Harefooted Halloween: Poltergeist III

What I Liked: Man, the special effects are really fuckin’ cool.  The use of mirrors is especially well done with so many simple yet effective illusions where a character might be moving in the mirror differently than in real life or not reflecting at all in the mirror and so on.  These tricks got me every time making me wonder how in the hell they pulled some of them off.  From what I understand they were all done in camera too and not messed around with in post production.

The story takes place in one day and almost entirely over the course of an evening.  There’s a gauntlet kinda vibe to it where Tom Skerritt (Alien, The Dead Zone) and Nancy Allen (Carrie, I Wanna Hold Your Hand) have to traverse all manner of obstacles and trials to try and rescue Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke (Poltergeist, Poltergeist II)) and Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle (Red Rock West, Twin Peaks)) from a malicious demon.

This piece also takes place in Chicago’s gargantuan Hancock building that includes apartments, offices and a full blown shopping mall.  It’s a good change of pace from sunny California and setting the whole thing in one building gives a bit of a claustrophobic feel.

What I Didn’t Like: It’s confusing as hell how all the family members are related to each other and why Skerritt and Allen are taking care of someone else’s kids.  And these two kids aren’t related to each other either.  Would it really have been so bad to start over with a new family for this installment?  I know they got Heather O’Rourke back again but she’s still only twelve and it doesn’t make sense that her parents aren’t there.

The school psychologist character (Richard Fire (writer: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer)) is such an annoying asshole towards everyone.  He tries to convince Skerritt and Allen that Carol Anne is hypnotizing anyone that crosses her path resulting in some sort of mass hysteria.  He’s so snooty and convinced he’s right but his theory is so far fetched and dumb sounding that I’m glad most folks end up ignoring him.

There’s definitely a certain we’re-making-this-shit-up-as-we-go-along kinda thing happening and you generally don’t want to get that impression from a movie.  The ending is particularly egregious where it feels like the filmmakers simply said “alright that’s enough, let’s just end this” because all of a sudden everything wraps up in a few minutes and the credits roll (apparently the ending was completely reshot for some reason but from what I’ve read the original version doesn’t sound any more thought out).

They brought back the villain from part II which isn’t a terrible move necessarily (I mean it’s an evil spirit after all that can’t totally be defeated I guess) but it comes off a touch lazy.  And that’s surprising considering how imaginative the rest of the film is.

It’s like they tried to set a record for the most times they could yell “CAROL ANNE, CAROL ANNE!”  in a movie.  According to IMDB they got up to 121.  Fuck.

Overall Impressions: Oooooooh shit, this one is also better than the first picture.  And I know for sure I’m all alone here but this crazy funhouse of terrors is so goddamn entertaining.  Yea, the budget was significantly less than the previous two and it shows, but it more than makes up for that with really neat visuals, camera tricks and a sense that there’s no escaping this malevolent ghost monster’s grasp.

Scene after scene, it doesn’t let up.  There’s Carol Anne being dragged down into a puddle on the ground by grotesque corpse arms, a pulsating glowing door that bows out so far it looks like it’s about to burst, a frosty demolition car derby in the parking garage, an elevator that moves at high speed pinning Skerritt and Allen to the ground, a meat locker where the animal carcasses come to life, plus all the incredible mirror gags.  I had such a good time.  And if you’re brave enough to check it out I think you will too.

It’s too bad this is where the series ended because I could’ve gone for another couple installments with weirder and wilder shit happening in each one.  However, Heather O’Rourke died shortly after she finished this one and I guess that combined with the fact that this didn’t make any money killed the franchise off permanently.  Damn, I was really getting into these.

Harefooted Halloween: Poltergeist II: The Other Side

What I Liked: The wacky horror scenes where shit goes off the rails are really inventive and well done.  I especially love the part where Craig T. Nelson (All the Right Moves) vomits up a gigantic worm monster that crawls away and turns into a slimy hunched over human skeleton-oid creature.  Fuckin’ A man.

Julian Beck (Dinner Guest in 9 ½ Weeks) is great and creepy as a demon pretending to be an old preacher who wants to steal Carol Anne away and kill the rest of the family.  He looks like a walking corpse with his sunken wide eyes, big toothy grin, gaunt appearance and soft spoken disposition.  His performance is kinda one for the ages in my opinion.  The scene where he tries to persuade Nelson to let him in the house is hypnotizing and freaky.

The cinematography is very nice and up there with the likes of a Spielberg production (although he wasn’t involved this time).  Andrew Laszlo (First Blood, Streets of Fire, Innerspace, Newsies) does a good job filling out the frame with excellent choices and makes the movie feel bigger than it really is.

