Happy Halloween!

[yendi]

If you're Michael Myers, remember to break into a schoolroom and scrawl "Samhain" on the chalkboard.

If you're Dr. Sam Loomis, remember to explain, authoritatively, that it's pronounced "Sam Hain."

If you're The Kurgan, remember to wish "Happy Halloween" to any nuns you see.

And if you're a tiny alien from another planet, remember to dress up as a ghost.

Comments

[lovingboth]

One of the reasons I like Halloween III vastly more than Halloween II is that the former has all the intelligence that was missing from the latter, including having an actor who can actually pronounce the word!

[yendi]

I actually think that H2 is a perfectly enjoyable, even above average, slasher, but it's a traditional one with a few bonus features, and a let-down after the first movie. There's also something to be said for not providing all the answers the previous film brought up (see Scream 3 for a much worse example on both fronts).

H3 is a blast, although I suspect the association with the franchise served as a double-edged sword.

[lovingboth]

Halloween II looks good (obviously, with Dean Cundey doing the cinematography) and I like what's effectively a remix of the original's music, but it's the first time Carpenter took the money and ran.

It relies on splatter for its shocks, but there's not enough to satisfy that market. It doesn't work as suspense either: we don't care about the victims and the question isn't 'where is The Shape?' or 'what's going to happen next?' - the two that make the first one so great - it's 'what method is he going to use to kill this one?'

The reasons I don't care about that start with the complete insult to the intelligence that passes for the script. It's obvious from the opening seconds, when Pleasence shoots seven times with his six shot revolver, then starts searching for the Shape... but waits fifteen minutes of running time, more in 'real time', before reloading.

The characters are changed for the worse: this is Zombie Michael, partly because of the change from Nick Castle to Dick Warlock, but again because of the script which changes his character. Similarly Pleasence has lost his 'only one who knows what's going on' role and is left as not very effective hunter. It is also Victim Laurie rather than the heroine of the first.

She does get the only intelligent bit of the script, when she asks why Michael won't die, just after Pleasence shots him another five times and just before she shoots him twice, once in each eye.

Incredibly, it got worse with H4 and the return of Pleasence.

[yendi]

Wasn't the seven shots a carryover from Part 1? But yeah, there are a lot of stupid moments, but there were some little bits that at least made me okay with the movie (the razor blade/apple joke, the continuity with the first movie with Ben Tramer and the sheriff, and the fact that at least the questions being answered here -- Michael as Laurie's brother, etc -- don't undercut the first film in the way later movies do).

I'm not sure I buy Zombie Michael as a problem, when you look at what he survived in the first movie.

The less said about H4-6, the better (other than launching the career of Danielle Harris, although for a scream queen I like, I've rarely enjoyed her movies.)

[lovingboth]

Possibly from the TV edit where they cut to the outside, but it's six in the real thing.

His movements are wrong (Castle the skilled mime vs Warlock the stunt double) and he's become a not very good 'slasher' film baddie more interested in show kills than anything else. Would the original's Shape be unable to stop a lift door closing? Would he kill a random teenager for no reason - the first splatter in the series - then walk through a busy town centre without touching anyone?

Being shot six times and getting away, fine. Twice in the eyes? Nah.

[lovingboth]

Yes, being called H III is why it has such an awful rating on IMDB.