Give me a pasty in the cinema I'd even sit through Anything and enjoy it :lol:

One time I was in the queue to get tickets behind a man with a brown paper McDonald's bag containing a meal he had bought from the 'restaurant' over the road! They didn't ask him not to take it in, or even mention it.

Years ago a mate and I went in with a full McDonalds each...the poor sod tearing the tickets clearly couldn't be arsed to argue the toss and just said please take the rubbish out with you (which we of course would've done anyway).

I wouldnt either what they going to gain apart from pissing him off.

I wouldnt and couldnt obey by rules eg checking bags and confiscating food tbh i couldnt care less, they come and bought a ticket as long as they dont annoy anyone whats the problem, i hate jobs worthy people.
There's doing youre job then going overboard, you dont get apreciated or thanks for it so why bother, any job you bust youre guts for a shit wage while you do all the work and the owners get all the money and praise so £@ck em for all i care. They dont give a toss about the people who actualy run and keep the company together. Youre just a number a static and dont mean jack to them.

There is a small sign on the stand where the staff check your tickets saying something along the lines of 'Please do not bring in outside food', but it's far from strictly enforced.

I'm always amazed by people buying foot long hotdogs and huge plates of nachos at the strangest times of day!

Several times i bought food from places, i work nights and a lot of times people have said how can you eat that at this time of day, so i jokingly start looking at the food and wrappers etc then they ask me what im doing, ill reply where does it state do not eat between hours off.? And.?
I dont think any time strange to eat any food.

Eating a huge hotdog at 11 AM seems a little peculiar to me, particularly because of how much it costs, but I take your point about nightshift workers having 'unusual' sleep and eating patterns.

It's never too early or too late in the day to take a foot-long in the mouth. :nod:

I was waiting for a response like that!

1968: part 2

Where Eagles Dare - Classic boys-own WWII actioner, Nazis, double agents, secret mission, explosions, death, destruction and a great opening score from Ron Goodman, what more do you want?

Dracula Has Risen From the Grave - By no means the worst in the franchise, but he needn't have bothered!

The Graduate - More from Hollywood’s 'New Wave'. (Really it’s a late 1967 movie). With some great music from Simon and Garfunkel and a few comedic moments. Mike Nichols won an Oscar for Best Director. This was the first picture to win at the BAFTA's in the combined category of Best British Film and Best Film from any Source. This new 'Best Film' category would continue until 1983 when the category was split once again into 'Best Film' and 'Best Foreign Language Film'.

Bullitt - Another example of Hollywood New Wave and with a great car chase scene.


Shalako - Sean Connery post Bond! Here he teams up with Brigitte Bardot in a pretty standard western.

Finian's Rainbow - I added this because of three things. 1) I realised that when I was doing both 30's and 40's movies I hadn’t added a whole lot of Fred Astaire, (if any), 2) This was Astaire’s last musical and 3) Comedy/musical and Francis Ford Coppola are two things I wouldn't normally associate with each other! And you know what...I enjoyed it! A great film for the family on a Sunday afternoon.

Funny Girl - Not a fan of Barbara Streisand but I quite like this even if it was a little overlong.

Planet of the Apes - The film that gave rise to two Franchises, one remake, a TV series, an animated series, a ton of merchandise and a comic book. The original and the best. "Get your stinking paws off of me you damn dirty ape!"

Rosemary's Baby - This was my first time seeing this all the way through, it’s not too bad, I think it’s very light on the horror to its detriment. Ruth Gordons New York (?) twang annoyed me a little!

Quatermass and the Pit - Hammers third and final Quatermass, classic stuff!

Attachment 171595

Well I didn't excepted to enjoy this half as much as did. A wonderful love letter to 80s horrors/slashers. Basic story of a young woman who a few years after the death of her mother in a car accident go to see a special screening of a famous slasher film she stared in and end up inside the movie. Not hard to see that the film makers have a deep love of 80s horror movies. Well worth seeking out for any fan of 80s horrors. Just shows they are some great "new" horrors out there. 9/10

I'm glad you enjoyed this, i was bleating on about how good this was last week and was worried perhaps others might not enjoy it as much, but it's actually really fun and I enjoyed it much more than my rewatch of Friday 13th the following night :lol:

NIGHTCRAWLER – Not many movies do the whole 'staring long and hard into the abyss of the human soul' thing all that well, but 'Nightcrawler' does. It's a pretty disturbing film. It's also excellent. Jake Gyllenhaal is Louis Bloom, a small time thief who aspires to the big bucks. He finds a way up the ladder when he encounters an underworld of crime scene lurkers who film local atrocities and sell their footage on to news stations. Lewis is prepared to go further than most in giving the viewing public what they want, up to the point of concealing police evidence, engineering a major crime and, ultimately, murder. 'Nightcrawler' could be read as a warped thriller, but its mind is on tricky questions about the media. What does it say about us when we flock to see our fellow humans in the aftermath of RTAs and drive bys? What does it say about us when we queue to consume the bloodied, ravaged images of ourselves on prime time, and fund a multi-billion dollar industry dedicated to the same? Louis clearly doesn't give a toss about any of this. He's a chilly character to put it mildly, a bit like 'Videodrome's Max Renn but with even less humanity (in fact, weirdly enough I thought Gyllenhaal looked spookily like a young Cronenberg here). With a business plan where his personality should be, Louis is pretty much the living embodiment of deregulated market forces, his goofy but plastic charm never really concealing the reptilian engine underneath the facade. The parallels with early Cronenberg don't end with the lead character – 'Nightcrawler' is ultimately about what happens when humans end up as commodified images, although the idea is served up in the register of neon lit noir rather than apocalyptic sci-fi. The bleakest moment – when the station news editor and Louis view that final awful footage and, lit like graveyard statues, rhapsodise about how great it is... truly the twilight of humanity. Great film, see it.

Circle - (Netflix UK)
Dir. Aaron Hann, Mario Miscione.

- This is a great Sci-Fi flick based on a simple idea, a bunch of folks wake up in a circle and a device in the center of the room kills them at increments of about 5 mins. They all have the joy of finding out the what where whys and whens of how they came to be standing in the room as they get picked off.

The film is very well executed, It stays simple and never over complicates what it's trying to achieve. The social commentary on the movie is really putting the finger on the pulse of American (and other countries) culture. A mature movie with a great ensemble of mixed ability actors, all pull together to create a very entertaining sci-fi flick.

My only criticism is the end of the film, like most sci-fi movies it goes in a direction that it didn't really need too (in my opinion).

The film makers can look forward to a long career making programs if this is an example of what they can do.

Check it out on Netflix UK if you fancy a watch. You could do worse things with your time, like read my crap. ;)

- I also watched Contamination but fell asleep, man that film is slow, but i really enjoyed what i saw. :)

I just want the Scarlet Boxset to show up. :)

Great review as always Frankie. Nightcrawler was at the top end of my 10 best films of last year. I need to get it re-watched soon.

We watched The Green Mile last night. Even after all this time, it still has the same impact, fantastic film!

10/10

Thinner
(Netflix UK)
Dir. Tom Holland

I think i hate Stephen King, for reasons i can't accuratly explain. I enjoy his stories but they leave me feeling uncomfortable. The twilight Zone does the same thing to me, It (What ever the Twilight Zone is) manages to either punish or set free it's visitors based (usually) on what moral desicion they make whilst trapped inside of the zone.
I feel the same about Stephen king, he has a 'Zone' which his characters exist BUT stories like Thinner arn't as simple to unravel as the ones we find in the Twilight Zone.
In Thinner, our main character is getting a BJ from his wife whilst he drives home from a reasturant, as he is clearly distracted, he runs down a walking steriotype of a gypsie... she dies and because our man is a lawyer the judge and the cop get him off free...

The father of the gypsie puts a curse on the judge, our guy and the cop and they all experience different kinds of horrible body horror.
This is where i start to wonder what goes off is Kings mind? Why would the father gyspie put such horrible and painful curses on these guys? why not a quick death? it's unbalanced... he didn't even bother to get an appeal or a re-trial or anything just over reacted and turned three men into walking carnival attractions.

so that's why i get annoyed at King. Every action has an equil reaction unless its Stephen king, where. if you accidentally fart whilst walking past a witch you can bet your ass your kids and wife will be turned into living blobs by supper time!

I enjoyed the film (Who doesn't enjoy a good Tom Holland movie) but it stressed me out. Haha.


My Bloody Valentine
(Netflix UK)
Dir. Patrick Lussier

Got 3 minutes in and realised i had seen enough dull American Horror flicks and didn't need to add another to my list. Instead i left the horror section of Netflix and found Sorry, Wrong Number... (see below)


Sorry, Wrong Number...
(Netflix UK)
Dir. Anatole Litvak

Bert Lancaster and Babs Stanwyck help to create a wonderfully tense and dark thriller in which a woman over hears a plot to murder her at 11:45pm that day. The film unfolds via a series of phone calls (as our main character is bed ridden) and with each phone call the storyline unfolds to the big reveal at the end.

I loved this movie folks, grab yourself a glass of whisky and some pringles like i did (classy right!) and enjoy this awesome thriller from 1948.

