Some quick thoughts on Halloween 5 (1989)

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This is what you'd get if you literally stuck a gun in Andrzej Żuławski's face and demanded it's the choice between either directing a Halloween sequel or his life. But, before I explain that, last night was the first time I have ever watched either Halloween 4 or 5. I've long heard that '88's Part 4 is generally well-received and I'd have to agree. After a seven year absence, IV is a solid, competently directed return to the Myers mythos with satisfying intrigue and not terribly-well-concealed echoes of Carpenter's original. Though Part 5, unleashed a year later, is much more interesting for all the wrong reasons.

Much like '89's Jason Takes Manhattan and '91's Freddy's Dead, The Revenge of Michael Myers is a real black mark on the franchise. Director Dominique Othenin-Girard is the prevailing issue who, either from lack of interest or talent (both?), constructs a sequel that provokes you to keep watching with jaw agape. Unlike the former entry's helmer Dwlight H. Little, Swiss-born Othenin-Girard introduces a rather European feel to Halloween 5. This would be great, if only the clumsy direction was markedly better. There's times where it's almost as if the director instructed the actors to ignore their marks and loosely inhabit the frame as they deliver their performances. The result is often times a lack of care in the composition of the frame, something dripping all over Carpenter's masterpiece, and too close close-ups that usually look blurry. Little's eye with Halloween 4 is no-frills, but at least there's a confident workmanlike sensibility to his sequel. Othenin-Girard just appears to be barely accomplishing the basics, badly pulling off some mildly interesting camera angles, and utilizing mostly first takes.

It doesn't help matters that scenes tend to go on for too long; whether we're getting real bored with the night's plans of soon-to-be Myers slaughter cattle, the elongated barn sex/kitten/farm tool killing, the bumbling keystone kops bull, or Michael driving around town. That's right, Michael tools about in a hot shit muscle car at length here. The Shape did drive in the original to get to Haddonfield, but you ask yourself "what the hell?" upon seeing him chase down Danielle Harris's Jamie through the woods while the Halloween theme plays. It's just like seeing The Fonz jump the shark--years before Rob Zombie was propositioned. Otherwise, Don Shanks's portrayal of Michael is good; however, it's ridiculous to believe Loomis could actually knock him unconscious with a few 2x4 blows. How in the world could the frail, weary doctor lug around and set up an undoubtedly extremely heavy chain net into the Myer's home anyway? Not to mention Ellie Cornell's Rachel, a character so central in Little's sequel, only to be offed early and seemingly forgotten about even by Jaime.

The one constant of quality in both Parts 4 and 5 is Danielle Harris. She does a great job as the young Jamie Lloyd. Judging by her performance, it was stupid of Zombie to not just have Harris fill the character of Laurie in his films. Donald Pleasence was spirited in Halloween 4 and despite having better burn make-up in this sequel, it's sad to see him so haggard here, presumably bothered he's in yet another mediocre Halloween sequel. The psychic connection mumbo jumbo between Jaime and Michael had more potential than Othenin-Girard's sloppy touch provides. Instead, what really cheapens Michael Myers is the tall and dark cowboy that points to the unstoppable force being tied to some cult or something. Ugh, a real unfortunate mess this one.

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Happy Birthday, Mr. Romero!

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Some quick thoughts on Zombieland (2009)

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Originally envisioned as a television series that never made it beyond paper, Zombieland is the resulting feature re-working and Ruben Fleischer's directorial film debut as his homage to Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's already iconic Shaun of the Dead. I stayed completely away from details concerning the plot all this time, but I did hear some wishy-washy sentiments regarding what has become the highest grossing zombie flick of all time. So was my first trip to Zombieland last night worth it?

Thinking back, they had me at For Whom the Bell Tolls. Like Shaun, Fleischer's infected-raving-maniac-as-zombie film, something explicitly stated in the making-of, is certainly a ballsy proposal. Perhaps a bit too much so for some, as it's a film that needs to grab a certain response out of the viewers in order to jibe with what it's trying to convey. What is that message? Well, it's nothing like what your average moviegoer expects from a modern popcorn flesh ripper. We seem to have missed the hardcore action of the initial zombie apocalypse. Survivors are scarce and those still truly alive aren't looking for cures, other uninfected, or particularly strong, errr...strongholds. No, instead Zombieland is purely indulgent undead wish fulfillment that recklessly rocks out with gleeful abandon and little concern.

