6 Weeks of Halloween

Time flies when you’re terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought. Yes, the Six Weeks of Halloween is just about over, with just that most hallowed of e’en coming up tomorrow. In accordance with tradition, this is when we engage in a Speed Round of brief thoughts on films I watched during the marathon, but haven’t otherwise covered. Usually because it didn’t fit with a weekly theme. Or maybe I just didn’t have much to say about it. Or I had too much to say about it, but the moment and/or inspiration has passed. Or it’s a rewatch of an all time classic (or, uh, a non-classic) and you don’t need anyone, let alone me, telling you more about it.

As of this writing, I’ve seen 54 horror (or horror-adjacent) movies during this Halloween season. This is basically comparable with last year, which was way down from the pandemic-fueled record of 71 movies. Nature is healing, etc… It’s nice to get back to pre-pandemic levels of socialization interrupting movie watching plans, not to mention the sudden emergence of Philadelphia sports excellence. Sports!

Um, anyways, we still have lots of things to cover in this here Speed Round, and we’ll wrap things up next Sunday with a Halloween Reading Roundup (it’s not all movies during the 6WH, after all). Anywho, let’s get to this speed round:

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Speed Round

Invaders from Mars (1953) – Another classic 50s Sci-Fi flick infused with Cold War paranoia, very entertaining with some memorable visuals. Not the best version of this sort of thing, but really quite solid and it’s another classic I inexplicably hadn’t caught up with until now. ***

The Spine of Night – Heavy Metal-esque adult animation that indulges in more than a little bit of the old ultraviolence. An ode to Ralph Bakshi and other rotoscope animators who made cartoons for adults. The brutal violence and cartoon dicks get old after a while, but it’s an interesting movie for sure. **1/2

Plan 9 from Outer Space – Infamously one of the worst movies of all time, it doesn’t quite live up to that label. There are far worse films out there, and there’s something delightfully odd about this, such that it’s not a surprise that it’s gained a cult following. I mean, it’s not exactly good and sorta defies a normal rating, but it has its moments. ???

Practical Magic – Young Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as cursed witches, sits comfortably in that weirdly unique 90s silliness that inflects a lot of movies of that era. It’s lightweight but somehow more than it seems. **1/2

The Shining – Kubrick’s classic still holds up and looks better than ever in the new(ish) 4K transfer. This isn’t a movie for everyone, but something about Kubrick always gets under my skin, and this movie has so many unsettling images and ideas.

There’s something to be said about adaptations that veer far from the source material, but this is a case where it’s all for the best. ***1/2

Invaders from Mars (1986) – Tobe Hooper’s remake of the 50s classic isn’t quite as successful as the other 80s remakes of 50s classics (like The Thing and The Fly) and I think the original is better, but this updates some things well enough, while almost leaving too much of the original in tact (and thus feeling a bit out of place in the 1980s). **1/2

The Addams Family 2 – It’s hard to believe that the mediocre animated Addams Family movie garnered a sequel, but here we are, a sequel that’s equally mediocre. That said, I kinda have a soft spot for The Addams Family as a general concept and enjoy spending time with them. Not great or anything, but it’s nice to mix in some lighter fare during the 6WH, which can get a bit morose after a while. **

Candyman (2021) – Gorgeous and well appointed sequel/reboot/whatever that suffers from modern horror’s tendency towards messy grasping for relevance and a desperate need to be didactic about Something Important. Still, there’s a solid throughline and some of the ideas they threw against the wall stuck, such that this remains a solid bite of genre fare with lots to chew on. **1/2

The Entity – The infamous ghost rape movie, it’s interesting how seriously they take the premise, such that it doesn’t feel as exploitative as it could have been. Indeed, this is a 1982 movie steeped in the experience of survivors, and this should work well given current Horror fans’ obsession with trauma. It’s repetitive, far too long (over 2 hours), repetitive, and devolves into weird histrionics later in the film, but it’s all firmly grounded and on point. **1/2

The Silence of the Lambs – An annual rewatch at this point, I’ve already said my piece on this, but it remains a classic standby. The newish 4K release is only a minor improvement over the Criterion release, but it still looks great. ****

Blood Red Sky – Interesting little slice of German vampire schlock highlighted as a Netflix programmer a while back (and similarly languishes in their archives, mostly undiscussed). There’s a fun premise here that is somewhat subverted by trying to be dark and more realistic. Fine for what it does, but it could have been more of a fun romp (but this is complaining about the movie I wanted it to be, not the movie it’s trying to be). **1/2

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions – More of the same, all in good fun. It looks good and has decent little puzzles strewn throughout, and the overarching conspiracy grows more and more ludicrous, but in a fun way. This should spawn a long-running series, and despite my distaste for sequels, this is exactly the kind of thing that begs for a franchise, and I’ll totally watch at least a couple more of these (which are presumably coming soon). **1/2

No Exit – Low-budget, snowy locked room mystery with Hitchcockian vibes that morphs into full-on, mean-spirited violence and gore in the third act. It’s a little overheated, derivative, and predictable at times, but they put this premise through its paces and execute well. Underseen 2022 release worth a look. ***

Hellraiser (2022) – It’s the best Hellraiser movie since Bloodline! Alas, that’s not saying much. It’s far too long, festooned with overly dark cinematography, and not nearly horny enough for a true Barker-like experience. Overstuffed with modern horror tropes (why is there a whole addiction subplot here?), it also takes some liberties with the mythology (not necessarily bad, given how far they’ve strayed). It does have some bright spots though! The new cenobites are great (er, when you can see them), and the Epstein stand-in villain was a nice touch. In the end, it feels a little safe, but perhaps that’s what the series needed. It does seem like there’s more Hellraiser stories to tell, so maybe we’ll get some more interesting stuff in later installments. **1/2

Se7en – David Fincher’s slice of 90s serial killer mayhem holds up really well. Everything still fits and the clever conceits work well. One thing that struck me in watching this (especially in close proximity to the new Hellraiser) – darkness in the cinematography here looks so, so much better than the modern digital dull mess that so many more modern movie (and shows) engage in. The darkness is actually used well here, but you can still see things you need to see. Imagine that! ***1/2

Werewolf by Night – Marvel tries to evoke classic Universal monster tropes in this short, 55 minute thriller, to middling success. It comports itself well enough and was a nice, fun, short watch. You’d think that Monster Hunters would have better succession planning though. **1/2

Hell House LLC – Rock solid found-footage movie that doesn’t quite crack the top tier, but is certainly top of the middle tier of the sub-genre. Interesting setup, and just enough reliance on interviews and news footage, etc… It does suffer from the usual found-footage problems, but not excessively so. Well worth a watch. ***

My Best Friend’s Exorcism – A bit of a tonal mess, this does smack of an adaptation that can’t quite encapsulate everything that’s going on in the book (which I have not read, to be sure, but it feels like there has to be a lot more here). That said, once it gets established, it comports itself well enough and some of the bits work pretty well. The comedic elements aren’t particularly well incorporated and undercut the scary stuff, but on the other hand, I did chuckle a few times. Perfectly cromulent, but not going to blow you away. **1/2

Prophecy – Prophecy’s screaming bear walked so that Annihilation’s screaming bear could run. This was one of those VHS covers I always saw at the video store, but never really pulled the trigger on… John Frankenheimer tries his best to keep things grounded and focus on the environmental politics and other 70s values, but it’s all injected into a pulpy monster bear narrative that’s kinda silly. Glad I finally watched it and it has lots of interesting elements, but is a bit too muddled to be fully successful. **1/2

Bird Box – Another Netflix programmer that suffers from its very nature. Derivative in the extreme (clearly generated by an algorithm – it’s The Happening meets A Quiet Place!), overlong, it was a popular hit for about a week, and has summarily disappeared from the cultural consciousness since then. That being said, it’s elevated a bit by performances from stars like Sandra Bullock and John Malkovitch, and there are a couple of interesting ideas floating in the mush. **

Elvira’s Haunted Hills – Part of Joe Bob’s Haunted Halloween Hangout, it’s always fun to hang out with Elvira. The movie is nothing particularly special, but it has some fun stuff going for it, I guess. Worth it if you enjoy Elvira’s schtick. **1/2