Halloween (1978)

The night HE came home, He being mute psychopath Michael Myers who we see in the opening scene butchering his sister after some surprisingly quick teen sex, I mean seriously, they are up the stairs undressed done and the bloke is leaving in the time it takes for the murder moppet to grab a blade and head upstairs. Two bumps and a shiver seems to be a marathon for the Haddonfield boys, this is pretty much confirmed with a later sex scene with the lovely P.J Soles, I have to admit I'd be pretty 'eager' with her myself but I do wonder what would happen if any of these girls met a man with any sort of staying power... But I digress.
Michael has been locked away in smiths grove sanatorium for 10 years staring at a wall. His psychiatrist Dr Sam Loomis, played by veteran character actor Donald Pleasence (who is needless to say bloody marvellous in the role) has pretty much dismissed any idea of rehabilitation and instead has opted for the 'keep the bastard locked up and sedated' approach to mental health care after getting scared shitless by what he found after the few therapy sessions he attempted. Sadly it seems that smiths grove has the Arkham Asylum revolving door policy on security and Loomis finds himself headed to the hospital with Nurse Marion chambers only to find a mass break out and lots of the residents wandering the grounds like a scene from Night of the Living dead. Michael promptly nicks Nurse Chambers car and speeds off into the night. Loomis, who seems to have decent insight into Michael correctly deduces that Mikey is headed home. Back in haddonfield a group of babysitters, including wallflower Laurie Strode, are planning Halloween night blissfully unaware that evil has come to their little town and is planning a carve up.
It's a sign of a films quality that it holds up today, a lot of younger, seasoned slasher fans might find Halloween somewhat predictable and tame forgetting it pre dates the slasher craze and in fact was the film that kicked it all off. Certainly there are earlier films one can point to, most notably Black Christmas, however the sheer cultural impact of the film, combined with a huge profit, ensured that low budget film makers looking for a quick buck had a formula to follow and exploit. Later films (including the Halloween franchise itself) would get bloodier and bloodier in an attempt to one up each other, but the original does not need nor warrant this level of mayhem.
Halloween is a film about the hidden evil and terror that can Lurk in the seemingly peaceful middle class suburbs of small town America. Myers own identity is actually sort of irrelevant as he's supposed to represent the urban myth, the bad thing that happened at that one house down the road that fuels the suburban ghost stories the same way Jason Voorhies represents the invisible evil in the woods. Essentially he's the Boogeyman, the thing in the closet, the creature under the bed the thing that keeps kids up at night and the cause of many bed wetting's. The film pretty much confirms this by the end when Myers apparently disappears at the end, its not so much there as an invitation to sequel but to show that its an idea that cannot ever be truly killed off and can be lurking anywhere. Michael himself is refereed to as 'the shape' not so much a man as a thing that you glimpse from the corner of your eye, a thing lurking in the darkness. His mask (apparently a William shatner mask!) is blank and lacks any detail adding to the idea that Michael himself is merely an avatar for our own fears and neurosis A pretentious film student might even go so far as to suggest Dr Loomis obsessed search for Michael represents the frustrated and unending battle of the forces of psychiatry on the primal fears of mankind. As much as he can win a battle against Michael he cannot win the war.
Carpenter's score is simple and effective, no overly dramatic flourishes, just plain, catchy and to the point and really delivers the goods. Apparently screenings without Carpenters score didn't go so well and it was only really after the score was added that the films ability to inspire terror was apparent. The adoption of Stedicam, combined with the excellent photography from Dean Cundy also helps to sell the film giving it a fluid almost dream-like feel, as if we are trapped in some kind of suburban nightmare with enough dark spaces in frames that the shape could be hiding anywhere and in one memorable scene does indeed emerge as if from the shadows themselves.
Halloween is still a terrific film to watch today, even after numerous sequels, comic book spin-offs ect it still works effectively well. Ignore the TV version which has some added scenes to help tie it in to part 2, it sort of ruins the pacing and It's better to see them as deleted scenes.

