feature early on completely fails to be that. The cast splinters off into a series of stalker vignettes which don't tie together at all, or really make much sense as to how Michael managed to get himself between them. Instead of making a mosaic, these scenes just seem like a bunch of shattered glass littered on the ground at random.

Pictured: The screenwriting process.

Even more unfortunately, none of these fragments are pulled together under a unifyied tone. We get some action hero set pieces with random shards of comic relief sprinkled in (these tend to work, actually, thanks to David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny McBride's familiarity with comedy filmmaking, though one horny teen character in particular gets a monologue that I think is supposed to be funny but it completely odious and made me want him to die all the more), and it occasionally cuts to horror sequences of the most brutal and unrelenting variety.

To that end, I will say that this is certainly the goriest Halloween film ever made, and a lot of the kills are incredibly well-realized. As a bit of a gorehound myself, it was nice to see Michael making a play to join the big boys of gruesome slasher killing (usually he's a bit of a bore, going with a couple swipes of the kitchen knife and not much else), but the murders here seem unusually mean-spirited and difficult to watch. Slasher films are supposed to be fun, especially when the other scenes are as silly or high-octane as they are attempting to be. Halloween is kind of miserable at times, making choices that do up the full-tilt horror, but feel more in tune with Rob Zombie's take on the material. Which I hardly expect anyone was actually asking for.

A la carte, though, I can accept the gore for being a very good example of the form. And John Carpenter's new original score is full of bangers, especially the droning alarm bell of his most frequently used new theme. And I'll never complain when Jamie Lee Curtis or Judy Greer are onscreen, even though the former is stuck in a retread of a character she already pulled off twenty years ago in H20. This is the rare example of a horror movie that actually gets better as it goes along, as it pares down its cast so we can focus on three generations of Strode women, all well-performed, and all kicking ass, fighting for their lives in solidarity with one another. 

And wearing wigs like the dickens.

If the whole movie was just a home invasion with the three of them squaring off against Michael Myers, it might have been the best in the entire franchise, including the first. Unfortunately, there is far too much fat on this one, and the filmmakers - especially in the first act - seem focused on delivering scenes that are quite self-evidently shaky ideas, like tremendously misguided pre-credits sequence. 

It's one I'll almost certainly visit again at some point and re-evaluate, unlike the previous two modern entries in the franchise, but there are a lot of other ones I'd prioritize for a rewatch over it. I will be first in line for any and all sequels that Halloween spawns (and it certainly will, if that record breaking box office weekend has anything to say about it), because I think there's a good movie in there, or even a lot of good movies. This one just doesn't happen to quite hit the nail on the head, and that's fine. Almost is better than nothing, and "nothing" is what we've gotten for too long.

TL;DR: Halloween is a middling entry in the franchise with many decent highs and some tremendous lows.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1211

Reviews In This Series

Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1988)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

Dangertainment

Year: 2002

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Cast: Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Jamie Lee Curtis

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It’s been a wild and rocky ride through the world of Haddonfield’s Finest, but here in the safe haven of 2002, we arrive at the final Halloween picture (Rob Zombie? Never heard of him). Though the back half of the franchise pretty much stinks like Michael Myers’ jumpsuit (He might have the scratch to spruce up his mask every time, but has anyone ever seen him launder his Lucky Murder Overalls?). Halloween H20 was a beautiful fresh start for the series, leaving the air clear for a follow-up to glide smoothly in.

Of course, that’s not what happened. This is one of my franchise marathons, after all. Things can always get worse. Halloween: Resurrection cannonballed in, gnarled and spitting, after four long years of radio silence. It’s far from the worst of the franchise (I lied – I’ve heard of Rob Zombie and those remakes are trundling down the trash chute right at us), but it’s a massive step down from the oasis of H20 in the barren Halloween desert.

Please take a moment to pay respect to that killer pun.

Halloween: Resurrection took one look at the calendar and thought, “What can I do to make sure that nobody ever forgets I was made in 2002?” The answer is this: The plot centers around Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes), the host of a spooktacular reality TV web series known as Dangertainment. This Halloween, he will be sending a host of sexy college students with webcams into the notorious Myers house to see if they can find evidence of the serial killer’s upbringing. The film’s understanding of psychology begins and ends at a single paragraph clipped from a Carl Jung book, so an intimately detailed portrait it ain’t.

