HALLOWEEN (2018): ONE YEAR LATER

I wrote this archival piece nearly two years ago, and nearly one year before Halloween (2018) was released upon the world (exactly one year ago today, in fact). More than just a musing on what I thought David Gordon Green might add to the franchise, it was a reflection on growing up alongside the Halloween franchise, how it forged my love for the genre, and how absurdly, ridiculously excited I was, at fourteen years old, for Halloween: H20 (1998) -- the first Halloween sequel to seize on a 20-year anniversary, and to bring Jamie Lee Curtis back to the franchise. At this point, production on the next entry in the franchise, Halloween Kills, which returns all the major participants from Halloween (2018) for another go-round with the Shape, is well underway. While we all anticipate this next sequel, let's go back in time a little for a melancholy dose of watching both Michael Myers as well as the calendar...

As a kid, I was a devout Michael Myers fan. Granted, I was a horror junkie in general, but there was something about that white-masked boogeyman that fueled my imagination and struck fear into my bones like lightning. I can still remember my elementary-school self waiting impatiently in the living room, on Halloween, for my older brother and his friend to complete their dead hockey player costumes by gluing half-pucks to their faces. It took so long, and I was so antsy to get out there and trick-or-treat, that I flipped on the television hoping to find distraction in the cadre of Halloween-appropriate titles sure to be on. While surfing, a burst of screams and frantic chaos in the dark caught my attention. Feeling good about my choice, I’d put down the remote and began to watch.

That was how I first discovered John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Okay, fine, it was only the last ten minutes or so, but as a young horror-loving fiend, what better time to tune in? The film was at its frenzied peak, and the suddenness and ambiguity of the terror helped to heighten the experience. Who was this man in the mask? Who was this old man in the trench coat trying to stop him? Why here, why now? What is this?

I saw it all — Laurie Strode fleeing and shrieking across the street from masked maniac Michael Myers; her frantic pounding against the locked front door; the couch attack, the closet attack, and the final confrontation where Michael was unmasked and Dr. Sam Loomis shot him directly in the jumpsuit.

For a moment, everything was quiet. The shot had knocked Michael offscreen into a back room. Surely he was dead, right?

Loomis ran into that same back room after him. Michael waited in the darkness — still, and very much alive.

At that moment, seeing his unnatural stillness framed by darkness, I was petrified. Beyond petrified. I couldn’t move — something so simple as a scary mask in silhouette, with a bit of inhuman breathing, and I couldn’t fucking move.

Five more gunshots rang out. Michael flew backwards off the balcony and landed with a crash on the  cold hard October ground. Finally, he appeared dead.

But after a quick cut away, his body was gone.

And thus began a forty-year legacy.

After that fateful television viewing of Halloween, I was hooked. One by one I sought every remaining sequel, skipping Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, as I’d go on to learn that it didn’t feature the babysitter murderer known as The Shape. (I’d eventually mature and warm to this entry, which I now watch every Halloween.) This love for the series continued for years. I bought every Halloween available on VHS, including multiple copies of the original. I bought every magazine or book or figure or poster or anything that bared the face of Michael Myers. Had there been a Halloween secret society, I’d’ve been a charter member.

1995 rolled around and I was in the fifth grade. One Friday in September, a childhood chum named Barry and I were swapping weekend plans on the bus ride home.

“My sister’s taking me to see Halloween 6 tonight,” Barry said casually.

My face went full :O and I begged him to take me along.

He did, and soon after, he became a boyhood best friend.

Flash forward a few years. It’s 1998, and I’m in eighth grade. My love for horror continues, and sometimes I’m successful in forcing my friends to go along with it. Scream 2 had proved such a massive box office success that Dimension Films re-released the sequel for encore showings. And so of course I went. It was then, in the popcorn-smelling dimness of the auditorium, that one particular trailer stuck out among all others:

From the audience’s point of view, we glided down long hallways as heavy winds made curtains billow and dry autumn leaves dance across the floor. An ominous voice growled, “he has pursued her relentlessly…”

Meanwhile, the tick-tock piano music in the background sounded so familiar…

“He has hunted her…everywhere…”

I knew I’d heard that music somewhere…

“Twenty years later, the face of good and the face of evil will meet…one last time.”

The music was a track called “Laurie’s Theme” from the Halloween soundtrack, and the trailer, which suddenly flashed to Jamie Lee Curtis looking through a window directly into the darkened eyeholes of Michael Myers, would end with the Halloween theme and the title Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later shrieking across the screen.

What I felt at that moment was indescribable — an insane amount of shock and surprise and excitement that I still haven’t felt for a movie to this day. It was euphoria. It was like meeting a superhero, or winning the lottery. A franchise that had seemed all but dead after the abysmal Curse of Michael Myers was suddenly back with a vengeance, and not only that, it was also hailing the return of Laurie Fucking Strode, the ultimate final girl.

In the dark, I could feel my friends look over at me and make their own :O faces. They didn’t care nearly as much for horror and the Halloween franchise as I did, but I could feel their excitement for me. And they were right. At that moment, I didn’t care about anything else. Once I regained my composure, I excitedly ran out of the auditorium and to the nearest payphone. (Yes, a payphone — it was 1998, ok? The only people with cell phones at that time were Mulder and Scully.) There was one person who needed to know – Barry, my horror movie/Halloween partner in crime – and he needed to know NOW. I was overjoyed, over the moon, and not thinking clearly. I felt like a celebrity, as if I had been the first person in the world to experience such groundbreaking news, and it was my privilege and duty to alert the masses.

