Terrifier is the okayest movie of all time

How can you eat a greasy croissant while you're cutting up dead bodies? Sweetheart, I've been doing this twenty-two years, alright? Once you've seen an eight-month-old microwaved to death... everything else is just old hat. About the overall gist of this movie. Saw a lot of love for this online. I thought it was fine, but nothing super special. Hell of a costume for the killer though. And his use of body language and his silence are pretty creepy. However, felt like it relied a lot on shock value--I mean, it was very shocking/disturbing--but that type of movie doesn't really do it for me. Brutal and sick. 

Plot runs thus, it's Halloween and this these chicks run into and become fodder for a truly sadistic supernatural murderer named Art the Clown. They run, he gives chase, commits murder, repeat. These murders are some next level sick shit, by the way. 

Written and directed by one Damien Leone. Also in the girl are the likes of Catherine Corcoran, Matt McAllister, Pooya Mohseni, and Samantha Scaffidi. Don't feel bad if you don't know them because no one does. Guy named David Howard Thornton plays Art the Clown. Looks like a much more terrifying Crazy Joe Davola from Seinfeld when he dressed up like Pagliacci in "The Opera." 

Tara Heyes, played by Jenna Kanell, is the final girl who ends up looking all fucked up. I think this is shown at the beginning but I can't quite tell if that is her or another chick. 

Apparently this is the second feature film appearance of the Art the Clown character. The first was Leone's 2013 anthology film All Hallows' Eve, which sounds pretty interesting. Chick watches horror movies with the kids she is babysitting that feature the character. He ends up coming alive and doing what he does. Might check it out. 

Madman is the okayest movie of all time

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) is the greatest movie of all time

Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Classic. Wouldn't watch it as a child. Was fucking scared out of my mind from the little bits I had seen flipping through the channels or from the five second clip from the second movie in the series in The 'Burbs. Didn't see it until like junior year of high school at which point I thought it was a comedy in the way that The Evil Dead is sort of comedy albeit way more brutal. Also dark. The second flick in the series just goes completely camp, by the by. This is totes director Tobe Hooper's masterpiece. Completely changed the direction of horror and invented the concept of the final girl with original final girl Marilyn Burns. Greatest movie of all time. Probably legitimately.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Thanks to a smart script and documentary-style camerawork, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre achieves start-to-finish suspense, making it a classic in low-budget exploitation cinema.

Group of five college aged kids, a brother, Franklin, and sister, Sally, and their friends, the other ones, are going to stay at their dead grandfather's place when they are attacked by a family of cannibals. The group's most memorable member, Leatherface, wears the flayed faces of people he kills like a grotesque Halloween mask and kills with both a sledgehammer and a chainsaw. After easily killing the other four, Leatherface chases Sally who puts up an impressive fight before she eventually gets captured and is forced to sit through an insane dinner where her friends are the entree that culminates in her attempted murder. When the group of cannibals--consisting of Leatherface, The Hitchhiker that we meet early in the film whom the college kids give a lift to before he attacks them, and The Cook who doesn't like killing but sure loves cooking and eating long pig--decide to let grandpa, who is 120 years old, perform the kill, Sally manages to wriggle free and get to the high where she makes her escape.

Directed by the ever misrepresented Hooper, who wins the movie for producing such an influential masterpiece of horror, this marks the early apex of the director who never earned the respect of Hollywood. He would later direct The Funhouse and Lifeforce which I have since grown to appreciate. All of these movies are out there. Surprising amount of humor in this one about a family of murdering cannibals that include one among them wearing human faces and what not. Not completely sure if this is intentional or not. The humor.

But here is some stuff I compiled that supports this being a comedy. At the beginning, just after an insane and terrifying voice over, Franklin, the character in the wheelchair, starts out the movie pissing in his pee can and then rolls down a hill, falling out of his chair screaming. It is close to Mac and Me bad. Then there is the Hitchhiker with the scar or birthmark on his face who they pick up. He jokes about working in a slaughterhouse and shows them pictures and stuff. Hilarious, right? He then starts talking about how the new, more humane method of killing livestock eliminates "good jobs" for people. This guy would freak out if he saw all the automation or walked into a Kroger with the whole self-checkout shit. This is all before he takes Franklin's pocketknife and starts cutting himself. Everyone freaks and Franklin takes the knife back. The Hitchhiker then pulls out a straight razor while everyone is screaming and slices Franklin's arm. All hell breaks loose and they boot him out of the car. It all goes south so fast that it ends up being like WTF funny. Then, once they stop and stumble upon the house where Leatherface and the rest of the killers reside but before anyone has died, Franklin spazzes out, saying stuff like "come on Franklin, it'll be a great time," and repeatedly blows raspberries and makes fart noises for an uncomfortable amount of time.

Plus, there is the scene where couple Kirk and Pam keep ignoring insane warning signs that they are in danger whilst dicking around out in front of the murder house where both of them will die. This includes finding human remains. Kirk finds a tooth, obviously human with a filling in it and shit, and like touches her with it to gross her out and is like "I got something for you" which is fucking insane. A minute later he goes inside and dies within 10 seconds as Leatherface busts out and smacks him in the head with sledgehammer. That shit ain't funny.

Then we get the stuff with Sally, played by actress Marilyn Burns, towards the end. First she is chased by Leatherface who is a first-time stoned Gunner Hanson. That is the reason for all the Keystone Cops swerving and shit. She eventually gets to this gas station that doesn't sell gas that they stopped at earlier. The old guy inside, whom we only get referred to as "The Cook", ends up being in on the killing and eating folks and attacks Sally, screaming hysterically, with a fucking broom and a burlap sack. Once they have Sally in the home, the group brings out grandpa to kill her with a hammer like he used to use on animals (not cool with that shit) but he is so old he can barely hold it. This allows her to break loose and hit the highway where we get the iconic Leatherface raging and twirling like a dervish.

