The Many Faces of Michael Myers

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Halloween Comes Early to the Avon Theatre!

Ever since last fall's showing of Return of the Living Dead, it has been the distinct pleasure of my cohort Captain Cruella and myself to host horror films at Stamford, Connecticut's wonderful Avon Theatre, on Bedford Avenue right in the heart of one of the Nutmeg State's most bustling metropolises. We've been party to Poltergeist, The Thing, Maniac and other fine selections in the intervening months, but I think this time we're more psyched than ever before.

That's because next Thursday night, June 16, promptly at 9:15p.m., we will be introducing a special screening of John Carpenter's Halloween--a film that never fails to be at or near the top of just about everyone's list of all-time favorite fright flicks. If you'll recall, this is the film that actually made the very top of the list back when I polled the entire horror blogosphere to determine the 50 Greatest Horror Films of All Time. That's a pretty big deal.

It's the prototypical slasher film, one of the most important in the history of the genre, and it will be our honor to take part in its presentation on the big screen next week. As always, there will be trivia and giveaways before the film, as well as some awesome retro trailers. So join us, Michael Myers, Laurie Strode, Dr. Loomis and the gang for the one, the only, the original Halloween. This is going to be a big one.

For more information, head over to the Avon's website!

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Retro Review: Halloween (1978)

"I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the Devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil."

What more appropriate time to take a special look at John Carpenter's masterwork than this week, right? I don't know about you, but around this time of year, I pretty much walk around with that iconic theme music playing constantly in my head. And "The Shape", Michael Myers? A movie monster that can hold his own with the best of 'em.

The original Halloween spawned a huge movement, an explosion of slasher flicks about mindless killers, masked or otherwise--with Friday the 13th being the most obvious copycat of the bunch. Yet just as decades of rock bands have tried in vain to be Led Zeppelin, so does Halloween stand head and shoulders above any of the wannabes that came later (including its own sequels).

Unlike the majority of schlocky slashers, Halloween contains a mind-wrenching level of suspense, and very little gore. It's direct inspiration seems to be Hitchcock more than anything else, as can most obviously be seen thanks to the name of Michael's nemesis, Sam Loomis, a moniker lifted directly from Psycho. We also have, in the lead role of Laurie Strode, one Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Psycho's Marion Crane, a.k.a. Janet Leigh.

Along with co-writer and paramour Debra Hill, Carpenter crafted a fine tale whose impact should not be allowed to diminish because of all the inferior stuff that came after it. The Shape is absolutely terrifying by simple virtue of the fact that he is faceless, unknowable evil. This is one of the reasons why Carpenter's original outshines Rob Zombie's competent remake--Michael's utter lack of humanity.

As his counterpoint, we have the intense and commanding Donald Pleasance as the doctor who knows the murderer better than anyone else. The stage-trained British thespian Pleasance brought a respectability and gravitas to the film, and his is far and away the finest dramatic performance in the picture. He almost serves as a Greek chorus, doing nothing more than warning the other characters and the audience of the danger that's in store. In fact, his only action occurs in the climax of the movie.

Jamie Lee Curtis originates the concept of the "final girl" in the role that made her a star--the virginal Laurie. She is the epitome of the scream queen, evincing purity, evoking vulnerability, and putting over the abject terror that surrounds her. Yet in a twist which would forever define this type of role, she finds the strength within herself to face up to the monster. It's powerful stuff to this day.

That said, it needs to be pointed out that the majority of the rest of the acting in this flick is right about at '70s porno levels. I was surprised, in fact, after my recent re-viewing of the original F13, to find that for the most part,the young people in that movie were a cut above, acting-wise. P.J. Soles and rest of Michael's future victims are clumsy and broad in their performances, but we forgive them for it, because the tableau in which Carpenter has placed them is so powerful that it doesn't even matter.

It's all about the technique here. Carpenter and his cinematographer, future Speilberg and Zemeckis favorite Dean Cundey, craft some amazing sequences, most famously the opening POV shot that pulls you in right from the word go and informs you that this is no ordinary teenager slice-and-dice. And in a taut suspense film like this, due credit must also be given to the guys in the cutting room--Carpenter's editors Charles Bornstein and Tommy Lee Wallace (later director of Halloween III) deserve some recognition for this veritable symphony of nail-biting fear.