What I Didn’t Like: I don’t know what the rules are with the ghosts/demons.  They seem to come and go as they please and I’m still not sure why they want Carol Anne.  This is typical for any ghost/haunted house picture but it’s still a negative nonetheless.

Overall Impressions: Oh boy, this is gonna piss off a lot of people but I liked this one better than the first.  It’s basically the same thing again except it’s more straight forward, gets to the point and actually feels thought out ahead of time.  The worm puking scene alone is better than anything its predecessor came up with.

I’ll never understand why the original was an enormous hit and still has its legion of fans.  Number 2 is like they stripped away all the bullshit and gave you a leaner meaner version.  I mean a Native American (Will Sampson (The Outlaw Josey Wales)) trains Nelson on how to fight the supernatural monster with magic smoke from a peace pipe.  It’s weird as hell and I’m into it.

Harefooted Halloween: Halloween: Resurrection

What I Liked: We finally get to lay eyes on the original Myers house which hasn’t happened since Halloween II (1981) I believe.  And the place looks sufficiently creepy like any respectable haunted house in a movie should.

What I Didn’t Like: The constant changing between head cams, room cams and normal cinema cams is more jarring than I thought it would be.  The quality of the picture varies so much and switching among the locked down vs super handheld styles is too disorienting.

Characters is these horror franchises, especially sequels, aren’t very likeable usually but this group seems more irritating and dumber than average.

You hear a whole lot of mask breathing in this, probably the most since the first one I think.  It’s nice, except that they overuse it and it becomes distracting.

Ok, yes the idea of mixing a web reality show with a Halloween is a bad one.  Like to the point where you might think this is a joke.  However…

Overall Impressions: having an installment in this franchise take place entirely within the Myers residence is an intriguing thought worth exploring.  That’s certainly different than doing the same old shit again and again or attempting to concoct some sort of utterly ridiculous multi-film storyline involving an evil cult and magic rune stones.

This could’ve been the most interesting sequel in the series if they got rid of the abysmal live webcam show stuff which only comes off as older folks trying desperately to appeal to younger movie goers.  It’s like they wanted to do a take on The Blair Witch Project but didn’t want to go full found footage so they did some in between crap.  And of course, the end result doesn’t feel like Halloween.

A lot of people dislike Halloween:The Curse of Michael Myers but Resurrection is despised by the entire community and I can understand why.  The twisted bullshit they make up to discredit the ending of H20 just so they can crank out another sequel must feel like a slap in the face to the fans who have been faithful to these pictures for 20 plus years.  And then to throw some half baked reality show concept at you after that (with the lesson that reality shows aren’t actually real!) is disrespectful.

So is this film really so much worse than the other installments?  I wouldn’t say it’s miles worse than part 4, 5 or 6 but it is clearly worse.  I mean when you got Busta Rhymes (Higher Learning, music shit) as your lead and he comes to the rescue with a badass line like “Trick or treat motherfucker!”, and then he does a few martial arts moves on Michael Myers, electrocutes him in the crotch and exits with “Hey Mikey!  Happy fuckin’ Halloween!” well, it puts one helluva big ass grin on my face.  It all feels horribly out of place in a Halloween movie but goddamn it’s entertaining as fuck.  Alright, maybe this is a lot worse than the one behind it.

Harefooted Halloween: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

What I Liked: Good look and movement on Michael.  Well, except for the mask sometimes but I’ll get to that.

The psychological element of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis (Mother’s Boys)) never fully getting over Halloween night 1978 is interesting.  It’s different for the series and delves into the trauma of being a Myers victim better than any other movie in the series.  Laurie had to go into hiding, is very protective of her teenage son (Josh Hartnett (30 Days of Night)) which causes a major strain on their relationship and she thinks she sees Michael wherever she goes making her jumpy.

Michael almost exclusively stabs people with his trademark chef’s knife and I don’t think we’ve ever seen that before.  It was surprisingly refreshing because most sequels try to one up the previous go around on the elaborate deaths.  Here they mainly went for the old standby that Michael is known for and it somehow doesn’t get monotonous.

What I Didn’t Like: Laurie is a borderline alcoholic but that doesn’t come into play at any point.  It never hinders her ability to save victims or she never attacks an innocent person thinking it’s Michael or rants so much that most folks distrust her or any of that.

Michael’s mask changes too obviously throughout the film.  What happened was the filmmakers decided to change the look deep into production and eventually used three different masks from three different effects houses.  They attempted to make them match up in post but it didn’t work.  Sometimes you can see Michael’s skin through the eye holes, sometimes it looks plastic pasty white like from part 4 and sometimes it looks dirty or like there are exaggerated shade lines to accentuate his features.