Halloween 2

after making its backers a huge profit on the back of a small budget and inspiring a bunch of imitators who also made some big bucks and franchise success on the back of the films popularity and formula it was almost inevitable that Halloween would get a sequel. John Carpenter himself wasn't entirely interested, however he's never been one to kick cash out of bed so with Deborah Hill began working on a script that would be handed over to Rick Rosenthal to deliver a film that continues directly over from the events in part one. Here the shape, having been shot six times and fallen out a window only to disappear is continuing his murder spree through Haddonfield. discovering Laurie strode has been taken to the local hospital our Mikey makes a beeline there after one or two murders before hand. The hospital itself is pretty much empty, showing Haddonfield warrants a large healthcare facility that its fortunate to not need (until tonight). Here in the empty hallways the shape begins killing off nurses and doctors one by one looking for HIS SISTER
Yes the soap opera contrivance I always hated rears its ugly head. It turns out, in spite of no mention at all in the previous film, that Laurie strode was adopted and in fact the baby sister of Michael Myers who has been babysat somewhere else when Michael had made his way home to kill big sis. Apparently the records had been sealed, which makes a sort of sense until you consider Haddonfield is small town mid-america where everyone knows everyone else's business and it seems f*****g WEIRD that no-one at any point would suss that firstly the Myers youngest would be put into care and adopted, in spite of the Myers parents being alive after Michael's first killing and that even if they had been deemed unfit parents, why would the child be given to a local family in the same community that the killings occurred. Someone would figure that shit out is what I'm saying. Personally I think if they were going down that route then they should have made Laurie JUDITHS kid, even having her be the product of abuse that might have indicated why this was all kept under wraps. It would even add more of a sharp, barbed critique of the sort of hidden horrors to be found in suburbia. Even then, Loomis, as Michaels therapist would have been made aware of this, considering it might factor into any therapy Michael would receive and loomis would have been bound by doctor-patient confidentiality.
I'm probably over-thinking it in all honesty and even Carpenter himself admits it was something thrown in, in order to add something new to a film that would otherwise be pretty much more of the same. It's certainly a more bloody affair than the first film, this one is post Friday the 13th and the same year as friday part 2 and at this point the blood & guts approach to slasher pictures set in and the series 'needed' it to compete. The gore scenes are pretty good admittedly and provide enough splatter for the slasher audience..
Director Rick Rosenthal does a good job with the material and delivers a film that manages to for the most part tie together with the first film pretty well. Certainly as slasher sequels go its one of the better ones, and the attempt to kill the franchise off at the end was a noble but ultimately doomed one as not only can evil never be truly killed, neither can the opportunity for a quick buck.

Personally i think My Bloody Valentine is excellent. Suspenseful and full of great kills.

Me too, much better than the original :nod:

Halloween 3: Season of the witch

Perhaps my personal favourite of the Halloween sequels, mainly because the central idea is such a f***** good one that its a shame commercial forces and the audience desire for familiarity won over the desire to provide something new. Essentially the film ditches Michael Myers entirely and takes a script first drafted by Nigel Kneale then filtered through Carpenter and Deborah hill before a polish by director Tommy Lee Wallace to deliver a Bodysnatchers-esque tale of an evil toymaker producing killer masks in order to make a sacrifice to the forces of Samhain utilising stolen stones from Stonehenge and Druidic rituals. If that concept sounds mental, well it is, the film itself is an oddity bu a welcome one with 19th century automatons as henchman, a small factory town with more CCTV than a British high street and an infuriatingly catchy add for the silver shamrock masks that will have you humming for days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIHUv2ooG38

Fortunately Tommy Lee Wallace sells the shit out of the concept as a director and it all works very well indeed. John Carpenter & Alan Howarth provide an excellent and moody score, Dean Cudy works his magic with some terrific photography all to provide a great atmosphere to the picture. Dan O'Herlihy is absolutely fantastic as evil toymaker Conal Cochran and really delivers the goods as far as villains goes, charming and likeable at one moment, malicious and psycopathically evil another. Tom Atkins gives a great performance as the drunken doctor trying to bring him down. Stacey Nelkin is also great and the fact that she's not afraid to 'get them out' certainly helps sell the film and cements my belief that Tom Atkins has some kind of magic luck powers.
The film was supposed to take the franchise in another direction, essentially a different Halloween themed horror to be released each year around Halloween. Sadly it seems audiences wanted more of the same, the film flopped and the franchise got put on hold until....

