The Halloween Franchise

[The Joker]

I appreciate the well thought out post, Colors, and like some of your ideas. Personally, I am not opposed to taking another timeline jump post-H4, with a returning Danielle Harris as Jamie. I think that would really play to the Halloween fan base really well in a lot of ways, to which Rob Zombie was no doubt cognizant of when he cast Harris in his Halloween films.

I know I said this offhandedly previously in this thread, but I kinda think having Paul Rudd return as Tommy Doyle in a post-HE world (not literally in the Blumhouse continuity, but in the overall grand scheme of things) might just be the shot-in-the-arm "name" (for mainstream advertising appeal, ect) the franchise is looking for with Jamie Lee Curtis calling it a wrap. If you add Danielle Harris into the equation, the Akkad's would effectively retain the Myers vs. Strode factor without the presence of Jamie Lee. Just as it was in 1988 with H4.

I think Danielle Harris would be game. I think Paul Rudd was courted for HE, but couldn't do to scheduling conflict. That may just very well turn out to be a blessing in disguise if such a scenario like this plays out.....

[thecolorsblend]

This guy is doing a YouTube series based on the entire franchise. But he's going in a pretty original direction so you shouldn't expect "Herpa derp, dId yOu kNoW MiChAeL MyErS Is nOt iN ThIs oNe?".

Rather, he reveals a lot of stuff that I certainly never knew. It's pretty insightful.

(Yes, I'm still in the Halloween III rewatch afterglow)

[thecolorsblend]

Halloween (2007)

I'm not a fan of Rob Zombie, but I give this one credit for carving its own identity and attempting a more grounded, psychological take on the central character. However the blunt, graphic nature of the movie is antithetical to what made Carpenter's original so effective, and the expanded back-story for Michael Myers merely demystifies him and – for me at least – makes him less frightening. The dialogue between the teenage characters is extremely cringeworthy in places (I read a leaked copy of Zombie's script before the film was released, and the original version was even more lurid than the finished product). On the plus side, the movie delivers some strong visuals and an impressive line-up of veteran actors appear in minor supporting roles. Zombie fans will probably rate this one higher, but it just didn't do anything for me.

I try to look for the good in Zombie's remake. I guess my way of rationalizing it is that the 1978 original will always exist. So, there's no real need for Zombie to try TOO hard in remaking it.

Instead, he reimagined the material according to his own sensibilities. He completely recalibrated the visual language of the Halloween series up to that point (for better or worse) and he somewhat modernized it. Yes, he made plenty of missteps along the way. And the good does not outweigh the bad. But I still see it as a worthwhile effort.

I should mention I've only seen the director's cut. I gather the theatrical version is quite different.

Michael's escape sequence is different. And I'll say better. In the theatrical cut, you get the idea that Michael saw Loomis walking out on him as being abandoned by one of his last tethers to mankind. From there, you can surmise that the reason that he escapes from Smith's Grove to reconnect with Laurie in the hopes that she will pick up where Loomis left off as being someone who hopes that he somehow comes back from the darkness.

Obviously, the director's cut went a completely different direction with the business involving the orderlies and the female patient.

Halloween H20 (1998)

H20 has the same late-nineties slickness that characterised movies like Scream, I know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend. But what it lacks is the post-modern self-awareness that helped deconstruct the American horror genre and rejuvenate it towards the end of that decade. There are a couple of metafictional gags relating to Janet Leigh, but aside from that H20 is basically just another retread of the first film. It looks nice and has decent production values, but the score is overbearing and the constant false jump scares are irritating as hell. This movie seemed really cool back in 1998, but now it just feels redundant.

Fair enough. I have a real soft spot for H20 tho. It came out when I was in high school and it felt like a slasher movie geared toward my sensibilities. I rly enjoyed the "slick" feeling the production has. It's a peculiar hallmark of late Nineties/early 2000's horror films. I don't know if we should blame (credit?) Rob Zombie's House Of A Thousand Corpses for this sea change of more grungey and grimy horror movie aesthetics. But I, for one, kind of miss slick movies like this.

I adore H20. But yeah, I have to admit it's not perfect. It comes in at a whoppin' 86 minutes (even with credits), there are no real subplots going on and the carnage is mostly frontloaded at the start of the movie rather than being a bit more equally spaced out through out. In fact, my memory is that H20 might have the lightest body count of all with six (?) kills. I think HK opened with more than six kills and it just went on from there. The H20 script could've used another draft to correct those issues.

Your remarks about the score interest me tho. John Ottman was supposed to score the film. And what he came up with was a pretty Hitchcockian score that leaned into the suspense more than the actual carnage (since there's not a lot of carnage to speak of). But the producers hated his score and replaced as much of it as they could with Marco Beltrami material repurposed from Mimic, Scream and other stuff. Ottman's opening titles remain. But big chunks of the rest of his score are missing. ALL of it would've been gone if the producers had enough time. Ottman is still miffed about that to this day, in fact.