Cape Fear is the greatest movie of all time

Cape Fear. My 4th of July watch this year. I guess it is sort of a 4th movie. There are fireworks and a parade. One of three movies I remember my grandpa telling my dad not to let me watch as a child which I overheard and immediately sought out (the other two were The Fly [1986] and The Silence of the Lambs) and was definitely way too young to watch. This one made it on the list for the horrific rape and face biting scene that is indeed still fucking terrible to watch. One of those things I probably should have waited a couple of years.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Smart and stylish, Cape Fear is a gleefully mainstream shocker from Martin Scorsese, with a terrifying Robert De Niro peformance.

Gist of the flick is that ex-con, Max Cady played by Robert De Niro, goes on a vengeance tour against his former attorney, Sam Bowden played by Nick Nolte, who didn't disclose that the woman that Cady raped was promiscuous which would have gotten him off, apparently. Was thinking it must have been a different time but now rape is more or less acceptable again if you are a republican with any sort of power. Anyway, Cady loses his fucking mind and basically becomes the Terminator, he is pretty much video game character unstoppable, with the ultimate plan of raping Bowden and his family to death. Yeah, it's purty fucked up.

The cast is amazing. It is a Martin Scorsese movie after all. We have the lovely and talented Jessica Lange as Nick Nolte's wife (Leigh), Juliette Lewis as daughter Danielle in one of her more relatable roles, Illeana Douglas who is young and pretty and in a bunch of stuff but is mostly remembered for this role as being the girl who gets her face bitten off, and MST3K favorite Joe Don Baker of Mitchell fame. A remake of 1962 original which has a 100% fresh rating on RTs, the flick has cameos from the original cast members with Robert Mitchum (who was Cady in the old one) playing a cop, Gregory Peck who was in the Sam Bowden role now playing Cady's lawyer, and Martin Balsam--whom I remember as Arbogast in Psycho and Juror No. 1 in 12 Angry Men but don't recall seeing in the original (though I saw it 28 years ago)--plays a judge.

Remember it as a longer, more developed movie but it's basically just De Niro yucking it up. The Simpsons fans out there, and likely people who have a passing knowledge of the series, will recognize all the times they have sort of spoofed the film with Sideshow Bob basically taking on the role of Cady and Bart as the dude he obsesses over. Also get the great scene where the police strip search Cady and we see all of his creepy as fuck tattoos that have to do with vengeance, justice, revenge, so forth. De Niro is impressively jacked here, especially considering he is almost 50 when this was made.

The film is pretty hard to watch but is a super solid movie. It is brutal and disturbing. Not only is it incredibly violent, but Cady is nasty. Like after he has displayed that he is a true sociopath, he poses as a teacher before coming clean to who he really is and seduces Juliette Lewis's character who is a child. Luckily they don't fuck, which would have been waaayyyy too much, obviously. But De Niro does stick his thumb in her mouth which she sucks on... I almost puked.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is the worst movie of all time

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. Yeah. Not good. Sixth movie of the franchise. Fifth one to feature Michael Myers as the killer. If you remember Halloween III: Season of the Witch you know those aren't the same things. First, and only one, to star Paul Rudd. Would have been the third one to feature Danielle Harris but it wasn't meant to be because the Weinsteins are the worst. This is a long and depressing story though I mean probably a blessing in disguise because, yeah, this movie is trash. Mayhap more so than Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. Going to revisit that eventually. I'll have to think about it. There is also a bootlegged producer's cut floating around out there--fuck it, right?--that I haven't gotten my hands on yet. It's supposed to be better and make a little more sense though I can't imagine it being great or anything. But, yeah, keep in mind, worst movie of all time, this one.

How they do 'em dirty at Miramax

Anyways, back to Harris getting shafted. By the by, gleaned all this info from this We Minored in Film article which has some other interesting factoids if you click on it. The short version is that Harris was buddies with producer Moustapha Akkad's kids. She would ask about when the next Halloween flick was going to get made a lot with Akkad keeping her informed and what not. But he partnered with Miramax who wanted to instead use a look-a-like who was over 18 because the Weinstein bros didn't want to fuck with child labor laws (all news to Harris). They ended up telling Harris that she'd have to emancipate herself from her parents to get the role. Once she did that, which apparently proved pretty costly, she got the script which pretty much sucked though it did have her make through most of the movie before getting killed off at the end as opposed to the version we get where she dies in the first 10 minutes. So the studio saw her as nonessential and offered her hardly anything which didn't cover the cost of emancipating herself. When she asked for more money, looking to at least cover the court fees and shit, the studio just offered the role to someone else, not even countering. This was supposedly all Miramax's doing with Akkad fighting for the young star. Though I'm not exactly sure "fighting" is really all that believable considering his track record.

Pros: Some decent kills. Hey, Paul Rudd. Attempts to make sense of what was going on before, though why?

Haters gonna hate

Cons: Stale AF. The nonsense metal version of the main theme that opens the film. Also the metal version of the "dun... dun dun... dun" theme. Donald Pleasance is clearly knocking on death's door, which is difficult to watch. The plot is confusing. Some uncomfortable domestic violence action. Creepy, dumb child which I hate 100% of the time. The whole Mark of Thorn underground cult thing is dumb. Lot of confusing bullshit. Do the Jamie character dirty (this was the Danielle Harris character in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5). The Weinstein bros apparently told the lead actress, the one who plays the Strode woman, one Marianne Hagan, that she wasn't very pretty, was too thin, and had a little chin that they didn't like and she'd never be a star. Just mentioning that they were huge POS way before the shit that they did sparked the whole #MeToo movement. Myers looks ridiculous. Hair and mask are stupid. Hair is clown-esque. Movement is off. So is body-type. Looks like he runs a little at some points too.