Christine – The bullied nerd breaks bad theme of Halloween Ends made me want to watch this movie, which does it better, in my opinion. I think it’s one of Carpenter’s more underrated efforts. Some real classic moments here. ***

The Black Phone – This feels a bit like a YA pulp short story padded out to feature length. A bit too much of the alcoholic father and bullies and some other superfluous plot points, and not enough of Ethan Hawke’s suburban boogieman (the movie does get a lot of mileage out of Hawke’s admittedly great mask, but there was clearly more there). The supernatural gimmick works well enough, once it gets going. Remember talking on the phone? Scaaary! **1/2

Footprints on the Moon – Strange slice of Giallo involving a woman who wakes up not remembering her last three days. As she tries to solve that mystery, she has flashbacks to a weird movie within a movie about astronauts being stranded on the moon. Some interesting stuff and gorgeous to look at, but a little too slow and doesn’t quite earn it in the admittedly neat (but nonsensical) ending. **

Frankenstein (1931) – Still a classic, what struck me most this time around is that it’s only 70 minutes long (and 2-3 minutes are spent on stuff like showing the credits twice and having someone introduce the film and inform the audience that what you’re about to see will be shocking!), meaning that this is about the length of a lot of prestige TV episodes these days. ****

The Invisible Man (1933) – Part of the first Universal Monsters 4K boxed set I bought last year, but never got around to rewatching. It’s grown on me upon repeat viewings, and the new 4K transfer looks great too. ***

Popcorn – The other half of Joe Bob’s Haunted Halloween Hangout, this is one of those meta exercises where a group of film students puts on a horror-movie-thon of old movies featuring William Castle-like gimicks like schocked seats in the theater and a big remote-controlled mosquito. The fake 50s horror flicks you get glimpses of were all created for this movie, and they are fantastic. The reference to an old art film with a tragic history is interesting, but after a while it does feel like there’s a lot of stuff being crammed into this movie. Still, I had a lot of fun with it. **1/2

The Bride of Frankenstein – One of the better sequels of all time, but I still prefer the original. New 4K boxed set of Universal Monsters dropped a while back and I never noticed until too late in this marathon, but this one looks great, and I’m sure I’ll get to the others soon enough. ***1/2

The Midnight Club – Mike Flanagan continues to produce interesting stuff for Netflix, but man, it’s like he heard all the complaints about monologues in Midnight Mass and was like, I hear you, but what if there were more monologues? I’m only a couple episodes in, but it’s interesting enough so far, even if it still feels like it might be better as one 2-3 hour movie rather than a 10 episode series (but then, maybe I haven’t seen enough).

Tales From the Crypt (Season 2) – I’ve basically given up on these showing up on HBO Max (apparently it’s hampered by a hideous tangle of rights issues), so I went ahead and grabbed the DVDs. I really appreciate the short, 30 minutes or less, episodes, especially given more modern tendencies towards excess. I still haven’t finished the entire season, but I’ll be making my way through them in future 6WH for sure.

And still plenty left to watch. I have Scream Factory’s new-ish 4K transfer of Halloween (curious to see how it compares to the previous 4K release) and I really wanted to try out Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities as well.

It’s been a grand ol time these past six weeks, and of course, we still have next week’s recap of season’s readings to come, so stay tuned.

After well over a decade of the Six Weeks of Halloween, it’s easy to slide into niche, obscure sub-genres and forgotten foreign flicks, but there are honestly some bona-fide classics or at least famous (or infamous) franchise-spawning films that I inexplicably haven’t seen. Week 5’s Killer Kids theme was actually already a pretty good example of catching up with famous films I’d never seen before (well, two of them were.) Obviously, what constitutes a “classic” is a fraught topic, but on tap today are two flicks that I figure to be pretty mainstream successes, such that I’m actually familiar with a lot of details, just through cultural osmosis.

It’s also worth noting that I grew up in the cable television/VHS era, and I have definitely seen bits and pieces of these movies, but never watched them all the way through. Revisiting those movies is always interesting, because sometimes I’ve watched much more of the movie than I thought… but sometimes I realize I haven’t really seen it at all.

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 6.5 – Inexplicably Haven’t Seen These Movies

• A Perfect Murder (trailer)
• The Silence of the Lambs (trailer)
• Wes Anderson Horror Film (SNL)

Fatal Attraction – A married man has a one-night stand and the affair comes back to haunt him as his new lover begins to stalk him and his family. It goes further than you might expect.

I’m sure there’ve been lots of revisionist readings of this as problematic or something, but that’s not a rabbit hole I want to go down right now. It’s a reasonably well constructed thriller, with a flawed man making a mistake that spirals further and further out of control. Each step escalates the stakes and indicates how fraught the situation is while also still remaining somewhat logical in structure, which is harder to do than it might seem. By the end, we’ve gotten to rather disturbing territory, but the progression was well established and grounded, so it doesn’t feel too improbable.

Michael Douglas does a good smarmy protagonist who should have just kept it in his pants here. It’s the sort of role that he’s played many times in his career, and for good reason: he’s really good at this sort of thing. It’s not an especially flattering specialty (and obviously it’s not the only type of role he has played), but I respect that he leaned into what he’s good at. The character is clearly flawed and the movie plays with sympathies a bit, but it’s obviously coming down on his side by the end (to my mind, once you start jeopardizing the wife and kid and pet, the proportion of wrongdoing/consequences has shifted a little too far).

This is a well made, mainstream Hollywood production, with all the slickness and competence behind the scenes that makes a the story and impacts seem effortless. Adrian Lyne has made a career out of restrained and yet somehow overheated premises like this, and the filmmaking is not flashy but still very effective. Great performances from Douglas and Glenn Close as leads, but a really solid supporting cast in Anne Archer and character actors like Stuart Pankin.

I already knew some of the more shocking moments of the film, but they’re still effective when watched in context, and while this movie isn’t exactly “enjoyable”, it’s effective and well made. ***

• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror: Bad Dream House (Disney+)
• Shining (Fake Trailer)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror V: The Shinning (Disney+)

The Amityville Horror – The Lutz family moves into their dream home, which they were able to buy on the cheap because the previous owner murdered his entire family in that house. As they get settled, it seems that it’s less of a dream home… and more of a nightmare home!

This is a movie that has spawned almost a dozen sequels, spinoffs, reboots, whatever, not to mention setting a template that countless imitators have used over the intervening decades. Which is kinda funny, because the movie is a bit of a mess. Lots of individual components are well done, to be sure, and there are memorable and oft-imitated elements, but this is one of those less than the sum of its parts movies. There’s a distinct lack of cohesion that becomes especially pronounced in the ending. Look, I don’t need everything wrapped up in a tidy little bow and it’s fine for some ambiguity to be present, but the end here feels suspiciously indifferent.

Once again, this is a reasonably well crafted, mainsteam Hollywood production. The overheated, sweaty nature of the proceedings isn’t really counterbalanced by anything though, which makes things a little less plausible. Of course, this is a haunted house movie – not everything needs to be plausible, and as previously mentioned, a lot of individual scenes work well on their own. A priest comes to bless the house and is struck with nausea. He hears a mysterious voice ordering him to “Get Out!” of the house. When he fights with his superiors over what should be done, even more ills fall upon him. Weirdly, this subplot never really connects with the main plot (which is part of the point – the house is asserting its will, in a way, I guess), which is a good indication of how things don’t really add up in this movie.

There are several other effective elements here. A little girl has an imaginary friend named Jody… but Jody might be a ghost… or worse? A babysitter gets trapped in a closet. James Brolin plays the step-father and he’s almost immediately worn down by the house. The way his appearance unravels throughout the film is well done (the Grinch-like reversal at the end is yet another example of things not quite adding up). Bees and flies swarm rooms at odd times, the walls bleed, there’s a strange draft in the basement that leads to the discovery of a hidden room. The house itself looks like a face, with big windows for eyes, and so on… Each piece is put on the chess table, but it doesn’t feel like they’re playing the game very well.