Seeing that trailer was magical. To be taken completely by surprise still lives on in my mind as one of the happiest moments I’ve ever experienced. And here I am, nearly 20 years later, and the idea behind what I am saying – undying devotion for what is essentially Halloween 7 – sounds completely ludicrous. But that’s the kind of magic I suspect dies off as your childhood does.

By the time I got back to the auditorium, Jada Pinkett was already dead. I was so excited by this revelation that the exploits of Ghostface and the stabbing of Sarah Michelle Gellar barely registered in my mind. Suddenly, Scream 2 didn’t mean shit in the face of Halloween: H20.

For months after that, I waited impatiently for the poster to appear in the theater’s lobby — to confirm that it wasn’t all just a dream, but a reality. And once it arrived, I stared at that poster and marveled at The Shape’s mask, and took in the pure pleasure of knowing it was coming soon…

Consumer-grade internet had just become a thing (we’re talking AOL 3.0), so naturally, for the next several months until Halloween: H20’s release, I would Ask Jeeves and AOL Netfind everything I could about this new sequel. I’d click over and over on distributor Dimension Films’ official website and watch the trailers and look at the photos. Every fold of my brain needed to be saturated with every bit of info I could find. Though I’m now of the age where I depend significantly on an internet lifestyle, I can also remember what life was like before it. Back then, if you wanted to know about the next installments of Phantasm or Halloween, you only had Fangoria Magazine. And all you were allowed to know about their productions was what Fangoria allowed you to know – a quote here, description of a scene there, and topped off with a publicity still that, nine times out of ten, wasn’t indicative of the final film. Back then, I wasn’t in the habit of bookmarking film sites and receiving daily news updates about projects in production. Nowadays, as a grumpy adult with the internet on his phone, I can assure you that finding out about a new Halloween sequel coming soon in the form of an article by an online pipsqueak movie writer isn’t nearly as magical as seeing that same sequel’s trailer in a theater for the first time — the very first sign to you that it existed.

Always the pioneer, I began assembling my own version of Halloween: H20 “special features” on a VHS tape based on material recorded off television; it included a Sci-Fi Channel hour-long making-of special; an MTV thing where the cast and story writer, Kevin Williamson, hosted Dawson’s Creek trivia in between music videos; and multiple appearances of the cast on late-night talk shows. I watched that tape over and over until I could finally see the film for myself.

Opening weekend, I finally did — myself and a whole host of my chums I’d likely strong-armed into going. My eighth-grade self was not disappointed. Seeing Jamie Lee Curtis holding an ax and furiously bellowing her brother’s name gave me chills. By film’s end, I was legitimately shocked and a little heartbroken to see Michael lose his head. I was very happy with it, and my chums seemed to have enjoyed themselves as well. After months of foreplay, the big moment had arrived: the rolling out of Halloween: H20 felt like the successful culmination of a plan I had nothing to fucking to do with, yet I couldn’t have been more pleased with myself. At home I put together a framed Michael Myers memorial, complete with birthdate and death date, because I was a silly nerd/psychopath. Too young to understand the concept of commerce over creativity, I felt assured Halloween: H20 would be Michael Myers’ final hurrah (LOL), and while that made me sad, I felt that it was a perfect finale. (As an “adult,” I look at Halloween: H20 with a more critical eye, as its shortcomings are no longer veiled by childhood romanticism. The mask, which changes frequently, even relying on CGI for one scene, is terrible; the California shooting location lacks that small-town and autumn feel of Haddonfield, Illinois; the stuntman who donned Michael’s mask and jumpsuit was just a hair too pint-sized to be fully intimidating; and except for the lush and orchestral rendition of the Halloween theme, John Ottman’s score, Frankensteined with Marco Beltrami cues from Scream and Mimc, is all wrong. Those misgivings aside, I still think it’s the best Myers-centric sequel since Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.)

What might be the longest intro in the world leads us to the point of all this.

I was born in 1984. By then, the original Halloween was six years old, though I wouldn’t know it existed until the mid-’90s. That’s ten years. When you’re a kid, ten years is forever. Halloween: H20 was the twentieth anniversary of the original film, but to me it was basically Halloween: H4VR. Anything that predated my existence didn’t jive with the timeline of my life. I couldn’t appreciate the full sense of that anniversary because I didn’t exist or wasn’t cognizant for most of it.

Halloween: H20 may as well have been the bicentennial.

Here were are, in 2017, just a couple weeks away from 2018. And with it comes the twentieth anniversary of Halloween: H20, and the fortieth(!) anniversary of the original. A new Halloween film is in production — for the intent of my point, let’s call it Halloween: H40. Like Halloween: H20, this new film will be ignoring all the sequels and getting back to the original’s roots of dread, suspense, and little emphasis on violence. And Jamie Lee Curtis returns as the embattled Laurie Strode.