Some sad Weinstein shit with this one

Here's the gist... Jamie Lloyd, played by one J.C. Brandy in this film, niece of notorious serial murderer Michael Myers, now a young woman, gives birth to a baby boy which Michael is also the father. This is in some weird hospital run by this Cult of Thorn group that created Michael and are trying to create his replacement or something. It's not super clear since Myers also wants to kill the kid. I have no idea why the baby, basically. Jamie escapes and flees with her baby to the Haddonfield, IL area with excellent driver Myers in pursuit. Once she gets a bit of distance between them, Jamie calls a douche bag radio show host from a pay phone wanting Loomis, played by Pleasance, which gets him and the character Tommy Doyle who was the kid that Laurie Strode babysat in the original Halloween, this time played by Ant-Man himself Paul Rudd, on the lookout for Jamie, her baby, and Michael. Eventually she ditches the baby at a bus stop before Michael catches up to her and kills her gruesomely by impaling her on some farm equipment that he turns on, ripping her apart. Michael, now, is on the loose, headed back to his old crib to kill everyone there while also looking for his nephew/son and killing the Cult of Thorn folk because fuck it. There is also this side story with this Kara Strode woman, played by Hagan, who lives in the Myers house with her abusive father, abused mother, brother, and son that may be possessed or cursed or something. Sure, it's a common problem. She ends up getting swept up by all this shit as the Cult of Thorn kidnaps her and her son and the baby and Rudd and Loomis and what the fuck.

Alice in Chains Dirt girl and known Scientologist

Favorite line of the movie is more of an exchange. It's between Kara Strode's bro and his girl friend, Beth, who at times looks just like Jennifer Jason Leigh. It goes thus:

Beth: Your sister would kill us if she knew we did it in her bed.
Tim Strode: Hey, it was your idea.
Beth: I am bad, aren't I?
Tim Strode: Only when you wear crotchless panties and bark like a dog.
(Tim gets up)
Beth: Where are you going?
Tim Strode: I gotta take a shower. You know, to stay fresh.
Beth: Watch out for the bogeyman.

Fun facts about Mariah O'Brien, the actress who plays the girl friend. She was the model on the cover of the Alice in Chains album Dirt. She also went to jail for running a ponzi scheme where she ripped off fellow Scientologists. She is one of those and reached the level of "Clear" which is indeed some bullshit. She was married to Giovanni Ribisi, another more famous douche bag Scientologist, back in the day as well. Might be time to remind people that Scientology makes me irrationally angry.

Lot of halfway decent and generally satisfying kills in this piece of crap. Jamie's death was pretty gnarly. The nurse at the beginning, now a big Trump supporter, gets her head impaled on a spike. Myers goes on a rampage at the end, too. More on that later. But the one that really stuck out was the Strode dad. Not only is he an abusive asshole who beats his wife and daughter, he's also a liar that puts his family in jeopardy by moving them into the Myers house and not telling them which is just insane. He shouldn't be that surprised when Myers shows up to kill him but he is. Anyway, the way he gets it is that he first gets stabbed in the gut. Then he gets carried over to the electrical box. Then Myers stabs the box with Strode daddy still impaled. This electrocutes him. Unexpectedly, his head explodes which was unexpected, shocking, and super cool. Easily the best kill, maybe in the series.

Pleasance, picture of health

And now for some shit... Just a note, limiting it to three instances as I ain't got all night. When we first see Loomis he looks rough AF. Way older than his 75 years. Has a drink with his old friend from Smith's Grove Dr. Wynn. Should have a toast with a vitamin and a glass of water. The shit with this scene though is that he acts all like, "oh, if it isn't my old friend Dr. Wynn" like we are supposed to know who the fuck this guy is. Wynn, it turns out, was a doctor that Loomis was seen with briefly in the original. It's a pretty deep cut that no one would ever in a million years remember. Some more shit is every second that this radio host speaks or is on the screen. He is like a true crime shock jock or something. Whilst interviewing Beth and Tim he gets all worked up by Beth and acts disgusting, saying to Tim, "Does she get this riled up in bed? I bet she wears crotchless panties and barks like a dog." Beth lets it drop that Tim lives in the Myers house. He has no idea even though like everyone else in the town fucking knows. The radio guy is like, "everybody head to this guy's house!" but no one does. He goes to his van to move the party there but he calls Myers a pussy and dies like 5-seconds later even though Myers was just killing the dad, the dope head exploding kill, in the previous scene. A minute later we get this cringeworthy bit where this little girl under a tree has his blood dripping down on her. She says "Mommy, it's raining red" and then the dude falls from the tree. Ok. Why? Have to ask that a lot in this one. Lastly, what the fuck are they doing with this possessed child? Not the baby but this Kara chick's son. In the scene where Beth and Tim get murdered, Kara watches from Tommy's room, saying shit like, "oh my god," when all the sudden she sees her son crossing the street and going over to the murder house. WTF is this kid doing? They imply that he is possessed or something but they don't really go anywhere with any of this. When Kara goes over to retrieve him, he is just sitting there, staring off like an idiot. Kara is like, "whatcha doin?" and sends him off. There is a killer in the house who is chasing Kara and all. But she surprise attacks him, hitting him with a fire poker that sends him tumbling down the steps. He is just laying there and you think the kid is long gone but he comes back here at the most inopportune time and stands there right next to this maniac. What they are you doing? Most the other times he is on the screen he is yelling shit like "Mom. Mommy. Mom." So forth. God I hate children. 

Favorite scene is more or less the whole bit in the hospital at the end with everyone (Loomis, Kara, Rudd, the kid, the baby, so forth) stuck in this hospital with the Cult of Thorn and Myers and other insane people. First, there are a lot of satisfying kills in this sequence. Like when he goes into the Cult of Thorn ritual where they are god only knows what with the baby in the OR and just massacres everyone. Not sure how he got to the hospital or if they like wanted him there or what but it's a solid 30 seconds of pure chaos and like 15 kills, including Dr. Wynn. It seems at the beginning of the movie and here that they just let Myers roam around the hospital and kill patients whenever he gets the urge. Unclear what his day to day is like exactly. Also, it is implied that they were cloning Myers babies or something when we see a bunch of dead babies in vats and shit. Not sure what is happening there. Anywho, after he kills all the folks, then it is time to do whatever with the baby but Rudd, Loomis, Kara, the kid, and the baby are out of there. The chase is pretty great with Rudd and them locking a cell door behind them which gets a Cult of Thorn doctor killed when Myers grabs him and pushes his head through the bars until the door pops off the hinges. He eventually catches up to the fleeing group. The way I remembered the franchise was that Myers started teleporting around at some point in the series but I guess not. It's clearer here that he just knows every shortcut and is really good at using it. Screwed, Rudd seemingly gives Myers the baby. What is Myers planning to do with it exactly? Raise it as a single dad? We don't get to find out because it wasn't a baby, surprise to no one, but ends up being a bunch of syringes filled with green shit. Wait, what? Rudd stabs him with the needles and shoots him up with said green shit and eventually beats him to death with a pipe until the green shit comes out his eyes. Um, okay. That is how they end Myers in this one. But it's not over as Myers can't die. Ever. He is Akkad's money maker. So they leave. Loomis is all like "you kids go, I'll be alright." But he's not. Myers ain't fucking dead and we hear Loomis die over the end credits. And that was the best scene.

