I had quite low expectations going into ‘Wacko’ Not because I figured it was going to be badly made or anything like that, its just that…whenever a movie markets itself on being ‘SO CERRR-AZY!’ it makes me nervous…ESPECIALLY with older films that do that… It basically sets the expectation that your going to be getting 90 minutes of the absolutley lowest common denonimation humour, nothing but fart jokes, sex jokes, nudity and probably a lot of racism, mysoginy or homophobia to boot.

Which is why I was honestly quite pleasently surprised by ‘Wacko’. rather than looking at the ‘Scary Movie’ mold of comedy horror, this film instead cuts its teeth by the zucker brothers tone of ‘Airplane!’ and ‘The Naked Gun’ with plenty of communcation gags, visual pieces and slapstick. Make no mistake, it’s nowhere near as GOOD as a Zucker production, in fact it takes stupid humour to new frontiers honestly…but it’s a good spirited watch thats totally daft, very light in tone and has plenty of surprises along the way.

The plot follows one Mary Graves, 13 years ago her sister was slaine by an infamous and mysterious pumpkin headed killer in a bizarre Lawnmower incident in front of several kids (including Mary) during the annual ‘Pumpkin Prom’ now 13 years later, It’s Mary’s turn to go to the prom, and the killer may be making a return.

On the case? One Joe Don Baker, who plays a grizzled cop who’s been on the case for the last 13 years and still hasnt found who it is. Complicating matters further, a few days before the prom an insane inmate escapes from the local asylum wearing nothing but a trenchcoat and boots…

As you can imagine, Hilarity ensues.

And…yeh; I actually kind of had a soft spot for this one, I enjoy comedies that do ‘Stupid’ in a kind of smart way, and ‘Wacko’ is most definitely one of those movies. While the comedy itself does feel a bit like someones been rooting around in the Zucker brothers trash for discarded gags, The pacing is good, the hit rate on humour is high. it feels pretty zippy for 86(ish) minutes and the tone couldnt really get any lighter if it tried.

One thing I was quite happy about is the lack of gross out humour here. its an easy ride to stuff comedies like this with jokes about bodily fluids, erections or lewd acts. But ‘Wacko’ really kind of manages to steer away from that. We do unfortunatley get a few parodies of major horror movies of the time (Alien, Halloween, The Exorcist) which felt strained and ‘done’ even by 1982…and it gets even WORSE when they do some of those parody gags MULTIPLE TIMES within the same act. But mercifully they’re few and far between and the film rumbles to completion with a satisfying ending to a daffy story.

The film absolutely doesnt take itself seriously to ANY degree, and as such the characters are surface level developed, which here only helps keep the comedy nice and pacey as you realise that noone here needs any kind of grounding because the film is THAT dedicated to not being serious. This is the kind of movie that could completely derail into another genre entirely for 25 minutes and you wouldnt bat an eye.

the direction is pretty basic, but it hits the right notes; I do wish they’d gone maybe a little bit grander in stylization, but hey, this thing was aiming to mop up folks who wernt going to the major releases of that year. It does what it sets out to do, while it’s basic, its effective; and while there was definitely room for improvement, it gets in, gets the job done, and gets out…thats all I can really ask for when such craziness is going on.

The cine is equally kind of basic, but what they lack in compositional flare they more than make up for with effects and grander set pieces, expect plenty of blood, pumpkin filling and strange visuals here make NO mistake, the edit keeps a good pace, it feels tight with sequences that breath just enough to really help an audience relax into it. If I was nitpicking, i’d argue that some of the scenes could have done with just a few more shots and takes to help give them a bit more life, but on the whole? this things fiiiiiine.

Its the performances here that really sell it, With the majority of the cast playing things very deadpan and straight, in the vein if ‘Airplane’ or ‘Naked Gun’. George Kennedy and Joe Don Baker are probably the best of the bunch here, but they’re both old hands at this kind of thing, and JDB doing essentially a parody of the role he played in ‘Mitchell’ is just a delight. they have great comedy timing, the express EXACTLY what was needed when it was needed. and I think arguably they’re the people who save this film from completely falling over.

Julia Duffy as Mary is equally in lock step with the pair, playing an animated and very physically present take on the character, I really enjoyed her performance and I think she really got what the kind of tone this film was aiming for. She aced the assignment for me.

Adding to this a soundtrack that does seem a little out of place for a movie like this, it almost feels like a bit of a hodge podge of ‘in joke’ style rock-pop tracks and references to other horror movies as parody tracks (probably the biggest being the ‘Alfred Hitchcock presents theme’ getting used frequently throughout…because…why not?

I came away from ‘Wacko’ pleasently surprised. It didnt blow me away, but I went in expecting ‘bad comedy’ and came away having genuinely laughed multiple times across the runtime. While it does have its flaws, I think ‘Wacko’ does ultimatley manage to stick the landing, and while I wont say it’s an essential watch. I’d say check it out if your looking for an answer to the question ‘what if the zuckers did a ‘slasher’ parody’.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/wacko/

Watched on Thursday October 26, 2023.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/sleepaway-camp-ii-unhappy-campers/1/

‘Popcorn’ had been on the horizon of my ‘To watch’ pile for literal years until fairly recently when a die hard fan of this 1991 slightly demented comedy slasher halted a live stream I was watching for a solid 5 minutes to passionately monologue about how underseen this thing was and how they considered it to be one of the greatest slasher movies ever made…That’s some pretty big talk, but they sold me on the pitch. So one Amazon halloween sale later, I checked it out. And…they wernt that far off the mark honestly.

Popcorn is a very affectionate tribute to ‘Gimmick cinema’ in all it’s various flavours, think of it as the midway point between Joe Dantes ‘Matinee’ and Rick Sloans ‘Blood Theater’ and your not a million miles off.