Looking over at the IMDB's trivia page, the film was meant to be entitled "Another Day in Zombieland" and in hindsight this would have made the perfect title. As you're watching, there's a distinct sense that this is indeed just another wild day living in a world infested with insane, bloodthirsty ebola/syphilis/fucked up shit maniacs. With even less reason to exist than Shaun, Zombieland basically acts as an excuse to set up hilarious hijinks at the expense of the end times. It's wafer thin, but everything tearing across the screen points to an acknowledgment of that, so one would have to be a dick to pile hate on such harmless fun. You also gotta love the extremely sly references to zombiedom peppered through. The funniest example being the fat, zombified patrons of the grocery store that hearken back to Dawn of the Dead's "This was an important place in their lives" line.

To its more serious credit, the story does prance on familiar serious zombie scenario topics such as the loss of loved ones, the new concept of love in a dead world, and the advantages of plundering celebrity homes. The cast is uniformly excellent for the otherwise lightweight material and act as the glue holding the roaming narrative together. One can imagine writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick had these characters quite formed being first created for the more expansive television market. Woody Harrelson is the fucking man so it's easy to accept him as a more hillbilly Mickey Knox without the media-slicked evil. The star cameo, which is probably known to everyone by now, borders on a joyous experience. It's so refreshing to see this particular actor ham it up after years of awards in higher art.

What's perhaps even more impressive is this film is an unabashed horror comedy and found success at the box office. Zombieland's positive reception both critically and financially proves the usually poisonous "horromedy" is still viable in the mainstream. A little redemption for all those splattery laughs that failed to spark outside of our obsessive community. Though, in a short time, like all genre offerings Zombieland will be carried off by us and have real potential for continual discovery by the just initiated and horror fan vets alike. Bring on the sequel, this one could go anywhere from here.

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Halloween (1978) - 1982 MEDIA Betamax

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As a follow-up to a few days ago, here's a scan of Media Home Entertainment's Betamax edition of Halloween. This release, along with the VHS edition, was the film's second home video bow stateside in 1982 (and re-released until Media's final 1987 Television Edit VHS). Unfortunately, the Beta-sized slipcover was all scissored up by some dumbass, but the cassette is like new--maybe never even played. Have $52.99 to spare? I need some Michael "Meyers"!

Well, they told me it was a midget force...

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These arrived today, three (already unpacked) Dawn of the Dead action figures hailing from Japan produced by a company called Reds, Inc. The first is dubbed "MOTORCYCLE RIDER", or Tom Savini's Blades. The second is "HATCHET HEAD", or Leonard Lies's head cleaved zombie. The third is "BALD HEAD", or the Monroeville Airport doorway zombie. All three are complete with the only figure having an accessory being Blades. The only figure I'm missing is "STEPHEN", which is of course is David Emege's character. I don't know their exact release year, but I remember seeing these over ten years ago on the 'net and desperately wanting a set. Each usually go for $40 packaged, but I grabbed these three loose for much less. Cheesy looking, especially compared to NECA's figures, but they're impressively detailed for cheap Japanese toys in person.

The "Lost" Halloween Tapes

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Out of the three teen gullet opener megapowers of the '80s (Macho and Hogan being the unofficial fourth), Freddy and Jason seem to have dominated everyone's favorite analog home video format in the era of Reaganomics. It's not hard to walk down a swap met aisle without one of their films on VHS resting in a box somewhere within a constant six-foot radius of your person. Just look down in that one stained cardboard box by your left foot. Or you could bebop right now over to Amazon or eBay and drop $3 on any number of vintage Freddy's Revenges. Jason has especially captured (ripped out?) the hearts of our VCRs as it's a cakewalk to assemble the original eight cassette run of Paramount's series output--in great condition no less. And yes, I'm not referring those crappy EP-speed Paramount/Gateway tapes.

But what about Michael? Haddonfield's preeminent son that continually proves you can go home so long as you kill a fuckton of citizenry manages to be the most elusive on the ol' Video Home System. Excluding Curse through Resurrection, it's quite a task to dig up first run copies of Carpenter's Halloween to Revenge of Michael Myers. I'm talking about the real deals here, not the multitude of cheap tapes that flooded the market from Blockbuster Video, Goodtimes, Video Treasures, and finally Anchor Bay. Once Universal and 20th Century loosened their hold on these first five Halloween flicks; small VHS studios snapped up the licenses and rode the '90s wave of cheap tapes selling to sky high VCR ownership saturation before DVD exclaimed STFU at the dawning of the new millennium.