Infamously presented as “Based on a True Story”, much of it has since been revealed as a hoax. There really was a Lutz family who moved into a murder house and left suddenly, but most everything else is just exaggerated and overblown. But that’s not a big deal in my boat. I’d rather have bleeding walls and hallucinations rather than the truth here – this isn’t a documentary and from what I can tell, the reality of what went on in the house was rather boring. Still, it would have been nice if the disparate elements here were tied together a little better in the end. Weirdly, this means it actually makes sense that there would be a long-running franchise. Lots of opportunity that is presumably covered in the sequels and reboots and whatnot. **

We’re really in the homestretch now. The standard Speed Round of films I’ve watched, but not otherwise covered coming up on Sunday, and then some reviews of spooky books read during the season the following week.

Horror franchises that live long enough almost inevitably reach a point of creative bankruptcy and jump the shark. This takes various forms, but one of the most amusing is when they send the franchise to outer space. There aren’t actually a ton of these, but there are enough, and while the conceit is irrevocably silly, the batting average for these movies is surprisingly good? Maybe “good” isn’t the right word, but they’re all pretty amusing and entertaining in their own way. The highest profile example is clearly Jason X, a movie we’ve already covered a few times here. Still, I was able to cobble together three more examples (oddly enough, all the fourth installment of their respective franchise) and despite this seeming like a weekly theme destined for a bad experience, I had a pretty good time with all these movies.

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 6 – Horror Franchises Go to Space!

• Hellraiser (2022) (trailer)
• Pinhead’s New Look (Robot Chicken)
• Cenobite Cinnabon (short)

Hellraiser: Bloodline – This fourth Hellraiser film tries to tell the full history of Lemerchand’s box. A prequel detailing the creation of the box by a French toymaker, a sequel to the excesses of Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth that explains the mysterious Lament Configuration building that appeared at the end of that movie, and the ultimate conclusion set in the far flung future of 2047 on a space station.

I actually saw this movie in the theater back in 1996. Had to travel to the dam tri-state mall to see it, and it turned out that the theater was basically empty. Me, a friend, and one other dude. I know the movie has some rather serious flaws and definitely muddles with the mythology of the series, but I rather enjoyed the idea back then, and I was surprised to find that I still had some fun with it, even today.

The film had a troubled production. Lots of studio interference, reshoots with another director, such that the original director, effects and makeup guru Kevin Yagher, formally disowned the project. Due to vagaries of film credit attribution, this makes Hellraiser: Bloodline one of the hallowed few to be attributed to the infamous Alan Smithee pseudonym. Watching the film, you can absolutely feel the behind-the-scenes tumult, but the skeleton of what Yagher (and Clive Barker) intended seems to still be in place and functioning. It’s not perfectly executed or anything, and I’m not entirely sure how good this could be even in the best of scenarios, but I still kinda like the idea at its core.

I know I just spent a bunch of time decrying Halloween Ends‘ ambitious take on that series, but even though Hellraiser: Bloodline isn’t especially accomplished, I think it actually delivers on more of its potential than Halloween Ends, which sounds absurd, I know. There are some severe flaws. The film opens in the future on a space station, then uses a flashback structure to tell the prequel/sequel stories before returning to the future. Using that as a framing device is awkward, since it removes any sense of suspense in the first two segments of the film. Granted, stopping every 20-30 minutes to say “200 years later” or whatever is also a bit clunky, but it would at least be surprising for those going into the film blind (and it could have had the surprising effect of stuff like Psycho or it’s many imitators like Scream).

The opening sequence is perhaps my favorite, with bad French wigs and sacrificial satanic rites and hammy overacting and a young Adam Scott? The middle segment, which is the longest, drags a little and suffers the most from the framing device (hard to worry about the continuation of the toymaker’s bloodline when we already know his descendent will end up on a space station in the future), but that’s where Pinhead shows up and starts dropping pretty great line readings of cheesy but actually kinda effective dialogue. The future segment pits Pinhead against space marines, which has to count for something.

A lot of the scare sequences that are supposed to be suspenseful come off as more perfunctory than anything else, but I still appreciate what they were going for here. Not a good movie, per say, but more enjoyable than you’d think (and certainly better than Part III and/or most of what follows in the franchise). ** (but this does sorta defy ratings)

• Strawberry Smiggles (Rick & Morty)
• HELL NO: The Sensible Horror Film (short)
• Horror Movie Daycare (short)

Leprechaun 4: In Space – On a distant planet, a power hungry Leprechaun kidnaps a princess in the hopes that marrying her will grant him enough royal power to rule the universe. Or something like that, it doesn’t really matter, does it? This is not especially connected in any way with the previous entries in the series (not that I’m an expert there, to be honest), but again, I don’t think that really matters.

This is quintessential so-bad-it’s-good cheese. Low budget, shamelessly juvenile, dumb, and rather entertaining. Macho space marines that are clearly dollar-store imitations of the Colonial Marines from Aliens, with the sergeant in particular hamming things up with his delivery of cliched dialogue. A mad scientist that gets Cronenberged also gives it his all, to amusing effect. His assistant is perhaps more restrained, but almost as weird. Warwick Davis still seems to be having fun as the titular mischievous imp. Instead of copious rhyming puns, he monologues and quotes Shakespeare. There’s a rebigulator/debigulator that is introduced, and eventually enlarges the Leprechaun, because of course there’s a giant Leprechaun wreaking havoc on this space station.

Look, this isn’t in any way good, but it’s so delightfully bugnuts that I couldn’t help being thoroughly entertained throughout the runtime. **1/2 (but again, this defies ratings)

• “Gremlins 2” Brainstorm (Key & Peele)
• Critters (trailer)
• Critters 2 (trailer)

Critters 4 – Bounty Hunter Charlie has discovered the last two Critters eggs in existence, but he gets stuck in a transportation probe that gets lost in space. He’s picked up by a salvage crew and brought to an abandoned space station. Naturally, the Critters escape and do their thing.

Of the horror franchises that have gone to space, this is probably the most logical one. Indeed, all the Critters movies feature space in some way, so it actually makes sense that they’d eventually set an entire installment in space. Of course, there’s not really much to do once they get there. Indeed, the Critters don’t even really show up until 30 minutes into the movie, and there’s only two of them. There’s one pretty gnarly death scene, but the rest are somewhat rote (or even worse, offscreen).

What saves the movie from being a complete and utter mediocrity is the cast. A young Angela Bassett, a rare heroic Brad Dourif, and the guy who played Leo from Twin Peaks are all present and giving it their all. It’s all presented a bit too serious and the pacing is lethargic, but there’s something divertingly odd about his movie. It’s far from the hoot that the first two movies represent, but it’s a step above part 3. Not particularly necessary, but just weird enough to hold interest. **

I don’t know how these 6 weeks flew by so quickly, but we’ve still got plenty to come. We should have some movies I inexplicably haven’t seen yet on Wednesday, and next Sunday will be the usual Speed Round of quick hits on movies I watched, but haven’t covered in depth (and we’ll catch up on some horror books the following week)…

In honor of the release of Halloween Ends, I present you with Kaedrin’s definitive ranking of the Halloween films:

1. Halloween (1978)

And that’s it! That’s all you really need to watch.

Alright, fine, I’m being overly snarky and my general distaste for sequels is probably being too strongly expressed, so here:

1. Halloween (1978)
2. Halloween III: Season of the Witch
3. A ten way tie of Halloween Sequels
4. Halloween: Resurrection

Alright, still being facetious here, and clearly Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is pretty bad (it’s not quite the absolute nadir of the list, which is definitively Resurrection, but it’s not far off), but I just can’t bring myself to care that much about all of the sequels and reboots and sequels to reboots and sequels that branch off from other points in the timeline and so on. But here’s the thing: The original Halloween is one of my all time favorites and would rank somewhere in my personal top 100 movies of all time list (perhaps top 20 or maybe even top 10). According to Letterboxd, I’ve seen somewhere on the order of 4500 movies, and the rest of the Halloween sequels probably range in the 3000-4000 range (alright, again, maybe I’m exaggerating – but the point is that there’s a tremendous chasm between #1 and #2 on the list above). Even Halloween III, which has seen a well-deserved rehabilitation over the last decade or so after being unfairly maligned for so long, isn’t that great of a movie. I do appreciate what they were trying to do there though.