If you can avoid getting caught in the petty trappings of the internet, Halloween: H40 has a lot going for it. The production is in good hands with Jason Blum, who has kick started the horror genre over the last decade by sacrificing multi-million dollar budgets in exchange for handing off full creative control to the films’ talented writers and directors (a refreshing change of pace from former rights-holding and extremely meddlesome Dimension Films/the Weinstein brothers), with this approach resulting in new classics Insidious, Sinister, and more. (Dude might also be nominated for an Oscar for producing Get Out — you read it here first.) Jamie Lee Curtis is returning, of course, but the casting of Judy Greer as her daughter shows that the production is more interested in talent than vapid Facebook-level recognition value. John Carpenter returns to compose and consult. And it’s being directed by David Gordon Green — an actual filmmaker — who, comedies aside, has a solid body of work, including the very underrated, Night Of The Hunter-ish stalker thriller Undertow.

As of this writing, not a single frame of Halloween: H40 has been shot, but it’s already as terrifying to me as the original was all those Halloween nights ago. Because, to me, Halloween: H20 is only a few years old. I remember everything about the excitement I felt in the months leading up to its release. I remember going to see it, that all my boyhood chums came with me, and what each and every one of them said about it after the credits rolled. I even remember, upon Michael’s first on-screen appearance, my friend Kevin jokingly whispering to me, “It’s him, the guy from the ad!,” quoting from an episode of The Simpsons — something we did constantly.

Within the confines and timeline of my life, Halloween: H20 feels like it just happened to me. There’s no possible way it’s been twenty years. Yes, I’ve lost friends and family; I’ve moved multiple times; I’ve gotten numerous jobs; I’ve been lucky enough to have fallen in love a couple times. Those childhood friends who went with me to share in my excitement of Laurie Strode’s return, all of whom I miss dearly, eventually scattered to different parts of the world, and it’s been years since I’ve spoken to any of them. All of that makes a solid case for a two-decade timeline. But there’s just no way. I can’t fathom it. And I don’t want to.

As a film fan, a horror fan, and a Halloween fan who has weathered some serious mediocrity over the years, I’m more excited than anyone for the coming of Halloween: H40.

But as a mere mortal keeping a wary eye on the clock and the calendar, it just might be one of the most terrifying films I ever see.

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

PROBABLY MR. RIDDLE

Mondo poster by Jock. 

ONE GOOD SCARE

Excellent stuff.

FILMOGRAPHY

GIRLHOUSE (2015)

 [As Girlhouse has spoiled my night, I have now spoiled Girlhouse. Read on with caution.]

Kylie Atkins' father has recently died, so it's porn for her.

After giving it some very little thought, she accepts the offer of a well-dressed stranger to appear on the porn-centric website "Girlhouse," a Big-Brother sort of set-up where a group of people live away from civilization in an isolated house with cameras in every room that broadcast their every move, only instead of "people" it's "girls," and instead of "every move" it's "every orgasm, fuck show, and methodical soaping of breasts." Once she's dropped off at the super-secret "Girlhouse" location, she meets all her costars, all of whom eventually take off their clothes, and none of whom are particularly memorable or developed.

As Kylie begins her show, she "meets" an online user by the name of Loverboy, whom all the girls know and call a sweetheart. Loverboy soon fixates on Kylie after he sends her a photo of himself and she doesn't throw herself out the window in response, but later on, after another "Girlhouse" performer finds Loverboy's picture and shows it to everyone and they all laugh and mock his not-so-ideal appearance, Loverboy loses his mind and decides there's only one fair way to handle this: murder. (He's also really good at computers, BTW.)

A film that manages to ape its concept from Halloween: Resurrection while somehow resulting in something worse, Girlhouse was written by Fred Olen Wray, directed by Jim Wynorski, and produced by Roger Cor-ohman, none of that is true. It wasn't a wrong assumption to make, however; add some corny self-awareness and even more exploitative nudity, and Girlhouse would have felt exactly like product from the 1980s -- more specifically, from the team who brought us Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers and Sorority House Massacre 2, only with a hip and modern shot of adrenaline (which means now it has internet, cell phones, and terms like "IP address" and "firewall"). An important distinction, though, is that when Corman et al. made those deliciously stupid B-movies, they weren't trying to impart any kind of wisdom or moral stature on their audience: they were more concerned with finding girls with ample breastage who could fit into all that old wardrobe recycled from their last several hundred movies that had "slime" or "massacre" in their titles. They weren't trying to be socially relevant or needlessly (and, inexplicably) preachy and indifferent all at once. They were just trying to make their films fun. And that's where Girlhouse really misses the boat. For actually managing to bring to fruition such an absurd concept as "house of slutty website performers become locked inside by one of its users who gets all pissed off because they called him ugly," only to try and turn it into some kind of disturbing or visceral experience -- well, that was the first misstep of many.

The reason it's neither disturbing nor visceral is because we just don't care.

At no point is there an attempt to devote background or development to any characters. Kylie's sole decision to become a pornographic actress is because "the money is good" and she wants to send some home to her mother. Because her motivation for her decision is to be considered selfless and done out of love and worry, we're supposed to forgive her for getting into porn, but it would have behooved our filmmakers to, perhaps, include a scene where Kylie and her mother actually share a conversation -- in person would have been nice, but over the phone would have been acceptable -- to enforce the significance of this relationship. At least once. As it is, their entire relationship is confined to them leaving voicemails for each other, and the word "MOM" appearing on Kylie's cell phone when it rings...which Kylie doesn't answer.