And finally, Paul Rudd is the obvious MVP of the film. Even though the movie is trash and his role isn't anything special, it's hard to take your eyes off that guy. I originally saw this after Clueless way back in the day so I knew his face. Maybe that was why but I swear that you can sort of tell that that dude was going to be a star. While this film isn't exactly something he was proud of, it is what got him started and he now looks back on it with some amusement. Here is what he had to say about in an interview that came out after he was an Avenger:

When I first saw Halloween 6, I remember thinking, Oh God, this movie’s not good, and I was really kind of bummed out. In fact when we first started making it, I remember thinking, Oh, this is the one that’s going to be different! [laughs] I enjoyed making it; I thought it was really, really fun. But then I thought, Oh God, are people going to think I’m a joke? Am I ever going to get work as an actor after this comes out? I have since changed my tune; I love it. I’m honored to be part of a franchise that has lasted that long, that has that many devotees, and I couldn’t be happier that I can say that my first movie is a Halloween movie. 

Regardless of how he feels now, you can totally see that he is totally swinging for fences and he connects more than he doesn't. Without his charm, I'd say the movie is more or less unwatchable. But damn is that dude charismatic. And that is Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers the worst movie of all time.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is the worst movie of all time

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. Holy shit snacks. This movie is BAD and crazy. So much nonsense. Lowest box office totals of the Halloween franchise. I'm guessing this is generally what happens when you just wing the plot as you go along. With Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers ending so definitively with Myers getting his ass lit up and buried and his niece, little Jamie Lloyd, stabbing her foster mother and taking up the role of pure evil. While they don't totally ignore the ending of Halloween 4, they do dismiss it. Jamie has a psychic connection to Michael in Halloween 5 but she no longer has his evil inside her or whatever and they chalk up her trying to kill her foster mother as a fluke. Going in, the previous director and writer, one Dwight H. Little and Alan McElroy respectively, set the stage for a Loomis focused film where he would either try to stop this evil, killer child from or try to help her from turning completely evil or some shit. That was idea at least but they didn't want to do it as they thought they should probably exit on a high note which Halloween 4 was. But Moustapha Akkad, who owned the rights, disagreed and was all about him some Mikey Myers. So when the first screenwriter offered up a draft where Jamie inherited Michael's evil, Akkad fired him and hired an eccentric named  Dominique Othenin-Girard who just got weird with it. Worst movie ever.

Pros: The only Michael Myers film other than the original Halloween that actually feels like it takes place on Halloween. They really do up the festivities in this one. The chick who plays Tina, though annoying, is pretty attractive. While this movie is complete trash... it is sort of fun in the end.

Cons: The wheels really come off the bus plotwise. Kill off the best character from Halloween 4 almost immediately. The Man in Black stuff is just awful. As is the Mark of Thorn. More animal cruelty. The mask looks like shit. The performances on the whole are exceptionally bad. The Keystone Cops are just embarrassing.

And heeeerrrreee we go... With the events of Halloween 4 a year behind--these events include the entire police department getting butchered, the sheriff's daughter getting impaled with a shotgun, a kid getting shot to death by a roaming death squad, and the protagonist (Jamie Lloyd) trying to stab her foster moth to death with a pair of scissors--everyone except for Jamie and Dr. Loomis, Myer's former shrink, are ready to move on and forget the killer that they assume to be dead... But he's not. Not even close.

Tina, the brunette, and some other chick

The movie stars, once again, Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis and Danielle Harris as Jamie Lloyd, both of whom were in Halloween 4. Only others returning, to my knowledge, were Ellie Cornell who briefly reprises the role of Rachel and Beau Starr returns as Sheriff Ben Meeker. Newcomers include Wendy Foxworth (as Wendy Kaplan) plays Tina who more or less completely replaces Rachel after that character is killed off early in the flick, Jonathan Chapin as Tina's raging dickbag boyfriend Mikey, Tamara Glynn as Samantha (the blonde friend of Tina), Jeffrey Landman as Jamie little annoying buddy Billy, and Matthew Walker as Spitz who is this way over the top blonde guy with a death wish who keeps dressing up like Michael Myers and pretends to stab people. Donald L. Shanks takes on the role of The Shape aka Michael Myers.

The film was directed by one Dominique Othenin-Girard who seems like a real piece of work and hasn't done anything you've seen since movie came out 30 years ago. As you can imagine, there is some real shit in this movie and it is more or less all attributable to Othenin-Girard. I'm limiting it as I don't have the energy to rage about everything. First, lets start with the most ridiculous opening scene of all time where in Myers slips out the back of a  mine after getting shot 50 times and crawls into a river as Illinois's finest toss a stick of dynamite down the shaft. The way he crawls... It is hard to convey how dumb this looks. From there he slipped into a river and floated down stream where some bum with a fishing shack pulls Myers out of the river and cares for him as he chills in a coma for a year until the next Halloween rolls around. What this entails--feeding him, changing him, so forth--is unclear. Once Myers comes to, he immediately repays this guy by murdering him... and then he's off.  