The film follows a group of film students who are looking to try and raise some cash to allow them to continue their film society and maybe even grease the wheels of getting a new production off the ground. After a couple of weeks of backing and forthing on what to do, they decide to host an all night ‘horror-thon’ showing 3 movies back to back (with bands!) that are all parodies of 50’s B-movie classics, and that all have some variation on an actual real world gimmick piece. ‘Mosquito’ for example features a giant mosquito that flies over the audience ala ‘House on haunted hill’ alongside it being in 3d, ‘Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man’ features a variation on ‘Percepto’ with audience members getting electrocuted in their chairs at key points in the film.

So far, so nostalgic, But things arnt quite as cheesy and cozy as it seems, when one of the students ‘Molly’ reveals that shes been experiencing psychadelic nightmares in which shes being hunted by a bearded man who wants her dead. While sorting out the reels for the movie night, they stumble on an incredibly short reel that isnt part of their featured evening. On playing it, it’s revealed to be ‘Possessor’ a thought lost movie made by the great experimental film director ‘Lanyard Gates’ who infamously ACTUALLY murdered his family at the end of the movie before torching the theater down, killing over 40 people.

Molly recognises the bearded man in ‘Possessor’ as the man in her nightmares, but things just arnt adding up, and with the main show starting imminently…the gang may find themselves in a LOT more trouble than they bargained for.

And I feel this film really kind of hit the sweet spot of being goofy enough that it was charming, but serious enough that it made the kills and drama feel worth investing in. While I will say that the tone on this DOES wobble from time to time, sometimes ending up TOO gnarley and sometimes ending up irritatingly goofy, it never quite completely falls over and on the whole manages to hold itself together across the full runtime.

The film is solidly paced, not quite as zippy as i’d like, but quick enough that I didnt get bored, wander off or start googling the actors, so I see that as a plus. The act structuring is solid with no real issues to report it knows when to change gears narrative wise, when to raise the stakes and when to let things slow boil. The characters have enough going on about them to keep the film feeling busy, but some of them do have a bit of an identity crisis, wherein I because they all acted kind of ‘samey’ it meant I sometimes lost track of who was who and who was supposed to be doing what.

That being said, balancing that out is some delightful dialogue which really hits the spot and I could see being very quoteable after a couple more watches.

The plot itself is very entertaining, a little bit trippy and the humour lands more than it fall for me personally. I did feel the ending was a little on the weak side, especially given how much it was bigged up across the runtime, but this is really more of a movie you watch to enjoy the ride rather than relying on the ending to deliver a wallop. With that said, had the ending been a bit more powerful, i’d honestly have very little to complain about with this thing.

The direction is fab, highly styalized and heavily reliant on coloured lighting, it reminded me a bit of ‘Creepshow’ in terms of how things were laid out. theres a clear vision on display here and I think despite the production changing directors about halfway through, this still surprisingly feels coherent to me.

The cine too is great, not only do the main theater moments pop with crisp and vivid colours and decent composition and blocking, particularly in the dream sequences where things get psychadelic to almost ‘Hasu’ (1977) levels…and thats not to mention that I feel they do a great job of the ‘retro movie’ sequences as well! with the scenes from ‘Mosquito’ in particular really managing to catch that ‘columbia pictures’ 1950’s/1960’s stylizastion. I honestly really loved this thing visually.

The editing is fine enough, I think the first couple of acts are stronger than the 3rd act. It feels to me almost like they shot diligently in the first 2 acts worth of scenes, but as the money and time started to run out, the need for ‘the essentials’ to be grabbed outweighed creative liberty. As a result some of the kills and the end sequence in particular do feel a bit rushed and confusing in places. but on the whole the editors here have managed to keep things on a decent footing and this edit breaths pretty fine for most of the runtime.

The performances are simultaineously some of the most memorable and best parts of this movie, while also being the weakest. On the one hand the delivery of the dialogue that our cast offer is hammy, WAY over the top and utterly delightful to sit through, their physicality is wonderful and it really does feel like the cast are throwing there all behind the picture. On the other hand, it really does feel like the cast are constantly throwing their ALL behind this picture…Even if their ‘All’ isnt really particularly great. expect moments of BEYOND stiff physical performance, line deliveries that are laughably awful in places and a near total lack of camera placement awareness (that last ones not their fault…it feels like a miscommunication with the director) I LOVE the performances in this thing, but if your averse to cheesy acting. this will not be your rodeo.

And the soundtrack is a mixture of Reggae and 90s style beat pop. predominantly because this film was almost entirely shot on location in Jamaica…I think it suits the film fine personally, I couldnt…nor would I want to imagine this thing having a fitting score, because the film itself is so demented in places, having the weird scoring almost feels complimentary to the other weird aspects.

‘Popcorn’ bombed at the box office, which is a real shame (that being said…thats what happens when you release your horror movie in early February!) I think had this come out around halloween time 1990/1991, it probably would have fared quite a bit better. It has developed a cult following over the years, and I can absolutely see why. With striking visuals, and interesting, campy and engaging plot. Some nice callbacks to the Atom age of film making and some bizarre performances and tones. ‘Popcorn’ feels like something rather special. I really quite enjoyed myself, and I can happily recommend you check it out. it’d probably pair quite well with something like ‘Blood Theater’ or ‘Phantom of the Ritz’.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/popcorn/

Watched on Tuesday October 24, 2023.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/hack-o-lantern/1/

A near perfect combination of the unsettling and disturbing work of Clive Barker, married up to the fantastical, otherworldly and surreally vivid imagery of Bernard Rose has here yielded a deeply unpleasent, but highly compelling work.

‘Candyman’ follows two university students Helen and Brianna, they’re studying folk legends as part of their final dissertation, when the pair stumble on one unique not just to their city, but unique to their immediate area. The tale of ‘The Candyman’ a folklore spread largely amongst the local black community about the son of a slave who grew up to become a famous painter who was brutally murdered by malicious slave owners who dissapproved of his relationship with a white woman with whome he fathered a child. The Candyman was tortured, had his right hand hacked off with a rusty saw, and was smothered in honeycomb and left to be stung to death, nude, in the boiling summer sun.

