For an example of a king in its own genre, there’s no beating Jaws.  Spielberg’s shark-horror movie was so iconic that it scared off almost all potential competitors.  Sure, every once in a while you’ll see a Deep Blue Sea or an Open Water or even a Sharks In Venice, but the field is comparatively puny.  Look at how many haunted-house movies or demonic-possession movies or vampire movies there are, and you’ll have to agree.  Human beings have a potent and primal fear of sharks, to this day, even though our species has virtually decimated theirs – it’s an irrational fear, but it still persists.  Normally anything that scares this many human beings gets dramatized on film more frequently, but not sharks.  And that mostly because Jaws was so damn good.  Most filmmakers don’t want their movies to live in that shadow.

Soul Surfer is a shark movie, technically, but of course I know it’s not meant to be a horror movie.  It has a shark in it, but only for about thirty seconds.  Soul Surfer is meant to be an inspirational sports movie, based on the true story of Bethany Hamilton, the teenaged competitive surfer who made headlines first by having her left arm bitten off by a tiger shark and then by returning to the world of competitive surfing (and the daytime talk show circuit).

I’m not such a monster that I would ever poke fun at Bethany Hamilton – however, she did license her life story to writers and producers of Baywatch, and if I can’t make fun of that, then what’s the point of having a sense of humor in the first place?  Writer-director Sean McNamara didn’t work on Baywatch – he directed the Alba-free Into The Blue 2 and many episodes of That’s So Raven – but he did work on the script along with nine (!) other credited writers, most prominently the ones who brought the world, especially Germany, many great works including Baywatch Hawaiian Wedding and the Hulk Hogan series Thunder In Paradise.

This story doesn’t have to be maudlin to be inspirational – look no further than 127 Hours.  Real life doesn’t need ghosts or goblins to be terrifying; mortal danger exists all around us at all times, and horror is just one tool we use to conquer our fears just so we can get through the day.  The loss of a limb is a much more common occurrence than a shark attack, it’s a legitimate phobia, chilling to the bone, and this disturbing notion has been cinematically exploited in movies as varied as Evil Dead 2, The Empire Strikes Back, Saving Private Ryan, Predator, Robocop, oh okay, and Jaws 4.  By harnessing the awful intensity of the shark attack, Soul Surfer could have capitalized on that primal fear to make audiences sympathize with Bethany, the way that Danny Boyle brought audiences directly inside the experience of Aron Ralston in 127 Hours.  Then, her recovery and her eventual return to the ocean would have had a true sense of triumph.  Instead, the shark attack lasts less than a minute, and nearly off-screen – it’s just a fin and a splash, basically.  I know this thing is a PG, but come on, so was Jaws.  Now I’m not made of stone, so admittedly, it’s a harrowing three or four minutes as the poor girl is rushed to the hospital.  But it’s really not long before the onscreen Bethany is on her feet and looking towards the waves again.  Then the tears of joy start rolling and the pop-country song plays, and anything the movie had going for it is long gone.  Missed opportunity.

But not if you leave the movie right after the shark attack…

That’s how I watched Soul Surfer, and it’s the only way to do it, assuming you want to see a harsh, uncompromising horror film tucked away in a treacly, preachy family film.  Soul Surfer up to and including the shark attack, or Soul Surfer: Redux to shorten the terminology, is a profoundly unsettling parable of man versus nature – or, more specifically, man brutally victimized by the whims of nature.

Bethany (AnnaSophia Robb) is a pretty blond teenager who loves her family almost as much as she loves to surf.  She loves her blond parents (Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt, looking like they spent a lot of time in the sun preparing for the role) and her two brothers, and she loves her local church youth group, the leader of whom is played by American Idol star Carrie Underwood.  All these people live in an idyllic sun-world also known as Kauai, Hawaii, a truly beautiful place which is photographed here without much inspiration by journeyman cinematographer John Leonetti (Piranha 3D).  The location is pretty, but there’s something not quite perfect about this world – everything looks a little too blond, a little too made-for-cable, not at all ugly, but frankly kind of dull.  That doesn’t deter our protagonist, who bounds out into the surf with her board and her friends, cheered on by her family, with all of the promise of life, untroubled by any of its complexity or dark poetry.

One overcast morning, Bethany goes out surfing from a remote location with a friend and her father (Kevin Sorbo, TV’s Hercules).  The musical score is done by horror-film composer Marco Beltrami (Scream, The Faculty, Blade 2).  We’re a ways from a Carrie Underwood campfire sing-in.  The surfers paddle out into the murky water, some distance from shore.  The waves lap quietly at the boards.  Bethany dips an arm into the water.  Something dark, large, and sleek briefly submerges, then disappears back under the surface.  Bethany’s arm is gone.  She goes into shock, bleeding mortally.  Her friends and Mr. Sorbo leap into desperate action, using Bethany’s surfboard as a makeshift battlefield gurney.  They load her into the car and race for the hospital.  Elsewhere, Mr. and Mrs. Quaid get the call, and rush to meet the car at the hospital, where Bethany is being wheeled into the emergency room.  The unforgiving drones of overworked medical equipment drown out the soundtrack.

Now leave.

What Soul Surfer: Redux tells the viewer is that the universe is random, unpredictable, and horribly cruel.  It will literally attack you, without any warning, even in a moment of peace or happiness, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  You can be a pretty blond white girl with pretty blond parents living on an island paradise, living a life of sport and prayer with all the possibilities in the world wide open to you – and then the sea will rise up and take your arm.  And there’s nothing you can do about it.  There’s nothing anybody can do about it:  Not your movie-star parents, not your handsome friends, not Carrie Underwood and her prayers, not God, not Jesus, not even mighty Hercules himself.  This is real life, and it can end at any minute.

It’s an alarming thought.  It’s probably true.  It’s as dark an ending as any movie I can think of off-hand that isn’t The Exorcist, Seven, or The Great Silence.  It’s a bold statement for the God-fearing, Baywatch-making imagineers behind a family movie like Soul Surfer to make, except of course that they totally didn’t.

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The Lost Boys is one finely-aged wedge of 1980s cheese. I don’t know what experience a first-time viewer would have with it, but for those of us of a certain age, there’s a fondness. For those of us who were high school comic book geeks, it was one of the first times we were represented on screen (by  Corey Haim and Corey Feldman, still a few years away from traumatizing us by, among other confused acts, double-teaming Nicole Eggert from Charles In Charge), and for everyone else, it’s a camp classic – and not just 1980s camp.  Hall-of-fame camp. There’s no other classification that is able to house a movie with dialogue such as  “How are those maggots, Michael?”, “You killed Marco!”, “Death by stereo!” and of course, “Christ!” (Corey Feldman’s single greatest acting achievement.)