The Meat he packs into the house includes Jen (Katee Sackhoff of Oculus), a fame whore with the energy of a rabid chipmunk; Rudy (Sean Patrick Thomas), a chef in training who thinks that Michael’s rage stems from a poor diet – who invited this guy?; Sara (Bianca Kajlich), a good student who is in an online relationship with Deckard (Ryan Merriman of Final Destination 3 and The Ring Two), a freshman who sneaks away from a party to watch her show; Jim (Luke Kirby), a horny music major; Donna (Daisy McCrackin), a pretentious asshole who thinks she’s smarter than everyone else because she read that Jung paragraph; and Bill (Thomas Ian Nicholas, Kevin from American Pie), who might actually be hornier than his hapless Pie character,

Naturally, Michael Myers (Brad Loree) arrives for his close-up, fresh from finally offing Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, who wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t be asked back for any more sequels). His one mission in life complete, he does what any recent retiree would do – immediately attempt to recapture the glory days.

I suppose a model train set is out of the question.

Halloween: Resurrection is the cinematic equivalent of the absurdly confident freshman who just took a PSYCH 101 class and gleefully analyses their friends from on high. It’s clearly an attempt to dredge up some latent themes from the original Halloween about how the boogeyman represents the darkness inside all of us. However, this topic loses some of its luster when addressed by annoying clods who correct each other’s grammar, scoff at phallic imagery before being penetrated by sharp objects, and have the sheer pedantic audacity to call Michael Myers the “great white shark of our unconscious.”

However, I have been forever inoculated against annoying characters thanks to Tina from Halloween 5. Though Resurrection’s slate of characters is universally obnoxious, they’re hardly more obnoxious than all of us under 30 were back in 2002. The real beauty (if you can call it that) of Halloween: Resurrection is that it’s an unabashed time capsule of the strangest, most embarrassing trends and behaviors of the new millennium. Many film fans find dated movies to be abhorrent, but my secret joy lies in exploring the unearthed rends of a decade not too far removed from our own, yet as distant from the context of 2015 as Mars.

Thus, in my eyes, Halloween: resurrection is a totally adequate stupid slasher. There’s no part of the film that could conceivably be called “good,” but nearly every minute is a haphazard good time.

Kind of like a Ryan Murphy show.

OK, we all know Halloween: Resurrection is crappy. But as a self-professed kinda sorta fan, I feel that it is my duty to start with some positive comments before we rummage through the barrel of well-worm mockery. First and foremost, the mask is actually sort of decent. Or, at least it’s kept in shadow enough that it’s given the opportunity to be creepy. It’s the best Michael Myers couture since Halloween II, at any rate. My favorite element of the mask is that, when it emerges from the darkness, it looks angry. Now obviously that flies in the face of the idea that he is a faceless force of evil, but I feel like on this side of the Thorn trilogy, we’re a smidge past the point of fussing over subtextual minutiae.

And one should never underestimate the value of an evenly parsed-out platter of Meat. We meet our core three one at a time before we’re dumped in with the rest, so we’re given a moment to breathe and get a bead on who’s who. I don’t particularly want to get to know any of these paper-thin archetypes from Aristotle’s thesis on Irritating Drama, but I appreciate the fact that we’re given the opportunity.

Finally, as dated as the film’s premise and technology might be, it has some fun with it. Director Rick Rosenthal (returning from Halloween II, having helmed the classic The Birds II: Land’s End in the meantime) still doesn’t quite know how to frame a shot when he’s not quoting John Carpenter (as a matter of fact, he doesn’t quite know how to frame a shot when he is quoting John carpenter), but there are some clever editing moments involving the POV of the webcams, especially when they’re attached to teen corpses or rolling down the stairs on a severed head. 

Plus, the presence of Deckard and an increasing crowd of partygoers watching the show allows us to be a part of the game, getting real time audience reactions as the horror ensues. This all culminates in a sequence where Deckard must act as Sara’s eyes because only he can see where Michael is hiding in the house thanks to the cameras. It’s not exactly fraught with tension, but it squeezes some blood from the stone that the franchise had become.