He swore his revenge and its claimed that anyone who says his name 5 times in a mirror and then turns out the lights will find themselves on the reciving end of Candymans hook. Helen and Brianna are sceptical, but…for fun, they try it anyway…And what can only be described as chaos unfolds for them, as a string of awful events begin to befall Helen culminating in her being accused of murder and kidnap of a young baby. Helens world spirals out of control and as the Candyman gets closer and closer to her. Helen begins to realise that there may be even more than she realised to the legend.

I remember catching this one years ago and kind of being a bit nonplussed by it. At the time i was on a Clive Barker kick, fresh off some of the Hellraiser films and ‘Candyman’ seemed like an extension of that kind of gory unpleasentness. So I put it in, and 97 minutes later, I ejected it fairly non plussed and quite dissapointed…I was a fool.

Because ‘Candyman’ is a wonderful examination of how legends and rumours can run rampent, how fear effects the psyche and how the boundaries of reality and something altogether more supernatural can be manipulated very effectively.

The script is a zippy 97(ish) minutes long, has a clean 3 act structure with which it transitions effortless between those acts. the pacing is excellent with new information thats almost always relevent being thrown at the audience constantly. The tone is wonderfully bleak, not just for its vivid imagery of impovrished black communities, but in a similar vein to ‘The Devils’ this is a film that revels on almost every level in showing just how awful things CAN get.

I was constantly in a state of being kept on my toes with this one, and even up to the closing minutes, I was hooked in finding out exactly what was going to happen next. The characters are all wonderfully written with deep rooted complexities that slowly reveal themselves as the film progresses. its got a exemplary ‘slow boil’ quality to it that gently works up the suspence and thrills to a fevered pitch, before leaving the audience to decide exactly what they’ve just witnessed and how much of it was real, and how much of it was Helens own manifestation.

The direction and cine? Pfft, this is the near perfect dovetail of Bernard Rose and Clive Barker’s creative zennith. Rose having just come from ‘Paperhouse’, one of the most visually stunning films of the late 80s, and Barker having just capped off ‘Hellraiser 2’ and ‘Nightbreed’. The pair were in their prime, and ‘Candyman’ is one of the most visually striking works I think either of the pair have ever produced.

Its a rich, grotty, dirty, sumptuous take on decaying suburbia, rich in set design, rock solid in style and tonal direction. GORGEOUS compositional choices throughout that do NOT shy away from showing the beauty in true uglyness. While I will say it would have been nice to have a bit more colour present here (a lot of this film is browns, blacks, moulding/festering greens and blues) I can absolutely appreciate this work for what it is, and Rose has used contrasting colours VERY sparingly here, I feel to great effect.

The edit keeps tremendous pace, utilises B-roll effectively and allows this thing to breath comfortably, without making it overstay its welcome. This is a film that I feel hits the EXACT sweet spot it needed to. Not too long that I feel it could have been trimmed, not too short that it leaves me really wanting more. It tells an effective story for EXACTLY as long as it needs to and then it gets out.

The performances are genre defining quite frankly, with Tony Todd absolutely OWNING the role of the ‘Candyman’ bringing a tremendous sense of power, sadness and vengence to the role that I dont feel any other actor could have quite mustered. he’s seen sparingly here, but that just means when he is on screen front and center, he’s an absolute powerhouse.

Vanessa Madsen as Helen is also astounding, getting a full range of emotions to work through across the runtime as shes REALLY put through the ringer. She nails almost every scene she’s in, is animate and Rose seems to have really given the cast the precise information they needed because every scene is astounding, its animate, lively, set space and props get used very effectively, its just a really sold work from the cast here, I honestly cant grumble.

And the soundtracks delightful too, It’s Phillip Glass, and barring one or two synth tracks (the opening titles in particular) where I feel the synth versions would have worked so much better with ACTUAL orchestral instruments. It helps set the tone of this picture perfectly and really acts as the bow on top of the present here, tying everything together beautifully.

‘Candyman’ is a rock solid production from start to finish, and barring a couple of scenes that felt a bit laboured to me personally, a ‘twist’ ending that hasnt aged too well (it reads more goofy now than terrifying) and a couple of dodgey synth tracks on the OST, it’s more or less faultless to me. HIGHLY recommended if you havent seen it before. My gut tells me to just stop at this one as its a great self contained story. But your milage may vary.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/candyman/

My final stop on a marathon of the ‘Friday the 13th’ movies, and this was a first time spin for me, I missed this when it was out in theaters after being told it really wasnt worth the price of admission. However; a ‘Google Movies’ sale a few months back put this on in HD for a good enough price that I thought it was worth taking the risk on it. Honestly? Im kind of glad I did, as 2009’s ‘Friday the 13th’ is probably the best entry in the series since the Paramount years…That’s not really saying much. But it’s nice to see a bit of a return to form!

The plot is pretty straightforward, the film opens with a quick (slightly altered) recreation of the end of the original ‘Friday the 13th’ (they do get the dates wrong here as this film has those events taking place in 1980…but the original film itself states the events took place in 1979…splitting hairs I know but…That did bother me a bit)

We then jump forward to the present day (2009) as a group of teens are heading up to one of their dads hunting lodge near crystal lake to party down! On the way up there, the gang bump into ‘Clay’ a guy who’s handing out missing persons flyers trying to find his sister Whitney, who dissapeared under mysterious circumstances alongside all her friends a number of months ago while hiking in the woods…You can guess who’s responsible for THAT little encounter…

Anyway, the gang get to the lodge, they start playing drinking games, having lots of sex and doing naughty drugs…Clay turns up at the lodge to hand out fliers not knowing the teens he ran into a short time ago are staying there, which causes some friction with members of the group…In any case, it doesnt take long for Jason to re-emerge to teach these teens a lesson, with only Clay and a handful of survivors finally getting to the bottom of what happened to Whitney and what fate may lie in store for them!

And, given the last two Jason movies were bad enough to put me off EVER checking out ANYTHING New Line Cinema wanted to do with the character ever again, I have to be honest and say I actually kind of liked this one.

