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.

Harefooted Halloween: Halloween II (1981)

Ok guys, full disclosure time.  I re-watched this two years ago but didn’t talk about it because I’m an idiot.  Since I’ll be exploring the rest of the films in this series proper (meaning I’m going up to Resurrection) it only makes sense that I give my thoughts on part 2 to complete the bridge.  And yes, I know I never wrote anything on John Carpenter’s original masterpiece but, well, there you go.  It’s an excellent film that’s required reading for anyone into horror, thrillers or John boy himself.  I strongly urge you to check that one out before venturing on to any of the sequels.

Anyway, I just wanna make this particular one short and sweet because it’s been a while.  Here a goes:

Overall Impressions: Part 2 isn’t that bad but it isn’t very good either.  The coolest aspect is we pick up right where we left off on Halloween night 1978 with Michael Myers still on the loose even after being shot by Dr. Loomis.  It’s a novel approach and something you don’t see very much in horror sequels.  Another neat thing is the filmmakers did a good job capturing the look and overall mood of the original.  John Carpenter wrote and produced so that would make sense.  But he declined to direct because he didn’t want to do a sequel and he was also working on Escape from New York.  It turns out he hated his own script and I can see why.

The biggest problem with this one is that it feels in every way derivative of its landmark predecessor.  The slasher genre was in full swing by 1981 with more Halloween knockoffs than you could count.  The over the top death sequences, the carnage and gore amped way up (the first one had very little blood in it), the terrible plot twists involving the killer’s identity and the overly complicated climax had already become clichés by then.  Having Michael Myers as your villain helps because he’s so iconic but it’s not enough.

The movie is…fine.  It’s pretty average and that’s disappointing considering most of the original players were involved.  The sad thing is no one really wanted to make it.  But you take what you can get and this first sequel is by far the most straight forward one we would ever see.  That could be good or bad depending on what the filmmakers decided to do and we’ll check that out over the next bunch of Talkin’s (Spoiler: they chose bad, oh so bad).

Almost Time...

Get your dancing claws on, it's almost time...

Kickboxer: Retaliation

The Kickboxer reboot that came out a couple of years ago was not very good at all.  It wasn’t even a fun little thing that you could dig on for 90 mins and then forget about.  It had too much to live up to and fell horribly short in more ways than one.

So I wasn’t holding out a ton of hope for Retaliation.  In retrospect making two films back to back probably wasn’t the best idea.  When you do that you leave little, if any, time to regroup, correct mistakes or change direction from the first one if need be.  The filmmakers had a tremendous amount of faith in the series from conception.  So much faith that they were sure it was gonna be big enough to warrant at least one sequel, so they must’ve figured why not make that too while we’re at it?  It’s a given, right?

Well unfortunately Retaliation doesn’t stack up.  I had read that this was a significant improvement over Vengeance but to me this is the same or, at best, only a teeny bit better.  The plot is similarly generic involving a rich underground fight promoter (Christopher Lambert (Mortal Kombat)) kidnapping Kurt Sloane (Alain Moussi (stunts: Pacific Rim, The Smurfs 2)), transporting him back to Thailand and throwing him in jail until he agrees to have another fight to the death.

Van Damme returns as Sloane’s trainer who’s been blinded by Lambert as revenge for coaching Sloane which led to the death of Vengeance’s villain Tong Po, I think.  Whatever, it doesn’t make a difference because Van Damme knows everything that everyone is saying and doing anyway and can follow a fight purely by sound.  If there wasn’t going to be some disadvantage, any disadvantage, to losing this guy’s sight then why do it?  Literally nothing’s different.

Actually, I found the entire picture to be a strange experience because it’s very straight forward yet it’s not.  For example the thing opens with a long action sequence on a train where Sloane is dressed in a fancy suit and fights a bunch of bad guys through multiple cars and on the roof and so on.  I genuinely thought I was watching the wrong movie for a little while.  Then I realized it was a dream but why is this in here?  It has no bearing on anything.  Like at one point Sloane manages to break free from Lambert to search for his wife who’s also been kidnapped and being held hostage but soon after he gets caught so the escape amounts to nothing.  Mike Tyson (Ip Man 3, boxing shit) is in the same prison with Sloane and helps with the training even though we have Van Damme.  Tyson doesn’t seem to teach Kurt a move or technique that clearly helps him in his big showdown.  Speaking of which, the final fight lasts over twenty goddamn minutes with both men taking superhuman levels of beatings.  It gets kinda boring.  This is all weird shit that wasn’t thought out.

Apparently they’re still trying to get a third installment made.  I think they should tap out.  These are two mediocre films that keep tricking people like me into watching them because they bear the Kickboxer name.  Ok fine, Van Damme is a legit draw but his character is so infallible and he plays it so laid back that it’s annoying.  The whole undertaking is tedious.  I said it in my Vengeance review and I’ll say it again here, just watch the original Van Damme version.  It’s still really fuckin’ good.