The Lost Boys has dual protagonists: young Sam (Corey Haim) and his older brother Michael (Jason Patric, interestingly enough, the son of Exorcist star Jason Miller).  Sam and Michael and their mother (Oscar-winner Dianne Wiest) move in with their eccentric grandfather (Barnard Hughes) in the coastal west-coast town of Santa Clara.  All three newcomers quickly fall in with their own social groups:  Mom meets and starts dating a friendly video store owner (Edward Herrmann).  Michael meets a beautiful, unfortunately-named girl named Star (Jami Gertz), who hangs with a creepy but charismatic dude named David (Kiefer Sutherland), who rolls with a gang of troublemakers.  And Sam meets a pair of comic book store employees named Edgar and Alan Frog (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander), who are convinced that both Mom and Michael’s new friends are hideous bloodsucking vampires.  And they happen to be right.

David and his boys are definitely vampires, trying to recruit Michael to their brood.  Can Sam save his brother?  Does Michael want to be saved?  In a three-way collision of tone, the scenes between Michael and Star are eerily romantic, the scenes with David and co. inducting Michael towards the dark side are pure horror movie, and the scenes with Sam and his buddies, as they try desperately to prove the existence of vampires to Sam’s oblivious mom, are goofily comedic.  I have to admit, I still think it all somehow comes together.  It’s a movie so anxious to please, bursting forward with a little something for everyone, that it can’t help but continue to endear.  I’ll still stop to watch this movie if I happen to see it running on TV.

Time Out New York once called The Lost Boys “the Twilight of its day” but they’re wrong; Despite the tenous Peter Pan connection and the disturbingly dated fashions (Corey Haim dresses exactly like Kristy Swanson did) and the operatically cheesy soundtrack, The Lost Boys at least tries to scare you. This isn’t “vampire romance” — these vampires might have then-stylish mullets and ear jewelry, but they’re nasty S.O.B.’s, and not easily killed.  There are a couple surprisingly lengthy and intense stake-slayings, and the way that the movie withholds the image of the vampires in flight actually kind of succeeds. No doubt it was a practical and budgetary decision, but it helps to force you to imagine a much scarier image. The way-better-than-average cinematography goes a long way in that direction; the film was shot by Michael Chapman, who shot Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. I also think that my man Kiefer is always at his best as a villain, and he certainly goes a long way towards stacking the odds against the heroes in this movie – against an angry fanged Kiefer, what shot can the Coreys possibly have?

And now here’s some credence towards my argument that you can almost never entirely write off anyone: Joel Schumacher directed this movie. The film-geek community probably doesn’t like much light to be shone upon this fact, and I can’t blame them, after what Schumacher forced us to endure with his 1997 Batman & Robin.  But he keeps The Lost Boys moving at a brisk pace and he keeps the humor in its right places and he stays out of Chapman’s way when a visually atmospheric moment is working.  The only real Schumacher-ism that comes immediately to mind is the greased-up shirtless saxophone player attacking a microphone like it was a bachelorette party. And that’s pretty damn funny, so who can complain?

I can’t call it a personal favorite, but I like The Lost Boys enough to have eye-tested the first direct-to-DVD sequel, The Lost Boys 2: The Tribe. Skip that one. It’s not that it’s bad – it’s maybe worse than bad, since it’s not bad, just serviceable. I don’t remember any character except the lead vampire, who was played by Kiefer’s younger half-brother – I thought he was good, understated and charismatic, but the sad fact remains that there’s already an alpha-vampire in the family. Besides, the sad emo cover version of “Cry Little Sister” just pales.  A third sequel came out last year, but I can’t do it.  It’s too sad.

Some movies are too much of their era to ever be replicated.  The Lost Boys is so much a piece of the 1980s that to separate it from its time is to destroy its appeal.  If you truly love the vampire, you must leave the vampire to its cave, or else it collapses in a pile of dust.

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The 1970s and the 1980s were an unusually fertile period for memorable horror movies, as evidenced by the fact that it’s hard to think of many movies from more recent decades that truly measure up.  I’ve mostly covered movies from those decades so far this month, although I’ve found plenty personally to love in more recent years.  Ironically, one of the better horror movies of the past few years is a total homage to the movies of the 1970s and the 1980s.

The House Of The Devil blends the Satanic-cult trending of the 1970s with the teenagers-in-peril slasher flicks of the early 1980s (which themselves owed plenty to 1974’s Black Christmas and 1978’s Halloween).  It’s very resolutely set in the 1980s, as demonstrated by the logos of the opening titles, the fashions of the characters, and the recognizable pop song “One Thing Leads To Another” by The Fixx, which the protagonist listens to over and over on her Walkman.  The girl, named Samantha and played by Jocelin Donahue, is a college student who answers an ad looking for a babysitter.  She accepts the job over the phone, and heads to a remote location to meet her employers.  Her friend Megan, played by the since-ubiquitous Greta Gerwig, doesn’t trust the sketchiness of the whole thing, and insists on driving her there.

Let me tell you something that horror fans already know — when you take a babysitting job and Tom Noonan opens the door, don’t think.  Back away slowly.  When you see that his wife is played by Mary Woronov, stop backing away so slowly.  Just run.

These people want Samantha to watch someone for them while they step out for the evening — Noonan’s character eventually insists it’s his mother — but Samantha never gets to see who she’s supposed to be watching.  Well, eventually she does, I guess, but by then it’s way too late.  What’s so incredible about this movie is how long it’s able to stretch suspense before revealing anything.  For the first hour of this movie, very little incident actually happens.  You get to meet this girl, who’s very cute and certainly likable, if quiet, and then you follow her as she accepts this strange job offer, sticking with it far past the point of plausibility.  Most of us wouldn’t take that job, no matter how bad we needed the money, especially after we meet those two creeps, most especially once those noises start coming out of the attic.

No, not much happens for quite a while in The House Of The Devil, but once it does, once that deviltry finally begins, it just starts tumbling out of the movie in a delirium.  The climactic scenes of this film are freaky and memorable and thoroughly worth sticking around to see.  Your patience will reward you with some truly effective scares.  In the meantime, there’s that Tom Noonan performance to chew over.

