Rob Zombies Halloween

[pox1169]

Trailers have looked pretty good so far. I did enjoy Devils Rejects when it came out for pure blood and the old west kind of shoot out style of movie.

I'm getting pretty tired of remakes of classics though and with Rob being a horror fan hopefully it doesn't ruin an already tarnished series.

[Latte Thunder]

Huge bummer here. Devil's Rejects was such a success that it allowed Rob Zombie to write his own checks. They asked him what he wanted to do next and he could have told them anything, but he wanted to make his version of Halloween. I think that translates to 90 minutes of frantic hand held camera work, gallons of blood and not an ounce of suspense.

Oh! And more remixes of Dragula and Living Dead Girl.

The fucking tragedy of this is that I'll probably wind up seeing it.

[Irrylath]

The fucking tragedy of this is that I'll probably wind up seeing it.

I feel your pain.

[Broken_Glass_Lotion]

Huge bummer here. Devil's Rejects was such a success that it allowed Rob Zombie to write his own checks. They asked him what he wanted to do next and he could have told them anything, but he wanted to make his version of Halloween. I think that translates to 90 minutes of frantic hand held camera work, gallons of blood and not an ounce of suspense.

Oh! And more remixes of Dragula and Living Dead Girl.

The fucking tragedy of this is that I'll probably wind up seeing it.

I think its going to kick ass and illustrate a lot of the history of Michael Myers. Of course, if I'm wrong I am more than willing to eat shit for it. But, I think I am going to win this one...

[Latte Thunder]

True to my word, curiosity got the best of me and I wound up taking in a private show of this last night.

Over all not a bad movie. The first half of the movie features the background of Michael Meyers and the second half is pretty much a shot for shot rehash of Carpenter's movie, albeit with much more graphic violence.

I know a lot of people are going to eat up the origin of Meyers and as good an actor as Daeg Faerch is, it still doesn't make me give a shit about what sort of things make a killing machine. I don't really want to get down and sympathize with the guy wielding the knife, you know?

Here are my thoughts on the whole thing:
http://www.cinema-suicide.com/2007/08/2 ... ie-review/

[Irrylath]

great review! I went today. I enjoyed the background, but I felt no sympathy for the wee slasher. Anyone who kills cats for fun deserves to be tortured.

it was a good horror pic. lots of blood and gore, but you're right, no suspense. the original creeped the hell out of me. carpenter gave that total boogeyman effect.

[Blasphemous_Cacophony]

I thought it was good, but, not great. I thought the background on the 10-year old Michael Myers was more disturbing then when he actually became the adult/boogeyman/slasher, version.

You could hear The Misfits, "Halloween" in the background during one scene.

[Remo D]

1957:

"Do you believe it? They're remaking FRANKENSTEIN! How could they let anyone touch that? Oh, it's happening, all right. It's not a rumor. And they're doing it in ENGLAND! Yep, full color, extra gore, and no Boris Karloff. Yeah, I know--Karloff only played the Monster in the first three films in the series, but he's still DEFINITIVE! And it's not like the Monster matters anymore, I hear--see, this time they're going to go back and give you the life story of the DOCTOR. They're going to do more of his childhood, and it's going to be at least halfway through the movie before you even get to the Monster! Yeah, like THAT's going to work."

"What? They're doing DRACULA, too??? DAMMIT!!! Why can't they leave these things the hell ALONE???!!!"

1976:

"Just what the world needed. A remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Hey, man, Joseph McCarthy is dead and buried. The Red Scare thing is over! I guess somebody thought that if they did it in color and moved it to a BIG CITY, that would somehow automatically make it better than the original? Oh, new special effects, too. Whoop-de-do. It wasn't about the effects, and it wasn't about the gore! This story worked well enough to begin with! Why do they have to mess with it?"

1981:

"Get this. Remember when John Carpenter showed a clip from THE THING in HALLOWEEN? Well, now he's REMAKING it. But it doesn't even follow the same story! What the hell's the point? Just more gore? Call it something else if you can't even be faithful!"

1986:

"Man, it's not THE FLY anymore! You don't get the fly's head on the man's body, and you don't get the man's head on the fly's body in the spider web! No 'help me, help me' scene? That's the payoff of the whole thing, and they're leaving it OUT?! Give me the Vincent Price movie any day!"

Oh, I could continue. We've all seen great remakes, and we've all seen lousy remakes. But nothing... NOTHING is truly "untouchable." It's been nearly thirty years since John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN, believe it or not, and we've sat through seven sequels already (okay, only six if you only count Michael Myers movies). Pretty much just like FRANKENSTEIN, no? Thanks to all the sequels and all the ripoffs, Michael never lost his recognition value, so he's still "current." And I was one of the original theatrical audiences that got scared half to death by the original. That's never going to happen again. The CONCEPT of "Michael Myers" is no longer capable of frightening me. And I've got all the movies on DVD to view, review, dissect or absorb at my convenience.