It fits in with the other movies pretty nicely (barring the odd minor continuity issue) You could either jump straight from the first movie to this one, OR you could watch ‘The Paramount Years’ and then skip ‘Final Friday’ and ‘Jason X’ and just head straight into this thing with a minor bit of headcannon being that ‘Jason took the Loooooooooong way back to Crystal lake from Manhatten’ and It fits in pretty much fine.

The script isnt exactly breaking new ground, Its essentially a mishmash of the first 4 Friday movies but with looser censorship laws meaning the sex is more graphic and the kills more bloody and violent. Again; to me? given the last 2 films in this franchise couldnt have gotten further AWAY from what a ‘Friday the 13th’ movie is supposed to be all about, I absolutely understand why for this 2009 soft reboot of the franchise, they chose to play things a bit safer. In fairness, this is the first time Jasons been picking off teens in the woods since 1988. and things have kind of moved on a fair bit since ‘Part 7’

The scripts fine. I have no major issues with it really, its maybe a little bit slower on the pacing than i’d have really liked. but we have a clean 3 act structure that transitions well, there are a couple of nice twists here that help make things a bit more interesting and the characters actually do have a bit of personality about them beyond a surface level interpretation.

The tone emphises horror over dark comedy, but it isnt afraid to have a bit of a laugh if it suits the nature of the movie, which is nice. I think…really, my only main criticism is it’s overly safe and a bit generic. there are some scenes where things slow down a bit too much, if you’ve sat through the other 11 of these (like I have) you can pretty much tell from the get go who’s not going to make it to the 3rd act. and the deaths are (mostly) all plays on stuff we’ve seen before, only…because of a relaxation on censorship around violence, here; we get to see even gnarlier and more bloody after shots of bodies being hacked, burned alive and mangled.

In short, it reads like an F13 film, as written by a team who’ve been tasked with recentring the series after deviations into psychic battles, trips to Manhatten, mass MASS possession and futuristic cybernetic space upgrades. I feel it achieves that, and had it not been for the legal troubles the franchise encountered shortly after this films release, i’d have actually kind of been interested to see how they developed this on.

The direction is just above the studio standard, This was produced by Michael Bay…which kind of blew my mind. and you can see a bit of an influence of his style and tone present in this movie. The film is very styalized in line with similar remakes and more modern productions from the time (See, ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ (2006), ‘Halloween’ (2007), ‘The Strangers’ (2008) ) It looks the part, but it is very reliant on Blues and firelit oranges to give a faux sense of style, and while for this series, its a definite step up in quality. I cant say that it’s anything we hadnt already seen 3 dozen times before in previous years leading up to this. It doesnt break the mold, but; it does have some strong visuals when compared to its predecessors.

Direction of the cast is fairly solid too, clear communication seems to have been on the cards as the cast are animate, know their marks, are well blocked within the shot and get through their scenes cleanly with little in the way of issue. Again; its kind of expected on studio pic’s for that to be the case, but here I think it does go a little extra.

The cine is really quite solid as well, we have some really nicely composed shots, Jason is obscured for a large chunk of the movie, which im kind of on the fence about, on the one hand; it’s nice to have a little mystery thrown in there. But on the other hand, I do miss those nice lumbering shots the older films had of our guy making his way to the next kill.

Theres a solid use of colour throughout, though that over-reliance on blues and oranges does get a bit bothersome after a while, to it’s credit, this is one of the few 2000’s movies that DIDNT desaturate the everloving crap out of the picture, leaving it a sludgey uninteresting mess. Instead, it actually does have some nice contrasts going on, though it is of the era of crushed blacks and no vibrancy…so…be prepared for colour…but subdued colour.

Additionally; this film also has the same issue a lot of movies from this time have in the horror genre, in that a LOT of the shots are handheld, quick cut close ups and frantic B-roll usage. Its to try and create a sense of unease and confusion…In short a quick, cheap and nasty way to put the audience on alert. But I always personally found that style incredibly frustrating. I enjoy cinema for the worlds it builds, not to spend every other 10 minutes stuck in a 5 minute extreme closeup of some actress bawling her eyes out, while flickers of b-roll crash into the sequence from time to time. I find it very annoying.

Beyond that though, the edits fine enough, I kind fo wish the film was 10 minutes shorter as theres a lot of flab present here that could have been tightened up for a significant improvement. But Im willing to be a bit more forgiving of it given it isnt inoffensive…and again, we’ve just come from 2 of arguably the worst films in the series.

Performance wise, there isnt a single likeable character in this thing, everyones either aloof, an asshole, or some combination of the two. Mercifully non of them really cross the line into being utterly unlikeable. they’re all just varying shades of dislike. Which is something I can work with really.

Its nice to see the cast have a bit of nuance about them…well…the cast that matter at least. Its a mild spoiler, but basically the ones who get backstory? they’re the ones making it to the end. The ones who are just here to drink beer and be horny? yeahhhh…they aint hanging around for too long.

Beyond this the cast are bright, animated, seem to know what they’re doing and give solid performances for this franchise. I cant say they’re great OUTSIDE of this run of movies…but here at least? they’re one of the better lots to come up against Jason…Who might I add is MORE than back on form. here? he looks the part, acts the part, and has a wonderful menace to him that I really appreciated. With some rumblings that the franchise may be getting another movie in a couple years time, I for one really hope they bring Derek Mears back to the role. as, if what I saw here was a taster of what he’s capable of. I think he’d be great in a sequel.

The scores kind of mixed, its got a few jukebox tracks in here, its kind of missing the F13 stuff…but honestly? I didnt miss the original score style too much at all, and I think the new one, while very generic. was inoffensive.

All in all? colour me actually kind of impressed with this thing. while it does suffer from trappings of the era it was made in, and it IS overly safe and generic in places. I feel like the franchise really did need a recentring after the supernatural elements had begun to run rampent and the franchise had begun to come loose from its moorings.