Also early in the film we learn Jamie's foster parents, Rachel's biologicals, decide to go out of town on vacation one year to the day that a masked maniac killed half the town, tried to kill both of the children in their care, and offed the family dog AND their foster daughter tried to stab one of them to death for which she is locked away in the children's clinic. Seems like a great time to get out of dodge, don't get me wrong, but maybe take the kids with you on that one. No time for a second honeymoon, I guess you can say. Anyway, Rachel, again, is not long for this movie. Way hotter than she was in the previous flick, we get a close call as we see Myers wandering around inside her home as she showers. Luckily, though, Jamie, now mute, is psychically connected to Myers or something and knows he's about to kill which she like pantomimes to Loomis choking out words like "dog" and "Rachel" and so forth. "What's that, girl? Timmy is stuck in the well!" "Dog" was in reference to the family's new dog after the previous one was killed the year before. We see late in the film that this dog is murdered too although when this happens is also unclear since the dog is tied up outside when Tina gets to the crib after Rachel has been murdered, but I digress. For now Myers just let the dog out and he is loose to roam the neighborhood. But these fucking awful Keystone Cops are out and about and find him. "Find dogs; rescue cats. It's our job and we love it," is something they actually say as goofy slide whistle music plays in the background. These two fucking suck. They go in and look around and shit but do a half-assed job and Rachel goes back in and gets murdered. No one really asks where she is or anything which is weird since they are all supposed to kick it together at this huge house party and her sister or whatever, Jamie, is constantly freaking out and what not.

Apparently the actress, Cornell, was super pissed about this shit, and rightfully so. In Halloween 4 she was a bad-ass and what not. Here she is in a scene where she looks and acts completely differently where she showers and then dies. It wasn't even a matter of her wanting more money like with all the "returning" characters that had similar fates in the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies as Cornell threatened to walk when she saw what happened to her character. Originally, all the same shit was supposed to go down but she was supposed to die more violently with scissors going in her mouth and down her throat. It sounds weird and Cornell called bullshit on that. So they ended up changing the death and throwing more money her way which sort of worked out for her but then again she still had to be in this POS. This was producer Moustapha Akkad big regret when it came to the film. At the time leaving basically all creative control up to Othenin-Girard who thought that if Rachel's character went early, then it meant "anything could happen next" which was cliched to shit by that point.

Oh Billy

More shit here, this kid Billy is fucking irritating. This kid makes me irrationally angry. I'm sure the child actor is serviceable or whatever but the shit they have him do. Like how he constantly fake stutters and is always whining and shit. He is sort of this constant presence in Jamie's life, sidling around and being annoying. At one point Loomis has had enough of him and acts disgusted. This, also early in the movie, is pretty subtle but totally noticeable. It's in the children's hospital (not trying to think too much about how hard that kid would have it to be in there with a kid that tried to kill her foster mother and what not) after Jamie just had one of her freak outs. Loomis sort of throws him out with this look of disgust on his face without saying a word. Also, Loomis should still think that Michael is dead and what not but is totally in the know that he is alive despite any evidence whatsoever. It's just a feel he has I guess but have no idea since it isn't at all explained or really hinted at in the movie.

The last bit of shit I'll get into is everything to do with "The Man in Black" (MIB), a guy we see take public trans, which is cool... The character is played by Shanks who was also Michael Myers. No one, including the director or writer, had any idea who the fuck the character was supposed to be or where the story line was going. The character ends up breaking Myers from prison after he is captured by Loomis who chains and tranqus him before beating him into submission with a wood plank and then having a heart attack on top of him. This fucking guy. Why the fuck? He was never part of the plan, which is obvious, and was added halfway through after Akkad started to freak out about the way the film was turning out with the various plot holes and what have you. So Akkad's suggestion was basically to make the movie more confusing and that they would hire someone else to clean it up in the next installment which is all insane nonsense. This is also where we start to get this "Mark of Thorn" bullshit, more on that in the next movie.

I could go on with more shit here like how the Myers's house is completely different than it was in the first flick or how this shithead Spitz runs out in a Myers mask wielding a knife at the cops which is a great way to die or any number of other things that don't make any sense and are just crazy that happen in this movie. But I ain't got all night. So yeah. Lots of shit. Little desire to spend any more time thinking about it. 

Anyyyywhoooo. Favorite quote of the flick comes at the end when Meeker or whoever explains what is going to happen with Myers now that they have caught him because, again, that happens. In it he says something like "from here it is to a federal super-max where Myers will stay until the day he dies." And Jamie, delivering the best line of the movie, solemnly says "he'll never die." True dat.

Best kill isn't anything special really. Just a weird three pronged hook tool thing to the head. But it is satisfying because it is Tina's dickhead boyfriend Mikey who gets it. He spends his minute and a half or so on screen just being an unbelievable asshole. Tells his friend he'll kill him for touching his car, treats Tina like absolute shit, peeling out when travelling less than 50 feet from one side of the liquor store to the other, and he even tries to fight Myers for scratching his car with said hook thing. Super satisfying when he gets his which leads to my favorite scene of the movie.

Favorite scene I chose based on unintentional hilarity. It's the one where Myers, having killed Tina's boyfriend Mikey, goes and picks her up for their date at country farm party which is all kinds of insane. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy seeing what Myers would be like as a boyfriend and all, and it turns out not much worse than her real boyfriend Mikey was. Myers picks her up at her house, honks impatiently for her to come out, drives like a maniac, and slams on the breaks going 60 when Tina nags him to stop and get cigarettes. He's had enough and plans on killing her when she gets back in the car from the convenience store. But Jamie has a vision of the convenience store logo that is a cookie woman with big cartoon cookie tits which Billy interprets for everyone and someone recognizes as said store. So all the cops show up and Myers discretely bounces which Tina thinks was Mikey being a prick. Absurd.