The jump scares in here are more noticeable and irritating because for the first two thirds they wanted to explore Laurie Strode’s fucked up mind instead of doing a straight ahead horror thing.  So those cheap ass jump scares come across as a petty strategy to keep the audience at bay until the gruesome murders start.

That title is atrocious.  I don’t think it’s ever good to reference the age of the series as part of the official title.  Not only that but they wound up with the very strange H20 abbreviation.  So this one is like the chemical makeup of water?  Like it’s vital for life to exist?  I don’t get it.

The biggest issue here though is they didn’t know what kind of movie they wanted make.  The first hour is more of a psychological thriller focusing on how Laurie and her son cope with Laurie’s horrific past.  Then in the last half hour it suddenly becomes a slasher picture with Michael hacking everyone up.

Overall Impressions: This one certainly has a unique tone compared to the other installments.  First of all the setting is a northern California high class boarding school and not homespun breezy Illinois.  That combined with Jamie Lee Curtis making a return to the series gives the production a classier feel.  The whole thing seems too pristine for a horror film, but I kinda like the juxtaposition.

What also classes this up is they put a bona fide legendary horror director at the helm in Steve Miner who did Friday the 13^th Part 2, 3(D) (the one where Jason gets his iconic hockey mask), House and Warlock.  This is a big upgrade from the previous directors, all of which hadn’t done much at all before taking on a Halloween (this includes John Carpenter).  Miner doesn’t have a particular style but he knows his shit and you can tell this is more competently made than most of the others (mask shit aside).

People tend to like this one and it’s probably for several reasons.  One is that it picks up after part 2 and ignores the events of 4-6 which are considered lesser and begrudgingly canon by most.  The higher budget and production value have to be persuading factors as well.  Story wise it’s a mess but it’s less of a mess than the other sequels.  They went for something a little off the beaten path, at least for a bit, and I appreciate that.  I wish they pushed the psychological shit further and stuck to that angle.  Bizarrely it reaches downright zany cartoony territory at the very end far from where it started.  The final product is unfortunately uneven and lacking.  That’s too bad.  Better luck next time.

Harefooted Halloween: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

What I Liked: There’s good atmosphere throughout.  Most settings look creepy and that was something that was lacking in the previous sequels.

The gore is heightened which I don’t always go for but it just seems fitting in this installment.  It matches the darker aesthetic the filmmakers chose.

I know I make a big deal about how Michael looks and moves but it’s really important because this is the main character that everyone is going to watch closely.  If he’s off then the entire picture is gonna feel off.  So I’m happy to say that Michael could feel the most right since the first movie.  There seems to be a slightly more human way he walks around and delivers the death blows.  In other films, like part 4, he comes off as too robotic (this is very ironic considering the same guy played him in 4 and 6 (mostly though, the role was shared by two stunt guys in each)) which gets too far from him supposedly being a real person and not a supernatural entity.  In this one there’s some personality to his movements so that’s nice.

What I Didn’t Like: Too much goddamn strobe light use.  During the two nights that the story takes place it’s lightning constantly.  Not only that but inside all buildings the lights are flickering all the fuckin’ time.  I mean it makes things look kinda eerie, especially with all the white Michael masks that randomly appear in the background, but it’s so distracting.

The story doesn’t make any sense no matter how you slice it.  A lot is setup and then discarded or forgotten about.  I’ll get more into this in a minute.

Like in part 5, the old Myers house is not the same one from the part 1 which is starting to get confusing.

The scene transitions with white flashes, images of a knife, Michael and that *shing* unsheathing sound are terrible and annoying.

Overall Impressions: Ok, so the version I’m really talking about here is the theatrical cut.  If you don’t know the story Halloween 6 is infamous for having two different cuts, theatrical and producer’s.  Originally the movie that was made, the producer’s cut, didn’t test well so a completely new third act was shot.  Additionally the entire film was re-edited trimming minutes off the final runtime.  This was what ended up being released, the theatrical cut.

After seeing the two versions back to back this time I think the theatrical cut is definitely the better picture.  More is explained in the producer’s cut and continues what they setup in part 5 but all the stuff they do explain and carryover is stupid as hell.  All the evil Thorn cult, man in black, Michael being controlled by magic rune stones, incestuous baby making shit is so fucking bad it’s unbelievable that it made it into two installments.  And it’s not like the producer’s cut does a good job of clearing things up anyway so it’s better to throw as much of that garbage by the wayside and go for something more in keeping with the series.  So even though the theatrical cut is totally nonsensical at least it moves quickly enough and feels more like a traditional slasher flick instead of a prank being played on the audience.