Oh, and there’s a handful of pretty cool kill sequences that are baroquely gooey in the classic slasher tradition, including a blood tracheotomy that hearkens back to 1960’s Peeping Tom.

Rosenthal’s motto is “If it ain’t broke, steal it.”

I do recognize that a film that requires this much defending isn’t exactly Wizard of Oz, but Halloween: Resurrection is just fun. Spectacularly dumb fun, but fun just the same. There’s a lot to hate in the film and many scores of people have found it, but at least for me it’s all part of the ineffable experience. Sure, the actual webcam footage is pixelated enough to abrade your corneas, the Final Girl is next to useless, and a climactic scene involves young Rudy throwing fennel in Michael’s eyes. But it wants so badly to entertain and I for one feel that it does.

Resurrection’s piece de resistance (and an accurate gauge of if this movie is for you) is without a doubt Busta Rhymes. He is far from a good actor, but his singularly arresting energy is far more compelling than the herd of halter tops that surround him. His performance style follows two steps incessantly and unfailingly: 1) Cock head at a physically impossible angle that makes people fear for your health, and 2) Just keep talking until you get to something that feels like the line you were supposed to say.

His copious monologuing puts even the loquacious Dr. Loomis to shame. And although Donald Pleasance has chewed up mountains majesty of purple dialogue, I’m not sure even he would relish calling Michael Myers a “killer shark with baggy-ass overalls.” Busta just lets loose and goes for it, performing every act with supreme commitment, whether it be wooing Tyra Banks (who is in this, did I mention that?), kung fu kicking the Boogeyman, or merely sitting on his couch at home. His performance is pure, magnetic lunacy, a perfect centerpiece for this unflappably deranged sequel.

Whatever. I like Halloween: Resurrection. Sue me.

Killer: Michael Myers (Brad Loree)

Final Girl: Sara (Bianca Kajlich)

Best Kill: Jim’s head is crushed and he cries tears of blood.

Sign of the Times: Deckard meets Sarah through a Yahoo! Chat room and they keep in contact using their Palm pilots.

Scariest Moment: Sara has to climb down the stairs over Bill’s dead body.

Weirdest Moment: Busta Rhymes does kung fu alone in his apartment.

Champion Dialogue: "Screwing a music major would be tantamount to lesbianism.”

Body Count: 10; not including the decapitated “paramedic” shown in H20 flashback footage.

1. Security Guard is decapitated.
2. Willy has his throat slit.
3. Laurie Strode is stabbed in the back and falls to her death.
4. Charlie is stabbed in the throat with a tripod.
5. Bill is stabbed in the head.
6. Donna is impaled on an iron spike.
7. Jen is decapitated.
8. Jim has his head crushed. 
9. Rudy is triple stabbed and pinned to a door.
10. Nora is stabbed and hung offscreen.

TL;DR: Halloween: Resurrection is an immensely stupid but vastly entertaining time capsule.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1634

Reviews In This Series

Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)

Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)

Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)

Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)

Halloween (Zombie, 2007)

Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)

Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

Die Hydrogen Monoxide

Year: 1988

Director: Steve Miner

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Adam Arkin

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Let’s not pull any punches here. Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later is the single most asinine title ever inflicted upon an innocent horror movie. The core concept makes sense (this – the seventh film in the franchise – was released twenty years after the original and brings back many of its characters and themes), but the execution is downright execrable. This film has nothing to do with water, and the needlessly hip, hopelessly confusing title is just another outgrowth of the pop postmodern horror flicks that sprouted like kudzu in the years following the success of Scream.

Yes, we’ve finally reached that fabled genre-savvy period of the late 90’s, where slashers could be slashers and teens could be overwritten. While I’m on the subject, let’s take a moment to appreciate how much the Halloween franchise adheres directly to the historical development of the genre as a whole. It’s uncanny, really. The whole thing is like a road map of the dominant trends of each era. Halloween exemplifies the proto-slashers of the 70s, Halloween II the gory killfests of 1981, Halloween 4 the quasi-supernatural bent of the post-Nightmare period, Halloween 5 the soul-sucking crappiness of 1989, and Halloween 6 the bleak desperation of franchise filmmaking in the early 90’s. Then it would move on into the no-man’s land of the early 2000’s slashers and stand at the forefront of the remake boom, but that’s a story for another time.