So no matter how much you respect the original, you won't get anywhere insisting that it "shouldn't" have been remade, any more than insisting that it "shouldn't" have been sequelized to begin with. It was. And it was. HOUSE OF DRACULA sure as hell didn't stack up as a sequel to FRANKENSTEIN (no Karloff in sight, Monster barely a significant element), but it was still a great time with the Universal formula. And I don't think any of us saw Hammer's THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN trying to assert itself as any sort of "replacement" for the Karloff original (any more than the Karloff film was any sort of faithful adaptation of the Shelley novel, let's be completely fair). It was an established, iconic horror property, and somebody decided it was time to put a new paintjob on it.

And now somebody (Rob Zombie, to be specific) has given Michael Myers the reboot. No different than James Bond when it comes down to it, and I don't hear any CASINO ROYALE complaints, do I?

You wouldn't have accepted a scene-by-scene "remake" like PSYCHO. And honestly, what new story could you come up with to follow H20 and RESURRECTION and get the fans to fill the theatres? No, since you don't get the option of "the series is over and there will never be another Michael Myers movie," the "re-imagining" was the way to go.

But is it scary?

Ah, that's the thing. The original HALLOWEEN became a sensation because it scared the bejabbers out of people with sheer, suspenseful SKILL. Not with gory effects, and not with an extensive, detailed backstory regarding the life and times of young Michael Myers. It's a simple enough equation--the more you KNOW about him, the less SCARY he is. The Shatner-masked Michael in the original was terrifying simply because he was inexplicable, indestructible EVIL. The very first scene of the movie shows him committing a ghastly crime without explanation. Without motivation. "Michael, why did you do this thing?" The world will never know, and the film itself became truly frightening from the very beginning.

And we all know that the director of HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and THE DEVIL'S REJECTS isn't going to give you that sort of subtlety. He's going to try to send the viewer to hell along with the characters--and THAT's what you get right out of the box here. You may immediately despise young Michael for his cruelty to animals, but you'll also be forced to sympathize with him as he's subjected to a sleazy, abusive "family" life, the bullying of his classmates, what have you. You see his problems, and you watch him snap. It's undeniably effective, too... it's just not scary. Suspense has been replaced with blunt force trauma and ever-increasing levels of bloody violence.

Give the devil his due--Rob Zombie knows how to work with actors and get immensely memorable performances from them. No matter how deriviate HOKC may have been, Sig Haig's Captain Spaulding was astonishing and unforgettable. And in addition to the performances we already knew we could count on in THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, Zombie gave us great work from Priscilla Barnes and even Leslie (POLICE ACADEMY) Easterbrook... in the Karen Black role, no less! It's no less true for HALLOWEEN... the complex, flustered, wild-and-wooly Malcolm McDowell is an agreeable update of Donald Pleasence's Sam Loomis, Sheri Moon Zombie gains plenty of sympathy as Michael's mother. As for Scout Taylor-Compton? To her credit, she's as unlike Jamie Lee Curtis as one could imagine... neither a "slut" nor a repressed wallflower--she's a completely believable young lady enjoying her life. Too bad she and her friends Annie and Linda are introduced a scant ten minutes before Michael has at them--it would have been nice getting to know them a little better (though I'm sure most people are just waiting for the latter two to take their tops off--no shortage of THAT in this movie).

The "spot the star" thing eventually wears thin. Good work from the actors listed above, as well as Brad Dourif as the sheriff. Nice bits from Danny Trejo and Sid Haig... but really, Udo Kier for one lousy line? Ken Foree on the toilet (I guess they picked this scene for the USA Network preview because it was the only scene they could SHOW on TV)? Unless you're new to the field, you're going to be studying the movie not for the story, but just to see who's going to turn up next. And for the record, I still missed Mickey Dolenz.

The new HALLOWEEN does hit the desired groove by the time we get to the ending. A different background and a different motivation for Michael puts a different dynamic on his obsession with Laurie, and for a remake, that's a good thing. And when Zombie's done trying to trick us with setups from the original paying off differently, there are some terrific jolts to be had--nothing will match the intensity I personally felt when I saw Carpenter's original on the big screen in 1979, but I will freely admit that the film had my full attention and that I was genuinely interested in seeing how it turned out.

Let the controversy roil on. For the most part, this is more shocking and sickening than it is scary. But if you acknowledge that it's not trying to duplicate the effect of its inspiration? A lot of it works. And you'll never really know unless you see it for yourself. So don't avoid Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN. By all means, see it and THEN let me know what you think.

[pox1169]

I'm usually not fan of remakes/rehashes/reshoots of any movie, they just don't live up to expectations and usually you judge it against the original anyways. I thought it was a good movie overall as a total package. I thought it was creepy in a twisted way and the begining "backstory" was just enough to make me forget that it was a remake.

The Good (for me):
Tyler Maine as Mike Meyers was great for his pure size compared to the other castmembers, it made it believeable to me that he could break through walls and pick up people.

I'm a sucker for seeing old movie favorites in other movies so it was great to see how Rob casts familiar favorites from his other movies in different ways in this movie.

There were a couple other good things that are escaping me right now I may have to view again to remember them.

The Bad (for me):
I didn't believe the innocence factor of the new Lauri Strode compared to the Jamie Lee Curtis version. JLC just had that innocent deminer about her thus making the audience believe that she was truly terrified and I didn't get that feeling in the new version.