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Proving to be pretty much UN-killable, Moustapha Akkad decided to rejuvenate the franchise with this 1988 picture that returns the iconic killer Michael Myers after a long gap in films (7 years since Michael, 6 since part 3)
Director Dwight H. Little takes a script that identifies the core things from parts 1 & 2 that seemed to appeal to the audience and brings it large and loud here as Michael returns to Haddonfield after another 10 years in a coma in order to kill the now apparently deceased Laurie Strodes daughter Jamie Lloyd played by the hugely talented Danielle Harris who would become something of an Icon to the Franchise and return for part 5 as well as Both Rob Zombie Halloween pictures. I can gush all day about Harris all day but for a child actor she really delivers the goods here and gives a great performance. Ellie Cornell also deserves credit in the Big sister role of Rachel Carruthers who must protect Jamie from her demented uncle. Naturally of course Donald Pleasence is fantastic and his return really cemented the franchise as his own. He seems pleased to return and for an actor to get a retirement plan like this cannot be a bad thing!
My main gripe with the Halloween pictures from here on in is we lose some of Michaels 'playfulness', a sense that at least some of his killings are twisted Halloween pranks, also he seems to have mutated into a Terminator capable of wandering into a police station off screen and killing everybody inside. While subtlety may have gone, its fair to point out that at this point Horror cinema had moved on and was almost dead on its feet. The slasher flick had been repeated to a level that a return to a more classical style might have been a difficult sell, equally the film is still fun and delivers what it sets out to achieve for the most part. It was a hit stateside but I seem to remember it coming out on VHS over here and it was a fun afternoons rental and better than a lot of stuff out at the same time.

Halloween 5

Given the solid performance and positive reaction to part 4, which promptly delivered the film fans seemed to want it was inevitable that part 5 was far away.
Following 1 year after part 4 it seems Michael 'terminator' Myers has become something of a Voorhies and has shrugged off more Bullets than the wild bunch after a years lie down to once again Pursue his niece Jaimie, played once again by Danielle Harris. Now she's a mute in a care home after the end of the last film where she seemed to become the new Michael after killing her step mom... except she didn't and she's apparently not evil at all setting an enjoyable but deeply, deeply flawed film that begins to go completely off the rails as it progresses. 'Controversial' director Dominique Othenin-Girard , director of the legendarily terrible piece of shit that was Omen IV: The Awakening decides to add some mythology to the franchise. Ellie cornell gets butchered quite quickly into the film, the remaining characters (bar Loomis and Jamie) are annoying. Michael has a Tatoo that appears to be a runic tattoo and there's a mysterious character dressed as a cowboy in black who seems to have some connection to Myers. So what does it all mean? who the f**k knew, the director didn't admits as much. He was using the same playbook as the writers of LOST and throwing in weird shit that he could leave for other people to explain. The pacing is terrible and in places gets genuinely dull, the killings are mediocre, neither subtle and well crafted or splattery and fun... just bland. I can still watch it, and really think Danielle Harris excells however the film just feels like a let down after part 4. Still pity the poor bastard who had to work out part 6....

Loving these Halloween reviews Keirarts. :woot:

Personaly i think we need more writers like Stephen King where their imagination is of the wtf scale.
Because if we didnt have people like him so many films wouldnt be made
I mean what normal mind would think of Human centipede.?
David cronenberg a prime example especialy with films like videodrome.
Or some of the j horrors
Personally imo todays film writers etc are lacking these people imagination and we need someone to come along and make something new and fresh, yes occasionaly get odd films that comes along, but if we had more like them then we wouldnt have to rely on reboots, remakes, and.? V? Because lets be fair the film industry is running out of ideas for something new and fresh. And is churning out the same old rubbish.

Halloween 6 curse of Michael Myers (and producers cut)