Halloween H20 upholds the tradition, providing a textbook example of the self-reflexive slasher. Normally this wouldn’t bode well, considering that it’s in the company of mediocre films like I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend, but the film was assigned a dream team of slasher bruisers, including many veterans of Scream itself. Along with the guidance of Screamsmith Kevin Williamson (who isn’t credited with the script, but according to the hot Hollywood gos, probably should be), we have Scream editor and composer Patrick Lussier and Marco Beltrami, as well as Friday the 13th Part 2 director Steve Miner. The cherry on top, naturally, is the return of reigning Scream Queen Jamie Lee of House Curtis.

Long may she kick ass.

Of course, there’s the nasty little wrinkle of Laurie Strode having been killed off in Part 4, but that’s nothing a little ignoring the last three sequels can’t solve. H20 is a direct continuation of Halloween II: Keri Tate (Jamie Lee Curtis) is the headmistress of a prestigious Southern California boarding school, but she has a secret. Back in 1978, her brother (yeah, that’s still a thing) Michael Myers (Chris Durand) killed a lot of her friends, then vanished in a hospital explosion, presumed dead. After that she faked her death and changed her name, living constantly under the fear that Michael will return once more.

This paranoia has led to some glam alcoholism (there’s nothing like shotgunning chardonnay in a chic cream sweater) and damaged her relationships with her son John (Josh Hartnett) and her boyfriend, guidance counselor Will Brennan (Adam Arkin). On Halloween night 1998 (helpfully proclaimed by a condescending title card that reads “October 31st – Halloween”), John ditches out on a school field trip in a rebellion against his overprotective mother, throwing a party with some Meat friends. He, his girlfriend Molly (Michelle Williams), and their horny mates Sarah (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe) and Charlie (Adam Hann-Byrd) sneak into the school building for some illicit merriment.

Of course, a little thing like an exploding hospital can’t stop Michael Myers, and he shows up to wreak havoc once more, though he must have lost his mask at some point over the years and had to make do with a Sideshow Bob wig.

You’d think it wouldn’t be too hard to replicate the original mold, but you would be wrong.

The thing about Halloween H20 is that there’s a character named Brennan, and I only allow my namesake to be used by good films (for the record, there’s a Dr. Brennan in The Exorcist). Ergo, Halloween H20 turns out to be the best sequel of the entire franchise, in a close race with 4. Some might argue that bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back pretty much earns the movie a free pass, but some probably haven’t seen Halloween: Resurrection.

Halloween H20 is short and sweet. It gets in, does its job, and books the hell out of there, and I greatly admire it for that. The story it tells is simple and taut. A trauma victim must survive one more trial to wipe her slate clean and get her life back on track. It’s surprisingly poignant, and the return of characters we actually give a flying hoot about bumps up the scare factor something fierce.

Obviously, H20 couldn’t dream of matching the elemental terror of the original. Steve Miner is a competent workhorse at best, not a Carpenter-esque auteur. But after a couple dozen years in the business, you learn how to stage a scene, and he certainly horses his work. Scenes like the opening kill, where the police are called to one house while the murder occurs next door, are genuinely thrilling. It’s the first actually tense Halloween in a decade. In the later scenes especially, the film uses parallels with the original film to crate expectations and repeatedly thwart them.

It is in these moments that Halloween H20 truly works as a self-referential piece. There are several not so subtle nods to other films (like Curtis’ actual mother Janet Leigh being cast as her assistant whose every line is a veiled Psycho reference), but the canny Williamson humor doesn’t quite strike up a meaningful relationship with the narrative. In the Scream films, the characters are aware that they’re living out a horror film, hence the references, but when our H20 teens pop on a DVD of Scream 2, it’s only a leering pat on the back. Their knowledge of horror doesn’t influence events in any way. Most of the humor is totally acceptable and amusing (especially LL Cool J as a security guard/budding romance novelist), but a lot of it just sort of aimlessly drifts across the screen like an errant balloon at a Fourth of July picnic.

One day I’m going to gather up all these magnificent similes and write the great American novel.