With Halloween, we're talking about three '80s VHS releases from Media Home Entertainment. The very first edition was a debut title for the studio in 1980, then known as MEDA, and is exceedingly rare and valuable when copies float on eBay. With Halloween II and Season of the Witch, MCA/Universal issued both in the '80s before Goodtimes Entertainment dumped them into EP-speed hell. Return and Revenge of Mickey Shatner Myers were both dropped by CBS/FOX Video before Anchor Bay went apeshit with releasing these two and Carpenter's original three dozen times. Actually, I'm fairly certain Anchor Bay have gained absolute control over the licenses of these three.

It may not seem too difficult to find these tapes, but trust me, it is surprisingly so. I have two copies of Media's second issue 1982 Halloween and a copy of CBS/FOX's Halloween 4 (the only other copy I've seen was mangled). I've never seen the "MEDA" Halloween or CBS/FOX's Halloween 5 and the few copies of MCA/Universal's Halloween II and Season of the Witch I've spotted have been heavily damaged. So be on the outlook, all of these are so oddly difficult to locate, it's almost as if you're saving a little something from the scrapheap of horror history if you hold on to them.

Unfortunately, my two copies of Media's Halloween are sealed away, but here's the CBS/FOX Halloween 4 which I found just yesterday.

Some quick thoughts on Angel Heart (1987) and The Annoyances of Blu-ray

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A nuclear family-period private dick (Mickey Rourke) with a greasy Manhattan accent is hired to track down an elusive musician in Bayou country. As a trail of death begins running red, the disquieting man (Robert De Niro) paying for the job seems unaffected while the detective's psyche and memory starts collapsing around the mysticism of the deep south and horrifying forces beyond his control.

So I popped in the Blu-ray of Alan Parker's Angel Heart late last nigh...morning and it seems wrong that I still don't love the film. There is some bottlenecking with the story's fairly-not-hard-to-guess revelations in the final half, but otherwise it's an extremely well-made, voodoo-fueled creeper with a genre blended pedigree that's unusual for its time.

Mickey Rourke's performance, just a few short years from his near total career derailment, proves the man has born at the wrong time and is trading in the wrong profession. The stubble-faced, then only slightly facially scarred actor just exudes his character from every one of his loose pores. Lisa Bonet outgrows her Cosby Show training wheels along with ultra pissing off Cosby himself over her lecherous, blood-soaked sex scene with Rourke. De Niro was still firmly giving a damn back then in a devilishly minor but important role sandwiched between fanastic turns in The Mission and The Untouchables. It's simply good stuff, acting as an "in-spirit" sister film to Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder, but still Angel Heart doesn't resonant with me that well and each re-visit is almost like watching the film for the first time. That sounds bad, but shouldn't dissuade anyone from checking this one out pronto for themselves.

As for Lionsgate's Blu-ray, the 1080p transfer is only good, but not nearly as great as it could look. It's the kind of picture that doesn't seem that much better than the DVD, until you pop in the DVD with this Blu-ray's quality fresh in mind. It's clearly more detailed, solid, and richly colorful than the standard definition image. Still, it's a lazy job with a slightly processed appearance and clumpy grain structure. The almost perfect 5.1 lossless DTS-HD Master Audio track is better than the picture quality.

Here's the annoyance. This Blu-ray edition actually lacks some of the supplements found on the prior Special Edition DVD. Both share a director commentary, introduction, selected scene Rourke commentary, and interviews with Parker and Rourke. What's missing is an hour-long documentary on Voodoo, the 1987 behind the scenes featurette, and additional interviews with Parker and Bonet. It would have been no problem to fit this additional stuff onto this 25GB Blu-ray. Though strangely, Angel Heart's original theatrical trailer is on this Blu-ray despite not being on the DVD(?!?). I'm personally not the biggest extra feature watcher, but it just seems "right" to have all the material ported over when the DVD isn't that old and both are released by the same studio. At least there aren't twelve trailers and commercials at the beginning like many new release Blu-rays (i.e. - Saw VI) tend to have nowadays, argh.

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Can't explain why...

...but this might be my favorite shot in all of Dawn of the Dead.

The Gates of Hell Announced for Blu-ray!