Having been left with Dominique Othenin-Girard's clusterf**k of an attempt at adding a mythology that left numerous plot threads dangling that no-one knew how to explain, director Joe Chappelle was left to mop that shit up. An actually pretty decent director who admittedly delivered the Dean R Koontz, fun in a crap sort of way Phantoms with Ben Affleck (actually a lot of fun when stoned) but redeemed himself by delivering some terrific episodes of the wire, Chappelle actually delivers a film that is competently shot but rife with issues from the beginning.
The film starts with a character we discover is Jaimie from 4 + 5, something of a shock considering she is played by another actress and is barefoot and pregnant. Quite a creepy development considering she was 9 years old when dodgy cowboy dude abducted her in his creeper van along with Michael (a scene that makes the producers cut). Jamie promptly gives birth and then cheeses it with the help of a nurse before being promptly pursued by her uncle Michael. It seems the character all the fans rooted for has been held captive for about 6 years (still making her somewhat under-age) and the Thorn cult that has been keeping her hostage has had uncle mike rape her to get the baby because.....reasons. To add insult to the fans, someone else is playing her because the tight-ass producers didn't want to pay Danielle Harris anything because ... again reasons. So, the central character from 4+5 is promptly killed off by Michael, not before hiding her baby at the train station. Michael it seems is more than capable of tracking down blood relatives like a laser guided missile until its his own incest-spawn, then he seems to be as clueless as the rest of us. Fortunately Tommy Doyle, the kid from the first movie, has spent most of his adult life waiting for this day in spite of sleeping through Michaels two previous rampages and retrieves the baby from the bus station. Tommy is played by PAUL "ANT-MAN" RUDD, in a case of early casting i'm sure the now mega star is pleased to include on his resume. Meanwhile the remaining strode family has moved in across the road into the old Myers house. Only abusive papa strode seems aware of this fact and has kept it secret from the rest of his down trodden family because in a small town like Haddonfield its unlikely that anyone else is ever going to ask "why the f*** are you living in the Myers house, its like Amityville without the flies". Not even Tommy doyle bothers to say anything, in spite of his habit of spying on Kara Strode through a telescope.
Before you can say "who wrote this!" Michael is back and begins killing off folk again, Tommy Doyle decides to team up with Sam Loomis, who is now looking his age and has lost his burns thanks to plastic surgery. Ultimately they manage to explain the whole thorn debacle, Dr. Wynn here played by Mitchell Ryan but played by Robert Phalen in the 1978 original is the head of the cult. It seems most of the staff, bar Loomis, had been worshipping Michael because of ...paganism.... Halloween....need for interconnection and everything to wrap Ultimately it all ends up back at smiths grove and seems resolved except it isnt because Myers is worth cash. Sadly Donald Pleasance died so they add a scream at the end to suggest he has been killed by Michael and ...the end.....
Blimey this film is a bit of a mess. Stick with the producers cut which actually makes a bit more sense and has a weirder ending that makes it somewhat appealing. It leaves more questions that will never be answered and the Franchise in a bit of a mess but unlike part 5 its an entertaining mess. Apparently they were setting it up so Tommy Doyle would be the new protagonist, it didn't work out and the series went on further hiatus while the producers sat down to think about how to un-fu** things. Good thing for Tommy Doyle really as he would have only ended up being written out at some point or teamed up with Jamie Lloyd's ghost in order to defeat the Michael Myers robot hybrid in space. Sometimes failure can help a franchise.....

http://youtu.be/jw3jMPjAcwg?t=15

I found the whole Jamie being stuff rather ugly. To think that poor little girl from Halloween 4 & 5 went though years of absolute torture makes me ill.

I can handle it in films like Martyrs, where the child torture was part of the point. But the Halloween series is essentially, a simple slasher series and it just feels rotten to me.

Halloween H20: 20 years later

3 years after the enjoyable mess that was Halloween 6, on the 20th anniversary of the original film, Moustapha Akkad along with Dimension pictures and Kevin (scream) Williamson decided to give the almost totally broken franchise a new lease of life.
Not 2 years after part 6 crawled away screaming, hampered by a mess left by the previous director, Wes Craven had taken a script by Kevin Williamson called Scary movie (renamed SCREAM) and delivered a slasher picture that played the nostalgia card perfectly. Slasher movies, which at this point had gone past the point zombie cinema is slouching past now, were suddenly revived and all the studios were scrambling to put one out. Fortunately for Dimension they had one of the major ones under their belt, the only difficulty being 3-6 which left a whole bunch of troubles. Fortunately the idea that Williamson put forward, to forget that 3-6 had ever happened stuck. even better news Jamie lee curtis, whose character Laurie strode was supposed to be dead, agreed to come back and Steve Miner who already had some slasher experience under his belt agreed to direct and the project was good to go.
The film opens with Marion Chambers, the nurse from parts 1 + 2 coming home to discover a break in. she gets the boys next door (including an early role for Joseph Gordon Levitt) to check things out, all seems ok though Marion is disturbed to find the papers in her office have been rifled through and the details of the new identity of Laurie Strode are gone. Before she can raise the alarm Michael has returned and promptly kills both her and her bratty neighbours off before heading on a road trip to find his little sister.
Laurie meanwhile is teaching at a remote girls school, she lives there with her son, played by Josh Hartnett. It seems that Laurie has changed identities and is something off a mess. Her previous relationship (which I assume was with the creepy nurse love interest from part two Jimmy, who was all into romancing those attempted murder victims) was beset by drug and alcohol issues and she's pretty much a walking mess who is smothering her son from over-protectiveness. As most of the school is off on a trip, Laurie's son John along with her new BF played by Adam Arkin and her sons friends stay over at school. Before the partying can begin however Michael gate crashes the party and all hell breaks loose.
Considering the numerous production problems that H20 encountered, from Moustapha Akkad's tantrum at the suggestion of actually killing off Michael to the first score by John Ottman being abandoned as being too elaborate and unsuited to the material there were numerous issues with the film. The Myers mask was changed several times, from re-using one from part 6, to KNB designing one that then had to be re-shot to one being produced by Stan Winston studios. It's a happy miracle then that the final product actually works. Certainly ignoring 4-6 was a good idea from a narrative perspective. Its especially f**** up if you think of them actually happening, which means Laurie strode essentially faked her death and changed her identity leaving her first daughter a neurotic mess who almost kills a person before being abducted and forced to carry her uncles incest-baby through rape and then getting murdered. Even worse she doesn't see fit to let her new son John in on the fact he has a sister out there somewhere. But I digress, the film is well structured and suspenseful and actually gives more of a shit about the material than 5 or 6 ever did. There's no extravagant gore on display and a level of restraint is shown that the franchise has missed for years. Jamie lee curtis really delivers and the final act where she locks the gate and goes one on one with Michael in a bid to finally confront her neurosis is excellent. The film even manages to put in one final sting that draws a close to the franchise all together except....