As for Kylie's pornsemble: two of the girls are (quite quickly) established as lesbians involved with each other, one of the girls as threatened by Kylie's appearance in the house, and another girl, who it would seem was once an actress in the house before her heroin addiction resulted in her getting the ax, makes a surprise return. Pity that NONE of these characters' subplots offer anything to the film rather than cheap thrills of girl-kissing and an additional body to hammer.

Kylie is an irritating character, a girl who willfully gets into pornography, but for whom we're expected to sympathize -- not because of any attempt at her inner conflict with the job, but because she tells anyone who will listen that her father is dead and that's really sad and then equal sign pornography. Not terribly likable, Ali Cobrin still manages to give an okay performance, but as you watch you'll suddenly realize her remarkably similar appearance to actress Rose Byrne, who tends to make good movies, and then you'll become irritated all over again because instead of watching a good movie that stars Rose Byrne, you're watching Girlhouse.

I feel intensely bad for rapper-turned-actor Slain, thanks to his appearance in this mess as Loverboy, and not just because he's the only one attempting to bring actual depth to his performance (which vanishes following the start of the third act, unless we're being asked to believe that it was the actor himself and not an underpaid body-padded stuntman who wore the jumpsuit and girl mask to stalk his house of whores), but rather because he got a pretty good head-start on a career 2.0 when Ben Affleck cast him as the revered Bubba Ragowski in Gone Baby Gone. Affleck subsequently cast him again in his box-office and bank-smashing crime thriller The Town before director Andrew Dominik chose him to play a minor role in his Brad Pitt-starring Killing Them Softly. And here, in... sigh... Girlhouse... Slaine is slumming it, with the kind of bravery needed to play a role of someone who dwells in a basement, subscribes to and depends on pornography, and who feels ostracized because of his physical appearance. The only problem is he's going through all that effort for the film Girlhouse. The actor deserves better.

Ironically, the makers of the film are selling Girlhouse as a "Halloween-type slasher," and by god are they testing the durability of the word "type," for the only thing these two films have in common is that someone wears a mask and kills some girls. Kylie is supposed to be Girlhouse's version of Laurie Strode, only instead of her character being virginal and pure by abstaining from acts and behavior that would force her to retire those traits, she instead embarks on her pornographic webshows where she willfully shows off her naked body to her viewers, but with the camera never showing her breasts: according to these filmmakers, that makes her virginal and pure. Added to Halloween are the nauseating references to Rear Window and its director, Hitchcock, who as you know reveled in cinema in which girls played strip-poker or strip-billiards and performed dildo shows on websites for users named "Tugboat" and "Cream_Slinger." Hitchcock would be sincerely proud. No, that's not sarcasm - not at all. I mean that, you idiots, he would love your dumb fucking movie.

Girlhouse is violent and filled with nudity, if you're into that sort of thing. I am, normally, but only when the actual movie surrounding the violence and nudity is worth a damn. Girlhouse isn't. Girlhouse is about as subtle as a truck carrying fireworks driving through a fireworks factory. It makes no bones about clearly endeavoring to satirize the "art" of pornography, but then doing absolutely nothing to either support or condemn it. Girlhouse offs a character by beating her in the head with a dildo before shoving it into her mouth and sealing her head with packaging tape so she suffocates. Girlhouse offs another character by having her commit suicide after her confrontation with the killer has left her mutilated because OMG, without pornography, she is, like, of no use to anyone. Girlhouse fucking ends with Kylie beating her killer to death with a camera. If that's not a failed idea at clever subtlety, ladies and gentleman, I don't know what is.

SUSPIRIA (2018)

Film fans, especially those of the horror genre, tend to take it personally when some of their favorite titles, or those that have achieved classic status, hit the remake block, and I can understand why. To remake a film is to suggest that the source material is flawed in some way, or needs a modern update to connect with new audiences. While films have benefited from a remake, most don’t. (To remind the fettered of the most obvious comfort: remaking a film does not erase your beloved original from existence, although it does make Google image searching just a bit more irritating.)

The Suspiria remake machine has been gunning since at least 2007, with Halloween ‘18 director David Gordon Green amping up to take the reins alongside producer and would-be star Natalie Portman (who had yet to star in another horror-ballet juggernaut, Black Swan). As tends to happen, the project did not materialize and those involved left to pursue other things. But since you can’t keep a good unremade horror title down, the remake refused to die and eventually came to fruition under the tutelage of another unexpected filmmaker: Call Me By Your Name director’s Luca Guadagnino. From the start, Guadagnino was eager to quell fanboy fears by talking up how much different it would be from the original, considering it more of a companion piece than a straight-up retelling.

Forty years after the debut of the original, which split critics right down the middle thanks to its garishly beautiful images, its shocking violence, and its carefree storytelling, the remake was released to nearly the same kind of reaction. And despite Guadagnino’s intent on telling a different kind of story, there are enough similarities within to comfortably label it a remake — along with an additional hour of running time; the remake clocks in at a whopping 152 minutes.

In the press, Guadagnino was quick to bestow his love for Dario Argento’s original, and that love is definitely showcased in his directorial techniques. During the first act, Guadagnino relies heavily on camera movements popularized by the ‘60s and ‘70s era of European filmmaking — the sweeping shots, the quick-zooms — in an effort to coast on the audience’s familiarity with Suspiria ‘77. All the updated characters share the same names of their original’s counterparts, and once again, it’s about an American ballet student studying dance in Berlin and slowly realizing she’s in the company of a coven of witches. But where Guadagnino’s redux begins to drift off into its own identity is with its very muted and institutional colors, its low-key musical score, and its heavy emphasis on the political unrest ongoing in Berlin in 1977 (when the film takes place), even finding a way to include allusions to Nazi Germany and the separation of families (sadly topical, but also almost too “mature” considering the A story).

