MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN MONSTERS PART 48; HALLOWEEN- MICHAEL MYERS AND THE THORN

"In order to appease the gods, the Druid priests held fire rituals. Prisoners of war, criminals, the insane, animals... were... burned alive in baskets. By observing the way they died, the Druids believed they could see omens of the future. Two thousand years later, we've come no further. Samhain isn't evil spirits. It isn't goblins, ghosts or witches. It's the unconscious mind. We're all afraid of the dark inside ourselves."

-Dr Sam Loomis, Halloween II

Original art by Townes Murr (12)

Past the halfway point in the first sequel to John Carpenter's beloved horror classic, HALLOWEEN, Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasance) says the above words in reference to the word "Samhain" written in blood on a blackboard in the school. This scene was fairly minor, but pointed to a possible supernatural explanation for Michael Myers-as opposed to the original film where Loomis certainly believes Michael to be pure evil, but the connection to the holiday of Halloween seems more coincidental than ritualistic. The bloody "Samhain" hints towards something deeper, but at the end of the film it's a plot thread that is left unresolved. 

HALLOWEEN III; SEASON OF THE WITCH is expressly about Paganism and the roots of Halloween or Samhain. There's no connection to the first two films (in fact, we see a TV advert for the original in the background of the bar Tom Atkin's character is drinking at, seemingly confirming this is a different universe, but, hey, what if it's just a movie based on the earlier events?) and there was never meant be. Carpenter and producer Debra Hill had conceived SOTW as a way turning HALLOWEEN into an anthology series. Those plans were dashed by critical and fan backlash, of course. 'Where's Michael? We don't want anything new or original..!' Which is too bad, because it has taken over 30 years for SOTW to get some of the respect it deserves for being a legitimately creepy and original story. If it had come out instead of HALLOWEEN II or just under the title of SEASON OF THE WITCH it would have likely been a much bigger movie. 

So with the anthology concept in the toilet, producer Moustapha Akkad brought back Michael for HALLOWEEN 4; THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS. Written by Alan B McEllroy and directed byDwight H Little, RETURN brought us to a high security facility where Michael, in a coma since the end of II, is being held. The time has come to transfer him (why???) and enroute he kills the attendents and escapes, making a b-line for Haddonfield, with Dr Loomis hot on his trail. Though critics disliked RETURN as well, the film did a good job of bringing back Michael and was a well crafted story. We learn that Michael's sister and object of his murderous rage, Laurie Strode, has died in a car accident and her daughter, Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), has been adopted by the Carruthers family. When Loomis reaches Haddonfield to warn the police, things go crazy. Michael massacres everyone at the police department while a lynch mob of locals hunt him down. This gives RETURN a slightly different flavor from I and II, people remember 'the night HE came home' and they're not going to sit back and let that shit happen again. It's not a perfect movie, but there's a lot to love and it sits nicely next to the first two. Plus, for me, it was the brand new when I first got into horror films. The issue covering the film was the first Fangoria I ever bought, those two factors might color my enthusiasm for RETURNS, but only a bit, since the film still holds up well.  

At the end of RETURNS we see Michael shot to hell before he falls down a mine shaft and a deputy throws dynamite down with him. Michael has, of course, survived. He made it out of the mine and to the shack of an old hermit, where he returns to his coma for exactly one year. he awakens on the next Halloween and kills the hermit and heads back to Haddonfield. I liked the hermit bit a lot, because it was a throw back to the BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, where the monster is taken in by the old blind man. So with Michael back in Haddonfield a year later and again going after Jamie, it seems like business as usual, until a mysterious man in black gets off the bus in Haddonfield. Jamie is now mute and living in a special children's hospital after being traumatized by the events of RETURN, including the murdering of her adoptive mother. A psychic link between her and Michael has emerged, as opposed to her becoming a killer as hinted with the ending of RETURN. She knows Michael is coming and Loomis, desperate to end the madness, exploits her psychic link, and uses Jamie as bait to lure Michael to his old house. Loomis is backed up by Sheriff Meeker and a police force, who surely wanted revenge themselves for all their fallen brothers in the last film. Naturally, nothing goes according to plan; half the cops are tricked away, basically leaving Loomis and Jamie to fend for themselves against Michael. In the end, Loomis is finally able to beat Michael down, before having a stroke. Then Meeker is able to arrest Michael-a first for the series. Instead of Michael being believed dead and disappearing, we see him in chains in a jail cell, awaiting the National Guard to take him away. Then the man in black arrives at the jail and kills everyone, blowing Michael's cell door off. the last thing we see is Jamie finding Michael's cell empty. Roll credits. 