More than a person, Michael is a force of nature, the embodiment of not so much what I would call "evil" perhaps, as a completely amoral sociopathy. There is no anger or hatred within The Shape (another misstep of Zombie's); he simply exists to end the lives of others. Almost the Grim Reaper himself. The mask, that brilliant touch infamously crafted from one of Captain Kirk, presents us with a truly blank, empty killer. He is an entity, coming and going at will, virtually impervious to physical harm. (I always wondered whether or not it was wise for Carpenter & Hill to have him drive a car, as this implied a certain level of higher reasoning. Still, it does make for a bizarre and unsettling image, doesn't it?)

By synthesizing Hitchcock and crossing him with the '70s grindhouse aesthetic, Carpenter was able to create what might even be called the "purest" horror film of the modern era--which in turn set in motion a wave of influence which we are still feeling. Some would even call it the greatest horror movie of all time, as can be evidenced by its number-one ranking by the "Cyber-Horror Elite". I sincerely hope that reading this has put a lot of you in the mood to relive this immortal classic--hurry up, before the season is passed. Watch it one more time.

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The Tuesday Top 10: Worst Things About Halloween II

I'm an angry blogger tonight, folks. Yes, I'm that guy. I just can't help it. Why? Because I saw Halloween II, that's why. Ever see a movie you hated so much it actually made you angry? Well that would be this disaster for me. I wanted to hold off till tomorrow and make it my Hump-Day Harangue, but I can't wait. I need to get at it tonight. And so, I'm making it the theme of my Tuesday Top 10. So here goes, let's dissect the ten major reasons why a colon irrigation would be preferable to seeing this film again...

10. Homeless-Looking Heroines
Rob, why must you make every character in your movies look like they've spent the past week hanging out at the Port Authority--especially the girls? The female leads may be OK on the eyes, but it seemed like Zombie did all he could to make them look as skeevy as possible.

9. The Best Part Never Even Happened
Hands down, the movie's best sequence was the opening in the hospital--but guess what? It was just a dream! That's right, the only part of the flick that felt like an actual Halloween movie, wasn't even real. Cause you know, Rob Zombie had to put his "stamp" on things and give us his version of the franchise. Thanks a lot, buddy.

8. That's So Jason
Characters you hate so much you can't wait to see them killed? Isn't that the domain of Friday the 13th? Don't get me wrong, Halloween dabbled in that to a degree as well, but not to the cartoonish level of the Voorhees series. Until now. I don't want to root for Michael Myers. I didn't in the original, and I shouldn't be now.

7. Logic? We Don't Need No Stinking Logic!
Why would Laurie be sharing the same hallucinations as Michael? And don't tell me because they're siblings, that crap might hold water if this was some lame-ass Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers-type supernatural nonsense, but I thought we ejected all that garbage in favor of realism.

6. Not Enough Danielle Harris!
What was the point of letting her character survive the first movie (unlike in the original) only to be rendered pointless in this one? Her presence is a major selling point of the film as far as I'm concerned, yet she was completely wasted.

5. Paging Dr. Frank N. Furter...
What was up with referencing the characters from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, yet vehemently refusing to mention them by name? Even going so far as to repeatedly refer to the good doctor merely as "a dude pretending to be a chick". Mr. Zombie, do you really think we're that dumb? Well, you got my ten bucks, so maybe you're right...

4. You Ma'am, Are No Laurie Strode
The completely annoying and unsympathetic Scout Taylor-Compton is such a far cry from Jamie Lee Curtis' iconic final girl that it's not even funny. Lacking all of the poise, style and acting chops of her predecessor, she turns Laurie into just another run-of-the-mill whining slasher flick chick. If this is the "good girl ideal", then our culture is doomed.

3. Angry Michael Myers
The Shape has no emotions. The Shape feels no pain. The Shape is an automaton. Or at least, he's supposed to be. Every time I heard Michael utter those seething grunts and groans as he murdered his victims, it felt like he was plunging the knife into my own heart. As if the humanization of the character in the first one wasn't bad enough...

2. Sheri Moon Zombie, Will You Please Go Now?
I know she's your wife, Rob, but why oh why did she have to be shoe-horned into this one, too? And as a completely out-of-place supernatural entity on top of it... It's been said before, but Michael isn't supposed to be the movie slasher who hallucinates his dead mommy, remember? Ms. Zombie and her stupid white horse nearly ruined the movie for me single-handedly.

