Halloween (1978) - Page 2

The sequels worked for me as just good fun until about 6. 5 is a bit rocky. There is so much wrong with it but there are also so many little things I love. I thought endings to 4 and 5 were impressive but the subsequents sequels squandered what could have been.

No matter what is said about either version of "Halloween 6", it is a terrible movie. It worked for me at the time because as a fan, I just had a lot invested in the whole Loomis storyline but it just isn't very good.

H20 is such an overrated film. I'm just not interested in this whole Laurie Strode conquers her fears crap. There just aren't any genuine scares. Even though there are a few copycat scenes, they never manage to deliver that suspenseful feeling of Laurie running back to the Doyle house in the original. The thing is that scene works, even upon repeating viewings, better than the Hartnett-Williams in the fence scare does the first viewing. It feels like watching Neve Campbell being chased in a Scream movie. It's grating because it is so obvious that nothing bad is going to happen to her despite how they play it. H20 has such a safety net to it.

Resurrection is just garbage. Everything that was bad about H20 and then some. Bad character stereotypes ("I'm a cook so I'm going to relate Michael's behavior to poor diet even going so far as to explain this theory to him while he's trying to kill me."), lame Internet backstory, and Busta Rhymes doing kung-fu.

The Halloween remake actually intrigues me in just how sloppy and poorly conceived it is. I loved Devil's Rejects but this one felt like a massive step back for Zombie. The characters are so excessive in trying to beat their point across. In the first fifteen minutes, we get at least two characters who spend literally every second of their screen time swearing their asses off and being abusive so they the fact that they are jerks is clearly established. Same thing with Laurie's friends in the third act. It was like Zombie threw all these ideas he had up on screen and had no idea how to balance them all out.

Honestly, I can watch all of the Halloween sequels and garner far more enjoyment out of them then I can for most Nightmare or Friday sequels. They're just as ludicrous, but they work for me.

I can watch Halloween 2 (and III) just to stare at Cundey's camerawork. I have tried and failed to sit through Halloweens 4 - 6. They're flat out terrible films.

Fixed that for you.

To some extent all of the sequels are just remakes of the first movie, but the fourth one takes the cake and pushes it through your sternum with the working end of daddy's shotgun. With a few wrinkles, the story beats are virtually identical.

Seriously though, while I'm with Phil on watching the first three movies for their camerawork alone (which, for the genre, is bloody well stunning), for sheer replay value, RETURN takes second for me in the series. Love the gore, which is nasty and brutal without being cartoonish. Love Ellie Cornell. Love Pleasance's weary performance. Sure it's so retarded it likes to spend Tuesday afternoons stacking cans in the shape of John Pankow's hairline, but goddammit, it's good at stacking those cans.

No way. I guess I hold the original Halloween in such a higher esteem than the original Friday film that I can pretty much watch nearly any of the Friday sequels for the genial trash that they are, but can't stomach a second helping of any of the Halloween sequels other than the admitted somewhat-guilty pleasure of Season of the Witch.

I disagree with regard to the Nightmare series. I just worked my way through the Elm Street box set and I was actually shocked to see as much continuity on display as there was. I will agree that the Fridays are all over the place in terms of continuity (although I love them anyways).

Nightmare on Elm Street has exactly two sequels that are worth a shit: 3 and New Nightmare. Don't even get me started on Freddy vs Jason.

Ritter, I fully agree on Friday the 13th. The whole series is brain dead.

I'm going to disagree. I think what makes Halloween work so well (among many other things) is that Michael Myers is both the Boogie Man and an escaped mental patient. And he DOES have a backstory. But he's also an omnipresent force, lurking in the shadows. If he only operated on one of these levels, it wouldn't be as effective. If he was just supernatural, there'd be nothing really connecting him to the real world. If he was just an escaped mental patient, then we wouldn't have such a chilling atmosphere as he stalks these girls and appears almost magically in and out of their field of vision.

It's like Anton in NCFOM.

The shot where Laurie rips off his mask and you see his face for a couple seconds is amazing. He's not some gruesome Rick Baker or Tom Savini creation. He's just a pretty ugly guy. Before he does anything else, he stops to put the mask back on, so he can be the Boogie Man again. Great moment.

Was he ugly or was it just the results of having had the Laurie Strode defense methods inflicted upon him? Guy had a coat hanger to the eye and a knitting needle to the neck. I always figured that he could easily pass unnoticed without the mask; just a regular normal looking guy. I agree though that it is a great moment.

Huh, it looks like you're right. I always thought his eyes had a Clint Howard kind of ugly thing going, but it does look more like an injury from the coat hanger than anything else. That and his expression. Never noticed that.