Going with Donald Pleasence for the MVP. More of a half-hearted, token MVP for this one. Sort of like when Steve McNair won the NFL MVP back in the early 2000s. He was a top five player for so long at that point, hey, he did alright, probably not truly the best, but he's old and has hung in there for let's give him the MVP situation. He does alright here and I'm really sure who else I'd give it to. Probably not Harris who also does fine. But Pleasence really goes for a couple of times here. There is the scene where he challenges Myers to come to his old house where he killed his sister back in the day. Then, once he gets him there and all the police leave based on Jamie's vision, which is more for the shit pile that I didn't get to, Loomis does some dumb shit so he can have his little showdown with Michael. How he catches him in the end involves a lot impossible planning that we don't see and couldn't have happened unless the cops were in on it but I digress, again. But the scene where he goes for is genuinely well performed but is just some more dumb shit. It's where Loomis starts trying to talk sense into Michael whom he has thought was pure evil for 25 years. Oh it's dumb and doesn't make sense but dude is impassioned, for sure.

Yeah, this movie is nuts, makes no sense, and is just bad. Don't watch it unless you are a Halloween completest as it doesn't even resemble John Carpenter's original in pretty much any way. Really looking forward to when H20 resets the goddamn universe back to after Halloween II. But of course, we still have Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers to get through before that sweet relief.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is the greatest movie of all time

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Surprisingly solid. Remembered it fondly from childhood. When it came out in 1988 when I was in second grade this little chick that lived down the street and her sister, second grade and kindergarten were these two, had seen it and regaled my bro and I with the entire plot in detail with vivid descriptions of kills and so forth. Later, she was the one that told me that they were making a fifth film that was coming out the following year. No idea how she knew that as this was pre-internet. But it was the coolest. You see, I too was really into horror and my parents too didn't give a shit about what I watched. Yeah, I crushed hard on that little lady. So yeah. Good memories before I had even seen the movie which happened a few years later. Loved it when that finally came about. Figured it would be fine or whatever but wouldn't really hold up to my equally low but different standards today. Wrong. It was pretty dope. Liked it way more than any of the other sequels in the Halloween franchise. In fact, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is the greatest film of all time. If you don't believe me, then maybe you'll take Peter Griffin's (from Family Guy) word on the film. Spoiler, he too says it is the "greatest movie of all time". No shit.

Pros: Back to what the people want (though it took some suspending disbelief to get there): Michael Myers killing folk. The hiding out at the sheriff's house is one of my favorites from the franchise. Decent amount of suspense. Still not quite a Jason ripoff but it's inching there. Performances are almost shockingly solid. The Rachel/Jamie relationship.

Cons: The mask looks terrible and at one point is pink with blonde hair which is just cray. The end where Jamie stabs her ma, spoiler, is weak bullshit. As was Myers's escape from the hospital. Basically a solid movie sandwiched between shit.

Here's the gist... Michael Myers, still alive after getting shot in both eyes and flaming for a good 35 seconds, awakens from a 10-year coma and escapes from the hospital to massacre more people as he makes his way to his bloodline in Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), the young daughter of the now deceased Laurie (played by Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween and Halloween II). However, his old psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis, played, once again, by Donald Pleasence, is on it, trying to stop the evil before it can repeat the carnage in sleepy Haddonfield, Illinois.

Some weird shit on the production of this flick. You may recall that Halloween III: Season of the Witch didn't have shit to do with Michael Myers and instead followed around a drunk doctor uncovering a mystery surrounding these dope killer masks (they are featured in the new Halloween movie trailer, by the by). This was because producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill, who wrote the first three films, shelved the Michael Myers storyline after the second movie had the character definitively die. They wanted the series to be more of the anthology type with each movie telling a different tale (this one was supposed to be a ghost story or some such shit). But after III confused audiences who went to see a slasher featuring The Shape, producer Moustapha Akkad, who had worked with Carpenter and Hill and on the first three flicks, demanded that Myers come back. Everyone was sort of on board but creative differences are a bitch.

Going to try to keep this rundown short... Carpenter liked this guy Dennis Etchison's script. The two had worked on novelizations of II and III and Carpenter liked the cut of his jib. And Etchison's outline does sound pretty interesting. One of those early self-aware flicks that get trippy and play fast and loose with the genre and our understanding of it. Something like a Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Etchison did an interview a while back giving some intriguing deets:

The idea is that the town, after all those terrible murders ten years earlier, has banned Halloween. They don't recognize Halloween as a holiday; they don’t allow Halloween masks and costumes or Halloween candy. And you know Hunt, the deputy from the first two films? Hunt is now the sheriff. And ten years of repression and suppression have boiled to the surface and there are some hints that He’s back!...

Some of the shit that was in the script included a tulpa, a paranormal being created through spiritual or mental powers, Myers that is sort of birthed in a pumpkin patch out of one chick's fear and is like 15 feet tall. The ending too sounded super dope and featured a scene in a drive-in theater, which I always love seeing portrayed on screen, like in the movie Targets which is insanely dope. It also had Tommy and Lindsay, the kids from the original film, as the leads in this one. Etchison explained it would have went thus:

It ends up with an enormous climax. Tommy and Lindsay go on the run into the countryside, away from Haddonfield. Lindsay hasn’t been able to remember anything that happened in 1978. She has no memory of it; it’s blacked out of her mind. And her mother wants it that way. 

Tommy, on the other hand — they both saw shrinks for a while when they were kids, and Tommy is beginning to get some flashes of it and begins to understand what’s happening. Whenever he tries to call Lindsay from across the street the mother never accepts the calls. ‘Don’t call here again, Tommy Doyle!’ Because it will remind Lindsay of what happened. But they’re bonded together because of what they went through, and they’re grown up now and they kind of like each other. But she’s not allowed to see him. 

Anyway, it ends up with this tremendous bloody scene at the packed drive-in at midnight. It’s really incredible. And the Shape is there and he’s stalking and killing people right and left. Tommy and Lindsay get away. They wake up in a farmhouse outside of town, in the country somewhere, and she has had a dream that starts to bring it all together for her…In short, it’s not just a slasher movie. The story has a philosophy behind it.

So it was more or less that when Haddonfield tried to suppress Halloween and Myers, it all came bubbling up to the surface ironically bringing him back into existence. Dope as fuck, right? But Akkad fucked it in the end, "too cerebral" for his taste saying that Myers must be flesh and blood killer. Eventually Carpenter and Hill had signed all of their rights away to Akkad and that was that and the script was forgotten. But yeah the end result was pretty great. But that sounds fucking cray and scary as fuck.