Actually, I think the theatrical cut is possibly the best Halloween sequel so far.  Well alright, while part II isn’t great it’s a legit film that does have all the classic slasher elements you would expect and is made competently.  It’s relatively harmless but that also makes it a little boring.  Meanwhile Part 6 is sorta grisly and almost disrespectable and it somehow works for me.  Am I crazy for feeling that way?

Harefooted Halloween: Halloween 5 (The Revenge of Michael Myers)

What I Liked: Michael Myers looks and moves more like the Michael from parts 1 and 2.  Gone is the ultra smooth pristine white mask and rigid body movements.

What I Didn’t Like: Jesus, too much to list.  Just skip to the next section.

Overall Impressions: I’m reminded of what John Doe said at the end of Se7en: “What I’ve done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed forever.”  Ok, that may be an exaggeration but there is so much in this movie that doesn’t make a shred of fucking sense.  The tattoo on Michael’s wrist, the man in black, the chain net trap Loomis somehow sets up, the prison break, killing off the Rachel character from part 4 only to replace her with an unbearably annoying woman (Wendy Foxworth, nee Kaplan (Guiding Light)) who has no connection to Jamie, for some reason Jamie is mute for the first half of the film, she has a telepathic connection to Michael but only sometimes, the Myers house is completely different than in the first movie, it’s unclear if Jamie killed or just maimed her foster mother at the end of part 4, some hermit takes care of Michael for a year in secret (yea, yea I know this was different and somewhat explained in an earlier version), there are these two bumbling cops that are supposed to be funny but they’re not and there’s this cartoon sound effects music that accompanies them and all sorts of other shit.

This picture is such a gargantuan mess it’s mind boggling.  I mean Michael races around in a sports car for a really long stretch which doesn’t fit the character.  So many odd decisions.

That's Michael in a different mask that he wears for a while

Man in black doin' his thang...whatever that is

The kindly old man who nurses Michael back to health

Niece and uncle have never been closer

At the same time this has more of a typical slasher feel than part 4 with the blood and violence up to an appropriate level.  It also looks better than the previous installment by shedding the cheap look with nice effective lighting.

The filmmakers decided to abandon what was established in part 4 and make up some new crap for part 5, but they then also made the conscious decision to lean on part 6 to explain the mysterious man in black and tattoo shit.  That’s never a good strategy.  You don’t want to explain your shitty movie away by saying that it’ll all make sense in the next one.  In my opinion the current one should make sense.

But anyway, chalk this up as another bad Halloween sequel.  Man, these ain’t gonna get any easier are they?

Harefooted Halloween: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

(If you’re looking for Halloween III: Season of the Witch I already talked about that last year, just follow the link)

What I Liked: Michael Myers does indeed return.  Neato!

The movie makes an effort to expand the Halloween universe by introducing Michael’s niece Jamie (Danielle Harris (Marked for Death, The Last Boy Scout)) and having her be the main target.  I guess it’s better than having Michael kill people just for the hell of it.

It’s cool how they hold off on the infamous Halloween theme until five mins in.  The timing is pretty perfect by first showing incapacitated Michael in a hospital bed behind bars for a bit, then when the doctors make the huge mistake of moving him out of the sanitarium the theme kicks in and we know Michael’s about to make his big comeback.

What I Didn’t Like: Michael looks bad in this installment.  His mask is featureless, too bright white and seems like it’s made of hard plastic instead of rubber or latex or whatever.  He has very stiff movement too like he can’t bend his knees or turn his neck.  I don’t get why they made him more of a mannequin.

There are too many off screen deaths.  The film feels kinda cheap as a result, which it was compared to other horror movies from the same year.

Some of the storytelling is shoddy.  For instance the part where Jamie runs into multiple Michaels in her bedroom is supposed to be a dream I think but it’s not clearly stated.  That scene is further muddied by the real (I think?) conversation Jamie and her foster sister (Ellie Cornell (House of the Dead)) have right before that.  Also, Michael’s hair is blonde in one scene and it’s not explained how he got on to the back of a speeding pickup truck towards the end.  He just appears.  There’s too much of this kind of shit all over.  Either a bunch of shots were missed throughout the production or they seriously fucked up with the editing.

What the hell is up with Mike jamming his fingers into people’s heads in this?  It’s not his trademark or anything and he weirdly does it a lot.

Overall Impressions: Halloween III was such a disaster that it took them six years to attempt another one.  And they wanted to make sure you knew Myers was back so they put it right in the damn title.  Unfortunately this is a pretty bad movie.  It doesn’t even have a somewhat interesting plot like III or cool fun deaths.  Plus it’s so bland and questionable on a technical level.  What a shitty homecoming to give Michael.