After the biggest What The Fuck moment of the franchise to date, we have a six year time jump for THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS, conceived by screenwriter Daniel Farrands after several attempts were made to get HALLOWEEN 6 to the big screen. Unfortunately for Farrands, a die hard, well-versed HALLOWEEN fan, and franchise fans in general, when CURSE finally arrived it was a boring, plot hole ridden, neutered affair. This was due to a lot of unnecessary behind-the-scenes drama, re-shoots, and an end product that was a half measure and a poor excuse for a sequel. It was known among fandom though that there was a different version out there, with 43 minutes of additional footage and a completely different ending. This is what's called 'The Producer's Cut.' There is also a director's cut, which is mostly the theatrical release with added gore. 

The theatrical cut reduced the set up from REVENGE to a minor plot point which mostly fizzled out by the end and even the CURSE in the title seemed a generic, tacked on title. The Producer's Cut on the other hand, takes us back to 1989, when the man in black breaks Michael out of jail and we see both Michael and Jamie being kidnapped by the man in black and some henchman. They've held Jamie all this time, waiting for the stars to align and letting Michael rape and impregnate her with a child destined to be Michael's final sacrifice, before the curse that has given him his strength and invincibility would be passed on to another child and Michael would cease to be. 

The Producer's Cut is so ridiculously superior that it vexes me the theatrical cut ever saw the light of day. One thing it does is give us an actual Thorn Cult, which is not so different from the pagan cult that uses a toy factory as a front for it's nefarious plans in SOTW and ties back to the bloody "Samhain" Michael leaves behind in II. Michael is also given a purpose and an explanation. This part many fans balk at (including Carpenter) because they liked the mystery of why Michael is doing all this anyway, or that he's simply the embodiment of pure evil. I think that's fine for I, but we can't have a single sequel without some explanation that can be built on with each successive chapter. If all we had was a mute indestructible killer for eight films no one would give a shit, so why the hate for evolving the story? I've never understood that. 

At any rate, now that we have the Producer's Cut officially available (it was passed around by bootleggers for years) we can take in 4-6 as a whole, their own trilogy within the franchise, not unlike FRIDAY THE 13TH PARTS 4-6. The Producer's Cut actually wraps up what we'll call the Jamie Saga. In the theatrical cut Michael kills Jamie in the opening minutes of the film after she has escaped with her baby and hidden it away. In TPC, she survives that attack, at least for a while longer. Meanwhile, another character from I returns, Tommy Doyle (Paul Rudd), the little boy Laurie was babysitting on that original Halloween night. He suffers from PTSD, obsessively hunts for Michael, and tries to convince others that Michael is still out there. He's also the only one who finds Jamie's baby before trying to contact Dr Loomis. Loomis has spent the last few years in retirement, recovering from his stroke when he's approached by his old colleague, Dr Wynn, who wants Loomis to return to the hospital to take over as administrator. His offer though, has to take a backseat when he hears Jamie pleading for his help on a radio call-in show. So Loomis and Wynn head to Haddonfield. From there, we are introduced to a young boy named Danny who is hearing "the call," the same call that Michael heard the night he murdered his older sister back in 1963. So we're getting a sense of legacy here and a seemingly end to Michael's mission. 

By the time all the pieces are in place, we've seen the Thorn Cult, we've seen Michael under their control, the man in black is back, we know they wanted to sacrifice Jamie's baby, and crazy Tommy Doyle is seemingly the only person who knows what's going on and what it might take to stop Michael. It's the widest scope storytelling wise that we've been treated to so far. We still get some classic HALLOWEEN stalk and slash, but it feels less by-the-numbers. Eventually, the cult gets the drop on Tommy and Loomis and get their hands on the baby, Danny, and his mom, Kara. Wynn reveals himself as the man in black and the head of the Thorn, before drugging Tommy and Loomis. When they come too, they chase Wynn and company to the hospital to save the day and stop Michael from sacrificing the baby and from Danny sacrificing his mom. None of this occurs in the theatrical cut. It all has something to do with DNA and there's no robes and altar cult, just a bunch of doctors, who Michael massacres in the hospital for some reason. In TPC, we get treated to pagan ritual and a very different face off between Tommy and Michael. Frankly, it's more satisfying the way Tommy defeats Michael using runes in TPC vs fighting Michael in the theatrical. In the end, Tommy escapes with the baby, Kara, and Danny, while Loomis stays behind to put an end to Michael once and for all. The theatrical version ends vaguely, Michael's probably alive and he probably just killed Loomis. In TPC, Loomis finds Michael laid out in the hallway. He unmasks him, to discover that Wynn has been put in Michael's clothes. As Wynn dies, he grabs Loomis's hand and transfers the curse, which manifests itself as the Thorn symbol appearing on Loomis's wrist, mirroring the mark we see on Michael in REVENGE. And then we see Michael escaping dressed as the man in black. 