While we’re on the complain train, I have one last grievance to air, which is again the fault of one Kevin Williamson. He certainly does adore writings teens who speak like overly trendy mini Rhodes scholars, and the non-Strode kiddos are irritating as balls. Or, as K-Dubs would say, more painful than Titus Andronicus’ tongue piercing. Sarah especially is a one woman quip machine, with a groan-worthy line constantly at the ready for any situation (“Inconsiderate, party of one!”). This archetype is what really dates this movie, even more so than Josh Hartnett’s haircut, which looks like it was chewed into shape by a rabid dog.

But lo and behold, H20 leaps those hurdles like it was born to do it. The most irritating parts are hardly onscreen longer than you can say “ixnay on the ipsquay.” This is a movie that has Laurie Goddamn Strode in it, and she isn’t about to let no pockmarked whippets ruin it for her. Jamie Lee Curtis is just as subtle and illuminating as ever, bringing her natural charm to the far meatier role of a Girl Next Door gone sour. She’s a vodka-pickled, snarling survivor with a plastic smile that’s all bared teeth and hard edges. Her performance really picks up on the nuances of a genuinely good girl closed off to the world, and it reinforces the strong emotional throughline that the film boasts.

A little loopy but always fun, a little gritty but always exciting, H20 is a massively entertaining entry in the franchise. Coming hot on the heels of the atrocious Parts 5 and 6, this was a much-needed breath of fair to allow me to regroup and keep on plowing full steam ahead. On to 2002 and the film that completely undermines this one’s climax! Hooray!

Killer: Michael Myers (Chris Durand)

Final Girl: Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis)

Best Kill: Joseph Gordon-Levitt gets an ice skate buried in his face.

Sign of the Times: John’s shirt is about fifteen sizes too big for him.

Scariest Moment: Charlie drops a corkscrew in the garbage disposal and reaches in to get it.

Weirdest Moment: Another Halloween tradition this film follows is that the local kids go trick or treating absurdly early. They can be seen wandering the streets at the explicitly mentioned time of 1 PM.

Champion Dialogue: “I’d rather have my eyes pierced.”

Body Count: 6; not counting Michael Myers (whose head is chopped off), who always seems to find his way back home.

1. Jimmy is stabbed in the face with an ice skate.
2. Allegre is stabbed in the back.
3. Nurse Chambers has her throat slit.
4. Charlie has his throat slashed.
5. Sarah is stabbed to death.
6. Mr. Brennan is stabbed in the back.

TL;DR: Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later is a brilliant rejuvenation of the franchise through the lens of the post-Scream era.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1547
Reviews In This Series
Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

All Hallows Evil

For our podcast episode about this film, please click here.

Year: 1978

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, P. J. Soles

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Well folks, the first of October has struck once more, so you know what that means. While you are busying yourselves with warm-ups for the pumpkin spice flavor gauntlet your taste buds are about to endure for the duration of the autumnal season, my wicked little elves have been hard at work putting together a delectable collection of Halloween treats for you all. In addition to our yearly crossover with the Great Pumpkin himself, Hunter Allen of Kinemalogue, and a whole host of Scream 101 Podcast goodies, we are also heralding the beginning of our second annual franchise marathon, in which I take this scariest of months to pore over a horror series that has been unduly neglected by Yours Truly.

This month’s topic was an easy choice: Halloween. We’ve only dropped in on our old pal Michael Myers just once with my Halloween II review in May, and he’s the only slasher villain of the Unholy Trinity to not have a complete archive of reviews here on Popcorn Culture. Over the course of this increasingly blustery month, we will see to it that that glaring oversight is rectified. 

We will travel to the rotten mires of druid cults, the mystifying enigmas of Stonehenge, the cutting prose of Kevin Williamson, the classical lyricism of Busta Rhymes, and the redneck rampage of Rob Zombie. But before any of that can happen, we must take ourselves back to one very special night in 1978, a crisp fall evening rife with enchantment and wicked possibilities…

The night HE came home.

When Michael Myers (Nick Castle behind the mask, Tony Moran in front) – a lunatic who killed his sister on Halloween night when he was only six years old – escapes the insane asylum, he heads back to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois (played here by Pasadena, California under a not entirely convincing blanket of imported fall leaves). [SPOILERS] By random happenstance, the first person he sees is Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis in her first feature role), whom he latches onto with a sharklike intensity. After stalking her round town for the remainder of the day, he holes up in the house across the street from where she is babysitting, killing her friends Annie (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda (P. J. Soles) in the process of his single-minded, totally arbitrary pursuit.