Friday the 13th (2009) doesnt break new ground, but it does set the grounding for what could have been a really solid run of new movies to be built on top of it. Its kind of a shame that this one will probably be relegated to ‘just a one off’ as I think there really was rich soil here to mine.

Not an essential watch by any means, if you DO like the paramount years though (1-8) and were dissillusioned by the new line years up to this point, i’d maybe say check it out.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/friday-the-13th-2009/

After being somewhat nonplussed by Rob Zombies remake of ‘Halloween’ I decided to plough on and see where he’d take the series in it’s follow up. The biggest draw was that some of the characters who were killed in the original, actually survived in Zombies version, and I was curious to see if they’d been saved for a specific reason, or if this film was going to drastically deviate from the original…and…well…yeh…yeh it does.

This film picks up 1 year on from the events of the first film, Laurie is now living with Annie and her father and the pair of them are rawdogging their trauma and having seizure inducing dreams about Michael coming to kill them.

Dr. Loomis, who in the previous entry was a little bit slimey, but still ultimately had his heart in the right place, is here just a full blown shill, looking to make a buck off the fact that he survived the night 15 people got straight up murdered.

These two plots trundle along without any interaction between the two, until literally the last few minutes of the film. As Halloween approaches, the dreams begin to become more vivid, as it turns out Michael isnt *quite* as dead as the people of Haddonfield would believe. Only now…he seems to be driven by the ghost of his dead mother and a white horse?…and they introduce this concept via a flashback to young Michael in the asylum…but it doesnt fit in with any of the other continuity?…and…yeah…I got nothing this things just too much.

At its core the biggest issue with ‘Halloween 2’ is its total and utter faux pretentiousness. The script reads like a badly made piece of fanfiction.com related narcissim run rampent and when it isnt indulging it’s innermost emo-ridden cravings, it feels like Zombie got bored with making a Halloween movie and instead decided to just…direct several mini music videos and short films which are inserted haphazardly into the already painfully bloated script.

This film sees a reintroduction of a supernatural element (a concept thats teased in the original halloween, and heavily used to disasterous effect in ‘Halloween 5’ and ‘Halloween 6’) In my opinion Michael Myers doesnt need any kind of supernatural evil cult association or murdeorus instinct driven by the ghosts of his stripper parents. To me? Michael is at his scariest when there isnt a specific target…or rather, the target is whoever is in his way. The idea that every Halloween this ‘shape’ emerges and relentlessly kills indiscriminantly until he’s saciated and can dissapear for another year IS what makes Michael as a character so unique and interesting. The idea that the blind evil is inherent to him, its what drives him, is the thing that sells me on him as a character.

Here? he’s reduced to a Jason Vorhees clone, driven by his mothers wishes in a vague attempt to reunite the family in the afterlife. Everything else is just poorly maintained window dressing.

I suppose beyond that, the script faults are numerous. For a start; the films RIDDLED with padding, ABSOLUTLEY CHOCKED FULL OF IT. several scenes turn out to be dreams (the worst fake out a horror movie can do) a lot of it is idle chatter that doesnt add anything to the main plot, NON….NON. Of the characters are even REMOTELY likeable. And i’m not saying that you have to have a likeable protagonist for the film to be successful, a lot of great works have traded on an all downer cast. But here; on top of not being likeable, they’re also just really REALLY boring.

Laurie does NOTHING except have multiple seizures and scream for most of the movie. Dr. Loomis as a character was slightly off putting in the first, but here is almost completely irradeemable. Michael has almost no personality and his goals are messy and unclear, and the film spends the vast majority of its time following these three characters in totally seperate situations, doing basically NOTHING right up until the last 20 minutes or so of the runtime.

The tonal issues that were present in the first film are still present here. It cant commit to what type of film it wants to be and how much it wants to be a slasher, a thriller or a super dark comedy…and as a result it just kind of…flails about for most of the runtime.

The continuity is totally borked too, dont expect any kind of coherency here. Characters can be in totally different parts of the country and shift entire states in a couple of minutes (as illustrated by the 3rd act where Loomis sees a breaking news bulletin about Michael from a hotel room having just given a talk show interview (presumably in LA) and in the very next scene, hes stood in a corn field in Haddonfield. Michael teleporting about is a bit more understandable, but even so; here, it gets rediculous.

Thats not to mention the totally uneven 3 act structuring, where AGAIN we find ourselves idling in a second act thats twice as long as the 1st and 3rd…and the AUDACITY of this film to have TEN MINUTES of credits. Thats a trick usually reserved for SOV films wanting to hit 80 minutes so they could get distribution. NOT the kind of thing you expect to see in a mainstream horror film studio release that’s ALREADY pushing one hour and 45 minutes (which for the record is WAY too long for a ‘Halloween’ film that has almost nothing to say)

Oh…and having seen that the theatrical and the directors cuts both have totally different endings, I checked them both out for completists sake. The theatrical cut ending is poor, the directors cut ending is slightly worse. I like neither, they both end in awful and totally uninspiring ways.

My issues with the direction and cine are the same as the previous ‘Halloween’ only here its quite ampliphied. everything is now even more desaturated than the previous entry, with blues, greens and blacks being about as good as it gets on a stylized colour front, it’s so badly corrected that the blood looks black for most of the films runtime. Everything is low-lit to the point that if you watch this as a streaming copy (as I did) even in HD, it looks compressed and becomes near impossible to figure out what your actually supposed to be looking at for most of the runtime.

The compositional issues I had with the original (chronic use of close ups and extreme closeups) are here compounded by strobing style editing that ‘flicker’ cuts several shots in quick succession creating a dizzying and unpleasent experience.

Theres an overeliance on Zombies love for german expressionism and kitsch vintage halloween fodder throughout. Which for, what must be either 1995 or 1996 within this film universe is just…odd. I know that the 90s did have a bit of a 60s revival going on at the time, but if you believe Rob Zombies take on 90s culture, every TV was playing either Fleischer cartoons or 60s and early 70s pop 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. and this, combined with the aforementioned ‘music video esq’ dream sequences which…just feel like Zombies videos for his own music tracks. create a lumpy and tonally uneven experience I really want drawn to.