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Yes! My favorite Fulci classic is finally getting the royal treatment! Just PLEASE don't digitally noise reduce the existing gloriously grainy transfer, BU!

Via DVD Active: "Blue Underground has announced DVD ($19.95) and Blu-ray ($34.95) releases of City of the Living Dead for May 25th, 2010. The only extra material on the DVD will be a Making of City of the Living Dead featurette, the English trailer, the Italian trailer, radio spots, and still gallery. The Blu-ray release will include all that, along with additional featurettes: "Acting Among the Living Dead – Interview with Star Catriona MacColl", "Entering the Gates of Hell – Interview with Star Giovanni Lombardo Radice", "Memories of the Maestro", and a poster and still gallery."

Blue Underground's listing also states the inclusion of 7.1 DTS-HD, 5.1 Dolby Digital EX, and Original Mono audio tracks. You're the one who got me out in the armpit of the world chasing your...galloping cadavers.

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Some quick thoughts on Saw VI (2009)

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I have no shame in saying that I've fully embraced the Saw series despite what was originally a low budget wonder being corporately ballooned into an annual Halloween cash register for Lionsgate. Well, or at least that's what the studio thought before this installment's rather dramatic drop in box office performance compared to previous trips to the flesh-rippin' well. An even more cheaply made indie (by a vast margin), Paranormal Activity, laid ol' rickety Jigsaw out for the '09 spooky movie season's dollar. Not to mention this sequel's absolutely piss poor trailers that might as well just said "fuck it" and then flashed the title and release date. That's a shame really, because Saw VI is the best sequel in the franchise since the underrated once-trilogy-ender Saw III. Though it's perhaps even more shameful that it took the series two limp-dick sequels to climb upon the more solid ground witnessed here.

You gotta wonder what got into the water of writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton this time around after also scribing the purely wheel-spinnin' fourth and fifth sequels. It's akin to getting to a section of an otherwise boring novel that seems to immediately spark up as if the author was just filling pages while looking forward to writing that exciting portion. You get the feeling Dunstan and Melton wrote their three sequels with getting to IV in mind all along. At the same time, IV has the most connective tissue in flashback to III as we see Jigsaw, Amanda, and the then "heavy-lifter" Hoffman setting up some of the particulars behind Jeff's game. Hoffman has a bit of blackmailing on his mind involving Amanda and John's main squeeze.

One constant complaint from Saw haters is the disposability of characters that inhabit its grimy, insular, and logistically impossible world. Before you know it, characters both minor and seemingly major get gorily knocked off left-and-right. That doesn't change much with Saw the Sixth, but we do finally get some meat on Costas Mandylor's Hoffman. I never cared for Mandylor as the man continuing Jigsaw's legacy. Though the character is shored up with the added pressure of his fellow investigators getting closer to his true identity as they run into inconsistencies with the dead Agent Strahm being pegged as the new killer. Betsy Russell is back as Jill Tuck and comes into conflict with Hoffman over the contents of the mysterious box left for her by John. This is Mandylor's best performance so far in the four Saws to his credit and that empty feeling left by Tobin Bell's Jigsaw is the least lingering in this latest entry.

It also helps that we get more Bell here than in the prior two sequels. The veteran character actor's cameos in IV and V usually felt trite; however, Bell's scenes in VI provide him with what he's fantastic at--monologue. When Bell as either John or Jigsaw clicks, he easily stands with other greats of the genre, and his character's "forced" absence after III (but what could ya do?) is one of the worst moves in the past decade's worth of mainstream horror. Shawnee Smith reprises Amanda in snippets taking place mostly from III as we see additional motivation behind her ultimate choice at that sequel's climax. Watch for an after end credits tidbit involving Amanda that might speak to something we'll see explored in this year's upcoming sequel. The presence of Bell and Amanda only further solidifies their place as the best thing the series had going and it would have probably been best to let Saw conclude as a trilogy.

This time around, the thrust behind the game is the dickish health insurance agency that denied John pursuit of an experimental gene therapy that might have saved his life. You guessed it, the head of the company (television vet Peter Outerbridge) ends up in a rusty trap run having to decide between the very lives of his employees. This provides some underlying commentary, albeit hackneyed (this is a Saw flick after all), on the timely American healthcare scheme. At the same time, this direct connection to the "living" John adds greater weight to the purpose behind the traps (think Dr. Gordon a la the first Saw) instead of random strangers facing the true measure of their animalistic desire for life.

