The Weekend Review: Holloween Movie Marathon

In which I review a selection of last weekend's entertainment.

The Weekend Review usually focuses on a single entertainment selection: Cool World, Super Smash Bros, The Equalizer.  This weekend was a little different, however.  This weekend was Halloween.  So rather than review a single piece of my Halloween festivities, I thought that I would show them off complete and unbutchered: what may very well go down as the most unique Halloween-themed marathon ever.

Halloween (1978) - The evening began with John Carpenter's classic slasher about an escaped lunatic who returns to his home town to slaughter its inhabitants.  Although I've already shared my thoughts on this film last week, it is a shockingly deep film with intensely psychological themes that I was only able to scratch the surface of in that one review.

I only began talking about how Carpenter brilliantly transforms us into the killer, stalking and executing his victims.  Sure, I mentioned that iconic opening sequence when then six-year-old Michael walks through his house and murders his older sister, but didn't have the space to bring up the innumerable other times when point-of-view tracking shots were used to simulate Michael's holiday pre-gaming.  I was able to detail how Halloween set the bar for how a modern horror movie looks, feels and sounds, but not how it perplexingly  stands apart from its own genre at the same time: with non-existent gore, mild violence, excessively long take (even beyond the tracking shots) and an overly-long buildup to Halloween night when the killing really begins (affording us ample opportunity to become attached to the film's protagonist).

I didn't even mention how the film portrays Michael as Lorri's fantasy lover - initially appearing to her when she's daydreamily looking out of the window at school, longingly singing "I Wish I Had You All Alone" or when the subject of her supposed seclusivity is brought up by her friends - nor the intriguing implication of incest that this suggests (given the revelations of their relationship from the second film).  It's not quite Shakespeare, not quite Freud and not quite Hitchcock, but some strange amalgamation of all three.  It's genuinely unique while still being tip-of-the-tongue familiar: like something that we infuriatingly can't quite remember.  I give it a 10 out of 10.

Halloween II (2009) - This movie was definitely not my fault.  It was misshelved at Family Video behind the original Halloween II's case.  It wasn't until we put it in for part 2 of our holiday marathon that we realized what was wrong.  But, given the option to abort the film, Becky chose to soldier on through the film - poor, misguided fool that she is.

This film is in every respect worse than it might first appear to be: a dramatic feat on its own.  Rob Zombie somehow mistook Michael Meyers for Jason Vorhees, transforming him into an avenging, mamma's boy butcher who hacks and slashes his way indiscriminately through his home town.  It lacks all of Carpenter's finesse and all of the original's depth: dumping buckets of blood over anything that moves and calling it a day.

Michael's uniquely psycho-sexual motivations are simplified into a simple Oedipus complex: he loves his mother (who is evidently Hellboy II's Princess Nuala's body double), hates his surrogate father (Dr. Loomis) and desperately wants to reunite with his sister (at his mother's behest).  Like the recent seasons of Family Guy, Rob Zombie makes every last character utterly unlikable: everybody is the worst possible version of themselves - crudely constructed caricatures of human behavior that is so far beyond how people actually act and sound as to be beyond ludicrous.

The murders are boring, the subplot involving Dr. Loomis' tell-all book about the Meyers is insipid and the acting far worse than even this movie deserved.  This is the most baseless type of horror: the kind that convinces audiences in droves that the genre is fodder for the psychotic and depraved.  Halloween deserved better than this.  Horror deserved better than this.  We deserved better than this.  I give it a 1 out of 10.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) - We ended our marathon with the infamous Halloween III: the only film in the franchise to not feature Michael Meyers.  Although head-scratching in retrospect, Carpenter's intention for the nascent series was actually very interesting: each film detailing a different, completely unrelated narrative that just so happened to take place on Halloween night.  The only problem was, however, that the first two films took place on the exact same night of the exact same year in the exact same town with the exact same cast of characters.  It's only natural that people would be upset about the third film in a series being nothing like what we've come to expect based off of the first two, even if that doesn't reflect the quality of the film itself.

The film follows an emergency room doctor who stumbles onto a plot to sacrifice the children of America to pagan gods through a combination of technologically-infused Halloween masks and long-distance witchcraft.  The mystery surrounding the conspiracy is actually extremely interesting and reasonably well executed.  The acting and direction are both serviceable and the film itself is surprisingly well-paced.

It the film can be faulted for anything, it's for trying to do too much in one film: Stepford Wives-styled robots replacing troublesome characters, a not-quite-right seeming town harboring a conspiracy against the rest of the world, ancient sacrificial witchcraft and the potential horror of modern technology.  At least one of these should have been dropped to make more room for the remaining aspects (for my money, I could have done without the robots).  It also doesn't age especially well, but it is far better than its infamous reputation would suggest.  Certainly, this was the last good Halloween film.  I give it a 6 out of 10.

What horror films did you end up watching on Halloween?  Did you go for a safe choice that you'd seen before, or did you opt for something new?  Were you happy or disappointed with your selection?  Please share in the comment section below.

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