The edit is messy, has almost no breathing space, uses WAY too many shots compressed into a very narrow window of time. its an ugly movie, theres maybe 3 or 4 arrangements across the whole thing that could be considered ‘defining’ but that isnt necessarily a good thing…

Add into that that the performances continue their slow decline. Im convinced Sheri Moon Zombie is only in this film so that her SAG card could get renewed. She does NOTHING in this film other than stand next to a horse in a white dress. her scenes are incoherent to the main narrative, but to be honest. i’ve seen people try to argue and justify the significance of her role. I personally just see it as psudointellectualism at it’s most pompus.

Malcolm McDowell is easily the biggest waste of talent here, I genuinely believe that with a better character sheet, he could play a phenominal ‘Dr. Loomis’ but here? the characters an ass. he really brings that iteration of the character to life. But when you make someone so unlikeable AND make that character a main and pivitol role…well your asking for trouble.

Scout Taylor Compton, is once again wasted as Laurie. Only here, she has even less to do because…Whereas in the previous entry she at least had a bit of snark to fall back on. Here? she spends most of the movie either crying, flailing, having seizures or incoherently rambling about wanting to party. And thats about it. Shes very good at the physical side of this role…but her total lack of depth or range given to her hinders her wider performance.

And the soundtrack? is actually an improvement on the previous film, a gripe I had was that the scoring for ‘Halloween (2007)’ felt like it didnt include the original ‘Halloween’ scoring, until one of the producers told them they HAD to use it. resulting in a tonally weird experience where you’d get very 2000’s style jukebox scoring that would suddenly snap into LITERALLY the original 70s Halloween OST. it was quite a jarring experience.

With this entry, they’ve managed to all but remove that aspect. barring one or two key scenes, its a quite modern sounding score. it did help to tie things together a bit better. albeit given everything else thats going on in this film…that isnt much praise.

The difficulty I have really with ‘Halloween 2’ is that, had it not been a ‘Halloween’ movie…Had it just been a generic slasher with the killer, main characters and locations changed up. I think i’d have probably appreciated it a little bit more…

But as an ACTUAL ‘Halloween’ movie? its dreadful. It’s everything I hated about the ‘thorn trilogy’ dialled up to 11, but with the added kick to the nuts of all the characters being deeply unlikeable, the script having very little to say, the runtime being absolutely INSANE given what actually happens in the film, and the cine and direction being ugly to the point of near pain.

It makes me laugh really that they sincerely wanted to squeeze a third film out of this that would have released in 2015…the fact THIS movie got made is staggering to me. For the longest time, i’d cite ‘Halloween 5’ as being the worst film in the franchise. But I think by a VERY narrow margin thanks in part to the runtime. This film may have just pipped it to being the worst ‘Halloween’ film made to date.

When even a ‘Weird Al’ cameo cant save your movie…you KNOW things have gone VERY wrong.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/halloween-ii/

Im not sure if the mid 2000’s was really the right time to do a ‘Michael Myers’ origin story…letalone to let Rob Zombie be the one to try and depict such an event…But the results here in the 2007 quasi-remake of ‘Halloween’ were mixed at best and left me kind of frustrated.

The plot is a near identical retelling of the 70’s classic, only here it’s been modernised (whereas the original opened in the 60s and takes place in the late 70s, here this film opens in the late 70s (apparently) and…seemingly takes place in the early 90s…) for this edition nearly all of the subtlety, nuance and tone has been sucked out and replaced by ‘easter eggs’ and callbacks to the first film, alongside Zombies usual heavy gore and swearing…Oh, and an extra 30 minutes has been bolted onto the front of the film depicting Michaels angst ridden preteens as he struggles with heavy DA, bullies and his love for torturing rats and cats…

Being truely honest, I struggled on almost every level to really get into this thing, the script itself is really quite over long when it really didnt have to be. The opening segment with young Michael, at first I felt was a nice touch, but it doesnt really tie in with the film in any way past Michael escaping Haddonfield hospital. thus making it pretty pointless.

The bulk of the film that acts as a remake to the original doesnt really bring anything new to the field (other than a healthy dose of homophobic and ablist slurs) and apart from a couple of scenes being swapped around and some of the key plot points getting a slight rework (an example being, in the original Michael breaks into a hardwear store and steals some rope and his mask, in this film Michel hides his mask under the floorboards of his old family home…where it sits seemingly untouched or undegraded for over 15 years…alongside a butchers knife that equally is pretty much unrusted…which is just ludicrous.)

The film seemingly doesnt seem to ‘get’ the characters…or rather, here they’re boiled down to their most basic elements. and those basic elements are then amped up to 10. So for example, Lynda was a slightly ditzy, slightly horny teen in the original…but there were layers to her character. Here…shes just horny and sarcastic…and little else. Laurie is supposed to be a wallflower, bookish, but able to stand up for herself if she needs to…here shes just a snarky, slightly aggressive teen. Lumis goes from being a doctor who’s exhausted and frustrated, but ultimately working to protect the community and ensure that his patient is locked firmly away..dead or alive.

To here being presented as a shill, someone who’s feined an interest in Michael to ultimately cash in on his story, there are some elements of compassion present, but its hard not to feel like everything he’s doing here, he’s basically logging so that he can write a revised edition of his cheap and sleazy novel. Which was particularly depressing.

Other than that, the script is just kind of lame really, as I’ve mentioned, it’s basically just a re-run of the original ‘Halloween’ but with more grungy rock aesthetics thrown in and all the complexities and subtleties taken out. The pacing is way too slow broadly speaking for something like this (it overstays its welcome) while ALSO asking the audience to make huge mental leaps to cover the gaps it cant be bothered to cover in the plot.

The tones kind of all over the place, it feels like a Zombie flick in places, with heavy gore being married up to border campy, heavy swearing, trailer trash black comedy. But then there are gulfs where it’s just retreading the old movie, where it feels like Zombie, the writers or the producers have made it clear those scenes are sacro-sanct and cant be analyzed or changed in any way from how they were in the original.