Halloween: Resurrection

Deciding that there is no sense in leaving things on a high note when cash is involved, Dimension decided to draw out one last film from the original universe before dropping it and starting again.
essentially this one starts with an act of cinematic fraud so blatant its actually depressing. H20 ends with Laurie strode decapitating Michael and ending the franchise. Apparently the god of slasher villains is over-creative writers who bullshit that it was actually a conveniently muted ambulance driver that Laurie killed leaving her spending the next few years in a nut-house tormented by guilt. so what happened to her son? The suggestion is that Michael killed him but who the f*** knows. Michael shows up, Laurie gets unceremoniously killed and then Michael heads home to stare at a blank wall.
That is until Busta Rhymes decides to live stream a bunch of kids wandering the old Myers house in Blissful ignorance of the fact that the shape has come home and isn't wanting visitors. Pretty soon the kids are getting bumped off one by one until the final girl and Busta rhymes decide to fight back. This ones directed by part 2's Rick Rosenthal and in all fairness once you get past the frankly idiotic premise its fairly entertaining. It was made in 2002 just as the interwebs was becoming a thing for film-makers and compared to some of the travesties out there is handles this shit pretty well. It's weird to see people communicating by Yahoo messenger almost as weird as it was in scream to see people questioned about why they have a cellular phone, my how things have changed. Non of the characters are especially likeable aside from the hot Katee Sackhoff who played the female Starbuck in the Battlestar Galactica re-jig. For an evenings entertainment its better than 5 or 6 and it was fortunately the end of things at that point until...

Not only do I consider this to be the worst of the series, but I honestly think that this is one of the worst films ever made.

Halloween (2007)

Given that Ressurection seemed to be the final act, it was no surprise that given Hollywood's penchant for remakes, re-boots, re-imaginings and other forms of necromancy, that at some point Halloween would be on someone's list somewhere.
The gig was given to Rob zombie who kicked some spectacular ass with the Devil's Rejects. A nasty, down & dirty, low-budgeted horror-western-road movie that stripped away a lot of the universal studios backed, then dropped like a hot potato House of 1000 corpses. Given that no attempt to remake it was ever going to be popular I was actually one of the few glad to see this, especially when director Rob Zombie made it clear he would try and make his own movie rather than slavishly copy the Carpenter classic. Here we get more scenes of the life of Young Michael Myers played by Daeg Faerch as a chubby little killer in a completely dysfunctional household headed by his single mother with a poor choice in men who makes ends meet as a stripper. Pretty much seething with rage Michael kills a bully at school and then goes off the deep end, killing most of his family bar his mother and his little sister angel, seemingly the only people he gives a shit about. Taken into smiths Grove he is put under the care of Dr Sam Loomis, here played by Malcom Malcolm McDowell who wisely decides not to even go near Donald Pleasances masterful performance. Instead the Loomis here is a vain egotistical narcissist who fails his patient entirely and abandons him for the book tour circuit after he realises Myers has disappeared behind his mask forever. Myers is safely locked away until Smiths Grove decides its best to hire morons to guard the inmates and two such morons take one of their patients into Michaels room for a spot of rape because taunting seven foot tall masked psycho's is always a good idea. Michael promptly tools up and heads back to Haddonfield to go hunting for his sister who has been adopted by the strode family.
While Rob Zombies Halloween is technically a remake, its better to think of it as a B-side or an entirely different mythology to its 1978 cousin. while carpenter used the story to talk about hidden evil, the nature of evil as a concept that can exist even in middle class suburbia. Rob Zombie delivers a film about family bonds that while lacking the deeper subtext of the original is still a decently told story. Its nice to see that Zombie resisted the temptation to stage stunt gag murders and delivers everything straight forward, brutal and believable. Add in the shaky hand held nature of the interior scenes and its clear Zombie has decided to go for a more cynical, more brutal and entirely different type of story to Carpenters. Certainly he retains several scenes as a nod to the fans but taken as its own film this Halloween is nowhere near as bad as some suggest. My only problem, is a fault that I find with a lot of Zombies films, he tends to lose focus in his story telling, looking at the deleted/alternate footage, the R-rated cut which is different in several key scenes and the other alternate footage there is a lot of stuff that Zombie does that ends up on the cutting room floor. Some focus might be appreciated but overall I like his work enough to welcome this into my collection. Certainly compared to other attempts at re-working Carpenters material for the big screen, The thing, the Fog, Assault on precinct 13, its a masterpiece.

its not as bad as parts 5 or 6....

