The Halloween Franchise

[thecolorsblend]

As an aside, Halloween (2018) is now streaming on Peacock. No idea if SN has seen it yet. But if he (or anyone) hasn't, well, here's your chance.

[Silver Nemesis]

I saw Halloween (2018) a couple of years ago, but I still haven't seen either of the sequels. I've been keeping out of this thread for a while now to avoid spoilers. However Halloween Kills is currently on Netflix, so I've added it to the list of horror films I'm hoping to watch during October.

I've already watched several old horror films this month that I'd not seen before, including The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), Dos monjes (1934) and Return of the Daimajin (1966).I'll probably watch Halloween Kills soon. I also want to re-watch The Exorcist for its 50th anniversary, and I always like to revisit a few of Roger Corman's Poe movies around this time of year. I'm aiming to balance my October viewing between movies I'm familiar with and films I've not seen before.

[thecolorsblend]

My life is chaos at the moment. For a variety of reasons too. So, I already knew I had no chance whatsoever of doing 31 In 31 this year. Not happening.

But I could (and did) settle for weekend rewatches. There are four Saturdays in October this year, which offers a pretty good balance.

So, last weekend, I rewatched Halloween Ends. Second time I've ever seen it. My initial concerns remain and so do my initial positive reactions. Looks like I called this one when it first came out, a rarity for me.

This coming weekend (if possible) will be Nosferatu The Vampyre. This is the rare remake which I think actually exceeds the original. The dialogue, the creepy atmosphere, the sinister production design, Dracula's resemblance to Orlok, etc. Against all odds, Nosferatu The Vampyre is a worthy remake. Highly recommended!

After that is Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. This is "the funny one". Yes, it's still a horror film. But it's less determined to be scary than its predecessors. I won't say this one's my favorite. But I do adore it.

Finally, there's The Lost Boys, a perennial favorite. I simply can't say enough good things about The Lost Boys. A true classic, if you ask me.

[Silver Nemesis]

Since my previous post I've watched A Page of Madness (1926), X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963) and Evil Dead Rise (2023). For spooky seasonal reading, I'm currently halfway through Dracula the Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker, and I've just bought a copy of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux to read next.

Right now I'm just watching/reading general horror, but in the second half of October I'm going to focus on more specifically Halloween-related things.

This coming weekend (if possible) will be Nosferatu The Vampyre. This is the rare remake which I think actually exceeds the original. The dialogue, the creepy atmosphere, the sinister production design, Dracula's resemblance to Orlok, etc. Against all odds, Nosferatu The Vampyre is a worthy remake. Highly recommended!

The last time I watched Herzog's Nosferatu was when I was about 16 or 17. I need to check it out again. Murnau's original is one of my favourite vampire films, so I prefer that to the remake. But the remake is certainly good and I've seen a lot of film buffs saying they enjoy it more than the 1922 movie.

After that is Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. This is "the funny one". Yes, it's still a horror film. But it's less determined to be scary than its predecessors. I won't say this one's my favorite. But I do adore it.

I've never really liked the Friday the 13th series. I've seen every instalment in the franchise, but I still regard it as a poor man's Halloween. A Nightmare on Elm Street is my favourite slasher franchise, so when it comes to the whole Freddy vs. Jason debate I'm firmly on Team Freddy. That said, I remember Jason Lives being the F13 film I enjoyed the most. Partly because of the humour, but also because it has a more gothic visual flair than the earlier movies. I read somewhere that the director was influenced by Hammer movies, and it shows. The death scenes are also more creative in Part VI than in the earlier films.

Finally, there's The Lost Boys, a perennial favorite. I simply can't say enough good things about The Lost Boys. A true classic, if you ask me.

The Lost Boys is unquestionably a classic. I just re-watched it last month and it's aged like fine wine. Great visuals, great soundtrack, a skilful blend of horror, comedy and action. I generally don't like eighties teen movies, but there's something about The Lost Boys that clicks with me. It clicked with me when I first saw it at the age of 12, and it still clicks with me now in a more nostalgic sense. I always identified strongly with the Sam character. When I was a teenager I used to hang around in comic book stores and I had friends exactly like the Frog brothers. Guys who were into martial arts, comics and air guns and who acted as if they were commandoes. I also have an older brother named Michael who's cooler than me. So all that stuff resonated.