I didnt much care for the direction here, Zombies style seems to have been smothered to some degree, whether it was studio intervention or otherwise. Given his previous on ‘House of 1000 corpses’ and ‘The Devils Rejects’ I was expecting a colourful, gritty, grindhouse style reimagining of the original. But instead, this things drowned in that awful mid 2000’s trope of blue tinted largely desaturated footage thats handheld, shakey and a mixture of CONSTANT closeups and extreme closeups that arnt particularly focussed on anything, combined with overuse of B-roll and cutaways that make for a totally incoherent watch in places.

It really works against this film, because; while I cant say the various production elements havent worked together well, the end product they’ve produced is just plain ugly; and very out of spirit with what these kinds of movies really run on. They trade on suspense, subtlety and a slow boil thriller to help really upsell the slasher elements better.

Here? the style would have been better suited to some of the more mindless ‘hack and slash’ fodder of franchises like ‘Friday the 13th’ or ‘The Hills have eyes’ remake. it doesnt feel like a ‘Halloween’ film at any point here.

The cine is problematic, as mentioned composition is kind of lacking, theres no real main focal point for a lot of shots and seemingly the films coasting on nudity and gory kills to help keep people invested. Theres nothing striking about this film, nothing that really helps it stand out against the other turgid sea of entries that were made around this time. It’s just a fairly generic, fairly washed out grubby little horror movie.

The edits manic and lacks focus as well, a lot of the film feels like they just dropped whatever footage they had down on the timeline to get things up to a near 2 hour runtime, and the chronic issues of incredibly slow scenes with breakneck cuts, just left me feeling tired by the end.

Equally; I have to say that…this thing is nearly 2 hours long. NO ‘Halloween’ movie should be nearly 2 hours long. And its a serious fault on the film makers that to have allowed that to happen.

The performances are mixed too. Malcolm McDowell I feel gives a solid performance as Lumis. He’s animated, bright and has a good mix of tone. It’s just a shame that the CHARACTER of Lumis here is so one note and against what the original really worked as. I feel had McDowell had the chance to play OG Lumis, this could have been a very different feature.

Scout Taylor Compton as Laurie again has similar issues to McDowell, had she been allowed to play the role with a bit more of a muted and subtle edge to it I feel she really could have brought her own energy to the character, as it stands the way her character is written here, she could have been the ‘final girl’ in almost ANY low budget horror production from 2002-2009…meaning that she’s at best; annoying for most of the runtime, and at worst; forgettable.

The rest of the cast are really quite one note, dont really bring anything to the production, are very muted; dont really get to use their space much and generally are introduced just to be killed off within 10 minutes…it’s depressing to sit through honestly…especially given the calibre of some of the casting choices here (Danny Trejo, Ken Foree, Udo Kier). And I still find it hilarious that Rob casts his wife in every film he makes…whether she fits the bill or not….here? she doesn not.

As a closing note, the soundtracks awkward and inconsistent; some of the movie is a bit of a Jukebox picture with ‘Dont fear the reaper’ getting multiple outings (hey! remember how it was playing on the radio in the original? Well; its gonna play at least 3 times here!) alongside modern (90s) tracklistings that dont really add anything to the production and…for some bizarre reason, the original Halloween soundtrack cues…unaltered. Which…given Rob Zombie is a musician, and given that this film is a gritty 2000’s remake of the original. Im BEYOND surprised he didnt ‘grime’ up the original audio cues…maybe add a heavier; rockier edge to them or something…as it stands it just feels like a swill bucket of available tracks and attempts to please the fans.

All in all? While there are elements I liked with this one, there really wasnt enough to win me over. the scripting is overly pandering, overly long and kind of boring, the characters have been dumbed down to the point where I dont care if they live or die, the camera work is messy, the whole thing looks dull and lifeless and its tied together with lacklustre casting and a questionable tracklisting.

I didnt really care much for ‘Halloween (2007)’ Its not the worst, and i’d say its maybe worth checking out at least once as an oddity…But its not one i’ll be hurrying back to, and it isnt one I can really recommend…

Oh yeah…and the best line in this thing? is ‘IM JOE GRIZZLY, BITCH!’…me and my partner laughed our asses off at that for a good 2 minutes solid…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/halloween/

A Clint Howard special here make no mistake, ‘Evilspeak’ is a solid Video Nasty that I didn’t really like the first time I saw it, but really quite enjoyed this time around.

The plot, a military school student (and orphan) Stanley Coopersmith is hated by almost everyone at the academy from the students to the teachers. He’s at an all time low, when he discovers a hidden room in the basement of the Catholic Church based inside the academy that houses a large number of satanic texts scribed in Latin.

Stanley translates one of the books and discovers that he can have immense power if he performs a black mass. As Stanley begins to explore satanism and its power, his bullying on all fronts grows and grows, until he finally snaps, with terrifying results.

The script isn’t the sharpest in the world, I felt it was a little too slowboil and the demonic element of the film is heavily underplayed. Which is a shame, but contrasting that the characters are complex and well written, with solid dialogue, the tone is near perfect for this and its ultimately a quite satisfying film, even if its a bit slower than I would have liked.

The directions pretty solid, it’s a Warner production, so it’s of quality, I don’t feel it quite exceeds *the standard* though.

The cine is a little bland on the colour front, but is creative and has some pretty solid sequence building. There are some ropey effects though that do downgrade things somewhat.

Performances are great, they’re no believable at all, but Clint Howard’s good fun and overall I enjoyed what I saw.

And the scores solid.

Its a bit slower than I’d have liked, a bit dry on the cine and he performances are a bit of a mixed ability room. But overall I thought Evilspeak was one of the better Nasties of the time. Easily in the upper half quality wise. And it’s one that, while I didn’t out and out love it. I could recommend it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/evilspeak/

And so, we arrive at the final FINAL chapter in the original ‘Friday the 13th’ series. ‘Jason X’ an entry that is to the ‘Friday the 13th’ franchise, what ‘Halloween Ressurection’ is to the ‘Halloween’ franchise.

