Post by Salzmank on Nov 1, 2019 1:51:24 GMT
For reasons unknown even to myself, I’ve watched 4 1/2 Halloween entries this October… OK, not entirely unknown, I decided to make this the year I finally caught up on the famous horror franchises, so I also saw Friday the 13th (execrable—sorry to all its fans) and Nightmare on Elm Street (decent, the dream sequences are creepier than Krueger) for the first time. I watch the original Halloween every year, but this was the first time I watched some of the sequels (aside from maybe the last third of III that I caught on TV a few years back).
I joke about Halloween’s goofier points (awful acting other than Curtis and the kids, it looks like California in the summertime other than a few leaves, empty streets throughout town, Pleasance and sheriff stay in Meyers House for nearly whole movie while Mikey’s out slaughtering babysitters a few houses down) every year, but I still think it’s a classic. I especially like Carpenter’s visual style, the script’s slow burn, and the atmosphere of lurking dread. There’s a reason I watch it every year for Halloween night.
I thought Halloween II stunk, unfortunately. The first half, picking right up where the original left off, was quite good, with the director imitating Carpenter’s style fairly well, but it turned into such a dull, run-of-the-mill slasher once the action went to the hospital, and the climax was so goofy and dumb. I don’t like the sister twist. Probably the worst entry I’ve seen, in large part for the squandering of the first act’s promise.
Halloween III I’ve written about before in this thread, but to sum it up: good ideas, poor execution. I don’t mind making it Meyers-less at all; in fact, that was one of my favorite things about it. I don’t mind Mikey at all, but focusing on him by necessity downplays all the Halloween mythology the filmmakers could be playing with.
Halloween 4 was, believe it or not, my favorite of the sequels. Yes, it’s complete hokum, but it’s fun hokum, à la Mystery Science Theater 3000, instead of tedious hokum, like Halloween II. My friend and I ended up debating the movie’s politics. (I jokingly argued it was the first fascist horror movie—government’s inept, private citizens are inept, but if they’d only listened to fearless leader Donald Pleasance, tragedy could have been avoided—while he argued it was individualistic/libertarian, against government and mob rule. We’re goofballs.) No slight on the movie, though: it’s silly enough to warrant such “arguments.” That said, I would have loved to have seen a film made from Dennis Etchinson’s original scrip for it, which is available online and which seems excellent, prefiguring the self-awareness of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and Scream by nearly a decade.
The 1/2 is the latest Halloween (2018). I’ve tried more than once and always gotten bored around the same point (where the granddaughter and her boyfriend are at the dance and have some dumb John Hughes-y teen argument). But it’s trying so hard to refer back to the original, with really obvious cross-references, that I’m not sure I’d like it even if I did see the whole thing.
Well, there ya go. I don’t know if I’ll ever see any more of the sequels, though I’d like to try at least one more Friday the 13th. Despite some qualms, I really liked New Nightmare—more than the original, in fact.
I joke about Halloween’s goofier points (awful acting other than Curtis and the kids, it looks like California in the summertime other than a few leaves, empty streets throughout town, Pleasance and sheriff stay in Meyers House for nearly whole movie while Mikey’s out slaughtering babysitters a few houses down) every year, but I still think it’s a classic. I especially like Carpenter’s visual style, the script’s slow burn, and the atmosphere of lurking dread. There’s a reason I watch it every year for Halloween night.
I thought Halloween II stunk, unfortunately. The first half, picking right up where the original left off, was quite good, with the director imitating Carpenter’s style fairly well, but it turned into such a dull, run-of-the-mill slasher once the action went to the hospital, and the climax was so goofy and dumb. I don’t like the sister twist. Probably the worst entry I’ve seen, in large part for the squandering of the first act’s promise.
Halloween III I’ve written about before in this thread, but to sum it up: good ideas, poor execution. I don’t mind making it Meyers-less at all; in fact, that was one of my favorite things about it. I don’t mind Mikey at all, but focusing on him by necessity downplays all the Halloween mythology the filmmakers could be playing with.
Halloween 4 was, believe it or not, my favorite of the sequels. Yes, it’s complete hokum, but it’s fun hokum, à la Mystery Science Theater 3000, instead of tedious hokum, like Halloween II. My friend and I ended up debating the movie’s politics. (I jokingly argued it was the first fascist horror movie—government’s inept, private citizens are inept, but if they’d only listened to fearless leader Donald Pleasance, tragedy could have been avoided—while he argued it was individualistic/libertarian, against government and mob rule. We’re goofballs.) No slight on the movie, though: it’s silly enough to warrant such “arguments.” That said, I would have loved to have seen a film made from Dennis Etchinson’s original scrip for it, which is available online and which seems excellent, prefiguring the self-awareness of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and Scream by nearly a decade.
The 1/2 is the latest Halloween (2018). I’ve tried more than once and always gotten bored around the same point (where the granddaughter and her boyfriend are at the dance and have some dumb John Hughes-y teen argument). But it’s trying so hard to refer back to the original, with really obvious cross-references, that I’m not sure I’d like it even if I did see the whole thing.
Well, there ya go. I don’t know if I’ll ever see any more of the sequels, though I’d like to try at least one more Friday the 13th. Despite some qualms, I really liked New Nightmare—more than the original, in fact.