Guadagnino muse Tilda Swinton takes on three different roles, one of whom is an elderly man (credited to “Lutz Ebersdorf”), and though I’ve done no digging as to why this choice, I’m assuming that Guadagnino looked at Suspiria as a female-driven story and hence wanted a female cast to do all the heavy lifting. (Men take on bit parts where their biggest contribution is to appear utterly helpless and even spiritually castrated by members of the coven.) Guadagnino, too, recognizes that music was a driving part of the original, and tries to convey the same emphasis, only instead of energetic and pounding prog rock, he enlists the help of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, who falls back on typically somber ballads and more esoteric instrumentals, as essayed by bandmate Jonny Greenwood for his multiple collaborations with filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.

Guadagnino’s redux isn’t without scenes that safely label it a horror film — if you’ve been reading reviews for this title at all, you’ve likely heard by now of the danced-to-death sequence, which is an excruciating moment that’s legitimately disturbing, but also a little undone by the use of obvious CGI. The dungeon, too, which houses the “heart” of the coven’s evil, feels like a nightmare, and is the sequence where the film comes the closest to feeling like traditional horror.

There’s a lot to respect in Guadagnino’s version, and the filmmaker is clearly respectful of the source material as well as passionate about his take on it (and the cameo from the original’s Jessica Harper is beautifully done, appropriately using her for the film’s most emotional moment). Fearlessly, he’s striving to make a unique, brave, and unrepentant horror film in the same way Argento did, but as time goes on, and like a lot of the horror remakes to have been unleashed over the last two decades, it’s likely that this Suspiria will fade from memories, leaving room only for the bright, colorful, violent, and nightmarish assault on the senses that is Dario Argento’s original masterpiece.

SKINNER (1993)

Stemming back to when I was a young video-store junkie, I’ve heard of the Ted Raimi-starring slasher flick Skinner, mostly due to two things: its slimy, gory reputation, and its inclusion of Traci Lords, whom the genre and genre fans were enamored with during the early ‘90s. (Ricki Lake’s involvement was a novelty back then, but hardly means anything these days…unless you’re a purveyor of ‘90s pop culture.) Watching Skinner with 2019 eyes, and coming from someone who has just seen it for the first time, I can understand why it gained such an infamous reputation upon its release all those years ago. Moments of it still seem shocking today -- one absolutely more than any other, and for wildly different reasons than you’re thinking. (If you’ve seen the movie, you know exactly what I’m talking about.) However, some of it has bypassed any previous levels of bad taste and now comes across almost charming, thanks to its usage of daring practical effects and an all-around “fuck, let’s go for it” independent mentality.

Skinner charts the exploits of Dennis Skinner (Ted Raimi, brother of superstar Spider-Man director Sam Raimi), a drifter who has a habit of hiring prostitutes, killing them dead, and skinning their dead bodies while reminiscing about his shitty childhood. One of these former streetwalkers, Heidi (Traci Lords), who previously survived an encounter with Skinner, has been hunting him down to take revenge for her mental and physical torture. Meanwhile, Skinner has rented a room from Kerry Tate (Ricki Lake) and her awful husband Geoff (David Warshofsky, an actual actor from stuff like There Will Be Blood and Lincoln, just to name a couple). Geoff’s job as a trucker has him on the road a lot, leaving Kerry behind to grow chummier and chummier with the aloof but innocent-seeming Skinner. (Also, I have to point this out: Laurie Strode uses the alias ‘Keri Tate’ in 1998’s Halloween: H20, so are we expected to believe that uncredited writer Kevin Williamson wanted to homage, of all things, the ‘90s video nasty Skinner and attach it to the genre’s ultimate final girl? The world gets weirder the longer it turns.)

The interplay between Skinner and Kerry makes for an interesting dynamic, in that both of them are lonely souls in their own way and could potentially find meaning in each other’s company, and it’s additionally affecting that Raimi and Lake don’t look like typical movie actors – they instead look like real people, adding to the approachability of this subplot. Raimi, too, despite his history of having appeared in his brother’s Evil Dead series in various costumed rules, has generally made a lot of garbage, but he often proves to be a capable actor, and Skinner is no exception. Lords’ subplot as a ruined Heidi, however, leads to absolutely nothing, which is a shame, being that the idea of Skinner’s unfinished business having potentially created its own monster could have been very interesting, had it been handled in a more assured manner. Lords gives her all in her performance as well, and though it never quite gels, in the end it doesn’t matter because it’s ultimately wasted on a go-nowhere character.   

The best friend to the horror genre there ever was, Ed Gein--after inspiring the likes of Norman Bates in Psycho, Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and both Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill in The Silence Of The Lambs--has again lent his visage to Dennis Skinner. For you see, Skinner doesn’t just skin his victims, but he refashions their skin into a full body suit, leading to the astounding sequence that I wasn’t going to get into, but my lord, I think I have to.