Anyway, back on track. Some shit I liked about the film, though the opening isn't the best with a sort of dumb kill (a thumb through a guy's skull), the movie doesn't fuck around and gets right into it with Myers waking up from a 10-year coma and immediately killing everyone around him. It basically gets some carnage and one sweet ass explosion out of the way early so you know what the guy is capable of before making you wait with some serious suspense late in the film that leads to some decent enough kills. Also, it's a different actress but they bring back the character Lindsay from the first film. She seems like a groovy chick in this as well. Pretty and cool. Looked up the actress. Owns a decent looking restaurant in South Carolina. She's 30 years older and rounder but still pretty and seems to be still grooving as well. 

How the fuck does this even happen?

Some shit I didn't like or made me uncomfortable... The scene where a group of little kids surround Jamie and chant "Jamie's an orphan" at her was fucked. Kids suck. The weirdest thing in the movie was Loomis hitchhiking which was just absurd. It's pretty unintentionally hilarious, in fact. He is out there and these teens pull up to him and are all, "yeah, come on, hurry up grandpa," and all that shit and then when he gets to the car they peal out. Then he gets picked up by a bumpkin priest that he makes insane small talk with as he rides back to Haddonfield. When Myers kills this guy Bucky who works for the power company by throwing him into a transformer is also unintentionally funny as fuck. Also, why does Myers always have to kill the family dog? Tired of that shit. I hate it. That dog didn't do shit to him. And there is a scene out of nowhere where Myers is wearing a pink mask with blonde hair. No idea what they fuck was going on there. It's late in the movie when Myers is in the school. It's some weird shit. 

Schwing

Best scene is easily when Rachel, Jamie, Sheriff Meeker, the sheriff's daughter (Kelly Meeker), Rachel's boyfriend Brady (who gets caught doing the sheriff's daughter), a deputy, and Loomis all hideout in the sheriff's house after Myers has slaughtered all of the city's police. It starts out super awkward as Rachel caught Brady with Kelly earlier, they just went back at after Rachel left by the by, and the sheriff is no idiot and knows that his daughter was getting schtooped and what not. Let's take a second here to talk about how hot I thought this woman who played Kelly Meeker was, an actress named Kathleen Kinmont. She was the sexiest chick I had ever seen when I was a child. In 1990, when I first saw this, she was up there with Kim Basinger, Elisabeth Shue, and Deanna Troi and Tasha Yar from Star Trek: The Next Generation as the prettiest women of all time. And she holds up. She really does it for me with hella ass and boobs and the little "Cops Do It By The Book" T-shirt. Fine AF. Anyway, it is then that the movie becomes a home invasion flick with the Myers stalking Jamie from outside the home. It is super intense as we, the audience, knows he is there and already in the house, while everyone else boards up the doors and windows to keep him out when they are actually just keeping themselves from escaping. When Sheriff Meeker leaves to deal with a vigilante killing and Loomis goes out to hunt Myers or whatever, the only two people that have a chance of disposing the killer, you know these folk are fucked and indeed they are. It's here that I really doubled down on this movie being dope. 

Escapee Myers without the mask. Good look, actually

It is after this scene that we get my favorite line of the movie. It is just a dumb throwaway from when Jamie, wandering around after everyone in the hideout has got got, gets scooped up by Loomis who is out trying to kill Myers. She says, "Everyone is dead. I just want to go home." Sort of hilarious. 

Best kill comes near the end when the group of vigilantes that killed that kid earlier find Rachel and Jamie outside of the school. They take them to the next town over when Myers pops up in the bed of the truck. After easily dispatching the three bumpkins in the back, Myers rips out the fat driver's throat. It looks great and is an excellent kill. You know it is coming but it is still pretty fucked and shocking. 

Though Pleasence really goes for it here, especially at the end when get the twist ending of Jamie stabbing her foster mother having turned evil or whatever, screaming "No! No! No!" repeatedly whilst trying to kill the child, the MVP of the movie is Rachel and Jamie's relationship. It's not that either of them have to knock it out of the park with their acting or anything for the film to work. You really just need for them to pass as foster siblings. But with these two, you genuinely get that they care deeply for each other. Like the scene where they have to escape the hideout via the roof and Rachel has Jamie climb on her back while she crawls away from the killer. The actor that plays Rachel, Ellie Cornell, kills it here. Really feels like a big sister and Danielle Harris totally makes you think that she loves her sister and trusts her completely. The pair really do a fantastic job. That shit and the long, super tense scene at the sheriff's house elevate movie to what is so far the second best of the franchise. Good shit. 

Halloween Trailer #2

Second Halloween trailer dropped. Watching all of the movies before it comes out even though they aren't connected as this is retconning everything except the first one. This shit looks way better than that first trailer where they hold the mask in front of Myers and are all like "remember this?" Still looks terrifying, too, but now I have more faith in it being a halfway decent movie.

Freddy vs. Jason is the greatest movie of all time

It has taken me a year to get here but I'm finally there. All of the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies. The end of two franchises. That is 19 total films. Most of them considered terrible. Personally, I was kinda surprised at how watchable they were. The Jason movies especially which I remembered as just being complete trash. They were, I guess, from a critical standpoint. But what can you say? They gave the people what they want. Gnarly kills, hot chick gratuitous nudity, and just enough plot to keep it interesting. Plus we get to hear Robert Englund say "bitch" a million times. After all that, finally getting around to Freddy vs. Jason. The two heavy weights of horror going at. Greatest movie of all time right there.

For people my age or a little older, late 30s/40s, this was over a decade coming and a super big deal. I remember before this came out I was at a party with some kid who was in a focus group for the flick. This was early summer 2003. He regaled like 30 people at this soiree with the entire plot of the movie and everyone was enthralled. It was one of the strangest communal experiences I've ever had; but this sort of shows you how guys and girls, at least the breed I hung out with, were losing their minds with anticipation for this movie... And then it came out and most people were disappointed. Other than some nitpicks, those people are wrong (though I doubt I'll ever watch it again, twice was definitely enough). This is definitely the best way these two franchises could have ended. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Fans of the two horror franchises will enjoy this showdown. But for everyone else, it's the same old slice and dice.