I think one of the reasons The Lost Boys works so well is that it gets across a more male-centric view of adolescence than the average teen film. Most teen movies focus on the female experience or on romance, but The Lost Boys is a more aggressive masculine film. It focuses on the love-hate relationship between brothers, the power dynamics within male groups where different people are competing for alpha status, dangerous peer pressure, the difficulties of adapting/changing in order to fit in, the immature way young males view girls as idealised trophies to be competed for, the irrational macho impulse to save face when confronted with violent and potentially life-threatening challenges, and so forth. Other films have used vampires and werewolves as a metaphor for adolescence, but few have done so as successfully as The Lost Boys.

The scene where the mother tries talking to Michael after he comes home late and he just wants to go to bed always struck me as real. I expect every teenage boy has had that experience, where a parent or older relative was trying to communicate with him and he just wanted to be left alone. Beneath the fantasy veneer, there's a kernel of emotional and psychological realism in The Lost Boys. It captures the excitement and awfulness of being a male teenager better than any other horror film I can think of. It's my favourite Joel Schumacher movie, and I rank it alongside Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark as the greatest modern day vampire film. I love both of those movies. Interestingly, they both came out in 1987, both have terrific soundtracks, and both feature sons of Exorcist star Jason Miller in prominent roles: Jason Patric in The Lost Boys and Joshua John Miller in Near Dark.

That family has some impressive horror movie credentials. But yes, The Lost Boys is superb. Looking back on it now, I can totally see why WB thought Schumacher would be a perfect choice for Batman. Chris O'Donnell's Dick Grayson wouldn't have been out of place in Santa Carla. In some ways, Michael can be seen as a prototype for Schumacher's Robin – a headstrong young biker with a strong attachment to his family, who gets drawn into a dark vampiric subculture, stumbles into a cave and is transformed into a violent creature of the night. I would've loved a Schumacher Batman film made in the same style and tone as The Lost Boys.

[thecolorsblend]

I think one of the reasons The Lost Boys works so well is that it gets across a more male-centric view of adolescence than the average teen film. Most teen movies focus on the female experience or on romance, but The Lost Boys is a more aggressive masculine film. It focuses on the love-hate relationship between brothers, the power dynamics within male groups where different people are competing for alpha status, dangerous peer pressure, the difficulties of adapting/changing in order to fit in, the immature way young males view girls as idealised trophies to be competed for, the irrational macho impulse to save face when confronted with violent and potentially life-threatening challenges, and so forth. Other films have used vampires and werewolves as a metaphor for adolescence, but few have done so as successfully as The Lost Boys.

My view is that issues and themes related to family were like catnip to Schumacher.

Some ridiculous percentage of his films center on a character (or group of characters) trying like crazy to build a family, rebuild it, reconnect to it or whatever. More than a lot of directors, Schumacher had a preoccupation with this subject that colors a lot of his films.

Flatliners, Falling Down, somewhat his Batman films, The Lost Boys, etc., family is a core issue/theme/conflict/goal/whatever in all those films. And I think Schumacher's difficult early life likely plays a role in all that.

[The Joker]

I saw Halloween (2018) a couple of years ago, but I still haven't seen either of the sequels. I've been keeping out of this thread for a while now to avoid spoilers. However Halloween Kills is currently on Netflix, so I've added it to the list of horror films I'm hoping to watch during October.

Very interested in your thoughts on "Halloween Kills" whenever you share them, Silver. I remember HK being somewhat controversial/divisive among the Halloweenies when it came out, but no where near the level of "Halloween Ends".

My life is chaos at the moment. For a variety of reasons too.

Oh, I definitely know what you mean, and can even very recently, relate! I'm thankful I still have a good job that pays pretty well, but everything else? Hoo boy! Nothing that can't be eventually weathered, but even an extended period of monotony sounds good to me now.

After that is Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. This is "the funny one". Yes, it's still a horror film. But it's less determined to be scary than its predecessors. I won't say this one's my favorite. But I do adore it.