For newbies to Skinner, feel free to skip this entire paragraph. Your viewing experience will go off much better if you’re not expecting it. BEGIN SPOILERS: At Skinner’s new job as a maintenance man, he runs afoul of a fellow coworker named Earl (DeWayne Williams), a former (and black) boxer that immediately emasculates Skinner in front of another coworker. Well, as you might expect, Earl doesn’t last long, soon finding the sharp end of Skinner’s blades. However, Skinner not only slips into Earl’s skin, but takes it one step further by turning his costume pageant into a horribly offensive display of racial monstrosity, using a “black” voice and minstrel slang like “Mammy” as he chases down his next victim. This sequence goes on for nearly ten minutes, during which you will be making the post-aftershave Home Alone face the entire time. END SPOILERS.

Skinner is a wild ride, with plenty of gore and over-the-top insanity and it should entertain less discerning horror fans. 

Just leave your political correctness at the door.

HALLOWEEN (2018)

Multiple franchises have been quick to prove that long-delayed sequels are hardly ever worth the wait, and this ranges across all genres. Twelve years after Die Hard with a Vengeance came a bored, bald, tired, and profanity-free John McClane in the anemic Live Free or Die Hard. Seventeen years between Dirty Dancing and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights proved that studios could reuse a film’s title, but they couldn’t make ’80s-era zeitgeist relevant in 2004. Even the horror genre, where sequels are king, and thus have more opportunities to create a worthy follow-up, often shit the bed. Just ask the The Rage: Carrie 2 (and don’t even mention Phantasm: Ravager in front of me).

This year’s Halloween isn’t technically a forty-years-later sequel, considering the franchise has remained active since the 1978 original, but it does embark on the ballsy move of pushing aside alllll those other sequels and remakes and pretending they never happened (something many fans already do) in favor of branching off from the best and least complicated entry in the franchise. (Easter eggs abound, however, for the sharp-eyed franchise fan — there are nods to every single Halloween entry, including the much maligned Halloween: Resurrection.) It’s additionally ballsy because 1978’s Halloween is so beloved — by both critics and fans of the genre and film in general. Halloween is that rare title that transcends its place in horror — a title that most people would say is simply great, and not just great “for a horror film,” which is like saying that cheeseburger you just scarfed down wasn’t bad “for McDonalds.” (Horror don’t get no respect, I tells ya!) If a director says he’s going to make Halloween 11, expectations are pegged pretty low from the get-go. At that point, most fans just want a solid slasher. But when a director — scratch that, a filmmaker (yes, there is a difference) — enters the scene and says he wants to make a direct follow-up to a legendary title, expectations are reset. There’s less franchise baggage and mythological mud to wade through, and when said filmmaker doesn’t come from a world of music videos but rather a world where his previous films have been released by the snooty Criterion Collection, that’s a big deal for a slasher series. That’s unprecedented territory.

Halloween ‘18 isn’t as good as the original, but only because that’s an impossible feat — not because the original is a flawless endeavor, but because it became the new watermark to which all subsequent slasher flicks have been compared. Halloween didn’t create a handful of the tropes and techniques for which it’s celebrated, but it did perfect them, popularize them, and marry them together in a splendid genre film that was part slasher, part supernatural terror, and part haunted house spookshow fun. Halloween wasn’t the first slasher film, but it was the first to take the world by storm. John Carpenter’s film endures because it’s pure, well-made in the face of a meager budget, and contains horror’s most iconic masked killer whose creepiness has yet to fade. For a long time, most fans felt that 1998’s Halloween: H20 was the last respectable entry in the franchise, which saw a returning Jamie Lee Curtis once again doing battle against the boogeyman, who in that timeline was still her brother. Halloween ’18 has now rendered H20 as being near-irrelevant, proving to be the best entry since the original.

In these last forty years, cinema has changed, including the horror and slasher genres. Audiences have different expectations. Charming, near-bloodless thrills just won’t do — not in a film where the bad guy wears a mask and carries a huge knife. Halloween ‘18 is obviously the bridge that connects the classy and pure intent for terror of the original with modern-day audiences, who expect a certain amount of viciousness and grue in their slasher offerings. Yes, Halloween ‘18 is violent — perhaps as violent as Rob Zombie’s gritty, immature, and white trashy take on Haddonfield. But (head stomps aside), the violence in Halloween ‘18 works to its favor, because this isn’t Zombie’s take on Haddonfield — it’s still Carpenter’s, and now Gordon Green’s (and co-writer Danny McBride’s). Their Haddonfield is idyllic, quaint, even boring. In their Haddonfield, murderous rampages aren’t supposed to happen, and it makes those moments — like that gorgeous, unbroken tracking shot which sees Michael walking and slaying from one house to the next — much more shocking. In Zombie’s Haddonfield, where everyone is terrible and exists in a pit of despair, we’re waiting for the violence to unfold. In Gordon Green’s Haddonfield, where the events of 1978 are barely a memory and life seems just fine, we’re hoping the violence never comes, because we’re not sure if we can take it.

