Halloween (2007)
Rob Zombie
When you want the heroine to die, the director has failed!
On paper, a "Halloween" remake looked interesting. Zombie tries to go back to the character's origin and reinvent him - it's a recent trend in Hollywood ("Batman Begins," "Casino Royale," the upcoming "Incredible Hulk," etc.), so it's not quite surprising that Hollywood greenlit the project and it got the push it received.
The problem that arises while doing this with "Halloween" is that it comes into conflict with the concept of Michael being purely evil. Although I can understand what Zombie was trying to do by exploring Michael's background, it contradicts the whole point of the original. By providing a reason and displaying a human character on screen, you give the character a soul - and despite what Zombie may claim, this does NOT make Michael scarier. It makes him an average movie serial killer: a guy with a messed up life as a kid who snaps one day and goes on a killing rampage. Is it scary? No. Gory? Yes. Realistic? At first. And if it were a movie about a serial killer, it would work. But it's not. This is a movie about a monster, a soulless creature; a boogeyman, as per the original film. Monsters aren't scary when we know they're flesh and blood.
Carpenter had a way of framing the action in the original movie. Michael stalks Laurie in her hometown, but we never see any real flesh behind the mask, we never really see him moving around like a normal human being. But we do here. He stands in the middle of an open road, in front of three teenage girls walking home from school, and they all see him. He stands there for a few moments, then trudges away off-screen. We actually see him walk away, instead of just appearing and disappearing as he did in the original film. Which method is scarier? The answer is clear.
Zombie spends 40 minutes or so building up Michael's character before he escapes from the ward. We see him killing animals as a child (and torturing them, too), a stupid subplot with his mom as a stripper and a typical school bully, and a promiscuous sister. The sexual talk is frank and disgusting - the mom's boyfriend (husband?) is talking about how cute her daughter's butt is, and at this point in the film we're not sure whether he might even be the father. It's just shock for shock value. Zombie has a tendency of this - blunt violence and blunt dialogue combined - and in a film like this, it seems cheap and fake and unnecessary. The heavy emphasis placed on the swearing - and I mean this literally (as in, the actors place a noticeable emphasis on the profanity they use) is almost unintentionally funny. Zombie cast his wife in the role of Michael's mother, and she can't act at all.
Donald Pleasence got stuck with the most unfortunate lines from the original film, but we were willing to forgive bad dialogue because of how well-made the film was otherwise. Here, Malcolm McDowell gets the worst of two worlds: he gets to handle an under-characterization with bad, bad, BAD dialogue AND a generally weak film to boot. The sequences with McDowell's version of Loomis are all completely clichéd - Zombie clearly writes his dialogue based on other films' dialogue. The "intimate" scenes at the mental ward between Loomis and Michael are awful. McDowell struggles with typicalities of the genre, such as the Dr. Who Wasted His Own Life By Devoting It To Someone Else's (he explains to Michael that his wife left him and he has no friends because of how involved he became with the case - and the dialogue itself is straight from any cop-vs.-killer flick). The recent film "Zodiac" had a similar theme of men losing their personal lives due to obsession over a murderer, but it was handled better. The whole Loomis character should have been dropped from the remake if all Zombie wanted to do with him was use him as a deus ex machina, by the way.
Overall, this feels like a redneck version of "Halloween," which is going to offend some people, but I can't think of any better way to describe it. It's trashy, vulgar, and silly - and hey, that's fine, if that's Rob Zombie's motif and he wants to make movies pandering towards that sort of audience. I have nothing against it, and I think it may work with some films - I can imagine him making a good re-do of "Natural Born Killers" (although I hope it never, never happens!).
However, when you're remaking an iconic, legendary, incredibly influential horror film - don't cheapen it by "re-imagining" it with horror movie clichés and shock-value material. The very worst aspect of this remake is that it simply isn't scary at all - it's a typical slasher flick, a homicidal-man-on-a-rampage flick, which ironically is exactly what Zombie said he wanted to avoid.The first film was eerie, spooky, and unnerving because Michael's motivations were cloudy and we weren't sure whether Laurie was right or wrong when she said he was the boogeyman. We only knew one thing: he wasn't entirely human.
But ever since that original movie, the filmmakers have attempted to keep expanding upon Michael's history: the second film developed a motivation for his killings (Laurie was his sister), the fourth offered more clues at his background, and now we come full circle with a complete remake of the original film. Michael's true demonic core - the natural horror element of the series - is stripped bare and all that is left is a disturbed, abnormally tall redneck with greasy hair who hasn't showered in years wearing a silly mask going around killing people because he had an abusive family fucking life as a child. Some things are better left unexplored.
So in ending I myself was a fan of John Carpenter's masterpiece, being born a few months before the original Halloweens' release and seeing it when I, 4 years old and to this day still manages to scare me. But to anyone looking for true scares watch the 1978 version and leave this pile of shit were it belongs meaning it should be in the $5 bin at a backwoods version of Walmart.
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The United States, homeland of cinema, duplicated by every country from The U.K. to Bollywood . One of the most important aspects of Cinema advertisement was the poster. From the inception of movies, a poster enticed the audience to come see the movie. One picture to sell the moviegoer into watching the film.
As an avid collector of posters, my collection spans from Thailand to the states. Some of my collection is highly sought after by other collectors, one even publicly referenced in "Never Sleep Again" documentary on the special features. In each issue I will show you some of the most sought after and/or unique posters in the world, minus the united states, some of which will be also from my collection.
Today we take a look at The United Kingdom, England specifically. In England, they use what is called a "Quad" poster. A standard United States movie poster is 27 inches by 40. In the UK, they measure a much larger 30 inches by 40 inches. As our posters are usually made top to bottom art style, the quad is left to right . Here are Dr. Krueger's top 10 British Quad (collector terminology) Posters.
10. Dracula Has Risen From The Grave
Christopher Lee, British Dracula. A hand drawn art that gives the viewer the anticipation and provoking thoughts that we crave.
9. Halloween (1978)
This is a very unique take on the movie. One I don't understand. It's interpretation is vague and doesn't explain much. Perhaps that is why it worked so well.
8. Frankenstein
Another hand drawn quad from the U.K. It's simplicity was what caught my eye. Posters of it's time were almost always hand drawn and the approach, much like Halloween above, leaves the viewer wondering about the creature.
7. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 : Freddy's Revenge
A favorite amongst horror fans and especially Fred-Fanatics, this poster dominates the US-One Sheet, showing us what a little creativity can do.
6. Night Of The Living Dead
Again, dominance. This poster gives us that classic, elegant and straight-to-the-point view on this George Romero classic, leagues ahead of the US-One Sheet.
5. The Lost Boys
This is a sleek and unique approach to the posters for this movie. Though not the better of what is available in other countries (Japan,Spain and Germany offer the best) this is a great take on what is not offered here in the states.