Pros: Way over-the-top. Satisfying ending for both franchises. Definitely a pleaser for hardcore fans. 

Cons: The homophobia doesn't age well. Most the teens are annoying. The plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 

Lot of that

Gist here is Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund, per use) and Jason Voorhees get it on and kill teens between their battle scenes. That's it, pretty much. Ignoring Jason X and New Nightmare, both characters start out in hell following the events of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare and Jason Goes to Hell. There is a surprising amount of Jason and Freddy flying around in the flick. The movie was directed by Ronny Yu whose previous work included Bride of Chucky and a bunch of shit I've never seen. The teens include Monica Keena, Chris Marquette, Jason Ritter, and Kelly Rowland from Destiny's Child. All of these "kids" are people you sort of recognize but have no idea where from. Lot of frosted tips among them. Playing Jason in this one is Ken Kirzinger which pissed the hell out of Kane Hodder, who played Jason in the previous four films and pushed hard to make this film happen. Kirzinger is fucking enormous and apparently why they went with him over Hodder who New Line, the studio, dissed for being too short. Shit is cold blooded. But Kirzinger actually appeared in Friday 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan as a cook that gets tooled on and a as double for Jason in various scenes. 

Lets get into it. So both characters, who are in hell, get their own little intros. For Freddy, we get the standard toying with and murdering a child (thankfully off screen). While this is happening an angry mob is forming outside of his house while he gloats and looks at newspaper articles he has in his boiler room about going free on a technicality. Unacceptable to the mob, they break in and torch him. So yeah, it starts like basically every other movie in the franchise. As for Jason, we first see a chick at Crystal Lake get naked, go for a swim, see Jason, run, and die. Freddy shows up as Jason's mother around here, telling him to go kill on Elm Street which like breaks him out of hell, I guess. We later find that Freddy has to build his strength up to kill in the dream world by having Jason kill in the real world or something. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense so it is best not to dwell on how we get anywhere in this movie. 

Some shit of note here. Parents on Elm Street just fucking love drugging their kids to get them to sleep. Every one of these Freddy movies has a kid that won't sleep because you know Freddy is kill his/her friends and that kid's parents slip sleeping pills in their soup or whatever. In every damn movie! This is no exception as the survivor girl's dad does this to her, nearly getting her killed even though this guy has clearly had run ins with the dream killer. 

The nadir of the flick comes near the end when Destiny's Child tries to piss Freddy off and have him come at her, leading him away from the survivor chick. She does this by first questioning his manhood/penis size and then calling him a "faggot". This is 2003. They should have fucking known better. This was truly appalling when I saw this in the theater and people gasped at how inappropriate it was even 15 years ago and it has only aged worse since then.

I'd rather die than hate...

Anywho, favorite scene is definitely where Freddy and Jason attend a rave which ends in carnage. The teens attend said rave after several of their buds were killed like the day before. No time to mourn; party on, I guess. One of the chicks, who's asshole boyfriend was the first one to die, shows up and gets wasted. She gets fucked up and passes out which brings Freddy around. While this stuff is going down, some other asshole shows up and sexually assaults her. Right before Freddy kills her in the dream world though, Jason shows up and murders her and her #MeToo. From there Jason goes to said kegger where like hundreds of 30 year old high school students have gathered. When Jason goes to get a beer or something, some idiot stops him and is like "this ain't a Halloween party! Why don't you find yourself a pig to fuck," and Jason twists his head around. The dude's buddy then sets Jason on fire which just pisses him off. Now you have a flaming, irate Jason just murdering the shit out of everyone. Even Freddy is like we have to get this guy under control. It's great.

Jason Voorhees. Not a guy that pays for keg beer

This is indeed something that happens

That eventually leads to this Jason Mewes type stoner character to getting possessed by Freddy as his plan is to find a way to knock Jason out in the real world since the dude doesn't really sleep and then finish him off in the dream world. The way he goes about this is when the stoner passes out after a little horribly timed "joint break" during a hospital breakout, don't ask, and shows up as a ridiculous looking CGI, Alice in Wonderland style caterpillar. Stoned, Freddy climbs down the guys throat and controls him in the real world. When his friends are like, lets get out of here, he drops a very Freddy line with "let me handle this, bitch!" Oh that Freddy Kruger and the word "bitch". He fucking loves it. Anyway, he ends up tranquing Jason and then coming at him where he has the advantage which doesn't work. Long story short, the survivor girl eventually goes to the dream world and pulls Freddy into the real world where the two killers have their final showdown. Did I mention this movie was confusing?

There is no inappropriate time to spark a doob

Seems like a good time to bring up the best line and summary of the movie. It comes when they are going over some insane strategy to killer off the two immortal murderers and someone ask how any of this makes sense. The Jason Mewes dude then, in very Jason Mewes fashion, screams, "you don't get it, do you, nothing makes sense!" Watch the movie and you'll see. 

As far as who comes out on top, Jason definitely wins the movie. The final fight, which is insane, sort of ends with Jason ripping off Freddy's arm for like the fifth time in the movie. From there there is a massive explosion set up by the kids and we get more Freddy and Jason flying through the air. This time like 100 feet into the lake. You think it's over if you've never seen a horror movie when Freddy busts out of the lake and comes at the surviving teens with Jason's machete in his remaining arm. But wait, Jason comes out of the water with Freddy's severed arm and stabs him with it, which is a nice touch. The survivor girl then finishes him off with a "welcome to my world, bitch," and chops his head off with the machete. In the final scene we see Jason crawling out of the water with Freddy's severed head in his hand. Freddy gives a suggestive wink but he is obviously in a pretty bad way. So Jason is free to skull fuck him or whatever before whatever goes down in Jason X. And that is the end of both fucking franchises. Thank fuck both of them and thank fuck that it's over. Jesus shit Christ.

The last we see of olde Robert England as Freddy