Tom Noonan is one of my favorite character actors.  He played Frankenstein’s Monster in The Monster Squad, he brushed against the notoriety he deserves when he played a villain in Last Action Hero, he made brief but memorable appearances in Synecdoche, New York and TV’s Louie, and probably most famously, he made a pivotal cameo in Michael Mann’s Heat (as the disabled mastermind who feeds De Niro’s crew their bank jobs) and portrayed one of the most unnerving movie monsters ever in Mann’s 1986 cult classic, Manhunter.  Noonan has a tall, lanky frame that puts him in a position to loom over even the most strapping movie stars, yet he has a totally incongruous way about him, a soft, almost sleepy voice that calms even if the character he’s playing is up to terrible things.  With his casting in House Of The Devil, it almost — almost — is understandable that Samantha trusts him initially and decides to enter his home, even though we all know that the movie is called House Of The Devil and eventually we’re going to have to see why.  If you’re a Tom Noonan fan, you know right away what’s up (there’s a history behind his casting), and if this is the first time you’re seeing him, you’re probably even more suspicious.

But even still, The House Of The Devil will probably blindside you.  Ever seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?  Remember Leatherface’s first appearance?  The way that the girl ventures into that awful house, against all instincts, and wanders around for a seemingly interminable moment until her killer appears, totally inevitably yet totally suddenly?  The House Of The Devil is like that moment, sustained for the entire length of a feature film. It’s a terrific genre exercise, and absolutely worth watching no matter how much of it you think I’ve given away.

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I have 469 movies in my Netflix Instant queue. I tend to watch one thing for every five that I add, but now my library is close to being full and I have to make room. So, every Monday I’m going to pick a random movie out of my queue and review the shit out of it. But (like Jesus), I’m also thinking of you and your unwieldy queue and all the movies in it you want to watch but no longer have the time to now that you’ve become so awesome and popular. Let me know what has been gathering digital dust in your Netflix Instant library and I’ll watch that, too. One Monday for you and the next for me and so on. Let’s get to it.

What’s the movie? Altered (2006)

What’s it rated? R for rednecksploitatation, a game of intestinal tug o’ war and James Gammon’s face.

Did people make it? Written by Eduardo Sanchez and Jamie Nash. Directed by Eduardo Sanchez. Acted by Adam Kaufman, Brad William Henke, Catherine Mangan, Paul McCarthy-Boyington, Michael C. Williams and James Gammon.

What’s it like in one sentence? It’s what Fire in the Sky would be like if it was an action\horror\comedy.

Why did you watch it? Jason the Mason said it was comfortable evening wear for a feline.

"That's the goddamn cutest little welder I ever did see."

What’s it about in one paragraph? Three redneck best friends are hunting a mysterious creature in the woods with some home made weapons. They capture something and take it over to their friend Wyatt’s house, who lives with his girlfriend on a heavily fortified compound in the middle of nowhere and is suffering from some serious PTSD. When their captured prey turns out to be an alien from outer space with razor teeth and psychic powers (and of the same race of aliens that abducted all the friends when they were teenagers), they have to decide whether to let it go, so as not to incur the wrath of the other aliens, or get a little revenge for their miserable lives. Either way, it’s probably not going to work out so well.

Play or remove from my queue? Play it for sure. This one feels so original that even when the huge head of steam it has from the word go starts to dissipate, you’re still so caught up in the novelty of the whole enterprise you can’t look away. The structure of the film is tweaked in such a way that the first scene in the film feels like it should be the halfway point in a regular alien abduction type movie, but Altered doesn’t seem really interested in following the typical story beats you might expect. It starts with Cody, Duke and Otis running around the forest hunting for something they’re also extremely afraid of, and their improvised harpoon gun and other weapons show that they are expecting it to be awfully deadly. After capturing something we can’t quite see (but looks fairly humanoid and screeches like a rabid monkey) they realize they weren’t remotely prepared to capture something and now have no idea what to do next. Duke (the Kenny Powers mulleted leader played by Brad William Henke) remembers his old friend Wyatt and thinks he might be awfully helpful in a situation involving an unconscious alien who might wake up and eat a face or two. As soon as Duke thinks of Wyatt, we flash over to Wyatt’s house and see him waking terrified from a nightmare. He grabs a bottle of liquor and starts checking the perimeter as his girlfriend soothingly tells him there’s nothing out there (and that there never is). He knows in his bones the boys are coming, coming with something deadly, barely unconscious and wrapped in a blanket. Once the alien is duct taped and chained to a table in Wyatt’s garage, the film settles into a less brake neck rhythm and stays fairly consistent for the rest of the running time. It’s mostly a bottle episode of a film, but some nice writing and the energizing pace keep you from realizing that most of the time.

The performances are mostly pretty great with the only exception being the actor playing Wyatt. Adam Kaufman isn’t bad necessarily (even though he’ll always be that scumfuck Parker from Season 4 of Buffy to me) but so much of his work is done through yelling that I found myself becoming less and less invested in his histrionics. I’m not sure if it’s his fault or if it was how he was directed, but I found myself way more interested in Duke’s story than Wyatt’s. Of course, Duke is played by Brad William Henke (who I’ve been a fan of ever since Choke) and his character in this just seems way more interesting than Wyatt’s does. All four of these friends were taken by the aliens when they were teenagers along with another friend who died terribly during their captivity. Duke, Otis and Cody were released early because they didn’t fit the profile for testing the aliens were looking for, but Wyatt did so he was kept for much longer and experimented on. Duke, Otis and Cody spent the decade after their abduction just searching for one of the little fuckers to wail on, while Wyatt holed himself up in his compound to watch the skies. The sadness of all these men who are all still scared little boys haunts every frame of the film and makes Altered more than just another sci-fi\horror hybrid.

I don’t want to say any more about the plot then I have already because watching shit slowly turn to fuck is one of the joys of the film that I refuse to take away. Altered is a a lot of fun and at a breezy 80 minutes there’s no good reason not to knock this one out when you’re looking for something fast paced with a few good jolts and a plot that won’t make you feel stupid afterwords. Also, the practical makeup effects are so gooey and drippy that gore hounds will have a blast with this as well. It’s a solid little thriller that you won’t regret watching one bit.

"I knew I shouldn'ta fucked Courtney Love while that thing behind me watched. It just felt wrong and now look at me."