Still, all in all, I dig H20. Maybe it's a nostalgia thing. But I enjoy it.

Did I ever post my own rankings? If not...

#11 will always be dead last for me no matter how many of these things ever get made. I'll be shocked if I ever watch it again, honestly. #07-#10 could be in a different order on any given day. These could get rewatched, you never know. From #02-#06, I enjoy all of them and rewatch them regularly. And #01, well, pass me some popcorn because that's obvious.

11- Halloween 5- I just have nothing positive to say about this movie. This will always be last with a bullet for me. I sincerely can't imagine a worse Halloween movie than this one.

10- Halloween II (1981)- I've never seen what other people love about HII so much. It's never made sense to me. My lasting resentment with this film comes down to the revelation that Laurie and Michael are siblings. Two different timelines and the reboot run with that idiotic plot point and I'll never forgive HII for that.

09- Zombie's Halloween II (2009)- Does very little for me. But I will give Zombie credit for exploring the aftermath of 2007. Violence has consequences and Zombie acknowledged that.

08- Halloween 6- It has some decent kills. But neither cut of the movie is what you'd call a masterpiece, exactly.

07- Zombie's Halloween (2007)- I don't need it, honestly. But, as above, I can see SOME good in it. Not much. But a little.

06- Halloween: Resurrection- I can only imagine how much grief I'll get for ranking this movie so high up. But I can't help it, I have a bizarre affection for this one and at this point, I have to admit I'm a fan. I recognize (and agree with) the fact that this movie has many fundamental flaws. But I still get a weird enjoyment out of it, no idea why.

05- Halloween H20- I mostly said my piece above. But whether it's nostalgia or genuine merit, I dig this thing.

04- Halloween Kills- It ups the ante considerably after 2018, it has more kills than any other Halloween movie afaik and it's a worthy entry into the 1978/2018/HK/HE quadrilogy. Plus, Haddonfield feels like a character in this movie rather than a setting or a backdrop. That's new to this series and I welcome it.

03- Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers- Possibly more than any other sequel, this one truly honors the original as much as it can. And I value that. I could quibble over the fact that Myers could've and should've used the bandage mask through the entire film. But since this is supposed to be the RETURN of Michael Myers, I can see where it was important to use the recognizable mask. Still, a missed opportunity.

02- Halloween 2018- This restored a lot of purity and dignity to the original. Plus, it gets points from me for FINALLY removing Halloween II (1981) from continuity.

01- Halloween (1978)- Duh, pretty sure this tops everyone's list. Honestly, there is ONLY the original movie in my headcanon. The various sequels are interesting, I guess. I enjoy several of them. But I don't mentally admit any of them into my imaginary canon. Which, I guess, is why the ever-shifting timelines don't bother me.

[thecolorsblend]

https://twitter.com/halloweenmovie/status/1562123791710318597

The long and the short of it is that Halloween Ends will premiere in theaters and on Peacock simultaneously.

Well, my work here is done.

[The Joker]

"Halloween Ends" posters.






I've been reading about HE having two different cuts that are scoring in direct contrast to one another.

Blumhouse/Universal will probably go with the cut getting positive results (unless they really want to troll the fans haha), but it does leave one to wonder just what in the hell is going on with the other cut? Is it THAT controversial? Or is it just a matter of this particular HE cut not being all that satisfying? Especially in terms of concluding the Blumhouse Halloween trilogy...

This could end up being something like the H6 Theatrical Cut/Producers Cut deal, somewhere down the road.

Maybe.

[thecolorsblend]

I think that by now most Halloween fans are fairly comfortable with alternate cuts. I wouldn't be surprised if whichever version becomes the alternate cut eventually gets released.

[Silver Nemesis]

This guy is doing a YouTube series based on the entire franchise. But he's going in a pretty original direction so you shouldn't expect "Herpa derp, dId yOu kNoW MiChAeL MyErS Is nOt iN ThIs oNe?".

Rather, he reveals a lot of stuff that I certainly never knew. It's pretty insightful.

(Yes, I'm still in the Halloween III rewatch afterglow)

Thanks for posting this, colors. I've long been a fan of Nigel Kneale and I'd love to read his original Halloween 3 script. But since it's not available anywhere online, Tommy Lee Wallace's upcoming book might be the next best thing.

10- Halloween II (1981)- I've never seen what other people love about HII so much. It's never made sense to me. My lasting resentment with this film comes down to the revelation that Laurie and Michael are siblings. Two different timelines and the reboot run with that idiotic plot point and I'll never forgive HII for that.