Solid entry in the franchise. I can't necessarily disagree with Silver's opinion of "Friday the 13th" being the poor man's "Halloween", but admittedly, during my childhood, I found the F13th flicks much more entertaining and rewatchable than I did the Halloween films. Where one franchise leaned into being more scary/suspenseful, the other seemed to gravitate into being more and more eccentric/spectacle. Course, I was getting into the films prior to 1995, so it was pretty much F13th 1-8 + Jason Goes to Hell vs. Halloween 1-5 at the time. I remember liking H6 Curse of Michael Myers a lot when it came out, but I think H20 really re-solidified the Halloween franchise to where it needed to be. Given that it felt like a big deal at the time, and was successful. Where, by comparison, H6 was just moderately fruitful in reigniting interest.

Course H6/Curse was following H5. It had no choice but to swim upstream and hope for the best. 

[thecolorsblend]

When I was a kid, Friday The 13th's mediocrity was actually the selling point for me. The Halloween series was ambitious. Even if the ambition utterly failed (such as The Curse Of Michael Myers), at least the ambition existed in the first place.

F13 knew it was a slasher conveyer belt and never aspired to anything else. The movies knew the audiences wanted mayhem and endeavored to give it to them. I liked that F13 embraced its second tier nature. I simply find Michael Myers a scarier villain than Jason.

But Jason kept coming back in film after film. And that gave me a strange affection for the F13 series. I can't explain it. But I have a lot of respect for F13.

[The Joker]

News is a few days old now, but it looks like the notion of a Halloween television series on the horizon is, indeed, very real.

https://deadline.com/2023/10/halloween-tv-rights-miramax-deal-trancas-series-cinematic-universe-1235571505/

[thecolorsblend]

I realize it's early days with this thing. But the idea of a Halloween cinematic universe presumably spread across film and TV doesn't necessarily inspire confidence.

I see three possible scenarios here.

Scenario 01: A reboot that incorporates the main Michael Myers franchise with the Season Of The Witch concept. Presumably, this would incorporate Silver Shamrock masks as part of Michael's evil. That fan theory has been bandied about for a long time now. And while I'm not opposed to the idea in principle, I do have reservations about attributing Michael's evil solely to an outside source. I don't think Michael should be humanized, frankly.

Scenario 02: A Myers-based reboot that reserves Michael for feature film with a TV series that shows the aftermath of Michael's rampage(s) in Haddonfield. Trouble is I don't see much room for a story in that limited idea. Plus, the Blumhouse series somewhat addressed that already. HK and particularly HE go to pains to illustrate the trauma Michael has inflicted upon the town, far beyond merely the Strode family.

Scenario 03: A Myers-based reboot in feature film and a separate/unrelated TV show that explores the SOTW concept in greater detail. This has the most appeal to me, frankly. I've come to enjoy and adore SOTW and would love to see the idea expanded upon in a TV series.

[The Joker]

The reports of this pushing for a "Cinematic Universe" with the Halloween franchise is concerning. It's a business aim that has proven to be successful for some, and disastrous for most. Not all IP's warrant, nor can support, such a direction. In addition, even if initially successful, it still runs the very real risk of over saturation, where the whole thing becomes overplayed, collapses under it's own weight, and audience apathy sets in (took awhile with Marvel, and happened reasonably quick with Star Wars).

There seems to be a real push to resurrect the "Season of the Witch" story line as a late, and though it's intriguing to think about, I honestly hope it doesn't (especially if they wind up knocking it out of the park) wind up unintentionally creating a 'Pro-SOTW Anthology' camp vs 'Pro-Michael Myers' camp where each team begins simply looking for things to nitpick and complain about concerning the tv show and films. We already have flagrantly vocal proponents/detractors regarding "Halloween Ends", where clearly fans are staunchly at the opposite ends of the spectrum with respect to. Would such a course direction unintentionally cause yet another rift? I'm not sure ... but the risk is there. Along with the aforementioned factors.

Course, who knows? Perhaps there's some brilliant ideas that can bring about cohesion between SOTW and Michael Myers, that doesn't wind up lessening Michael? I guess we'll find out.