A lot of these movies are perfectly cromulent (for a sequel/reboot/whatever) and I’m certainly not immune to nostalgia. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers has some intriguing elements, and I must admit that I always loved how game Donald Pleasance was in all these sequels. Rob Zombie’s remake could have been a solid neo-slasher if they changed the title, a few names, and used different theme music (it would have clearly been derivative of Halloween, but it’d work much better if it was an “original” concept and wasn’t constantly forcing you to compare to a genuine classic). And so on.

David Gordon Green’s recent trilogy, concluding with the release of Halloween Ends last week, has been a real mixed bag for me. The 2018 Reboot had some nice elements and some interesting ideas, but it was overstuffed and messy and never really delivered on its potential. Halloween Kills was downright disappointing, with a tacky and desperate overreliance on legacy characters and a frankly bizarre attempt to monologue responsibility away from the townsfolk, who had formed a mob and murdered some random guy (amongst many other dumb things). Again, some interesting ideas, but none were particularly well executed. So now we come to the concluding entry in this most recent series (Spoilers to follow)…

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 5.5 – Halloween Ends

A young man named Corey Cunningham accidentally kills a kid he was babysitting. Three years later, he’s trying to put his life back together, but Haddonfield will have none of it, as they still think of him as a pedophilic murderer of children who got off on a technicality. As pressure mounts, he begins to think that maybe he should stand up for himself… and start murdering those who blame him for killing the child. And oh yeah, he runs into Michael Myers at some point, and I guess they’re kinda friends? Kindred evil spirits with dead eyes or something like that? Whatever. Corey is also sorta dating Laurie Strode’s granddaughter, so eventually Corey and his new friend Michael try to kill Laurie, with predictable results.

Spoilers, I guess, but at this point, does it really matter? It’s telling that this movie isn’t really about Laurie or Michael, but rather a brand new character introduced in this movie. Which is actually a bold choice! As someone who generally bemoans lazy sequels and desperate reliance on legacy characters, I have a lot of respect for this approach. I actually don’t need them to rehash the Halloween slasher formula, and I wasn’t really looking forward to an epic showdown between Michael and Laurie, rinse and repeat. But if you do this, you have to do it well, and I don’t think they pulled it off.

David Gordon Green is a talented director, and the movie looks good. There’s some effective jump scares and some wonderful visuals sprinkled throughout. As with previous movies in the series, there are lots of interesting ideas thrown out there. Laurie’s new strategy for coping with PTSD continues a theme that’s been present throughout this new trilogy and despite modern horror’s obsession with trauwwwma, it makes sense to explore that here (even if it’s an… odd take, more on this below). The way contagious fear and tragedy has weighed on the town of Haddonfield, marked by a cyclical evil manifesting as a boogeyman that’s not always Michael Myers, but just as often the way the town reacts to Myers (as in the “Evil Dies Tonight” mob from Halloween Kills). These are all through lines of the trilogy, but this final installment also adds in a whole new theme about a tortured soul succumbing to pressures and his own trauma to become a murderer himself. It sometimes feels like each new scene introduces a new theme.

These are all weighty topics, worthy of deep exploration. Unfortunately, that’s not what we get. All these ideas and themes are just crammed into each movie with no regard to whether or not they’re actually well depicted or thoroughly established. It’s just like, oh, new scene, maybe this one will be a commentary on consumerism, is that something? We should draw parallels between the band nerds and the police, because bullies become fascist cops, amirite? These sudden turns end up feeling like they come out of nowhere and then just disappear without a trace, turning the whole experience into a disjointed, thematic vacuum where it tries to do so much that it doesn’t really accomplish any one thing particularly well.

I suspect this movie will garner a niche following. People like what they like and I’m glad some folks are really connecting with this. There’s a lot to like here and plenty to dig your teeth into, so maybe my dumbass engineer brain was in a mood for a more cohesive plot or something. However, even the folks I’ve seen who like these movies would probably agree that they’re messy. For example, one person I follow described Halloween Ends as “kind of a bozo masterpiece.”

On a plot level it's kind of dumb but it worked for me. Kind of a bozo masterpiece.

— Jessica (@BadPostsLLC) October 14, 2022

Honestly, I can probably get behind the “bozo masterpiece” label for this installment. I can certainly appreciate that these movies have ambitions and ideas, but to my mind, if you go that route, you really need to deliver on that ambition. I’ll take a movie with a simple theme that’s executed perfectly over a movie with a jumble of interesting but not very well established ideas. Your mileage may vary, and there’s plenty to chew on here if you really want to. I guess it does deliver on the promise of the title of the movie… at least, until Blumhouse decides to reboot it again in a few years:

Just to clarify, HALLOWEEN (2025) is not related to HALLOWEEN (2018) *or* HALLOWEEN (1978) and those continuities. It's actually a direct sequel to Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN (2007) but ignores the events of Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN 2 (2009).

— Scream, Spratula, Scream (@Spratlinger) October 14, 2022

Ok, now that I’ve resorted to just posting fun tweets, I think it’s time for more freakish, disjointed thoughts:

• One of my favorite parts of this recent trilogy is that Michael Myers was always portrayed as a force of nature. The personification of evil, like a shark, always moving, always killing, always crafting ironic, elaborate dioramas out of his victims’ bodies like a homicidal Banksy producing spontaneous art installations all throughout Haddonfield (which, believe it or not, actually kinda fits with what he does in the original movie). Unfortunately, that isn’t as present in Halloween Ends, due to the focus on young Corey. That might not be the worst thing in the world, but…
• Speaking of whom: Why doesn’t Michael kill Corey? Michael’s role in this whole movie seems weirdly out of place with his established character traits. It’s kinda implied that maybe Corey is kinda/sorta possessed by the same evil that drives Michael and I guess Mikey senses that? But that makes no sense, because he has lovey dovey conversations with Allyson all movie. Like, I get that the kid is a tortured soul, but why does he think murdering everyone will make things better? When cornered by a disarmed Laurie later in the movie, instead of trying to kill her, he just stabs himself in the neck? Not because he’s conflicted or senses that he’s becoming evil, but because he wants to make a half-hearted, easy-to-see-through effort to frame Laurie as his killer? What the hell is going on here? I mentioned above that I like the idea of taking the franchise in a completely new direction and introducing a new character like this… but man, this really falls down in the execution of that idea.
• Corey’s last name is Cunningham, which seems like a reference to Arnie Cunningham from another John Carpenter movie, Christine. Arnie and Corey have plenty of similarities – bullied nerds who are influenced by a great evil to kill their enemies (and thus become less awkward and more confident). This is one of those referential type things that some people like, but once again, it makes you think of a movie that did the same thing, only much better (in my mind, Christine is one of Carpenter’s more underrated efforts and is certainly a step up from this one).
• Alright, so, after the original Halloween, Laurie Strode (quite understandably!) suffers from PTSD and spends 40 years in a paranoid survivalist funk. She is then completely and utterly vindicated when Michael Myers escapes and goes on a rampage, killing dozens of people (including Laurie’s own daughter!), then mysteriously disappears with no trace. He could return again at any time. Haddonfield has gone absolutely bonkers as a result. But Laurie… decides to buy a new house and live a more carefree life, free from paranoia or fear? I guess you could say it was all a facade, but it was still a jarring decision.
• Laurie kinda sets up a meet cute with Corey and her granddaughter Allyson and keeps encouraging her to get with the nice boy who’s had a rough go of it. Then, halfway through the movie, someone says they didn’t like his eyes, and Laurie executes an about-face, forbidding Allyson to see him anymore? What the hell happened there? Like many things in the movie, this leads to some unintentional comedy and what the fuck? exclamations.
• Extra-special spoiler alert here, but towards the end of the movie, Laurie fights Michael in an epic battle to end them all or whatever. It’s fine, I guess, the sort of conventional decision everyone was expecting and which the movie marketed heavily on (and which undercuts the effectiveness of the whole “Corey is actually the main character here” approach), but Laurie gets the upper hand, pins Michael to the table with some knives, drops a refrigerator on him, and slits his throat. Michael, ever the sneakster, plays dead for a moment then grabs Laurie by the neck. Allyson joins the scene to save the day, they slit his wrist and now he’s dead for sure, right? Actually, yes. Despite decades of Michael always coming back from impossible-to-survive wounds, he just lays there. They strap his body to the top of their car (!?), then lead a procession of police and townfolk to the local dump, where they dump Michael’s body in an industrial shredder. What happened to the guy that took several gunshots and stabbings, then stood up and slaughtered the entire crowd, evaded the police, and snuck up to kill Laurie’s daughter? I wonder if the next Halloween movie, we’re going to see everyone start driving off towards the dump, then the camera will pull back, track into Laurie’s house to find the body of Corey Cunningham, suddenly awakening and grabbing a mask and knife, ready to continue Samhain. Are you ready for the Corey and Allyson saga, which will take us in the 2060s? Ok, I shouldn’t even joke about this sort of thing, should I?
• One of the best and funniest decisions in the movie was to make the bullies that are always pestering Corey a group of high school marching band dorks (as opposed to the traditional jocks). There were many things that made me laugh unintentionally during the movie, but this one made me laugh in a way that I think was right on target. (Not because band nerds are bad people or anything, just because it’s such a random, unexpected choice.)
• I can’t decide if no one chanting “Evil ends tonight!” in this movie was a good thing or a bad thing.
• For all my complaints, there were still some nice touches throughout the movie. The opening pre-credits sequence is fantastic and shocking, even if they fumble the aftermath later in the movie. The Scarecrow mask that Corey uses a couple times is actually pretty cool (and recalls Rob Zombie’s alternate mask usage in his remake). The tongue on the record was a nice, macabre touch. The score, once again provided by John Carpenter himself (along with his son Cody), is fantastic stuff, with just the right amount of nods to the original score while still updating and modernizing. The opening pre-credits sequence is pretty fantastic, even if they fumble the aftermath.
• Diana Prince, aka Darcy the Mail Girl, shows up in a bit part as the radio station receptionist who is cutting paper ghosts, which is nice. It’s only a quick scene; I did the Leo from OUATIH pointing meme in my seat. Apparently her death scene was cut from the film, but will allegedly be available in bonus features (or maybe an extended cut).