Halloween ‘18 is being referred to as the series’ #MeToo entry, and while that wasn’t the intention, that’s not wrong, either. It’s one thing to see, and to have become accustomed to, the “final girl” in the slasher genre, but we don’t often get to see that final girl return for another bout of bloody murder committed by her foe, and we certainly don’t see an adult actor return to her teenage stomping grounds as a haunted, ruined shell of a final woman. Halloween ‘18 is absolutely, positively, without question, Jamie Lee Curtis’ movie — one that honors and acknowledges her legacy in the horror genre, cements just how underrated of a performer she is, and boasts quite possibly her greatest performance in any genre. The Laurie Strode of 2018 is not the Laurie Strode you remember from the original; she’s now a grandmother, baring her scars both physical and emotional from her Halloween encounter forty years prior. She’s the genre’s ultimate defacto heroine, so naturally she’s still strong and tenacious, but only to a degree. It’s not often you see your hero break down in tears throughout his or her journey, and in Halloween ‘18, you’ll see that more than once. If you’ve invested yourself in Laurie’s struggles over the course of the franchise, and in Curtis’ real-life struggles over the years, your heart will break seeing her steely resolve crumble, leaving her a heaving mess in the arms of her somewhat estranged granddaughter. Judy Greer and a new-coming (and an excellent) Andi Matichak also bring life and complexity to their roles as next-generation Strodes, with the latter naturally drawing the most parallels with circa-1978 Laurie. They’ll prove essential to the inevitable sequel, and it would be to the series’ continued betterment that they return for another round of Halloween carnage.

As for Laurie’s pursuer, Michael Myers, aka The Shape, he’s scary again — not because he’s nine feet tall or cutting off entire heads and throwing them down the stairs, but because Gordon Green utilizes him the way he should be. For the most part, he’s back in the shadows, and he’s also back to playing his cat-and-mouse games — but sometimes he’s captured in blinding, brilliant light, mask or no mask, as a reminder that evil exists all the time, everywhere, and not just in the dark. The aforementioned tracking shot puts you directly at Michael’s back as he walks, unnoticed in his mask on Halloween night, up Haddonfield’s sidewalks, eyeing its people for his next target. You witness his decision-making in real time and see him veer off his path like a great white shark spotting an easy meal, and this extremely eerie and pulse-pounding sequence reinforces what made the original so disturbing: Michael’s murderous motivations weren’t based on him and Laurie being siblings, or because he was being controlled by an evil Celtic cult, or because there were a bunch of MTV douche bags wandering around his house and only Blackberries and the internet could save them. The original Halloween was horrifying because Michael’s motives were unknown, and his attacks were utterly random — the horror came from the not-knowing-why. It came from Michael watching Laurie approach the front door of his long-abandoned childhood house as he hid inside its dimness and thinking, “Okay. Her.”

Bolstering Michael’s presence is the phenomenal score — the best since the original and perhaps the best of the franchise — by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies. It’s a marriage of old themes and new, which perfectly complements Halloween '18, because that’s exactly what the film is, too. The original’s film score, by itself and without any visual representation of Michael Myers’ mask or knife, is scary. Appropriately, free of its haunting visuals, the score for Halloween '18 achieves the same result. (Don’t believe me?) Not to mention, Carpenter and sons have pulled off the unthinkable: during the climactic showdown between good and evil, they’ve taken the most recognizable horror theme in cinema history (respect to JAWS) and re-imagined it to be free from fear and tension and re-orchestrated it to sound almost…hopeful. If music has ever made a moment work, it’s this one.

Though not without its problems (the Dr. Sartain subplot should have been entirely dropped, as it deviates the main story to a distracting degree), Halloween '18 gets so much right that to laundry-list its faults seems like salty tears. The fact is, a slasher sequel forty years in the making shouldn’t be as good as it is, so instead of dictating faults, let’s instead celebrate that this Halloween dream-team of David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, Jason Blum, Jamie Lee Curtis, and John Carpenter have achieved the unthinkable: they revitalized one of cinema’s longest-running horror franchises and rebooted not just the property, but the respect it once carried. I’d give anything for this to be the final entry in the series, as it’s doubtful such a sequel could ever live up to what Gordon Green et al. managed to do, but they’ve proven one thing at least: if anyone can do it, they can.

[Reprinted from The Daily Grindhouse.]

MR. RIDDLE'S BACK YARD

THE SHAPE OF FEAR!!!!!!!!!

Absolutely terrible.

#HALLOWEEN: SAMHAIN

"In order to appease the gods, the Druid priests held fire rituals. Prisoners of war, criminals, the insane, animals...were burned alive in baskets. By observing the way they died, the Druids believed they could see omens of the future. Two thousand years later, we've come no further. Samhain isn't evil spirits. It isn't goblins, ghosts or witches. It's the unconscious mind. We're all afraid of the dark inside ourselves."

#HALLOWEEN: THE MYERS HOUSE

"You're not supposed to go up there. Lonnie Elam said that's a haunted house. He said awful stuff happened there once."

#HALLOWEEN: JACK-HO-MAGE

I tried.

HALLOWEEN 3: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982)

There was once a time – somewhere after Michael Myers returned to the Halloween series with Halloween 4: er…The Return of Michael Myers, when Halloween 3: Season of the Witch was considered the black-sheep odd-ball entry. Once that titular boogeyman Shat his face back on (see what I did there?) for the first time since Halloween 2, Halloween 3 seemed like a strange temporary diversion on what was, at that time, a still-linear and expanding mythos. Yet, now that said series also contains both versions of Halloween 6 (neither of which are good, and both of which are confusing as hell), a proper sequel that saw the return of Laurie Strode and subsequently ignored Halloween 4-6, an entry in which Laurie Strode was unceremoniously killed off as if the character were never more than a trivial footnote, and then Rob Zombie’s very controversial misfiring entries, I think it’s safe to say that Halloween 3 is no longer the odd-ball entry.  And it’s certainly not the turkey that many series fans like to say it is. I admit that I used to think like that: Season of the Witch used to be a punch line. It was derided for chucking out what “worked” – meaning, a slowly over-saturating storyline about Michael Myers that soon achieved the heights of ridiculousness that producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill had feared and tried to avoid. To many people, it became synonymous with the expression “jumping the shark.” 