Do you have a favorite line? After almost shooting Otis with a spear gun, Cody’s reaction to Otis’ anger and fear: “Shut yer trap, piss pants”. With friends like these you should look for other friends who aren’t such fucking assholes.

Do you have an interesting fun-fact? It’s an obvious one, but the fact that Altered is directed by Eduardo Sanchez, who co-directed The Blair Witch Project with Daniel Myrick. It would be interesting to find out why he followed up Blair Witch with such a weird and small little tale. They probably could have had their pick of projects at that point.

What does Netflix say I’d like if I like this? Organizm (the spelling of this movie makes me want to tell it to fuck itself), Senseless (been in my queue for almost 2 years), Deep Evil (I’m not the biggest fan of Lorenzo Lamas, so…) Scourge (cool cover, couldn’t make it 15 minutes into the movie) and Invasion (also known as Police Dashboard Camera: The Motion Picture).

What does Jared say I’d like if I like this? Get two TV’s and put Sleepers on one and Fire in the Sky on the other and then let your imagination be your guide.

What is Netflix’s best guess for Jared? 2.8

What is Jared’s best guess for Jared? 3.3

Can you link to the movie? I sure can!

Any last thoughts? Even if nothing I wrote makes you want to watch this movie, watch it for the tug o’ war over a dude’s large intestine. It’s one of the grosser things I’ve ever seen and made me giggle like a pig in shit.

Did you watch anything else this week? I saw Puss In Boots which was much better than expected and I watched Slither for the first time since it came out and it still makes me happy all over.

Next Week? The Evictors unless y’all got a better idea.

"You guys wanna watch Gilmore Girls and then have an art party?"

The found footage genre (which I think ultimately gets tossed around for a lot of dissimilar films) has been strongly revitalized in the last week and a half, as Paranormal Activity 3 has brought in over $100m worldwide already. The molecular budgets and occasional huge returns means that flops like Apollo 18 won’t put a dent in a genre that is likely here to stay, and more Cloverfield-like efforts may find themselves empowered once again as an unintentional by-product. It’s getting easier to point to fake-low-resolution footage films that are successful than trying to pitch the new Cloverfield. Fixed-camera horror films are obviously not the same as other films that purport to be shot on handicams and be POV, but the studios often ignore little distinctions like that.

In any event (that lead got well-buried!) Category Six, which New Line recently picked up for about 300k last week, sounds much more like a Cloverfield than a Paranormal Activity as it’s a cellphone-footage film about a large scale disaster. John Swetman wrote the script that details the harrowing story of a group of high schoolers that wave cellphones around while being chased by the biggest tornado in recorded history. So yes, Twister in puke-vision with a more annoying cast of characters!

There’s not much in the way of details beyond that, but I expect this one to get an actual greenlight pretty quickly.

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Source | Deadline (via JoBlo)

Steve Buscemi has been kicking ass in Atlantic City for a while now, standing tall among the many powerhouses that fill out Boardwalk Empire. There’s not a ton of humor in that show though, and for Buscemi’s next trip to a gambling town he’ll be exploring the lighter side.

According to Deadline, Buscemi is in talks to cram in filming for Burt Wanderstone during his Boardwalk Hiatus, which will partner him with both Steve Carrell and Jim Carrey. The comedy covers two rival magic acts, one of which is the titular Burt Wonderstone (Carrell) and his partner Anton (Buscemi, if he signs). After the partners split up, Wonderstone finds himself in direct competition with his rival, with Anton possibly switching sides? The description is a bit unclear (good ole Mike F. may soon update the original piece into comprehensibility at any moment, so keep an eye out).

If the rivalry and side-switching elements are in play though, then consider this a comedic The Prestige with Buscemi playing the Scarlett Johansson role.  That’s a fun image.

There is a major female role in the film though, with everyone from Jessica Biel to Olivia Wilde, to actual comedians like Sarah Silverman and Judy Greer in contention. Just on gut instinct I’d be interested to hear about Silverman nabbing that role, but still very up in the air.

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I’ve been beating the Kevin anticipation drum for weeks now, and I’m pleased to say I’ll be catching it in the next few nights at the Savannah Film Festival. Look for my review soon (I’ve already taken on The Artist, with much more to come), but until then take a look at the US trailer (HD at Apple).

I like this trailer a lot– it’s selling interesting and dynamic, but strongly hinting at the deeply uncomfortable and unpleasant family drama that (from my understanding) is at the core of the film. I’ll be able to tell you soon!

(via Collider)

Hollywood loves a good franchise. The movie-going public does too. Horror, action, comedy, sci-fi, western, no genre is safe. And any film, no matter how seemingly stand-alone, conclusive, or inappropriate to sequel, could generate an expansive franchise. They are legion. We are surrounded. But a champion has risen from the rabble to defend us. Me. I have donned my sweats and taken up cinema’s gauntlet. Don’t try this at home. I am a professional.

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The Franchise: Hellraiser — concerning a supernatural puzzle box (and those humans foolish/unlucky enough to solve it) that opens a doorway to the hellish dimension of Pinhead, the most prominent member of the Cenobites, powerful beings who desire human souls for sadomasochistic experiments. Adapted from Clive Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart, the franchise spans nine films, from 1987 to 2011.

previous installments
Hellraiser
Hellbound: Hellraiser II
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth
Hellraiser IV: Bloodline
Hellraiser: Inferno
Hellraiser: Hellseeker
Hellraiser: Deader
Hellraiser: Hellworld

The Installment: Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

The Story:

We open with some shaky camcorder POV found-footage shenanigans, with two friends, Steven Craven and Nico Bradley – get it?! Craven and Bradley; as in Wes Craven and Doug Bradley! Wait, Wes Craven? – on their way to Tijuana for the kinds of reasons that two young men go to Tijuana. It is jokes and good times while they’re in the car, but then we cut to them arguing later on, and then cut to them in a dank room where Nico opens the Lament Configuration and Pinhead shows up. Then we jump forward in time, one year, to a dinner party where Steven and Nico’s respective loved ones are hanging out. Turns out that Nico and Steven never returned from Tijuana and are presumed dead. Their belongings, including Steven’s video camera and the Lament Configuration, were returned to the parents, and long story short, we wind up with two stories here: Story A) the movie-within-a-movie found-footage story of Nico and Steven in Tijuana, and Story B) when Steven miraculously arrives at the dinner party, and winds up holding everyone hostage with a shot-gun. See, in Mexico Nico “accidentally” killed a hooker, which leads to the boys getting the Lament Configuration. Nico is taken away by the Cenobites, and Steven is sent into a spiral of depression and hooker bangin’. Steven ends up killing a hooker himself, and like Frank in Hellraiser Nico escapes from the Cenobites and needs Steven’s help murdering more hookers in order to reconstitute his flesh. Our big twist comes later in the film when we discover that Steven (in the present) is actually Nico wearing Steven’s flesh (like Frank did with Larry). Nico had betrayed Steven in Tijuana, which caused Steven to give himself over to the Cenobites — at which point Steven becomes, wait for it, wait for it, Mini-Pinhead! Now we have two Pinheads! Yay! Then the movie ends. And your bowels uncontrollably release.