So there you have it, a decidedly mixed trilogy in my mind, but I have to admit: they were never boring! Sometimes infuriating and other times baffling, but not boring! I dunno, I’m more excited to rewatch the original for the 40th time in a couple weeks than I would be to rewatch any of these new ones, which is probably the final word on this for me…

One of the odder little sub-genres of horror concerns killer kids. Real world tragedies involving dead kids generally make movies like this a difficult sell (both from a “making” and “watching” standpoint). I don’t have any kids, but it’s almost universally acknowledged that once you do, watching movies where kids are dying become more difficult to watch as well. On the other hand, that’s what horror movies are all about (at least, some of the time). A couple of these are older classics that I’ve somehow not seen (and tame by modern standards), but one is relatively batshit (though when the point of comparison is something like Cathy’s Curse, you’ve got an uphill battle). We’ve tackled a few of these movies in previous 6WH posts, but always on a weird generic-themed sorta week. So let’s watch some sneaky little shits engage in murderous shenanigans:

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 5 – Killer Kids!

• The Twilight Zone: It’s a Good Life (Paramount+)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror II: The Bart Zone (Disney+)
• Village of the Damned (1995 trailer)

Village of the Damned – Everyone in a small English village suddenly falls unconscious, and when they awaken, they find that every woman of childbearing age is pregnant. The resulting children have similar traits like blond hair and strange eyes, and after a few years, they begin to manifest odd psychic powers.

This is one of those classic movies that has seeped into the collective consciousness, such that you’ve probably seen many images or scenes laying around that you have an idea of the plot just from cultural osmosis. I’d definitely seen parts of this flicking around cable back in the day, but I never sat down and watched it from start to finish until this weekend. And it’s great!

This brand of British science fiction/horror hybrid was popular in the 1950s and 1960s. We’ve already covered a couple of the Quatermass movies this year, but this film represents a significant step up from those. Perhaps it’s the source material (John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos) or just the overall production values, but this hangs together much better.

Clocking in at just 77 minutes, this moves quickly and packs in a fair amount of interesting ideas. Indeed, the creepy kids don’t even show up for quite a while. Much time is spent on the British authorities trying to figure out what’s happening in the town where everyone has fallen unconscious, plotting the boundaries and experimenting as best they can. As that event ends and the mysterious pregnancies arrive, we get lots of speculation. Is this some sort of extraterrestrial plot or just the next stage in human evolution? Other similar events have apparently been happening in other towns throughout the world, sometimes with tragic consequences. Ultimately, no explanation arises for any of this, which is exactly the right approach.

The children themselves certainly present as otherworldly. They’re not necessarily saying spooky things, but they are so calm and collected that they take on an uncanny affect. Once it becomes clear that they can read people’s thoughts, it does start to get creepy, and while they’re clearly intelligent beyond their years, they do retain the child’s almost sociopathic attitude as they start to force their will on others. Their appearance as little blond kids, while probably chosen for contrast in the excellent black and white cinematography, also calls to mind the Hitler youth. The way they move in unison, with scientists hypothesizing some sort of hive mind, again adds to their eerie nature.

This was remade by John Carpenter in the 1990s and for whatever reason, I actually saw that in the theater and while it was fine, I wasn’t much moved by it. This is perhaps part of the reason I never made an effort to revisit this original, which was clearly a bad instinct, as I really enjoyed this. Well worth checking out. ***1/2

• Orphan (trailer)
• Bloody Birthday (trailer)
• Cathy’s Curse (trailer)

The Bad Seed – Young Rhoda seems like your average, sweet little girl, but she has a bit of a temper and a selfish streak. When a schoolmate rival of hers dies in mysterious circumstances, her mother begins to suspect she’s responsible.

Based on a novel and subsequent stage play, this movie is clearly modeled on the play, with limited locations and melodramatic dialogue delivered in a distinctly theatrical manner. The stagebound nature of the film is a bit hokey and old-fashioned, but it does lull you into a certain mindset that is cleverly subverted as the film proceeds. It also provides an ample opportunity for the actors to give their performances a little extra push. Patty McCormack was nominated for an Oscar for her sociopathic performance as young Rhoda. Other performances are perhaps less successful, but everyone is absolutely going for it, and even the more overwrought takes fit with the overall tone.

At 129 minutes, it certainly takes its time establishing its premises and themes, but it’s not exactly slow. It moves along at a decent pace, even if some things feel repetitive or perhaps too baldly stated. The whole nature vs nurture debate was probably more intriguing at the time, but it’s well established and obviously represents a common parental fear.

I won’t get into spoilers here, but I will say that there were a couple of genuinely shocking moments later in the picture (this is one reason I’m willing to forgive the length of the movie). The closing shot does feel a bit rushed and I have to believe there were some Hayes Code shenanigans at play here. On the other hand, the whole walk-on roll call bit at the very end is an inspired bit of lunacy. If that closing shot strikes you as odd, this playful curtain call will take the bad taste out of your mouth, and we need to bring this tradition back. ***

• Children of the Popcorn (Robot Chicken)
• Children of the Corn (trailer)
• Monster Problems (Short)

The Pit – Twelve year-old Jamie is a solitary pervert and budding sociopath who has discovered a pit populated by man-eating troglodytes (he calls them trollogs) in the forest behind his home. Bullied and shunned at school, Jamie decides to hit two birds with one stone by feeding his enemies to his new pit dwelling friends.

After the staid, mannered approach the previous two films took, it was nice to descend into batshit 80s cheese to finish out the week. I’ve used words like “odd” and “uncanny” and “otherworldly” above, but The Pit is the sort of movie that really embodies those words in a way that will have you exclaiming “What the fuck?” rather frequently throughout the more standard 97 minute runtime.