All the while, Michael is pursued by the well intentioned but monologue prone Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance), who teams up with the put-upon Sheriff Brackett (Charles Cyphers) in an attempt to apprehend his marauding patient. The sheriff doesn’t necessarily believe the doctor’s story and quickly grows tired of his habit of endlessly soliloquizing about Michael’s pure eeeeevilness like he’s Hamlet’s Tumblr page, but he agrees to the stake-out, at least for the night.

The night HE sat around rambling for 80 minutes before actually making himself useful.

Halloween is not a slasher movie. It is THE slasher movie. Psycho may have turned on the gas and Texas Chain Saw may have lit the pilot light, but the rolling boil that was the slasher genre could not have existed without the roaring flame of John Carpenter, Michael Myers, and Halloween (in this extended metaphor, Friday the 13th is a kid throwing his spaghetti-o’s at the wall to see if they stick).

Halloween, however unintentionally, cemented in the rules of the slasher film: the silent masked killer, sex = death, the virginal survivor… And while there may be a handful of slasher films that I personally prefer to Halloween, not a single one of them handles those particular elements better. You see, Halloween is a fable. A shadow-drenched, pot smoke-infused fable, yes, but a fable nonetheless. It tells a brutally simple tale of Good vs. Evil played out in a distressingly innocuous canvas: American suburbia.

The characters might be thin enough to be extras in Oliver Twist, but Halloween isn’t a character study. It’s a broad strokes narrative about good (Laurie Strode) triumphing over evil (Michael Myers) and learning pure evil can never be truly stopped, only stalled for a time. This story is told within a pulse-pounding, Euro-inspired edifice of unparalleled structural quality, showing audiences a terror that could reasonably strike in their own neighborhoods.

And scaring the bajeezus out of so many people, the face of modern cinema would literally never be the same.

As a work of cinema, Halloween is a triumph, especially considering that they barely had enough money to start a fire. John Carpenter utilizes every creative tool at his disposal with the assured skill and confidence of a much older man (which, of course, he now is – and pretty much all he cares about is X-Box and basketball, so maybe he has a Benjamin Button thing going on). We’ve already discussed a bit about how the script is such an intelligent and efficient engine of terror, but there’s a lot more that goes into scaring people than a good story. There’s a reason we aren’t talking about The Outing in similarly hushed, reverent tones.

One thing the film couldn’t live without is the cinematography, courtesy of Dean Cundey (of every film you like). There’s remote beauty in the iconic, unbroken tracking shot that opens the film and puts you in the indelible perspective of a young killer, the fantastically skilled color grading (on certain prints) that paints a fantasy Midwest town in vivid oranges and blues, or the shadow-drenched Steadicam that stalks and frightens just as much as Michael Myers himself. Even after decades of filmmakers aping his techniques, Cundey’s work here remains fresh and untarnished.

The other key figure in Halloween’s success is John Carpenter’s minimalist synth score, about which I have already written a fairly lengthy essay. However, in a nutshell, the self-penned score of this film changed the game. Instead of lush (and expensive) orchestration, necessity drove Carpenter to this devilishly uncomplicated music, which drives the film forward with unrelenting determination, switching between several repeated motifs to alter the tone of scenes on a dime. It’s elemental and incongruously huge, painting the basic, primal evil of Michael Myers with a distressingly parsimonious, unflagging melody.

Putting this music on your iPod shuffle will turn any drive into a daring adventure.

Unfortunately, Halloween’s methodical approach to terror has left a lot of modern horror fans (weaned on the Saw franchise and the like) in the dark as to its staying power. However, it’s not a big leap to get into the mindset of audiences of the time, as it is to watch something like Dracula or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It merely requires a willingness to turn on your brain and engage, because Halloween has a lot to offer even the most Twitterfied millennial horror fan. Here, terror builds like steam pressure in a kettle, though there are also a decent smattering of hard jolts for the impatient.