Halloween 3 was supposed to be the first of a new direction for the Halloween series: standalone entries released yearly or bi-yearly that celebrated and examined the October holiday in some way, none of which would be tied back to previous entries. Kind of a strange move, considering Halloween 2 already existed, and was a direct continuation of the first film – its very existence seemed to laugh in the face of that idea – but when the tiny Compass International Pictures releases your first film, and then suddenly, mega-studio Universal wants to fund the second – ya know, the folks that released Jaws – I could understand caving in on that original intention.

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch features no Michael Myers, no Dr. Loomis, no Laurie Strode. It does feature: Tom Atkins (rocking the mustache this time!), ruminations on old Celtic beliefs/traditions as they pertain to Halloween, an evil corporation, Stonehenge, booby-trapped bug-filled Halloween masks, and, fuck yeah, robots. Here’s the thing, though, and hold onto your butts: While Halloween 3 is nowhere near a better film than the groundbreaking original (ha ha; Lord, no), it does a far better job of incorporating the actual day of Halloween – and all the myths and iconography and history that come with it – directly into its storyline. We’re not just talking about some guy walking around in a mask on the day/night of Halloween and getting away with it because Halloween=masks. We’re talking about a revisitation of old-school Halloween; how it was celebrated and observed in lands foreign from our own; how the very idea of Halloween itself – one whose enduring popularity is credited to legions of children – is both the inspiration behind and the vehicle through which Halloween 3’s antagonist will carry forth his dastardly plan: essentially, to end the world as we know it. If you know the legends and lore of Halloween, you know (or should assume, anyway) that the Halloween of today is a sanitized and watered-down version of what it used to be. It is this embracing of genuine Halloween that makes Season of the Witch an entertaining watch, but it’s not the only aspect worth praising.

Halloween 3 also succeeds and exceeds because of everyone behind the camera. Carpenter’s involvement with this series diminished over time, producing/writing/directing the first film, writing and producing the second, and now only producing the third. This meant someone had to step up and take on the role of writing and directing what would be a radical departure for this newborn series. Things didn’t work out all that well with Rick Rosenthal, who directed Halloween 2, and was a person Carpenter et al. didn’t know personally, so this time the major creative roles were entrusted to Tommy Lee Wallace, who had been part of the filmmakers’ repertoire since nearly the beginning. Though a rearranged version of the original team that struck gold with Halloween, the major players were still there, injecting into the films their own DNA. Carpenter and Hill returned as producers; Dean Cundey as director of photography; Carpenter and Alan Howarth as composers.

Carpenter’s first three films (Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, and The Fog) had by then established what a "John Carpenter film" was – how it looked, sounded, who appeared on-camera, and the story it was telling. This aesthetic carried over to the subsequent Halloween films where Carpenter opted to take on lesser roles, but still accounts for a large part of their success and their reputations that would slowly grow over time. Much like Halloween 2, Halloween 3 feels like a Carpenter film – from the collection of actors and actresses making return appearances (Tom Atkins, Nancy Loomis, and voice work by Tommy Lee Wallace and Jamie Lee Curtis) to the film’s score (which is probably Carpenter's all-time best next to The Fog), to the added benefit of being grandfathered into a series that Carpenter and co. had created. And this isn’t, in any way, to diminish what writer/director Tommy Lee Wallace (director of Stephen King's IT) brought to the film. He was the man behind the typewriter and behind the camera. His gonzo script (heavily rewriting one by Nigel Kneale) about ritual sacrifice, the apocalypse, a womanizing Tom Atkins, and mothafuckin’ robots works because of how cartoonish and insane the events become. When it gets to the point in the film where Tom Atkins is being strangled by a severed robot hand, or you see that one single pillar from Stonehenge has somehow been uprooted from England, shipped over to the U.S., and planted in the middle of a concrete factory (you DO know how fucking big those stones are, right?) you have to know by then whether you’re on board…or not.

I totally am.

The cast of professionals and not-so-professionals brought it and did what needed to be done. Atkins is Atkins, and we love Atkins. Dan O'Herlihy as the villainous Conal Cochran brings as much gravitas and legitimacy to his role as Donald Pleasence ever did. Cochran's monologue about the real origins of Halloween may not be as chilling and exciting as Dr. Loomis' rant about "the devil's eyes," but O'Herlihy's performance is just as steely-good.

And Stacy Nelkins looks pretty good in a towel. And nighty.

Is Halloween 3 as good a film as Carpenter’s original? We’ve already been over that, and the answer is still no. But is it better than most of the entries to come, up to and including Rob Zombie’s scientific experiments? Absolutely.

Still very much a family affair, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch belongs alongside its previous two entries. Though it ditches everything that came before in favor of something new, it still somehow feels like the proper third part of a Halloween trilogy.

To me, this Michael Myers-lacking, Loomis-less, Carpenter-lite entry will forever be more of a proper sequel than Halloween: Resurrection ever will.