Tonally all over the place, this movie rockets from standard horror movie contrivances to “so bad it’s good” laughter to genuinely discomfiting weirdness (there’s a bathroom scene that’s just… oof). It feels like we’ve got bits and pieces from several different movies just thrown into a blender. The perverted loner kid in love with his babysitter is one, the pit where a bullied kid gets revenge on his enemies feels like a different movie altogether, and I haven’t even mentioned the teddy bear that talks to our budding sociopath and gives him creepy advice.

This movie toys with the idea that maybe the bullies had it coming. I man, sure, Jamie’s a weirdo, but the level of vitriol and hate he experiences for basically no reason is almost funny. He says hello to a kid on the playground and literally gets a fist to the face. A neighbor girl is incredibly mean to him (though the bicycle gag is A+ material). Even random old ladies on the street call him a freak out of nowhere. On the other hand, almost everything this kid does is uncomfortable and cringeworthy in the extreme.

The ironic, mean-spirited ending is laughably perfect though, and while this movie has a warped sense of humor and strange idea of what constitutes entertainment, it scratches a very specific, cult-movie type of itch. It’s a hard movie to recommend to normal people, but for seekers of strange cinema, it’s worthwhile. **1/2 (but this is the sort of movie that defies ratings)

How on earth is it already week 5? Well, we’ve still got a few things to look forward to, including next week’s theme of Horror Franchises in Space, and the subsequent Speed Round where I catch up with all the other stuff I’ve been watching but haven’t written about… so don’t touch that dial! Or, like, whatever you use to navigate the interwebs. Uh, don’t close this tab! Or whatever. Still plenty to come…

Naturally, I’m not the only practitioner in the Halloween ways. The very notion of Weblogs has become somewhat quaint and old-fashioned, but some of us get back into the swing of things in accordance with spooky season. Maybe not for a whole six weeks (though indeed, while most go for the traditional October timeframe, some swing the pendulum in the other direction and start in early September), but it’s always fun to see what other folks are doing to celebrate this hallowed season. Some of them don’t even *gasp* watch horror movies! Will wonders never cease. I’ll try not to hold that against them. As usual, I’m trying to sprinkle in some new links along with the old, so let’s take a look:

Old Hands

Film Thoughts – Zack is the sole other practitioner of the Six Weeks of Halloween (we both cottoned onto the idea from a fella named kernunrex, but he went dark, hmm, wow, around 7 years ago. How time flies when you’re terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought). As usual, his pace of both watching and writing outstrips mine by a significant degree, and his reviews are long and insightful. This year, he’s been going through the Paranormal Activity movies and watching Munsters episodes, amongst tons of other things.

Cinema Crazed – Only discovered a couple years ago, this crew is still going strong, covering new stuff like The Munsters and Prey, but also have regular features like Bad Movie Monday, which are a blast.

Horror Movie a Day – Horror dorks had something of an early fright this Halloween season when HMaD mysteriously got taken down by Google/Blogger, but fear not, it’s been reinstated. Brian doesn’t post every day anymore, but he did so for an absurdly long time, so the blog has an almost comprehensive list of reviews in the archives, so it’s an invaluable resource if you’re looking for thoughts on an obscure horror movie. He’s got some recent reviews of the new Hellraiser reboot/legacyquel/whatever you call it, and more. His book is also quite helpful when it comes to weekly themes or more obscure films to seek out.

Hellowe’en Horror -Well curated collection of images, posters, screenshots, and gifs from various horror flicks, still marching along with the season…

Final Girl – Shocktober is back! This time around, it consists of Stacie’s favorite random characters from horror movies (including stuff like people’s wigs or hats, because sometimes they’re important enough to be considered characters too, you know).

New Hands

With Gourley and Rust – A podcast that covers classic horror franchises, including all the Friday the 13th movies and Halloween movies, you get the picture (they just finished going through the Child’s Play franchise). They’re long, freeform episodes that take a little while to build steam, but are ultimately always interesting.

Severed Hands

Wonderful Wonderblog – Spreading the love beyond just movies and into various spooky versions of stuff like lottery tickets and records and whatnot.

Halloween Mixes – Well, technically, this blog is titled “The Murderer’s Plague Of The Phantasmagoric Beast Of The Haunted Screaming Horror Of The Mad Scientist’s Monster’s Bride Of The Vampire’s Bloody Psychotic Alien Werewolf Curse Of The Ghost Of The Zombie That Ate The Return of Dav’s Ultimate Halloween”, but uh, yeah it’s got an archive of nice playlists of Halloween themed music (Apparently the 2022 music mix is coming soon).

Zombie Crossings – An assortment of Halloween themed goings-on (music, images, fun facts, that sort of thing).

So there you have it, I’m not the only weirdo celebrating the season. Stay tuned, we’ve got a trio of Killer Kids movies coming this weekend, including some famous ones I’ve inexplicably never seen before.

Coming up with weekly themes for the Six Weeks of Halloween can be a fun exercise, but sometimes the theme contains a trap. You know, ideas that neatly encapsulate something, but force you to watch bad movies because it’s based on an inherently flawed concept (and also because of a somewhat informal rule that the movies be “new to me”, thus excluding many of the best examples that might fit into a theme).

This week’s theme was inspired by Edgar Wright’s inspired short Don’t, a parody of horror movie trailers that was originally part of Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse double feature. It’s a great little fake trailer and frequently used during the 6WH as one of the previews/trailers/shorts watched between movies in a given week. So the idea was to find and watch three movies with “Don’t” in the title. There are, of course, tons of these, so I guess it’s possible that I just chose poorly, but maybe I’m being too hard on these. One of them is actually pretty interesting, and the other two, while not exactly good, have some redeeming qualities. In any case, don’t watch these movies during your Halloween horror marathon. Except maybe the first one, if you must.

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 4 – Don’t!

• Don’t (fake trailer)
• Don’t Breathe (trailer)
• Don’t Open Your Eyes (Robot Chicken)

Don’t Go in the House – Meet Donny! As a young man, his sadistic mother tortured him by burning his arms whenever he displeased her. Now that she’s passed away, Donny has taken to stalking unsuspecting young women with a flamethrower.

Shades of Psycho mashed up with a hint of Peeping Tom (and maybe a precursor to Maniac), this is the only movie this week that feels at least somewhat complete. Creepy atmosphere, an actual good performance at its core, and a decent enough effects budget keep this interesting enough throughout its runtime, and there’s some genuinely creepy stuff sprinkled throughout. Don’t get me wrong, this is definitely low-budget sleaze, but it’s well done low-budget sleaze with some actual stylistic chops. It helps that Arrow did the restoration of this, and the transfer looks great. I have to wonder how much of an impact a good restoration has on some of these older films – am I cutting this slack because it looks better than the other things I watched this weekend? Maybe! But it’s also clearly the best of the three.

This movie was part of the infamous British Video Nasties list, which is always interesting because banning the films gave them an allure that most would never be able to capture on their own. I suspect this movie might have garnered a small cult following, since it has some things going for it, though I honestly don’t see why it needed to be banned in the first place. There’s some distressing stuff in the movie, but it’s nowhere near some of the other stuff on that list. If you have to watch a movie with Don’t in the title, this one’s actually not that bad… **1/2

• A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (trailer)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XX: Don’t Have a Cow, Mankind (Disney+)
• Don’t Look Now (trailer)

Don’t Panic – On his seventeenth birthday, Michael and his friends unwittingly summon a demon named Virgil whilst playing with a Ouija board. Michael has mysterious premonitions and visions of the killings and sets out to stop Virgil.

This is basically the non-union Mexican equivalent of Elm Street 2, only it’s not quite as fun as that sounds. It certainly has plenty of 80s horror cheese, but it’s telling that the thing this movie is most known for are the dinosaur pajamas. I mean, how on earth did this happen? Where do you even find pajamas with dinosaurs on them that fit a grown man? And how do you, as a professional film crew member (presumably this was something multiple people approved), allow them to show up so often throughout the movie? Like, maybe you could see them once, as a joke, when the kid’s in bed. Haha, yes, very funny. But this happens multiple times, and then he’s running around a hospital trying to save someone whilst wearing his adorable dinosaur pajamas. He’s supposed to be 17 years old, and he wears pajamas with cute cartoon dinosaurs on them. Someone thought this would be a good uniform for him whilst fighting a demon. This doesn’t seem to be a knowing, self-conscious parody, it’s played completely straight, which is why this movie has a cult following. Apparently Vinegar Syndrome did a release of this a while back and made replica pajamas that now go for $80 on Ebay.