And what would a Halloween review be without mentioning Jamie Lee Curtis? I could lose my credentials if I skipped over this performance, which inaugurated the reign of the Scream Queen. Jamie Lee is deserved royalty not just because she was in an astonishing number of early 80’s horror flicks (though she indubitably was), but because she’s the best of the best. Laurie Strode is a broadly simple character, a challenge for any true actress, but Curtis brings her to vivid life, balancing vulnerability and inner strength in a girl next door who never ceases to be a believable, rational teenager.

And of course I could hardly dare to skip over Donald Pleasance’s contributions, though they are certainly of a different ilk. His performance as Dr. Loomis is far from the grim reality of Laurie Strode, a bravura effort that constantly brushes against the fabled Top without slipping over it. Without Pleasance enacting the miniscule modicum of restraint he applies to the role, the entire character and his florid but thematically essential dialogue would be naught but a searing black scar over a classic film. But as it stands, Loomis is a loud, brash, intense piece of the puzzle, but a tremendously fitting one just the same.

Halloween’s success changed the horror genre forever, but nothing coming down the pike could ever match its elemental terror and thoughtful balance of shaded violence and fablistic fervor. There would be great slasher to come, but none that would exist in this pure, unfettered, absolutely essential form.

Happy October, everyone. Get ready for a wild ride.

Killer: Michael Myers (Nick Castle)

Final Girl: Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis)

Best Kill: Lynda is strangled with a phone cord while she tries to call Laurie.

Sign of the Times: Literally nobody drives anywhere without getting drunk or stoned first.

Scariest Moment: Laurie pounds on the front door while Michael pursues her across the lawn.

Weirdest Moment: Annie spills butter on herself so she takes off all her clothes.

Champion Dialogue: “You know, it’s Halloween. Everyone’s entitled to one good scare.”

Body Count: 5; not including 2 unfortunate dogs.

1. Judith Myers is stabbed to death.
2. Mechanic is slashed offscreen.
3. Annie is strangled and has her throat slit.
4. Bob is stabbed in the gut.
5. Lynda is strangled with a telephone cord.

TL;DR: Halloween is an elemental exemplar of the slasher genre.

Rating: 9/10
Word Count: 1560
Reviews In This Series
Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

Census Bloodbath: Mad Macks

Year: 1981

Director: Richard Franklin

Cast: Stacy Keach, Jamie Lee Curtis, Marion Edward

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

It’s a darn-tootin’ shame when I pop on one of my scheduled slasher flicks and it turns out to be a less-than exemplary purveyor of the form. No masked killer, no gore, no body count – it’s enough to make me worry whether or not I made a misstep in my research and accidentally spliced a romantic comedy into my calendar or something.

Road Games is one of those films. It’s about as far from a slasher as you can get while still maintaining the general formula and without, say, starring Meg Ryan. But it compounds the problem by being one of the most genuinely interesting flicks of the flock, much like the worrisomely categorized Motel Hell from way back yonder in 1980. Why oh why do the best movies in this project have to be the ones that turn themselves away from slasherdom?

I mean, we all know the answer to that but I’m electing to ignore it.

Road Games tells the story of the lonesome trucker Patrick Quid (Stacy Keach), who drives he highways of Australia (oh yeah, did I mention that this flick is Australian? They had a surprising wealth of slasher output in the early 80’s) delivering meat, entertaining himself by playing the harmonica along with the radio, playing word games, imagining stories for the other drivers along the road, and engaging in comic banter with his dog, Boswell the Dingo. However, his games begin to go sour when he picks up a hitchhiker who spots a man digging a hole on the side of the road during a game of 20 Questions. The very same man who he happened to see at a motel last night with a beautiful young woman who has since gone missing. In the very same town where a maniac is on the loose cutting up beautiful young women.

Forget 20 Questions. Now Quid only has two: Is this man in the green van a murderer, and will he strike again? On the road he picks up a girl who he calls Hitch (Jamie Lee Curtis) and together they speculate on the identity of the man, chasing the van from truck stop to truck stop along the desolate outback en route to Perth. When Hitch herself is captured, Quid becomes the prime suspect and he finds himself on the run to catch the culprit, save Hitch’s life, and clear his name before the meat in the back thaws.

The meat delivery business is a very high steaks industry.