What Works:

Presumably the vast majority of you reading this already know the backstory on Hellraiser: Revelations, but for those who don’t — Revelations is what’s known in the ‘the Biz’ as an ashcan copy, something that a company makes for the sole purpose of retaining rights/trademarks that are otherwise about to expire; generally not even bothering to release the finished product, sending it immediately to the “ashcan,” if you will. In this case, the Weinsteins (who have controlled the franchise’s rights since Miramax distributed Hell on Earth) couldn’t get their shit together on the Hellraiser reboot fast enough and were in danger of losing their claim. The pre-production stage of the film was so hurried and slipshod that Doug Bradley passed on the project — let’s keep in mind that this is the same guy who said yes to Hellseeker, Deader, and Hellworld; so that should let us know how horrifyingly half-ass this production must have seemed close-up. Not to mention that despite having his name used in relation to the previous sequels, even though he personally had nothing to do with anything after Bloodline, Barker was so aghast to see Revelations being marketed with a “From the mind of Clive Barker” tag that he sent out this tweet:

So knowing all this, I have to say, while Revelations is not a good film, it isn’t quiet the holocaust of cinema I was expecting it to be. The franchise was already in a pretty terrible place, so it’s not like Revelations is a gut punch in quality. For something that was blatantly dashed off with the utmost lack of concern, there are elements here that actually could have made for a semi-acceptable Hellraiser sequel. The flashback story of Steven and Niko in Mexico is pretty much just a remake of the Frank and Julia storyline in the first film, but tweaked to be about two friends instead of two lovers. Far from original, this nonetheless could have carried some entertainment value now that the franchise has moved so far away from the idea of a character escaping the Cenobites and needing blood/flesh to reconstitute themselves (which had been very important to the mythology in the first two films). And Steven asking to become a Cenobite is actually something we haven’t seen addressed yet, as both Channard and Elliot Spencer seemed to be turned into Cenobites against their will. So that’s novel.

Wikipedia lists the budget for Revelations at $300,000. If that’s true, this movie is actually more impressive than anyone is giving it credit for. The FX aren’t good, but we still get decent representations of all the old classics, like chains tugging at flesh (though I could’ve done without the lame CG glowing FX added to the puzzle box transformations). It was also nice to see the return of the magic hobo character from the first film; giving Nico and Steven the puzzle box and talking up the Cenobites as “angels, conductors, surgeons and more.”

Of course, all this is just a reaction to my low expectations – like Mariana Trench low – based on that abysmal trailer that surfaced earlier in the year.

What Doesn’t Work:

While anyone who gets truly up in arms about Revelations is cluelessly deluding themselves about the quality of the previous three installments in this franchise, the ninth Hellraiser film does have two unacceptable and insurmountable problems working against it:

1) It looks cheap as holy fuck.
Not having money should never be held against a film unless having grand spectacle is an intrinsic part of the concept (a $1 million Lord of the Rings trilogy would not have flown), so I’d like to note that I’m drawing a distinction between “low budget” and “cheap.” Hellraiser looked “low budget.” Revelations looks cheap. This franchise had descended to a low, low point, but the visual quality of this film just looks wrong; like a syndicated genre TV show one might have found in the early 00’s. And apparently Steven and Nico found the one area of Tijuana that has absolutely no one else in it, and the one dingy strip club that likes to play its music so quietly that no one needs to even raise their voice slightly to carry on a conversation.

2) It doesn’t have Doug Bradley.
Revelations goes a long way in demonstrating the importance of a franchise’s “face.” A lot can be stripped away from a franchise as long as the face remains intact. The Bond franchise has succeeded through its many face changes because it left its other popular elements fully intact. Since Hellbound we’ve been losing a lot in FX quality, dialogue quality, actor quality, story quality, mythos quality, but we at least still had Doug Bradley soldiering through the mire with us. And I can guarantee you, that even with unacceptable Problem #1, if Bradley had been here this would’ve surely ranked alongside Hellseeker in quality, if not above it — at least stuff happens in Revelations.  I’m not going to lambast Stephan Smith Collins here, because he is just an actor trying to get work, and I’m sure getting a chance to play a famous character like Pinhead was a great opportunity; no actor is going to look back decades later and say, “I wish I hadn’t played Pinhead in that shitty movie.” But the fact remains that Collin’s Pinhead is just no bueno. It is a tall order to swap out the face of a horror franchise nine films into a series. Only Robert Englund is more directly tied to a modern horror monster than Bradley. It wouldn’t be impossible to replace Bradley, but Collin’s does not feel like the outcome of an earnest search. I mean, to replace Robert Englund – who is a lovable hack – they got an Oscar-nominee for god’s sake. Collin’s take on the character is strange, his enunciation more Wishmaster than Pinhead, and for some idiotic reason they didn’t pitch his voice down to at least create a vague sense of familiarity. This, combined with the cheap look and production design, makes Revelations come off like a fan film. A fan film that some people put serious work into, but a fan film all the same. Hell, the film’s title card looks like something you’d see on a youtube short.

Ugh. Found footage. As someone who isn’t a big fan of the found footage subgenre in general, this is not a “you got peanut butter in my chocolate” combination for me. I’m glad that the entire movie isn’t found footage, but even the small doses we get is obnoxious. Right off the bat you know it is going to be obnoxious too.  The first thing we hear in the movie is Nico asking, “Are we rolling?” Are we rolling? What kid would say that? New camcorders don’t even use tapes anymore. That sounds like something an adult would write for a kid to say, which immediately destroys the this is real tone found footage is supposed to have, which in turns renders the found footage gimmick as nothing more than an extremely annoying visual style. The found footage also exposes some of the more hurried elements of the production. There is a scene in which Steven’s sister (also Nico’s girlfriend) watches the found footage of when Nico killed the Mexican hooker. During the entire scene she is making a face of extreme horror. Now, I’m sure watching video of your boyfriend banging a hooker in a bathroom isn’t pleasant, but the death doesn’t occur until midway through the scene. And her reaction does not intensify once the death is revealed. It seems like we’re really just getting footage of the actress reacting to seeing the dead hooker (not the sex) clumsily edited throughout the sequence, because they failed to get the appropriate reactions during the no doubt hectic production schedule.