Mish Mash 16 (Clean and Sober, Silverado, Hot Dog...The Movie, Maria Full of Grace)

Clean and Sober

Michael Keaton (Batman, White Noise) plays a coke and booze addict who admits himself to rehab to hide out from the cops, who are suspicious of him after they find an overdosed woman in his bed, and the company he works for, who he embezzled a lot of money from.  The thing is he ends up kicking his drug habit in the process.  So his plan actually backfires.

It’s a solid dramedy with Keaton playing the balance between psychotic drug fiend, remorseful optimist and straight up asshole very nicely.  The movie takes his character in a weird direction though because he becomes obsessed with a woman he meets in rehab.  She’s not really into him but he keeps nagging her until she finally relents but regrets it immediately.  Keaton puts his entire life on hold to forcibly keep her off drugs.  Sobriety is working for him and demands others see the light.  He becomes such a creep that I didn’t care for this guy very much by the end.  This may have been on purpose though because (Spoiler) there’s a tragic end to the story which flies in the face of the good deed Keaton thinks he’s doing.

Silverado

Super screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan’s (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Empire Strikes Back, The Bodyguard) action adventure western picture is kinda not great.  My hopes were high because you have a master of the genre getting to not only write but also direct on a grand scale his version of the type of film he had created with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for years.  They’re larger than life escapades that could only exist on the big screen filled with characters that are heroic and remarkable yet completely affable and humorous.

Silverado has too many characters and mini stories that don’t really come together.  It tries so damn hard to bring you the kind of action that makes you smile and even laugh but it falls flat.  As I’m writing this I’m struggling to think of what the hell happened plot wise and who some of the characters were.

Hot Dog…The Movie

Just like North Shore and a zillion others this is another movie about a kid who has to find out how good he really is at [insert sport here].  This time it’s skiing.  There’s all that same shit about the kid’s idol turning out to be a douchebag, befriending an older kindred spirit who teaches him the ropes, falling in love with a girl, etc.

However, unlike North Shore the kid in this one has a supernatural ability for skiing right out of the gate.  He doesn’t fall on his face and then train hard to reach a higher level of skill.  Instead he keeps getting screwed over by the judges who give the world renown star skier a better score no matter what.  That’s kinda dumb ‘cause then our protagonist doesn’t have anything to work towards.  Instead his goal becomes learning to not cheat on his girlfriend.

But that’s in line with the type of frat house picture they made here.  There’s plenty of partying, including our main group of skiers who have a drink in their hands at almost every moment, pranks, sex and all around childish shenanigans.  As a result the filmmakers make skiing look pretty stupid and informal like it’s not much different than doing a keg stand or playing beer pong.  The hip kids do it, you’re wasted most of the time and it’s easy enough that you can still compete on a national level.

This is a silly outlandish movie for sure, and I can enjoy that sort of thing (which I mostly did), except there’s one scene that’s really bad.  Our protagonist takes his new girlfriend out to a bar where they’re having a wet t-shirt competition.  At least one woman is dragged onto the stage against her will in front of dozens of drunk horny dipshits and some of the guys grab at the women and it’s simply awful.  The worst thing is the scene is played like it’s all innocent fun with beer spraying everywhere and rock music blasting.  Everyone’s having a ball with these half naked ladies being ogled and groped by a lot of dudes.  The rest of the film is definitely not perfect but this particular part is fairly appalling.

Maria Full of Grace

Holy shit what an incredible movie about a teenager named Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno (Che, A Most Violent Year)) who becomes a drug mule smuggling over sixty pieces of heroin in her stomach from Columbia to the US.  If one bursts in transit she’ll die, if not all are accounted for on the other end she’ll die, if she mentions this to anyone she’ll die.  It’s sort of a risky thing to take on.

Maria turns to this extreme shit because her life isn’t ideal.  She has a miserable job at a flower factory de-thorning roses and her boss treats her like garbage.  She says she’s sick and has to go to the bathroom but the piece of crap doesn’t let her go so she throws up on her roses.  Of course he then makes her clean them up and reuse them as if nothing had happened.

Maria is also pregnant with her boyfriend’s kid but this guy doesn’t really love her.  He takes her for granted so she dumps the prick.  Maria’s family gives her shit all the time too.  They don’t seem to band together very well with constant bickering over money and responsibilities.  They’re barely scraping by so there’s a lot of tension between everyone.

Seeing the journey this character makes from her shitty teenage life to drug runner is told beautifully.  And by “beautifully” I mean sad as hell.  She doesn’t have many options in the small town outside of Bogota where she lives.  The flower factory is the biggest gig there so that’s generally where you’re gonna find work.  Moving heroin becomes very tempting because it’s a helluva lot more money than what you could make in that stinkin’ factory.

I love Maria because she’s got so much fuckin’ courage.  She says fuck the flower job when her boss shows no concern for her well being, fuck the boyfriend when she knows he can’t take care of his own shit let alone a child, fuck poverty when the drug mule offer comes up and there’s one more thing she says fuck this to but it’ll spoil shit.  She’s such a strong woman that doesn’t take shit lying down.  She knows she can have a better life and goes down this crazy path to find it.  You gotta check this one out.