I don’t know, maybe I’m lowballing this movie. It’s definitely not well acted and the pacing is abysmal, but it’s got a certain element of dopey fun going for it. I mean, those pajamas! Ok, fine, there’s a story here too, I guess, and some reasonable makeup effects, but man, those pajamas. They’re iconic for a reason. **

• Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark (trailer)
• Don’t Open Till Christmas (trailer)
• Don’t Answer the Phone (trailer)

Don’t Look in the Basement – A young nurse goes to work at a secluded asylum, only to find out that the doctor who hired her was accidentally murdered by one of the patients. Naturally, things don’t go very well for the nurse.

If you thought the practices at the mental institution in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning were irresponsible, wait until you see this place. The doctor conducts axe therapy! None of the doors have locks on them, and there are no restraints to be found anywhere. The nymphomaniac patient commits female on male rape. The phones don’t work. Someone cuts a patient’s tongue off. But no, the therapy is working exactly as intended.

Sometimes horror movies play insane asylums for comedic purposes, sometimes they demonize the patients, and this one settles for stereotyping them. It’s not exactly a sensitive portrayal, but the whole situation does feel crazy, and while this is clearly a low-budget affair with none of the trimmings (and the version I watched on Amazon did not look restored or cleaned up in any way), there’s some visual style on display here. It doesn’t really make up for the stiff performances or languid pacing or exploitative treatment of mental institutions, but it’s there! There’s a twist towards the end that is pretty obvious, but hey, they’re making an effort to do something I guess.

It’s certainly an oddity of early indie cinema, but there are much better examples of that sort of thing from this era that aren’t quite so silly. Actually “silly” might make this seem like more fun than it actually is. Definitely my least favorite of the weekend. This was another Video Nasty, and I can kinda see why it was banned, though I have to wonder if this movie would have any longevity at all without that badge of honor. Bad movie enthusiasts might get something out of this, otherwise probably not worth seeking out. *1/2

So there you have it, I think I’ll have to find a theme that’s a little better for next week. I have some good Killer Kid movies lined up, I think that’ll do the trick.

It’s always a good idea to check out what’s now playing in theaters at some point during the Six Weeks of Halloween, but the last few years have proved difficult on that front. Naturally, the pandemic was not exactly conducive to movie theaters for a while, but even before Covid, there were plenty of times when it seemed theaters were lacking great horror movie options in the weeks leading up to Halloween (or, like, they’d release something on Halloween day).

But something’s in the air this year. Hot Horror Fall is upon us! We’ve already had stuff like Bodies Bodies Bodies and Pearl, not to mention the two movies we’ll be covering below (Barbarian & Smile), and even horror adjacent stuff like Don’t Worry Darling and See How They Run have been coming out. Of course, I haven’t seen all of these, and some might not be worth seeing, but options have been plentiful and I haven’t even mentioned Halloween Ends yet (though frankly, I’m not terribly excited for that given the ambivalence I’ve had for the last couple entries, not to mention general sequel fatigue.) Anyway, there have been a couple of really solid flicks that I’ve caught up with in the past couple weeks, so let’s get to them!

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 3.5 – Now Playing: Barbarian & Smile

• Don’t Breathe (trailer)
• Sawed by the Bell (Robot Chicken)
• The People Under the Stairs (trailer)

Barbarian – Due to an Airbnb scheduling snafu, a house in a bad neighborhood in Detroit has been double-booked. A young woman arrives to find a strange man already staying there. Due to circumstances, they end up staying in the house together and attempting to mitigate the fraught situation, only to find that there’s more going on in the house than meets the eye.

I’m going to leave the plot summary there because this is a good movie to go into whilst knowing as little as possible. Rest assured, it’s a fun ride with an unconventional structure and some well balanced tonal shifts between humor and horror. While it touches on some subversive and taboo elements and is not suitable for the faint of heart, it never reaches Don’t Breathe turkey baster levels (to reference another movie that makes good use of Detroit’s decrepit environs). That doesn’t mean there aren’t shocking surprises or anything, and it is rated R for a reason, but it doesn’t go too far (but what do I know, I’m a little jaded by all this horror movie watching, ymmv). Mild spoilers will follow, but I’ll try not to stray too far into that territory.

About halfway through the movie, just as our two protagonists discover something shocking in the basement of their rental home, we smash cut to Justin Long driving along the highway in California. He’s a famous Hollywood actor that’s about to fall from grace as the result of a Me Too controversy. In a desperate attempt to scramble up capital for his defense fund, has to liquidate some of his assets… like that rental property in Detroit!

This represents a huge shift not just in the overall narrative, but in the tone of the film. This whole section is played mostly for laughs. When this character discovers the secret murder rooms in the basement, his first thought is not the inherent terror of the situation… but rather the extra square footage that he can claim whilst selling the house. Naturally, his character is somewhat less than sympathetic, and even though you sometimes have hopes that he might turn things around, this is not a movie where a bad man is rehabilitated. When he gets what’s coming to him, it’s pretty damn satisfying (in part because he demonstrates his true character a bit too often).

Writer/director Zach Cregger displays an admirable control of both pacing and tone, especially as the narrative turns from one character to another, or we take a quick but illuminating flashback, or as tone shifts wildly from horror to comedy and back again. Thematically, it shows a deft hand in critiquing the dread “toxic masculinity”… well, at least compared to most attempts at this sort of thing, which are usually more didactic, overly-literal, and ham-fisted. I mean, it’s not exactly subtle, but it’s not a lecture either.

It’s not a surprise that traditional studios all rejected this (or requested that Cregger remove all the things that make it unique), but I will say that it is remarkable that they were not only able to (eventually) make the movie they wanted, but that the marketing was restrained enough not to give away the twists and turns (and most folks have been pretty good about not spoiling it on social media too, a rarity in this day and age). I know I’m kinda spoiling it now, but I’m leaving a lot out.

It’s still in theaters now, but will likely not be lasting much longer. If you’re still reading this and haven’t seen it, it’s worth seeing in the theater (I suspect audiences will be sparse at this point, but it’s nice to not be the only person gasping in the theater). ***

• The Ring Video Dating (Robot Chicken)
• The Ring (trailer)
• It Follows (trailer)

Smile – Rose is a psychiatrist who witnesses one of her patients commit suicide right in front of her. The patient was tormented by smiling delusions. Soon, Rose starts to experience odd occurrences that are suspiciously familiar to her patient’s descriptions. Is she suffering from her own PTSD episode, or is something else at work here?

A lot of modern horror and indeed, a lot of modern pop-culture in general, is obsessed with trauma. Smile is a movie that literalizes that tendency, but then slots it into a more traditional, studio-friendly jump-scare framework. It’s a weighty theme, but the enormous glut of trauma-focused narratives we’re seeing these days makes this an also-ran, even if it does ask some interesting questions. What does society owe traumatized people? What do traumatized people owe society? You can interpret this movie as a critique of the current obsession of trauma, but you could also see it as advocating for despair in the face of a difficult issue. Either way, you’re still amplifying a common theme.

Smile clearly wears its influences on its sleeve, notably The Ring (not as much Ringu) and It Follows. Both of those earlier films also feature trains of, for lack of a better term, infection. The infection is spread through differing methods; a videotape/technology, sex, and in the case of Smile, trauma. This sort of thing makes for an effective driving premise, but often leads to an unclear resolution. It Follows, in particular, doesn’t really know what to do with the dilemma it’s set up, and Smile suffers from a similar lack of clarity in the “rules” of the curse (or whatever you want to call it). I will say that Smile, at least, devises more clever workarounds once the basic rules are established, even if it loses its footing in the endgame. It’s one of those things where you could go with a happy ending or a sad one, but at this point – both approaches are played out, so you have to really thread the needle to make an impact. There was one way I thought of that would have been a sorta “win”, but also be a bit of a downer that could have fit, but the movie didn’t go that way…

I guess a lot of the above could be interpreted as a mixed review, but this is ultimately a really good time at the movies, and it’s thought provoking stuff. It’s very well crafted and while it does lean heavily into jump-scares, it is actually quite good at that sort of thing. It’s not exactly a fresh approach, but it doesn’t feel stale either. The premise offers an element of existential dread that the rest of the movie does deliver on, and it’s visually impressive as well.