Also, the whole hooker death scene in Tijuana is just terrible and riddled with bad logic flaws. For one thing, Nico excuses the hooker death to Steven by noting “I was drunk.” But… wait… was drunk? This literally happened mere seconds ago. Isn’t he still drunk? Why was he given that line? Worse is that Nico threatens Steven into staying quiet and not going to the police, noting that the camcorder footage shows him to be an accomplice. Except we are watching the footage and it obviously doesn’t show him to be an accomplice. If anything, Nico should be trying to destroy the footage, because it blatantly exonerate’s Steven. This just makes Steven (our sympathetic character) seem like a retard for getting bullied into covering up a crime for his asshole friend, even though we’re supposed to think he doesn’t have much of a choice.

What is it with Hellraiser sequels pulling away from a semi-interesting story to focus on an uninteresting aspect, just for the sake of blah mysteriousness and ambiguity? This is a series based on Hellraiser, a movie that actually undermined its hero (Kirsty) by showing us everything the villains were doing, thus removing all the mystery and ambiguity. Why they hell didn’t we just get the Nico/Steven story in Mexico? Why do the Hellraiser sequels always need to involve weird narrative structures and twists? The “A-Story,” the dinner party portions of the film, is so boring, even once Steven (aka Nico wearing Steven’s skin) shows up. Okay, that why? is a rhetorical question. I know why. It was to save money. But still. All the dinner party scenes feel like time killer until we can get back to the Mexico story. It does pick up a bit once Steven arrives, but it also becomes stupider in its own way too. Like a moment when Nico/Steven is threatening everyone with a shotgun, going around the room and pointing out the other characters’ various flaws. Who thought this was what people wanted from a Hellraiser movie? And then once the Cenobites show up and take everyone prisoner… oh, who cares…

I could go on and on, really, but I’m already getting a kicking a dead horse feeling. Knowing what I know about the film and its ashcan origins, critiquing its myriad flaws feels pointless, as presumably no one working on this film had more than a few minutes to consider every major creative decision made during pre, regular, and post-production. Analyzing the fuck-ups in Revelations is like analyzing a bungled touch town attempt in which a player tripped. Not much to read into the play calling or the player’s personal choices or reactions. The dude tripped.

Overall Body Count:  8.

Best Kill: One of the movie’s few legit moments is when Steven’s dad shoots and kills Nico-Steven, depriving Pinhead of his ability to reclaim Nico. And thus pissing Pinhead off. That’s kinda neat. Well played terrible movie, well played.

Best Cenobite That Isn’t Pinhead: Mini Pinhead.

Best Badass Pinhead Line: No chance. Not applicable.

Best Whimsical Pinhead Line: Not applicable.

Stupidest Pinhead Line: This isn’t fairly applicable either, as all of Pinhead’s lines seem stupid now that Doug Bradley isn’t saying them.

Most Unpleasant Moment: Hitting play on my remote.

Should There Be a Sequel: You fuckers seriously better stop. Seriously. This isn’t funny anymore. Just reboot the damn thing or move on to something else. Leave me alone!

Franchise Assessment: Hellraiser is a weak franchise, considering how long it has kept chugging along. As CHUD’s message boards have proven, after Hellbound the franchise immediately became niche even within the already niche horror genre. The primary problem, as we’ve already discussed, was mostly due to the fact that the first two films failed to establish a formula. All Friday the 13th fans expect from that franchise is for Jason to show up and kill 99% of the characters in a variety of silly ways. You can rinse and repeat the shit out of that formula (and they did). Hellraiser‘s greatest virtue – being unorthodox – was also its greatest flaw. It is impossible to have our Pinhead cake and eat it too. Hell on Earth tried valiantly to create a formula for the franchise. No one liked the formula. So the series was essentially set adrift into its own nebulous mythology, forcing filmmakers to guess at what elements people really wanted. Things were probably kept in check by Doug Bradley’s, well, checks and the decreasing budgets for the films. While Nightmare on Elm St kept adding more and more Freddy, after Bloodline Pinhead kept mostly to the background. Which I suppose was both good and bad, overall. Though, by Deader I realized I could totally go for a stupid Hell on Earth too-much-Pinhead scenario.

Hellraiser, as a franchise, needed a “thing.” Freddy became all about the increasingly elaborate dream sequences. Jason became all about the bigger and more ridiculous kills. Leprechaun all about the silly settings. Sadly, I think Hell on Earth had its eye on the right ball, but bungled the execution. Fans should’ve been showing up for Hellraiser movies to see what Pinhead’s newest Cenobites would be like. A couple of the sequels, namely Bloodline and Inferno, played with this, though Inferno‘s budget kept it from having particularly good Cenobites. Honestly, I don’t know how this new Cenobite situation could have or should have been handled so it didn’t feel stupid, but most horror franchises evolve into a stupider frame of mind anyway; it is hard to maintain an air of seriousness after your villain has been defeated and returned yet again for the fourth or fifth time.

The franchise also failed to dig deeper. I hate when sequels retcon backstory (I’m looking at you Jason Goes to Hell), but Hellraiser is a dense universe with the kind of ambiguous mythology that should have allowed for exploration. We should have gone international more often, dealt with a character like Frank searching for the puzzle box. Hell, I’m sure it would’ve been terrible, but I could have even gone for one from Pinhead’s perspective. Hellworld, with its meta approach, should have been a series highlight, at least as far as mixing things up, but it wound up rote nonetheless. To use an X-Files analogy, Hellraiser needed a Darin Morgan episode.

Franchise ranked in order of best to worst:

Hellraiser
Hellbound
Hell on Earth | Bloodline
Inferno
Deader | Hellworld
Hellseeker
Revelations

Up Next: What say you, Chewers? I had originally been planning to do Halloween this month before Fantastic Fest threw off my whole schedule. Now that October is over, I’m looking to take a break from horror for a moment. How do you feel about The Muppets?