As much as I like a Blood and Guts movie, Rob Zombie has done this before in his previous movies so I'm kind of done with seeing it with every killing. I've seen movies that were way more terrifiying with less visual violence (Jaws, Halloween Original).

I would have like to see more backstory and less retelling of the original. If they would have had the back story as the movie and then ended it with Micheal escaping the asylum that for me could have been a great movie. They could have dealt with his isolation more, and his relationship with Dr. Loomis and the Guard Danny Turjo (sp?), his mother and sister and just his twisted thoughts in his head.

Again overall I thought it was a good movie and I will probably go see it again in a couple weeks.

[Kimberly]

I actually enjoyed the backstory more then Zombie's "revisioning" of the rest of the film. I found the Laurie character to be too phoney, a little over the top in trying to be all sugary sweet. The dude who played adult Michael is a fucking monster, that guy was HUGE!

I was reading an interview in the latest Rue Morgue in which Rob says something about things in the original that just didn't make sense (like him knowing how to drive, etc...)... that doesn't bother me. The ONE thing in the original... or if shit like that he thought needed and explanation.... is HOW THE FUCK DOES HE KNOW THAT LAURIE IS HIS SISTER?! How does he come to find her...

Otherwise... meh... if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

[Lode]

Sure there are your usual stereotypical cheesy horror-film moments, but what remake of a classic would be able to get away with NOT having those? The back story on Michael makes the whole movie way more interesting. For people like my husband, who haven't seen the original, I would worry that the back story takes up a little bit much of the movie. Although HE said that was fine and he liked it. I would just worry that newcomers would be like "when is he going to grow up and start killing?" you know? But I suppose it works out this way.

I don't know what everyone is so up in arms about "trying to garner sympathy for the killer" and "animal abuse" - yes there are some images of mangled animals that appear for a couple of short seconds. It's not like they go off on a snuffing tangent. And I doubt any rational human being would feel sympathetic toward a character in a movie who is a killer through and through. I don't feel Rob is trying to go into Michael's back story to garner sympathy, but rather to give the faceless "Michael Myers" from the original movie some actual character development. If you end up "feeling sorry" for this character, then you are as psychopathic as he.

The cameo appearances are almost worth the ticket price alone, IF you are already a fan of Rob's work.

[DylanDog]

I'm glad you brought up the how did he know about/find his sister bit? That really irked me. Overall, I didn't care much for it, though I wasn't even ever a real big fan of the original series (my favorite is 3 and surprisingly, I met two other people over the weekend who feel the same!) and neither of Rob Zombie's first two movies did much for me. So I guess me being unimpressed shouldn't come as a big shock.

[Darth Tanner]

I ended up liking this a lot more that I thought I would. Being a fan of the original, I groaned when I heard about this "reimagining". But I liked Rob Zombie's other two films so I decided to give this a try and I was glad I did. Sure it will never top the original but it is still good in it's own right. The cameos were great but I would have liked to see a little bit more of Udo Kier and Sybil Danning. Malcolm McDowell was perfect as the new Dr. Loomis. The casting of Danielle Harris was a nice touch as well. Sheri Moon Zombie actually turned in a decent performance this time around and didn't grate my nerves like she did in Zombie's previous films. I do agree that the first half of the movie dealing with the backstory was more interesting than the second half. As far as Zombie goes I still think DEVIL'S REJECTS is a better movie, but this one still isn't too bad. I'll definitely take it over that dreadful remake of THE FOG any day.

As for that whole "sister" thing....unless I'm mistaken that plot point was never in the original film but established in HALLOWEEN 2. Yeah it didn't really make sense to me either.

[Kimberly]

As for that whole "sister" thing....unless I'm mistaken that plot point was never in the original film but established in HALLOWEEN 2. Yeah it didn't really make sense to me either.

Regardless, how the hell does he know that's his sister?!

[Darth Tanner]

Regardless, how the hell does he know that's his sister?!

Aww Kim, I didn't think you really cared that much......you're taking the fun out of it:dsmoke:


In all fairness, I think that whole plot element would have been best ignored in this remake since it wasn't in the original. I liked the set up in the first film better. Just the whole idea of him returning to his hometown after 15 years with no apparent motive except to wreak havoc made him scary enough. The second film was better than all the other sequels, but putting in that whole "sister" thing just didn't work. Don't even get me started on the whole bit with the niece. But I take the movies as they are. As long as I try not to think of detail like this, I tend to have a good time (assuming the movie is any good).

But getting back to your question Kim (and I assume that you are talking about the original film)....perhaps when Laurie went to drop the key off at the Myers' house, Michael saw her and realized she was her sister because she looked like their mother. Or maybe there are other ways he could have found out. Hell if he somehow figured out how to drive a car right away upon his escape, maybe he also learned while locked up how to play detective and tracked his sister down:) Yeah, I know it's plausible but nowhere near as plausible as in H20 when he was able to find out she was alive and where she was living after an unexplained 20 years absence!

Anyhow, it's just a movie so who really cares about these things right?:) But you wanted an answer and yada yada yada....so enjoy:devildoll