The plot? Its a non descript point in the near present, logically this takes place after ‘Freddy Vs Jason’ that would mean these events were happening in 2004. But this came out before FvJ and the last time we saw Jason was in 1993 (or 1995 ‘in film’ timelines) being dragged to hell by Freddy. So god knows when this is happening. A five year window between 2000 and 2005.

Jasons been captured after killing over 200 victims. he’s restrained in a military facility awaiting cryogenic freezing. The idea being that, due to his (seeminlgy new found) ability to regenerate his cells. he’s basically unkillable, and as the military cant find a way currently to finish him off, they’re just gonna pop him in the freezer till they CAN find a way to kill him in the future.

However, a rogue faction of the army has other ideas and want to try and weaponize Jason, so they bust him out. Theres a fight and both him and a female agent end up locked into a cryo tank and frozen. They’re found several hundreds of years into the future, by an expedition exploring a now totally ravaged planet earth. they’re bought onto their spaceship, thawed out and almost immediately Jason starts murdering again.

With the ship returning to ‘Earth2’, it becomes a race against time to stop Jason, before theres noone left to return home. Oh! and in the last 25 minutes he gets ‘upgraded’ into a solid metal demon murderer (If the poster didnt spoil that enough).

I really dont know how to feel about this one honestly, while im glad they’ve put the whole ‘supernatural’ aspect of the series on ice as things were getting a bit silly. There isnt really a whole lot going on here and some of the decisions that have been made havent aged all that well.

For a starters, this films tone is now way more in line with a campy horror comedy than a horror film with light comedy elements (as has been the case since ‘Part 6’) Where it works, its actually quite good fun. But the humour in this thing is incredibly cringy at times and it never quite seems to really settle on how far to go into the comedy aspects. A silly recreation of the sleeping bag kill from part 7 is fun. a weird psudosexual skit about magnetic nipples…less so.

Its absolutely a product of it’s time. Painfully early 2000’s in fashion, style and tone. I can appreciate that, but it makes the future scenes feel very dated at this point and where this thing creaks…it cant be unseen.

The script itself is actually kind of drab, barring a few funny cameos and a handful of jokey moments, this is really quite a flat script, the characters all feel mismatched given they’re supposed to be a professional expedition. The ship offered a great opportunity for some close quaters, suspensful thriller elements to help tie this slasher back to it’s origins of parts 1-3. But it’s all by the numbers. Jason wanders around the ship, slowly picking people off with little in the way of interesting kills or dialogue to help break the flow (with the obvious exception being the ‘deep freeze’ kill near the beginning.

I think my biggest problem with this is, just as it seems to be working up some steam to really get the thing going. It ends. Not a lot of interest really happens until we’re past the hour mark and the films act structuring is really uneven. With an opening act that lasts about 10 minutes, that gives way to a 2nd act that runs right up to the 70-80 minute mark and just idles into repetative and not particularly interesting kills. the third act DOES change things up a bit, but it mainly just gets incredibly dumb (in the best possible way I should add) leading to an ending thats kind of shrugworthy (I should also say, this film possibly has the worst ‘end credits’ for a horror film i’ve ever seen. No style, just ‘times new roman’ in white, on black with a overly quiet rock track. DULL.

The characters arnt that interesting, dont get developed very much and dont feel like they really exist in this space, and barring the comedy (my personal favourite being ‘Hocky was outlawed in 2024…’ I look forward to next year…) there just isnt a lot here.

The direction is PAINFULLY 2000’s in all the worst excesses. Im kind of glad we’ve moved on from this feeling like a generic ‘Made for TV movie’ as was the case with ‘Jason goes to hell’, but in it’s place we now have a film that feels like a ‘Sci-fi channel movie’. with really cheap and nasty looking CG effects, tiny poorly dressed sets, everything having a cheap plasticky looking feel to it and the ‘styalization’ basically just being ‘tint it blue…nice.’

I mean, the cast and crew do seem to work well together and whats delivered is absolutely of a ‘passable’ quality. But I just feel like so much more could have been done to really help give this thing polish.

On the cine front, decently composed shots are often hindered by the colour correction or CG, but theres some really cool ideas present here and the sequences are well edited, well structured and tell the story cleanly…well…up until the 3rd act where it feels like large chunks of the movie have gone missing (an example being the scene where Jason is ‘upgraded’, they show a shot of the computers running the upgrade ‘erroring’ and saying it needs to find ‘supplamentary materials’ to do the upgrade, the next scene; without explanation, Jasons got metal armour and is up and running with no issue…its odd.)

It has atmosphere, but the overreliance on digital effects has caused this film a lot of issues…Also; I have to say that ‘normal’ Jason in this film, is absolutely one of the worst looking designs of the entire franchise. It looks like a dollar store approximation of an ‘official’ Jason costume…and had it not been for ‘Exploded sausage’ Jason from ‘Jason goes to hell’ it would in fact be THE worst look that Jasons had in the series to date. ‘Uber Jason’ looks pretty cool though.

The performances are kind of middle of the road, not the worst the franchise has seen, but far from the best. I feel they lack a level of depth that really would have helped me get on with them better. And by the time Jasons up and running, i’ve already kind of gone off the main cast, which means I was less invested when they started to get picked off. They do okay, they have a good level of physicality, they use props and set space very well…I just feel like they didnt bring the A-game to this one.

And the scorings awful. It sounds like an ‘Asylum’ films take on star trek. dire.

I think, at the time, had the team behind this film realised that it would be the last ‘Proper’ Friday the 13th film in the original series…and the last Friday film till the 2009 reboot, they’d have maybe done things a little bit differently. As it stands ‘Jason X’ is a film that showcases some of the worst excesses of 2000’s studio film making, and while I will admit It absolutely has entertaining moments. I dont think this would be one i’d immediately grab if I wanted to catch a ‘Friday’ movie.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/jason-x/