DISCUSS THE FRANCHISE ON THE BOARDS

previous franchises battled
Critters
Death Wish
Leprechaun
Phantasm
Planet of the Apes
Police Academy
Rambo
Tremors

We’re usually taught to respect our elders; but there have been plenty of characters in film who never quite got that memo. There’s been a long and proud tradition in movies of elderly abuse and bad doings being transgressed on the 4:30 dinner crowd. This is the generation that did things like survived the Great Depression, fought the Nazis and the Reds, raised our parents and all too often us. One would think they’d earned a bit of consideration for things like guaranteed Social Security, adult diapers that don’t leak and generally not getting the shit beat out of them or snuffed like some third rate extra. In this CHUD list, we’re going to take a look at 15 old-timers who, unfortunately, turned into having-a-really-bad-timers.

The Film: Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Buy it from CHUD

The Director: Peter Jackson

The Elder: Theoden, son of Thengel, King of Rohan and Lord of the Riddermark.  Also his horse, Gumdrop.

"Oh yeah. I got this one."

The Abuse: Forced to attempt the notoriously difficult 1440° Equestrian McTwist.  Duffs the landing.

Lack Of Respect By: The Witch-King of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgul aka The Black Captain, Dwimmerlaik, Lord of Carrion

"YOUR PAIN WILL NOT SATE MY HUNGER. BUT I WILL TASTE IT NONETHELESS. "

This was it, the grudge match everyone had waited for.  All eyes in Gondor were on the opulent Pellenor Field Gardens, where the king vs (witch) king showdown would take place. At stake were bragging rights, and potentially the fate of all the free peoples of Middle-Earth.  Although Theoden was coming off a late-round knockout of Saruman at Helm’s Deep, bookies gave the Witch-King a slight edge, mostly due to advantages in size and experience. To better understand the handicapping, let’s examine the tale of the tape:

THEODEN
Height: 5’10
Weight: 235 lbs, armored
Age: 71
Weapons: short riding sword, horseman’s spear
Steed: Gumdrop, a very sweet horse with the occasional bout of colic
Fighting Out Of:  The Riddermark
Preferred strategies:  Retreating to his dad’s castle, following advice of a guy named “Wormtongue”

"Theoden king, 2 weeks prior to weigh-in."

WITCH-KING:
Height: 7’9 (8’11 with helmet spike)
Weight:  485 lbs, armored
Age:  Immortal.  So…yeah
Weapons:  Flaming sword, 70 lb flail
Steed: Fell beast, a 30 foot long flying lizard whose shriek has been known to paralyze the most hardened troops in all of Middle-Earth
Fighting Out Of: Old Minas Morgul, used to be Minas Ithil, why they changed it I don’t know…
Preferred strategies: Relies heavily on size, ancient death magic, giant dragon, and fact that he cannot be killed by any living man

Witch-King, preparing to stab a midget with a poison knife.

So on paper, the match-up looked pretty even. But when they actually faced off, things took a turn.

2.1 seconds into the first round, the Witch-King lands a punishing roundhouse dragon-bite-and-hurling.  6.3 seconds in,  Theoden’s horse stopped rolling over him.

Did He Have It Coming:  Pretty much.  We all know how Theoden loved to smack-talk, and he tended to get poetical when the press were around.  When pressed for comment pre-fight, Theoden is reported to have said “Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter! Spears shall be shaken!  Shields shall be splintered! A sword day! A Red Day!  Ere the Sun rises!!!  Also The Dwimmerlaik has a weak left cross and his mama is both portly and promiscuous!  More like THE BLACK CRAP-TAIN!!!”

DOWN. GOES. THEODENSONOFTHENGELLORDOFTHEGOLDENHOUSEOFEORL! DOWN GOES THEODENSONOFTHENGELLORDOFTHEGOLDENHOUSEOFEORL!

In a post-fight interview, he was heard to say “My body is broken.”

Could the AARP Have Helped? While I don’t doubt the group is staunchly anti-dragon mauling, they are hampered by the pesky “American” qualifier in their title.  As many of you are aware, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy was shot in New Zealand.  What fewer know is that this was due to studio concerns that if they filmed a King being clobbered this thoroughly in America, Los Angeles would burn itself to the ground.

"...did I win?"

If nature had taken its course? Theoden probaby wouldn’t have lasted too much longer in any case, but he almost certainly would’ve found a more dignified exit, even if it was falling headfirst into a pile of horse manure while masturbating to his personally authored Elrond/Isildur slashfic.  Did I mention that after he was taken out, his niece had to step in and finish the fight for him?  And she won? In the history of royalty, the only person more embarrassed to die under a horse was Catherine the Great.

“I like The Hobbit.  My father was a dwarf until his late twenties, and I always respected his small, deft hands and muttonchops.  But one thing I don’t like is dragons.  I grew up in the country, at a time when dragons were the number two cause of crop failure, and the number four cause of teenage pregnancy.  Now, Hollywood would have you believe that dragons sound like Sean Connery and all have hearts of gold.  But if you were to look inside a real dragon all you’re going to find is a roiling ball of fire or seven Chinese fellas.  And I tell ya,  I’m not sure which one scares me more.  That’s why I’m glad The Lord of the Rings was filmed in New Zealand, which has endured 6 dragon deaths in the last year alone (4 of which were senior citizens!)  That’s the second of any country in the civilized world, trailing only Australia at 312.  I tip my hat to Peter Jackson for not shying away from depicting dragons as the dangerous beasts they are.

RIP Thraddeus Forgefist Rooney  (1068-1893)”

Message Board Discussion

Day One – Gremlins

Day Two – Kiss of Death

Day Three – Punisher: War Zone

Day Four – Deadly Friend

Day Five – Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call – New Orleans

The Film: Rob Zombie’s H2: Halloween II

The Principals: Scout Taylor-Compton, Malcom McDowell, Tyler Mane, Brad Douriff, Daniellle Harris, Sherri Moon Zombie, Rob Zombie’s unbridled ego.

The Premise: One year (or two years, depending on which cut of the film you watch) after masked killer Michael Myer’s (Mane) brutal rampage on Haddonfield Illinois, survivor Laurie Strode (Tayor-Compton) is a hot mess. When she’s not fighting with her therapist or her best friend and fellow survivor Annie (Harris), she’s working at the local coffee shop and partying with her party girl friends. To make matters worse, Halloween is approaching, and Annie is suffering from terrifying dreams of Michael stalking and killing her. When Michael’s former therapist Dr. Loomis (McDowell) publishes an exploitive best seller detailing Michael’s madness, he reveals to the world that Laurie is Michael’s sister, a fact to which she was previously unaware, and Laurie really goes off the deep end. But the worst is yet to come. Michael actually survived his “death” at Laurie’s hand a year (or two) earlier, and spurned by his own family-related visions, is returning to Haddonfield to finish what he started.