Myers though wasn't given motivation outside of "random stalker/killer" until 2. His "backstory" is almost like that of an urban legend or a ghost story (kid goes psycho, kills sister on Halloween, gets committed, escapes to kill again on Halloween!...spooky!) which plays into his status as this Boogeyman. This is what makes the film in my eyes. He's almost like a personification of the random, cruel and sudden nature of death itself and the fear we all have of never being truly safe from it.


Halloween 2 has some good moments but it totally screws the pooch with the Laurie Strode is his sister retcon. This also brings up a plothole: Loomis has been with Myers since the beginning, we see a flashback with Laurie and Micheal and Loomis has no idea he even has another sister?

Was it his day off when that went down or have I just interpreted the entire sequence wrong?

And why the fuck did she keep apologizing?

What's weird about Laurie being Michael's sister is that now it's become such a part of the series that most people assume it was introduced in the first movie. I have to admit, it's hard to watch the first movie and not think that Michael is coming after her because it's his sister which I don't think was John Carpenter's original intent (I could be wrong).

The story I hear most often is that Carpenter attributes the brother/sister idea to a late night writing session fueled by a couple too many cocktails. I've never heard Carpenter's explanation, so that could be way off base.

Believe it or not, the guy playing Michael in the first Halloween is Nick " I directed The Last Starfighter!" Castle.

Yep, but Castle was playing The Shape. The actor who played him during the brief unmasking was a guy named Tony Moran.

You're not. Carpenter has said that the "revelation" served no higher point than to shock the audience, make the whole thing a bit eerier, and superficially justify the existence of the sequel. They needed a cherry on top and it didn't really matter if it added anything substantial to series (it doesn't) or if it didn't make a hell of a whole lot of sense.

Yeah, so much so that Rob Zombie decided to insert it into his tragedy of a remake.

He doesn't have a backstory in the sense that the impetus for his evil nature is never explained, but I think there's a difference between that and saying he's a "random stalker/killer," which to me brushes aside a lot of what Carpenter does. The key to the film's success is its permeating sense of dread, which is built by intercutting Michael's peeping tom shenanigans with Loomis's warnings and ruminations. From the get go the audience more or less knows who Michael is and what he's trying to do because of the opening sequence and how Loomis keeps affirming it. It's not about the random and sudden nature of death, but the persistent forward movement of evil.

I'm sort of rambling here but what I'm trying to get at is that the whole movie is trying to set up the inevitability of the final thirty minutes. From the minute he drives off the Smith's Grove property he has a plan. We don't know why he's evil to begin with, but we do know that nothing he does is random. I agree with what you're saying about his becoming myth and I love how Carpenter is so suggestive with the idea of his being the Bogeyman, but in context I think that ties in more with the idea of insistent, unstoppable evil ("You can't kill the Bogeyman!") than the randomness of death.

Regarding the sister angle, Carpenter kind of makes the same mistake in The Fog (a movie I otherwise love) when he reveals that the ghosts only have to kill six people. Kind of deflates the fear somewhat, as those are pretty good odds!

Earlier tonight I sat down with a double feature of PUMPKINHEAD (which I enjoyed way more than I thought I would) and THE STRANGERS, and now I'm celebrating the holiday with this classic film and a six pack of Octoberfest. As a result, you fine people get my rambling observations as I watch this thing for the umpteenth time.

First, Annie really is a bitch. I can't believe she has any friends, let alone anyone who wants to fuck her.

And what's the deal with the caretaker at the cemetery? Why do grizzled old handymen types in the movies always have weird, quasi-British accents?

Something I always forget about then laugh when I see it - apparently the drive from Laurie's place to the Wallace's house is like a buck and a half, buck forty-five. Haddonfield ain't exactly a budding metropolis, yet we go from full afternoon to twilight to black-o-night in the same sequence. I think Tony Scott ripped off such time continuity for the opening sequence of TOP GUN.

My friends and I did Halloween and Young Frankenstein tonight. There were a few people there that had only seen the remake of Halloween. I wept.

"You see the thing about a Myers is he got lifeless eyes, is a, black eyes, like a doll's eyes."

One thing I will always wonder- and if it's been pointed out in this thread, I apologize- but Sherriff Brackett is either the most incompetent cop ever, or the coolest Dad ever. There is absolutely no way he doesn't smell the marijuana smoke when they pull up to him in the car. They were hotboxing it, and five seconds later they're rolling down the window and talking to the law. I know he's got bigger fish to fry, like finding out which darned kid broke into the hardware store and stole a mask, a length of rope, and some knives. Which doesn't set off any flags, he deduces it's probably just some kids. So he's incompetent. Come to think of it, at that point the Shape has already been seen with the mask on, and yet when Annie and Laurie pull up there, the alarm is still going off and the cops are just now on the scene. Mikey is right behind them, in fact, still driving the Smith's Grove station wagon. That's a helluva response time, right there.