1. The Dr. Loomis Character Assassination
I say nearly, because what really did it for me, what drove me into paroxysms of geek rage, was the cynical, stupid way in which Zombie ham-fistedly raped the character Donald Pleasance made so famous. The doctor is supposed to be a heroic figure--the voice of reason crying out against the madness, the yin to Michael's yang. Instead, Zombie thought it would be cute to make him a sleazy media-whore. So very sad. Not to mention the fact that his character serves absolutely no purpose in the picture whatsoever. Not since Jack Black's Carl Denham has a classic character been so thoroughly FUBARed.

And just so you don't consider me your typical bitter genre blogger... Here are the handful of little things I actually liked about the movie: Some very cool imagery, the nods to Frankenstein, Michael-as-transient, Brad Dourif, the Psycho homage at the end. There, happy?

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Hump-Day Harangue: Which Michael Myers Is Scarier?

Earlier this week, I took part in a roundtable discussion over at HorrorBlips.com on what appeared to me to be a very one-sided topic. The question that was posed to bloggers like myself, Stacie Ponder of Final Girl, BC of Horror-Movie-a-Day, Bryan White of Cinema Suicide and others, was this: Which version of Michael Myers is scarier, John Carpenter's original character, or the version created by Rob Zombie for his remake?

Yes, I know, who in their right mind would choose the new Michael, right? Well, that's what I thought too, and lo and behold, not a single blogger polled did so. In other words, it was a landslide for Carpenter's Shape.

For those of you who haven't had an opportunity to check out the article at HorrorBlips, here is my contribution:

I would say, hands down, that John Carpenter's original conception of Michael Myers is the more frightening version. The mistake that Rob Zombie made was giving us way too much background information on Michael, almost trying to make him sympathetic.

The complete mystery of the original is far superior—it's almost as if Michael is less a person and more a force of nature. In the remake, we are made to understand how Michael got the way he is, and why he kills. In the original, we have no idea why—he seems to be just a normal little boy who one day decides to start killing people. This is far more chilling.

I understand why Zombie did what he did; obviously he felt he needed to add something, rather than simply regurgitate what Carpenter had already done. Unfortunately, however, the result points out even more clearly why a remake was pointless in the first place—from a creative standpoint, anyway.

So what do you say, HorrorBlips? Next time, give us a question we can really debate. This one was a no-brainer!

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Rediscovering Halloween

It's become something of a custom in my family ever since we moved out to Connecticut, that whenever my sister pays us a visit from the "old neighborhood" (where Brooklyn at?), I will sit her down, after the kids have been put to bed, and we will watch a horror movie. Usually one she has never seen or one we mutually love. And in the case of last night, with my sis in town for weekend Mother's Day festivities, the choice happened to be none other than John Carpenter's Halloween.

Let me preface this by saying--and I warn those of you with delicate constitutions ahead of time--that my sister had never seen the original film, only the Rob Zombie remake. Let me also say that she came over accompanied by my well-meaning dad, who looked me dead in the eye, and declared beforehand that he preferred Friday the 13th. After allowing the agony of those two pronouncements to wash over me, I calmed myself, and got down to the business of showing both of them the errors of their ways.

I explained it the way Halloween-lovers the world over have always explained it to the uninitiated. How this film is head and shoulders above anything else that followed in the slasher subgenre it spawned. How it's closer to the work of Alfred Hitchcock than the work of Sean Cunningham. Then I dimmed the lights, popped in the disc, politely informed everyone to shut the hell up, and let Carpenter and Debra Hill's masterwork speak for itself.

My sister was immediately struck by the shocking nature of the opening scene, particularly for its time. She did also mention that the reaction of young Michael's sister to being stabbed to death probably leaves a tiny bit to be desired, which I couldn't argue with.

But after having seen only Zombie's version, she was definitely riveted from beginning to end, pointing out how the remake was more polished, yet lacked the sustained atmosphere of suspense and dread. It was also worth noting the completely different objectives of both directors. While John Carpenter sought to shroud "The Shape" in mystery, adding to his mythic nature by providing minimal info, Rob Zombie quite obviously chose to humanize him and explore his backstory, making the movie more "about" Michael and less "about" Michael's actions.