Is It Good: Yes! Wait wait wait…don’t go. Let me explain! OK, by all rational and possibly reasonable standards, Rob Zombie’s sequel to his rightfully maligned remake of Carpenter’s classic Halloween is, like the main character, a hot mess. On just a basic filmic level it is a shotgun blast of technique and editing that sometimes works in creating tension and horror, bit sometimes fails completely at creating, well, anything. Taken as an entry in the Halloween franchise, it is an insult. There is barely anything in here that Halloween fans can recognize from the films leading up to Zombie’s 2007 remake, and in fact if it were not for the cast, there would be barely be anything even recognizable from the remake itself. Haddonfield isn’t the same place, the characters have all gone through radical personality shifts to the point of being unrecognizable, and even Michael himself has traded his simple, iconic look for that of a raggedy-man hobo.  Change the character’s names and take “Halloween” off the title and you would have a slasher film that bore no resemblance to the franchise from which it was spawned.

And that is exactly the mindset you need to take if you are going to see what a glorious, unique snowflake of a horror film Rob Zombie’s Halloween II is. This movie is friggin’ nuts. It is a shrieking, gonzo, hyper-violent fever dream of a film, and while it does bear some of Zombie’s more tiresome fetishes as a filmmaker, it has that crazed “so-bad-it’s good” quality that fans of mondo cinema seek out. The film is 100 percent earnest in its intentions, a fact underlined by the bizarre title card which explains to you the viewer what the image of the white horse symbolizes in a historical context so that you’ll know what Zombie was up to when he shoehorns his awkward white horse imagery into the film’s many hallucination/dream sequences.  This is pretentious film-school bullshit stitched to batshit grindhouse, and the results are wildly uneven and unhinged in a way that is rarely seen in mainstream cinema and never, ever seen in a major franchise horror film. You may not like what you are seeing, but you have to at least respect the fact that it got there.

The main problem you are likely to have as you sit down to watch H2 is that there is barely anyone to root for in this thing. Much credit should be given to Harris and Douriff as the Brackett family because they are the only sympathetic people in Zombie’s redneck vision of Haddonfield, and Douriff really brings his academy-award winning A-game to the role of the town sheriff, becoming the closest thing the film has to a true hero.  Everyone else in the film is either hysterical, sleazy, or downright evil.  And if you’ve followed Zombie’s output as a filmmaker you know that this is the way he likes it. It was a really incongruous fit for his remake of the original Halloween; Carpenter’s seminal ‘78 film was about the faceless evil of the suburbs and Zombie’s vision would have been far better suited for a Friday the 13^th or Texas Chainsaw remakes. He changed white-bread Haddonfield into white trash whenever it suited him, and the results were a film that seemed to miss the point of the original to a spectacular degree. Divorced from the need to homage the original Halloween (no one cares about honoring the original Halloween II, though Zombie does actually sort of manage to do that) Zombie is allowed to go nuts creating his carnival scumbag Haddonfield which taken on its own terms is a pretty fun place in which to unleash a giant hallucinating hobo slasher with a suitably giant knife. It’s a crazy backdrop for an even crazier story, if you can even rightfully call the content of H2 a story.

Yeah, I’m not going to defend the film on a story level. How could I? This is a narrative that contains 15 minutes of flashback/dream sequence (?) by way of introduction! Luis Bunuel or David Lynch couldn’t defend that as a reasonable narrative device! Logic and reason have no place in Zombie’s world, but if you are the type of person to enjoy the dream-logic horrors of 70’s Italian cinema, you may have what it takes to roll with the proceedings here. To say that the film has a structure is ludicrous – it is basically a magic carpet of crazy that takes you wherever it wants you to go, and where it wants you to go is someplace extremely unpleasant.  Once the film settles into its “narrative” it is basically just scenes of Laurie losing her shit and Michael murdering his way towards Haddonfield until they are brought together in one of the most bizarre climaxes ever given to a slasher film.  The side characters are all dealt with in one fashion or another, but this movie is really about two bugnuts siblings coming together in a literal bond of blood. And for me, that is the only “story” H2 requires.

This is a film that defies conventional criticism. To find plotholes and narrative flaws in H2 is a fool’s errand. This is a film that sets an extended stalk-n-slash sequence to “Knights In White Satin” and closes with a wispy Indie rock version of “Love Hurts”! You’re going to try to apply logic and serious critical thought to something that makes those types of artistic choices? Good luck with that. Half the time you don’t know what is real, imagined or a dream, and frankly my interpretation of the movie is that it is really just all one fevered hallucination. I choose to take it that way and I’m willing to bet Zombie wouldn’t even argue me down on that front. I think he just set out to make the craziest thing he could in the brief time he was allotted, and on that level I think he succeeded admirably. Does it make sense? Hell no, but for those willing to go along with the ride there are real pleasures to be had.

Look, I’m not going to begrudge anyone their hatred of this movie. Maybe you don’t have the “so-bad-it’s-good gene”, maybe you love the Halloween franchise too much to give this film a fair shake, maybe you can’t see past your hatred of Rob Zombie and his aesthetic. Or maybe you just think it sucks.  I will accept any of those reasons. But for anyone with a love of gonzo horror who doesn’t suffer from the aforementioned impairments, you owe yourself a viewing of Rob Zombie’s Halloween II. The violence is brutal and visceral, the imagery is whack-a-do and sometimes even lovely, and the film is going to take you places you didn’t expect to go and might even scare you a tiny bit. In my opinion it is the true red-headed stepchild of the Halloween franchise, even more so than the crazy and incongruous Halloween III.  So instead of going for one of the easy classics, why not challenge yourself with a viewing of Rob Zombie’s fever-dream franchise entry this Halloween? You might, just might, be glad you did.

Random Anecdotes: Rob Zombie did not want to make a sequel to his Halloween, and only agreed to do so if given free reign to do whatever he wanted. It shows in the film. He also wrote the “script” in two weeks. That also shows.

Cinematic Soulmates: The Devil’s Rejects, House of 1,000 Corpses, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original), Rob Zombie’s Halloween, Halloween II (1978), Italian horror and Giallo cinema of the 1970’s.