Oh, and I agree, Annie is kind of a bitch. "Speed kills."

After I finish watching Wrong Turn 2, I have The Strangers waiting on me. I saw it once, this past summer at the drive in, and it has stayed with me. Curious to see how it holds up to repeat viewings.

I don't get why Annie freaks out so much when she spills stuff on herself, basically getting naked right then and there and going to the trouble of washing her clothes. The fuck's she got going on besides mentoring Lindsay, the hag-in-training, that she needs freshly starched linens for? At the time it happens she doesn't think she's going to see Paul anyway, and even if she did, it's not like they're going dancing at the Copacabana.

Eh, horror movies need a dash of inexplicable behavior to keep em going sometimes.

"Hitchhiker!"
"Should we pick him up?"
"Pick him up, man, he'll asphyxiate!"
"The son of a bitch is gonna smell just like a slaughterhouse."
"Oh, he's weird looking..."

It was butter, Annie says. Butter! How big could the stain have been? Weirder still, when I was a kid we had the same blanket Annie's got slung around her shoulders.

Totally.

Banks, I know people like that. It doesn't matter if it was water they spill on themselves, they will change clothes. It's some OCD thing.

Wasn't this whole thread started to point out what a douche Tommy Doyle is? Because that kid gets on my dick nerve so much anymore. Even Paul Rudd couldn't erase the memories.

EDIT: Nope, I'm just echoing a sentiment already expressed by Phil.

Brilliant little visual moment that I never really picked up before - when Michael finally, mercifully chokes the like out of Annie, Carpenter shoots much of the scene from outside the car looking in through the windshield, which of course was fogged up with Mike's breath. It adds an eerily airy, dreamlike quality to the kill that works beautifully with the tone of stillness.

Brilliant little sound design moment that I did pick up before - the throbbing, crashing score from THE THING (which I think is still on at that time) as Tommy watches Michael carry Annie's body back into the house.

Also, goddamn, Curtis is perfect as Laurie Strode.

QFT.

Well, kiddo, I don't want to imagine anybody else in that role. Scout Taylor who the fuck?

Who'd win in a pussy fight, Tommy Doyle or that kid from LAST ACTION HERO? I wish they made kid-sized blenders.

I need another beer.

Also, I'm strongly considering watching HALLOWEEN 4 next. Chat along with me in a half hour.

Don't own that one, don't remember that much about it, really.

Ugh, don't watch that. The Dunwich Horror is on TCM.

Jesus Christ, Lindsay's parents keep a lit jack-o-lantern by their bed? Kinky.

Kinkier: Dean Stockwell in a perm conjuring up Yog-Sothoth from a book while romantic music plays.

Tommy Doyle: "Yeah, we get CANDY!" I wanted to smash his face on the sidewalk like his pumpkin.

Wait, is this DUNWICH we're talking about here? Ziggy should help with that shit.

Shit. I forgot Dunwich was on tonight, and I've never seen it. When did it start?

Carpenter's shot construction: timeless. House decor: Not so much.

You know, one thing that always bothered me about Halloween 4-5, and this is a really silly complaint, is that in part 5, he takes off his mask near the end and he has eyes. My fifteen year old self was so quick to point out, "But his eyes were shot out in part 2! What the fuck?"

So, apparently I have no problems with his multiple bullet wounds, the fact that his body survived a raging inferno, I'm super cool with his supernatural regenerative powers, but not the eyes! He shouldn't have eyes!

Yeah, I'm a retard.

EDIT: And I'm aware of the fact that Loomis miraculously survived the fire, too.

20 minutes ago.

His dialogue is getting creaky as well. I still love that movie. When I was a kid, no vcr, no cable, I would sometimes experience movies as kind of campfire tales from my older brother. He'd turn the movies into stories* he'd tell us at night (the three of us shared a bedroom). Halloween was one of them, and it's always stuck with me in a "boogeyman/urban legend" kind of way as a result.

*For years I thought the "the call is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!" story happened to someone in town. I was a gullible kid.

Michael Myers was the only movie monster that ever really permeated my dreams, for a long period of my life. I've had Jason, Freddy, and Leatherface make appearances before, but Myers was the only one who would come back again and again.

Since my birthday is on Halloween, this movie was a rite of passage from a real young age. My older sisters would threaten to make me watch it all the time when I was really young, and finally I did, and finally it scared the shit out of me.

The Shape is the one that caused real terror in my nightmares.

Phil convinced me. Watching Dunwich now. New thread.

You really don't understand men at all, do you? Or in this case, teenage boys, which are even worse.