Why in the world did we need another entry in the exhausted “Halloween” franchise? The studio can give you 253 million reasons.
That was the box office tally of the newest Michael Myers slasher flick, and the first one to feature Jamie Lee Curtis since “Halloween: Resurrection” 17 years ago. It completely retcons the series, banishing all the movies since the second one from its memory -- the sequels, the reboots, the remakes -- and taking us back to square of the smart, tenacious girl and the masked psycho who wants to slash her to bits.
Except, of course, both Laurie Strode (Curtis) and Myers aka The Shape (played this time by Nick Castle) are both grandparent age by now. Indeed, Myers spends more time chasing Strode’s granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak) than Laurie, who has become a pistol-packin’ grandma and recluse who seems to have done little over the past 40 years but wait for Myers to get out of prison.
Supporting characters include Will Patton as a veteran cop in Haddonfield, the fictional city where all the mayhem takes place; Judy Greer as Laurie’s estranged daughter; and Haluk Bilginer as Dr. Sartain, the oddball psychiatrist who’s been treating Myers without much success, just as Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis did.
The new “Halloween” has a creative team from a comedy background: director David Gordon Green and his fellow screenwriters, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley. It’s not a total yuk-fest, but they do slip in some comedic moments to lighten the mood.
Me? I likes my scary movies pure scary.
Bonus features are decent. They include seven deleted or extended scenes and the following documentary shorts:
“Halloween” is a decently energetic horror flickershow. But it doesn’t pass the basic litmus test of, “Does this movie need to exist?”
As you know, this film reunites Jamie Lee Curtis, in her most seminal role as Laurie Strode, with Michael Myers, with white-masked, silent killer who tried unsuccessfully to off her in the original movie of the same title from 40 years ago. It’s essentially a reunion.
But then, they already held this party in 1998 for “Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later.” She managed to whack off Michael’s head with an axe in that one, Lizzie Borden-style. Undeterred, he reappeared a few years later for “Halloween: Resurrection,” and returned the favor by killing Laurie.
And this doesn’t even take into account the Rob Zombie reboot and its own sequel a few years back, or the various Laurie-less sequels of the 1980s and ‘90s. “Halloween III” didn’t even bother with featuring Michael or Laurie, making television the villain, or something.
The point is, it’s impossible to take this franchise seriously any longer. It’s been rebooted and remade and retconned to hell and back again. There is no sense of consequences because anybody who dies can just be brought back for the next iteration by the next round of filmmakers. Rinse and repeat.
This 40th anniversary reunion is part homage to the original and part new story jag. It requires us to ignore all the previous Halloween movies since the second one. It even asks us to forget that Laurie and Michael are supposed to be brother and sister -- a key piece of the franchise’s iconography for five decades.
In this telling, Michael Myers has been rotting in a mental institution for the past 40 years, never speaking a word to anyone. Meanwhile, Laurie seems to have done little in the years between other than arming herself and preparing for the eventual day he would come after her again.
There’s another creepy, vaguely European doctor trying to puzzle his way into Michael’s brain, Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer). Laurie takes on look at him and cuts to the chase: “You’re the new Loomis,” she says, referring to Donald Pleasance’s psychiatrist, whose obsession turned from curing Michael to ending him. I think Pleasance has actually been in more Halloween movies than Curtis.
Judy Greer plays Laurie’s estranged adult daughter, who was raised under the threat of Michael’s return, and has her own teen daughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak). She goes off to a Halloween party with her friends, and soon finds herself stalked by her grandmother’s not-brother.
Will Patton turns up as Frank Hawkins, a veteran cop in the fictional town of Haddonfield, who reputedly was the first one on the scene for the 1978 murders. He putters around here and there, discovering the bodies Michael leaves in his wake, killing time until his own inevitable offing.
Nowhere in the movie is it ever mentioned that Michael would have to be close to 70 years old now. You’d think at some point even maniacal serial killers would segue from slicing horny teenagers to Metamucil and a nice day in the park.
Directed by David Gordon Green, who comes from a comedy background and co-wrote the screenplay with funnyman Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, “Halloween” contains a smattering of funny moments, such as two police officers comparing their lunches while sitting in their patrol car waiting to be stabbed.
How very different the horror genre has gotten in the last 40 years. I don’t think the original “Halloween” would’ve become anything like the iconic film it is with this sort of verbal diarrhea and passing attempts at levity.
John Carpenter knew that when you’re trying to scare people, concentrate on the scaring.
It's easier to see now, with a quarter-century of perspective, what "The Last Starfighter" was: A cheaply-made sci-fi flick looking to cash in on the popularity of the "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" franchises, which were in high gear when it came out in 1984.
But I admit I have a lot of affection for this film from loving it as a kid. And after checking out a new 25th anniversary DVD edition, I can say that my ardor was not misplaced.
Yes, there's no denying that the spaceships and other special effects look positively crude compared with what we have today -- or even with films of its own era. The Gunstar never looks like more than a bit of animation spliced in between some live scenes shot in the cockpit.
But "Starfighter" was the first serious attempt to use wholly computer-generated scenes in a feature film, and for no other reason than that it deserves a place in cinematic history.
And there are other reasons as well. Although we have had a slew of movies adapted from video games -- nearly all of them awful -- "Starfighter" is one of the very few movies that is about video games, or at least uses them as a major plot point. Off the top of my head, I can't think of another one.
Alex Rogen (Lance Guest) is an average American teen living in a mobile home park somewhere in the mountains. He's a prototypical example of the hero myth: A young man searching for a purpose in life. Alex doesn't really know what he wants, other than to get out of the dead end of the Starlite Starbrite trailer park.
In the meantime, he plays video games. Specifically, the Starfighter machine that recruits players to fight for Rylos and defend the Frontier against Xur and the Kodan armada. The game's screen shots look pretty convincing for arcade games of that period, although the controls are a bit more complex than the usual joystick and two buttons one saw an awful lot of.
One night Alex breaks the game record, which prompts a hilariously unlikely outpouring of trailer home denizens who emerge in their nightgowns and PJs to cheer on Alex and congratulate his victory. Having broken a few arcade records myself, I can assure you that the only reaction this gets from adults is a derisive snort about how much money you spent.
(Seriously, no joking, I got so good at the original "Spyhunter" that I could play for more than an hour on a single quarter. It usually ended up that I just quit the game out of boredom rather than play it to conclusion.)
Anyway, lo and behold, it turns out the game is not just a game, but a recruiting test for Rylos, which really is facing a threat from the evil Xur and his Kodan allies. The game was developed by the intergalactic huckster Centauri (Robert Preston, in his final film role), who shows up himself to transport Alex to Rylos.
The plot jumps back and forth between Rylos, where Alex is dubious about the notion of becoming a Starfighter, and life back at the Starlite. A robot called a Beta has been put in Alex's place, complete with a spot-on disguise, to keep people believing he's carrying on as normal. The Beta has a few problems interacting with Maggie (the achingly cute Catherine Mary Stewart, in full '80s hair tease), who wants to go camping up at Silver Lake and get naughty underneath the bedrolls.
Alex's space mentor is Grig (Dan O'Herlihy), a reptilian alien and navigator. When all the other Starfighters are killed in a sneak attack, Alex and Grig must tackle the Kodan fleet alone.
The smooth, unblemished surfaces of the Gunstar and other ships look too artificial to be convincing -- just like a video game, in fact. But over time you stop looking at the images and concentrate on the space action, which is pretty thrilling.
According to Imdb.com, "Last Starfighter" director Nick Castle and screenwriter Jonathan Betuel are working on a sequel due out in 2010. They've got me as an eager recruit.