It's fairly brilliant. Wynn is dead, which would likely cause the cult to fold, Michael has escaped again, this time free of Wynn's influence, and the next creative team to take over could take Michael in a whole new direction-as they do in HALLOWEEN; H20. the problem with that film, though is the way they pick and choose what to keep from the last three films. primarily the part where Laurie dies in a car accident, but it's revealed they she faked her death and started a new life. H20 is a fairly great film, except there is no mention of Jamie at all and everyone acts as if there's been no sign of Michael in twenty years. In the actual timeline, CURSE happened just two years earlier and there's no way Laurie would have missed the news of the three major events of RETURN, REVENGE, and CURSE. Had those three films been referenced even in the least it would give more foundation to her ongoing fear of Halloween night.

 

I can understand the decision to ignore 4-6 to clear baggage for Laurie's return, but the film spends too much of the first half of the film beating us over the head with how damaged Laurie still is, but gives us a fantastic climax where Laurie faces Michael, kicking ass and finally bringing their story to a very final end when she chops his head off. It's done. Come back from that, Mike! Of course, the next film RESURRECTION pisses all over this with a stupid plot twist that reveals that it wasn't Michael's head that got cut off, blah blah puke. RESURRECTION is literally the worst film in  the franchise and one of the worst films I've ever seen. No more words will I waste on it. 

So, yea, I love the Jamie Saga and we're very, very lucky to have TPC available to bring it to a proper close. At this point HALLOWEEN will be limping along toward a new sequel under Blumhouse with Carpenter returning in a producer's capacity. It's pretty clear they aren't interested in reviving anything from the Thorn, opting instead to return to the tone and mystery of the original. Fine, I'll watch it enthusiastically. For fans of the Jamie/Thorn Saga Farands and Philip Nutman (author of the excellent zombie novel WETWORK) continued the story through a Chaos Comics mini-series and later Devil's Due Publishing, which connected CURSE with H20 and beyond, including what would have been Farand's pitch for the eighth film, which would have been fantastic and would NOT have featured Busta Rhymes fighting Michael.         

    

(Special thanks to my son Townes for providing some Thorn inspired original artwork!)

My Heroes Have Always Been Monsters Part 24

The time line may be off a bit, but as I remember it I was eleven or twelve and it was mid-October. Halloween was looming and there was no shortage of horror movies on TV. I was expressly forbidden to watch anything worse than The Great Pumpkin, but as I've noted in previous posts, there was a distinct lack of supervision to go along with all those restrictions. One channel continually advertised that they'd be playing Halloween 1 and 2 back to back, and even though the commercials alone scared the crap out of me I was bound and determined to see those damn movies.
What I wound up doing was agreeing to watch whatever the hell the family was watching in the living room and secretly slipping off to watch Halloween on the little black and white set down the hall. That wound up being a big night for me as a film fan and Halloween, to this day, remains my favorite horror movie of all time.
Out of all the slasher films I've watched Halloween is still the only one that inspires dread in me and Michael Myers is the only killer that's still scary. I don't think many horror fans would disagree with me, but when you start talking about the sequels fans become far more divided.

The thing that had me so anxious to see these films that night was Fangoria's coverage of the release of Halloween 4; The Return of Michael Myers. My parents would never buy me such a disgusting magazine, but I was able to read nearly the entire issue in the drug store while they shopped next door at the grocery store.
I was up the entire night-not too scared to sleep (although I was freaked out and wouldn't have slept if I'd tried) I stayed up brainstorming super villains for the comic books I made with my friends. Halloween 1 and 2 rocked my world and I couldn't wait to see the next two.

As luck would have it I saw part 3; Season of the Witch the next week. I bemoaned the fact there was no Myers, but I loved the film anyway. People piss and moan about Season of the Witch, but only because it's called Halloween. Call it anything else and a lot of people would shut the hell up and they should anyway. The last thing the world needs is another slasher film and Part 3 gives us a different kind of horror; a halloween mask company has sinister plans for millions of children and our heroes are racing against the clock to uncover their plot and stop them. I don't want to give too much away for those who haven't seen it yet. There are plenty of twists and turns and scares, just keep telling yourself, "It's not a Halloween movie, it's not a Halloween movie"...