It's also worth mentioning that I discovered several things about the picture by paying extra special attention to it last night:

1. Donald Pleasance is God. Yes, I know, this is no new discovery. But I can't get over how much he brings to the movie, what a levl of gravitas he adds. The man is the gravitational center of the film. His monologues to the police chief in particular are among the finest to be found in any horror movie, ever. Also, it's fascinating to notice that he actually does next to nothing in the movie, acting more like a Greek chorus--until the very end, when he takes swift action and draws the plot to and end (sort of...)

2. Jamie Lee Curtis is in a league of her own. Amazingly, this is the first motion picture appearance of Janet Leigh's daughter, and she knocks it out of the park with a subtle, nuanced and thoroughly convincing performance that defines the "final girl" trope for all time to come. I also noticed that, in comparison to her, both Nancy Loomis and, yes, P.J. Soles (sorry, BJ-C!) are quite laughable in their acting chops. Just about '70s porno level. I expected P.J. in particular to shout out, "Oh, Mr. Greenfield!" at any moment.

3. Michael is far from the average slasher. He drives a car. He patiently stalks his prey. His actions infer thought, logic, and even a sick sense of humor (ie. the infamous bedsheet scene). Clearly, Mr. Myers is light years ahead of Pamela Voorhees lumbering clod of a son, that's for sure! Nick Castle's silent performance is actually a thing of beauty.

4. There is almost no violence until the final act. And oh yeah, almost NO blood. Pretty amazing. The amount of restraint Carpenter shows in building the tension is impressive in the extreme. In the classic horror tradition, its all about the anticipation. And then the movie explodes into an orgasm of intense terror as Michael puts his violent fantasies into motion at last. Brilliant filmmaking, with some damn fine camera work by Dean Cundey.

5. Easily one of the most ripped off movies of all time. Unfortunately, Halloween suffers because it is viewed by some through the lens of the films its inspired, rather than vice versa. It's riddled by so many of the cliches we've come to know and love in these types of movies: the unstoppable killer, the false deaths, the final girl's discovery of all the bodies, the head tilt, etc. But it cannot be stressed enough that in 1978 these were largely original devices. We do the film a disservice by judging it from the wrong angle.

And so, as the end credits kicked in to Carpenter's thrillingly terrifying theme music, I turned to my misguided family members in triumph. You see, Halloween is one of those horror movies a lot of people seem to take for granted, and its awesomeness is often not appreciated enough (despite its being voted the number one horror flick of all time by the "Cyber-Horror Elite"). Casual fans will choose to judge it based on qualifiers other than their actual memory of the film itself. And that's when you have to shake them out of their misconceptions and remind them exactly why John Carpenter and Debra Hill were true horror visionaries.

Mission accomplished.

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**SPOILER PIC** Michael Myers to Be Maskless for Majority of Halloween Sequel

Ryan Rotten of Shock Till You Drop landed a fascinating little interview with Halloween 2's makeup designer Wayne Toth on this Easter Sunday. The FX guru discusses a range of topics, including his surprisingly positive response to the bogus fan art that hit the web a couple of months back, the extensive use of dream sequences in the film, and most provocatively, the fact that The Shape will apparently be without his iconic mask for roughly "70%" of the sequel!

Here's Toth on the subject:

"I thought the reaction was pretty much going to be, What? No mask on Michael Myers?' But it's like anything else, as long as you're doing something cool, people get it. No one has dared to change the character, they just put him in different situations and that gets old pretty fast. Be daring with Michael Myers and change it, I think that was the appeal with this movie. It wasn't limited to a remake, like last time. We're taking it a step further."

This is bound to create some division in the fan community--which was already divided as to whether or not the remake sucked in the first place. For the rest of the interview, head on over to STYD. As for this "new design", the spoiler-wary among you might want to divert your eyes or jump to another site, 'cause I'm about to share an on-set peek of actor Tyler Mane sporting Michael Myers' maskless look. Here's the infamous shot which has been dropping jaws at STYD:


Well, no one can accuse Rob Zombie of being without balls. Although I'm tempted to say that without the Shatner mask, it kind of becomes less "Halloween" and more "Crazy Homeless Guy in a Jumpsuit Randomly Stabbing People". Stay tuned, true believers.

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