There’s a phrase that has emerged over the last several years to describe a particular brand of films called “elevated horror.” This is a somewhat annoyingly vague phrase, as what most of its proponents describe as hallmarks of “elevated horror” are not unique to the films that have garnered this label. This, of course, leads to Joe Bob Briggs’s snarky definition, which is that “elevated horror” is the term that people who hate horror movies use to describe horror movies they like. Whatever the case, there’s a bunch of movies that seem to be almost embarrassed of their horror genre trappings, as if the filmmaker is saying something to the effect of “I really wanted to make a movie about trauma, but the only way I could get a budget to make this downer of a movie was if I said that a demon was involved” (I’m looking at you, Hereditary!) Anyway, Smile might be the sort of film that earns an “elevated horror” moniker, but it’s definitely not embarrassed by its genre roots. There’s some genuinely crazy stuff in the film, and it revels in all its jump-scares and face ripping glory.

It’s certainly a bit derivative and it’s yet another film that focuses primarily on trauma, but it’s well crafted and effective stuff. ***

There you have it. I’ll probably cover the new Halloween movie in the speed round at the end of the marathon, but in the meantime, we’ve got some good stuff coming your way. I think this weekend will focus on movies with the word “Don’t” in their title (I’ll explain more on Sunday), but plenty of other things going on. If you’re still craving more reviews and horrorific fun, don’t forget Zack’s Film Thoughts, as he’s been cranking out reviews of multiple movies almost daily.

It’s officially October, so it’s time for some pure horror comfort food. I have an inexplicable fondness for slasher films and indeed, this very theme has shown up in the Six Weeks of Halloween before (amongst other related themes). The true Golden Age for slashers was probably that 1980-1983 corridor, but while I have certainly not seen every slasher made during that time (apparently there was rarely a week without a new slasher release during that time), I have seen most of the higher profile ones, so I’m expanding the range to be 1978-1983. Unfortunately, at least one of these isn’t especially slashery and another is borderline, but it was still a good weekend!

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 3 – Golden Age Slashers

• It’s the Gifts That I Hate (Robot Chicken)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VI: Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace
• Wet Nightmares (short)

Girls Nite Out – The students of a remote university are preparing for the annual all-night scavenger hunt, but it turns out that they’re the ones being hunted… by a deranged killer wearing the school’s bear mascot outfit!

This starts out as your typical, bog-standard slasher and proceeds along those lines for a while, but eventually derails into something that’s actually pretty interesting… but only for slasher fanatic types. I suspect most normals will just see this as a stiff, awkwardly paced slasher with a silly killer costume (because, to be fair, that is what it is). But if you’ve seen tons of slashers and are down with the formula, the rule-breaking in the third act is pretty cool.

Of course, it takes a while to get there. The much touted scavenger hunt doesn’t even start until halfway through the film, and we only get about 20-30 minutes of standard stalk and slash type stuff (there’s a couple of kills earlier on, but they’re short and feel tacked-on). The bear mascot suit is pretty goofy, but I actually kinda love it, and the killer whips up a bear claw weapon comprised of steak knives taped together between the fingers (a full two years before Freddy donned his infamous glove). There’s some decent buildup before the kills start to flow, but the kills themselves are somewhat unremarkable.

Then something odd happens. Spoilers, I guess! So our final girl discovers a body and calls the cops. Then the cops actually show up and actually act like responsible adults. They cancel the scavenger hunt, and everyone goes home. For the next ten minutes, the film turns into something of a procedural whodunit, as Hal Holbrook tries to unravel the historical underpinnings of the night’s mayhem (his character’s daughter was murdered by a lunatic in the bear costume many years earlier). Then one girl gets kicked out of her house and is being chased by the killer. She calls the final boy, and they end up in the killers lair, where we find out that the bit character from earlier in the film is actually the twin sister of the historical murderer and Hal Holbrook figured that out and shows up and… then the film just ends. If this sounds a bit rushed and confusing, you’re not alone.

It never really reaches the consistently bonkers level of fun that the best unhinged slashers manage (i.e. this movie can’t compete with something like Pieces), but slasher aficionados might appreciate the weirdness of the third act. **1/2

• Driving Lessons – Halloween Deleted Scene (short)
• Scream (trailer)
• How Scream Should Have Ended (short)

Effects – A film crew in a remote cabin begin to suspect that some of the “kills” in their low-budget horror flick are actually real, and that the director is an infamous producer of snuff films.

George Romero’s Pittsburg troop of collaborators got together and made this cheapie in the wake of Martin and Dawn of the Dead, notably including star Joe Pilato (of Day of the Dead fame), makeup FX legend Tom Savini, and several other bit players and crew members.

Movies about making movies are one of those meta exercises that can get old fast, but while the first act of this drags a bit and there are some repetitive gags, it eventually takes its ideas to a logical extreme that is surprising and impressive. There’s some rote horror sequences that turn out to be a scene the characters are actually filming for their movie, a fakeout gag that gets old… until it doesn’t. It’s a deceptively simple premise, and while there’s a little too much of the crew just hanging around drinking Iron City beer, doing blow, and chatting, it’s actually cut pretty tightly, and at 84 minutes, never really wears out its welcome.

There’s a film-within-the-film that a few folks sit down and watch about halfway through that is genuinely unnerving, and after that point, it’s pretty much off to the races. The simple fakeout gags from earlier in the film grow more complex, such that you don’t know if you can trust what you’re seeing, and there are several surprises that I truly did not see coming. It’s often referred to as a slasher, but it certainly doesn’t follow most of those conventions. This is a little more unique than that.

It’s clearly a low-budget affair, but there’s a core set of ideas that they commit to heavily, such that this sticks with me a lot more than the more recent spate of mumblecore horror (mumblegore), which often strike me as boring. This has more on its mind than that, and it’s really grown on me (and it’s only been a couple of days). ***

• Thursday the 12th (Robot Chicken)
• Terror Train (Trailer)
• Thanksgiving (Fake Trailer)

Fade to Black – Eric Binford is an obsessive movie dork who snaps and starts acting out horror scenes from his favorite movies. Hijinks ensue!

This is one of those fun little referential exercises that actually earns the references. Dennis Christopher gives a great performance as the movie nerd who is growing more and more unhinged over time, and he captures a certain melancholy that keeps the whole film grounded. He’s almost like a nerdy Travis Bickle, and the focus on his character plays with slasher conventions in a unique way. The classic makeup and costumes he embodies lend the film some credibility, even if it’s just drafting on the iconography of old Hollywood.

There are a few other notable appearances in the film too. Tim Thomerson’s cocaine-fueled dumbass cop psychiatrist performance is truly something to behold (there’s this harmonica jam that just comes out of nowhere, but is utterly spellbinding), and I’m not entirely sure it fits with the rest of the movie, but who cares, it’s a lot of fun. Mickey Rourke also shows up in a bit part and gives it his all. Linda Kerridge does a cromulent Marilyn Monroe impersonation too.

I have to wonder if all the short clips of classic Hollywood films would cause a legal headache if the film were made today (indeed, I’m surprised it’s even available these days, they must have been diligent about clearing all those clips). It’s the sort of technique that doesn’t work 9 times out of 10, but this is that one exception that nails the execution.

This is probably the most conventional movie of the weekend, but it’s got a lot going for it, especially if you’re a cinephile. Which, if you’re reading this, you probably are. ***

The Six Weeks of Halloween will keep chugging on Wednesday with a look at some current theatrical releases, and next weekend? Not sure yet, but I’m leaning towards killer kids…