So, back to Part 4; The Return of Michael Myers...Scared the crap out of me and kicked off a trilogy within the series. 4-6 focus, at least in part, on Myers' niece Jamie, a young girl who's night of trick or treating becomes a night of hell ten years after Part 2 (Return...). Next time (Part5; Revenge of Michael Myers) it's a year later and Jamie is living in a mental institution when Uncle Mike resurfaces and a mysterious man in black arrives in town shortly after. In 6 (The Curse of...) Jamie is six years older, with a baby and on the run from dear old uncle. We learn the identity of the man in black and get treated to a broader conspiracy and hey look! There's a young Paul Rudd as the grown up Tommy Doyle from Part 1.
It's not often I hear anyone praise 5 and 6 and complaints I've heard usually center on the conspiracy, which I won't be giving any details about. But I think the filmmakers deserve a lot of credit for trying to build up the original film and tell a broader story rather than just cashing in and killing one group of dumb teenagers after another. I give 4-6 high marks for what they set out to do and how much fun they were. Of course all three films are tossed in the trash and Stalin-ized with the true cash in films of the series Halloween H20 and Resurrection.
Yes it was wonderful having Jamie Lee Curtis back, but the writers should have been held to a higher standard for H20 and Resurrection is an abomination.  In fact, Resurrection was so bad that it absolutely justifies a remake, almost makes a remake necessary, to redeem the franchise.
Rob Zombie's Halloween films will get an essay of their own later and I'm going to end this here with a bloodbath from Part 6. Happy Halloween!

Keep watching the sky, nerds! And the bushes. And...everything.

    

My Heroes Have Been Monsters Part 13

 When I was in the 4th grade my family got HBO. There must have been some promotion/special price, because there was never any money for such extravagence, but we had it and I had something special to go along with it...a lack of supervision! This was during the slasher boom of the 80's and on top of the cable I had a friend named Joey who collected Fangoria and brought them to school all the time, so I was hip to what was coming out and what was worth watching. And by my recollection there was no escaping the tv spots for Friday The 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street. Hell, DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince did a song about Freddy and Robert Englund appeared on Nickelodeon!

 When I was a teenager I started working my way through my local video store's horror section, finding brilliance and stupidity in equal numbers. Halloween become my favorite of the slasher franchises. For some reason Michael Myers captured my imagination and I continued to love all the sequels up to H2O. I thought the Friday the 13th films were a bit spotty, my favorites being parts 4, 5 and 6. Part 3 was the only one I found to be unwatchable (until Jason Takes Manhattan...bleh).

The thing about these films was that they were cool and sometimes cartoonish, but never very scary. Halloween and Friday both had moments that would haunt me, but I didn't find them to be particularly horrifying. Then I watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Leatherface hit a nerve with me and I found myself half buried under a blanket on the couch by myself at two o'clock in the morning hating myself for putting the movie on...but I couldn't turn it off. I had to see how it ended. Gritty and grainy, super realistic. I mean, look at that pic to the left! Freddy's wise cracking doesn't compare. Even though you knew they would be back for another film, Freddy and Jason always got beat in the end. Leatherface was just left on the side of the road pissed off! Free to torture and maim beyond the credits! Nothing new now, but I was only in the 6th grade and had only experienced these mainstream slasher films, nothing so nihilistic.

 Unencumbered by rationale, the Nightmare On Elm Street films were by far the most imaginative and fun. Anything could happen, because it all happened in dreams. Freddy could be anywhere or anything, leaving the series wide open and limited only by the imagination of the writers and directors. Johnny Depp's death scene, in the first film, is still one of the most memorable death scenes I can remember. The only time I found myself disappointed with the series is about half way through part 6, Freddy's Dead, where what started off so promising began to feel like the film was just running out the clock trying to get to the conclusion with standard slasher filler. Wes Craven's return to the series (first time since the first film) with New Nightmare was nice and a fresh take and would have been a good final farewell to Fred, but who can say no Freddy vs. Jason, even if it sucked how could you not see that film if you grew up on these this stuff?

So these days we have all these modern classics getting remade. When they announced the TCM remake I was entirely unenthused, I watched it of course, and it wasn't bad at all, the same with the remakes of Friday, Halloween, Nightmare, My Bloody Valentine or whatever. The remakes are fine movies, sometimes they even improve some aspects of the original (remakes of The Fly, The Thing, and The Blob in the 80's certainly did), but why don't the studios just run the originals in the theatre again? I'd pay to see TCM 2, Nightmare 3, or any of the first five Halloween's on the big screen and I know I'm not alone. The other aspect of the remakes that rubs me the wrong way is that for every remake coming out that's an original film not being made. As a struggling writer I'm not encouraged by the trend of repeating. Of course, how many different Frankenstein films have I paid for? Oh well, when is the Halloween 3 remake coming out?

And just because I don't want to hear any complaining that I didn't mention Child's Play...

...that first one is still creepy!

Keep watching the sky, nerds!