Personaly i think a lot of franchise films get lazy or stray from concept of the films or just keep chirning them out because they can because off the franchise and think their on to a winner. I might be missing out on some good films but i tend to get bored after the 3rd film, think only films where i havent was Final destination i thought the 3rd was ok but the weakest of the lot, Personaly a lot of films you havent got a clue if their good or not after the 3rd film because they stop pushing the film and just tend to release the next 5/6/7 r so films without any publicity unless u a film fan you dont notice this, how many times have you heard from a average film watcher say i didnt know there was a part four. You even get that occasionaly from fans as well. Their loads of films/franchise etc out there where there 7/8/9 etc films
Halloween
Fri 13th
Children of the corn
Hellraiser
Tcm and lets be fair most of them after the 3rd are pretty dire and rubbish
Nightmare on elm st are just a few.

I'm afraid I think differently. Whereas parts 5 & 6 tried, yet failed to something different (connect Michael Myers to a Celtic cult), Resurrection is lazy, lazy, filmmaking.

Not to mention that the characters in Resurrection are so sleazy. Not the fun type of sleazy you find in Joe D'Amato's films, but the "no way in hell is my daughter going with them" type of sleazy. :mmph:

http://www.gstatic.com/tv/thumb/dvdb...88_d_v7_aa.jpg

:thumb:

Halloween 2

Rob Zombie delivers a sequel that surpasses his original film, shock! ;) I say that half in jest as most fans accept Devils Rejects was a better film than House of 1000 corpses however, and this may be controversial, I really, really like zombies Halloween 2. Essentially it kicks straight off from part 1 with Michael Myers escaping the ambulance that carries him off. He heads straight to Haddonfield hospital and it looks like we're in for a replay of the Hospital from part 2...except its all a dream, or is it. Admittedly its a flaw in the film but its never abundantly clear where the dream ends and reality begins as we re-join the now pierced and tattooed Laurie strode whose dealing with the events from part one, barely. She's pretty messed up to the annoyance of her friend Annie, played by Halloween stalwart Danielle Harris (nice to see zombie bringing her back for these.) and her father Sheriff Bracket, played by the ever awesome Brad Dourif. Meanwhile Dr Loomis has another book out and a revelation in it threatens to tear poor Lauries world apart. Even worse Michael has decided to head home and finish what he started.

Part of what I like about part 2 is what I liked about part one. The violence is savage and immediate and not at all jokey or comedic like it is in a lot of the later slasher flicks. In fact if anything its more brutal and direct here with Michael becoming the embodiment of pure rage. Some nice cameos (clint howard, richard Lynch, Udo Kier in the first, Caroline williams ect here) However what takes this over and makes it my favourite is the weirder elements zombie includes here. From the imagery of the white horse and his mother guiding him to the killings which could be either just plain madness or something supernatural to the weird hallucinatory imagery including the pit of bodies in the hospital, the weird fairy tail characters feasting.. its a trippier, weirder sequel that might even be happening in Lauries head as she sits in a psych ward (just one reading of it. ) I know a lot of people hate the zombie versions and I don't really blame them but I find myslef liking them more each time I watch them


and that folks is why I've not been posting so many reviews up recently..

phew!

in fairness it is an appalling bastardisation of H20... :nod:

Great write-ups!

I didn't like Zombie's Halloween 2 when I first saw it. But I had a grudging respect for it. It's certainly different from most slasher sequels, and I admire it's focus on how the events of the first film have damaged the surviving characters (Brad Dourif's Sheriff Brackett was one of the poignant characters in the film).

In the years since I saw it, the film seems to getting a reappraisal so I'm looking forward to rewatching it.

I really like both Rob Zombie Halloween's. Yeah, he turned Michael Myers into an actual character, not just a faceless Shape like Carpenter created, but that doesn't bother me, I was happy for the change considering how much the franchise had declined in recent years (not including H20, which I think breathed new life into the series).

I much prefer them than the F13 remake or whatever it is