As you can probably surmise from my description, Road Games is a goofy road movie that slowly boils into a pulse-pounding crime thriller though it’s hardly a dyed-in-the-wool slasher. It’s terrifically strange, strangely terrific, and uniquely Australian, but it’s slasher elements don’t so much occur within the narrative as they do around it. The way that these elements are integrated into Quid’s restless jokes and games is superbly piano wire thrilling, but it’s a through-the-looking-glass entry in the genre to say the least.

The quickest description that comes to mind is that Road Games is like National Lampoon’s take on Duel. Its loony outback sense of humor seeps in through every pore, from the Mont Python-esque names given to its roadside ensemble (who Quid sees time and time again in different combinations at various rest stops along his journey – a clever, realistic touch) like Captain Careful or Sneezy Rider to the casual banter between Curtis and Keach regarding the murderer’s methods. It dances a little too close to the keen knife edge of wackiness in some slapstick scenes, but for the most part the atmosphere of effortless comedy propels the thriller elements straight to the core when they do arrive.

If any single person is responsible for the success of this highly unusual thematic pairing, it’s Stacy Keach. A large portion of Road Games is what can only be described as a one man show, and he has the ability to tune into the needs of each scene with the ease of a skilled chef knowing exactly how much spice to add without overpowering the soup. And naturally Jamie Lee Curtis is great too, but her hardly-a-cameo fifteen minute role is almost more thankless than her appearance as a headshot in Halloween 4. No, this is Keach’s vehicle and he drives it like a well-oiled machine. I’m genuinely dismayed that he didn’t’ work ore outside of the realm of comedy, because his Robin Williams meets Dennis Weaver mien is really working for me.

I’m glad I write about slashers. There’s no way a romantic comedy project would provide this many startling combinations of adjectives.

Of course, if Road Games were the glistening slice of pure cinema perfection that I’ve thus far made it out to be, we’d be talking about it in terms of awards buzz or in conversation with the rest of the crime thriller classics, instead of here in my lowly backlog of slasher reviews. Because no, it ain’t perfect. It’s ramshackle, rough around the edges, and unmistakably Less Than. Whatever it has, there’s never enough. There’s not enough gore, not enough Jamie Lee, not enough incident… It’s terrific at what it does, but it’s low budget and low key, content to stay in the slow lane and ruminate while chomping its cud. This is certainly not a detraction, but it prevents it from entering the upper echelon of true classic films.

That said, for what he had to work with, director Richard Franklin makes his film sing. Although the first two acts are aesthetically competent (smashing lonely wide shots and Duel-esque glimpses at the speedometer), in the third all hell breaks loose. Franklin opens Pandora’s box, unleashing every ounce of directorial talent at his disposal all at once in a glorious visual crescendo. Highway imagery (concrete, glass, and rushing metal) collides with organic matter in a sickeningly beautiful manner, most memorably in a shot where Quid’s eyes are drowned out by the glow of the van’s taillights, giving him demonically mechanical red eyes. His descent into madness is captured by the frenetic, magnetic imagery on display in hat is one of the most visually inventive sequences of the whole year

I liked it a lot, can you tell?

Really, all of these things merely endeavor to make Road Games a more confusing film. The more I fall in love with it, the stranger and more alienating it gets. And while I can admit that it’s far from a masterpiece, it holds an iron grip over my heart. Really, all I can say is that you won’t regret checking this one out for yourself. Don’t expect a slasher, don’t expect to be scared, don’t expect, well… anything. Just get ready for a wild and dusty ride.

Killer: Smith or Jones (Grant Page)

Final Girl: Hitch (Jamie Lee Curtis), sort of

Sign of the Times: People still hitchhiker instead of just using Uber.

Best Kill: Not really applicable, but the girl who died was playing guitar naked, if that’s of particular interest to you.

Scariest Moment: Quid keeps watch on who he thinks is the killer in the restroom while Hitch sneaks into his van.

Weirdest Moment: There’s a mural on a rest stop wall depicting soldiers massacring aborigines. Nobody seems to care.

Champion Dialogue: “No, it’s 'Q-U-I-D'. 'D' as in 'death to young girls'."

Body Count: 2

1. Naked Guitar Chick is garroted.
2. Some Girl is decapitated and split in half offscreen.

TL;DR: Road Games is a surreally strange, goofy thriller yet an utterly effective one.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1279