I suppose one thing Halloween 2 has going for it is the proximity of its release to that of the 1978 film. It takes place on the same night as the original and features many of the same actors, and since it came out just three years later the cast don't look all that different. In that sense, Halloween 2 looks closest to the original film. But ultimately it is an unnecessary addendum to Carpenter's movie and lacks the subtlety and restraint of its predecessor. The plot twist about Michael being related to Laurie always struck me as contrived and redundant. Though saying that, Halloween 4 arguably redeemed the fratricidal aspect of the mythology by using it as the starting point for Jamie's storyline.

Fair enough. I have a real soft spot for H20 tho. It came out when I was in high school and it felt like a slasher movie geared toward my sensibilities. I rly enjoyed the "slick" feeling the production has. It's a peculiar hallmark of late Nineties/early 2000's horror films. I don't know if we should blame (credit?) Rob Zombie's House Of A Thousand Corpses for this sea change of more grungey and grimy horror movie aesthetics. But I, for one, kind of miss slick movies like this.

I think Zombie's partly to blame, but ultimately he was only part of a much larger shift towards grungy 'extreme' horror and torture porn that dominated the genre throughout the noughties. This was partly driven by the popularity of the Saw franchise and Eli Roth movies, but also the influx of Asian extreme (Audition, Ichi the Killer and pretty much anything else directed by Takashi Miike) and European extreme movies (Irréversible, Martyrs, The Human Centipede, etc).

I too have a lot of nostalgia for the horror films of the late nineties and early noughties. Back then we were spoilt with an abundance of stylish and smart western horror movies, plus a new wave of inventive Asian horror films, that reinvigorated the genre after the terminal sequelitis of the late eighties temporarily killed it. Then the postmillennial trend shifted things in favour of torture porn and bad remakes (mostly produced by Platinum Dunes), which is why I stopped following the horror genre for a time. It was only towards the end of the noughties that a higher quality of horror film started coming out again, and that reawakened my interest in the genre.

If H20 exemplifies the slick self-aware horror trend of the late nineties, then it could be argued that Zombie's Halloween films exemplify the nastier 'gorenography' trend of the noughties, thus illustrating how the Halloween brand has adapted to the times in an effort to stay relevant. Similarly, the emphasis on nostalgia that permeates the Blumhouse films (bringing back JLC, the retro synth score) is typical of current cinematic trends.

If we want to know where the future of the series lies, we should keep an eye on emerging trends in the genre.

[The Joker]

I thought these were well done. VHS-style trailers for the Blumhouse trilogy.

[thecolorsblend]

My enthusiasm for this thing remains undiminished. Not so long to wait now.

In terms of sheer kill count, HK is a tough act to follow.

[Silver Nemesis]

Aside from the convenience of the studio owning the rights to both franchises, I've never understood the logic behind pitting Michael Myers against Pinhead. Not only are the characters themselves totally different – and not in a way that would make them contrast effectively against one another – but the tone and style of their respective movies are also drastically different. Incompatibly so, in my opinion.

I don't particularly want to see Myers go up against another movie villain. But if it has to be done, there must be more appropriate adversaries for him to face than Pinhead. How about the Sawyer family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise? Or Carrie White? The Friday the 13th movies already made an unofficial Jason vs. Carrie in Part VII: The New Blood (1988).

But with Halloween they could make it a licensed crossover. Maybe even bring back Sissy Spacek as an older version of Carrie, whose teenage granddaughter is now manifesting the same powers she once did. It's a lame idea, I know, but it's one way to go.

Or you could take a more humorous post-modern approach and make Halloween Scream (or HalloScream), in which a group of Ghostface killers try to manipulate Myers into recreating his own past murders so they can document it in their movie. Michael would have an obvious advantage over Ghostface on account of his supernatural strengths, but the Scream team could compensate for that by having maybe five or six Ghostfaces on their side; all highly skilled, with teamwork strategy and modern technology at their disposal. Or perhaps the Ghostfaces are all serial killer competing to see who can take down Myers for a cash prize. Surely something like that would work better than Halloween vs. Hellraiser.

For Pinhead, a more evenly matched opponent would be the Tall Man from the Phantasm franchise.

Both characters were once human, but were transformed and enslaved by a malignant force after venturing into another world. Both possess telekinetic powers which they use to slash, drill and tear their victims apart (the Tall Man uses Sentinels, Pinhead uses hooked chains). They both possess the ability to travel between dimensions, and to manipulate life and death in order to enslave their victims. They can also transform their victims into monsters (Lurkers and Gravers/Cenobites).

Phantasm vs. Hellraiser would be a dark fantasy film centred on a war between two hellish realms: the Red Planet and the Labyrinth.

Both worlds can be accessed from Earth using a special gateway (the Dimensional Fork/the Lament Configuration). Our world would serve as the battleground between them, with the Tall Man pitting his army of Lurkers, Gravers and Sentinels against Leviathan's army of Cenobites led by Pinhead. That would work better than pitting Pinhead against Michael Myers.