This is definitely an improvement over the last two years and a few steps in the right direction for everyone's favorite torture porn soap. With adjustments, this should have been the fourth film. I can remember some saying they were disappointed that VI didn't actually "end" the story, it does, the arc that began in 2004 is cleverly closed here. No spoilers, but the survivors will be going rogue in VII and this could potentially breathe entirely fresh life into the franchise. The next film could be radically different from Saw norms if its creators wished...that is if the gimmicky 3D thing doesn't get in the way.

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Much Thanks and BD's Horror Blogger Awards

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Before all else, I'd like to give a belated thank you to Evil Dead Junkie of the great Things That Don't Suck for a Fantastically Frightening award, or as I like to call it, the Skeletor Sexual Assault award. I'm very sorry about being such a drag-ass in my appreciation for this boobilicious award. Also thanks goes out to Professor Brian O'Blivion of The Cathode Ray Mission for linking to me through his thoughts on The Zom's Halloween 2. I'm always appreciative and proud to have you guys as readers!

Bloody Disgusting is running a Horror Blogger Awards with BoGD included (as Ghoul Basement) and for that I'd like to recognize with much gratitude Mike over at From Midnight, with Love for the selfless nomination. To be truthful, I'm not particularly looking for recognition in this fashion, and I'd take a more Marlon Brando-way of award acceptance if I won. Like I've said before, I wanted to create a site/blog I'd personally want to visit and read daily. I'm proud to say Basement of Ghoulish Decadence is this place through-and-through and I only hope readers have as much fun reading as I do writing this little blog.

This is actually why I stopped submitting to HorrorBlips, as the whole thing started to feel like a popularity contest. I'm confident in my creation. Those who know, know, and each visit, follower, award meme win from my fellow bloggers, link here, and bookmark are more important to me than winning a contest between my blog peers. So while I'll appreciate any votes BoGD happens to receive, I'm not going to shout it from the rooftops or shove it down your throats to vote for this blog. As I said to the left, I'm humbled to just be nominated and it's great to be mentioned on such a big site as Bloody Disgusting even though I personally very rarely visit the big Horror news destinations. Again, thanks and stay tuned!

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Check These Out!

First Blood (1982 / Thorn EMI VHS)

Love this cover art, the DVDs can't compare...

(click to see a scan of Thorn EMI's First Blood Part II VHS)

More Baffling Video Dealer Behavior; or you aren't Best Buy, man...

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Awhile ago I detailed the annoying practices of video dealer "in-betweeners" and this morning I ran into an even more totally baffling ideology from a swap meet DVD seller. Today I could have scored an authentic, factory sealed copy of Zombieland, exactly nine days before its official release date. The guys selling these are there every weekend and peddle a strange mix of "real" discs, obvious bootlegs of real discs, and throwaway bootlegs of UFC events and Bumfights. When I first spotted this crew setting up shop a number of years ago, they carried nothing but bootlegs, though I guess over time the fear of that whole up to five years in prison and/or $250,000 fine-thing caused this real/fake release mixture. I seldom see people actually buying stuff from them, but they manage to usually have Tuesday's new blockbuster releases like clockwork. Sometimes they have real releases way ahead of their street date and this is where this morning comes in.

There it was, Sony's brand new Zombieland DVD, sitting there next to bootleg copies of Gran Torino and the Platinum Edition of The Lion King. Now, this occurrence isn't new to me, and realizing there was only one copy on the table threw up alarms. So I put on my idiot face and tone as I coyly asked how much the DVD was. I was quickly met with "It's not for sale, it will be next weekend." Huh? I didn't press the reasoning because these dudes look like they have friends on C-block, but what possible advantage would there be to not sell the product you have out...to sell?

I don't give a flying damn if you'll have it for sale next week. I don't want it next week, but I will buy it now. What, I'm just imagining that I'm holding this DVD in my hand? What's for sale and what isn't? Pre-release swag is awesome (well, with movies that are worth it) but the thing is this thrill dramatically decreases with the arrival of the street date. So yeah, I could wait and buy it from these dudes next weekend...or just wait three days more for February 2nd and pick it off the bountiful retailer tree anywhere. There's almost no incentive to buy it from these guys if they won't break street dates by a substantial margin and this should be obvious even to them, right? Chain stores and e-tailers can indeed face hefty fines for breaking street dates, but you aren't Best Buy, man. I'm sure Mr. Police Officer will notice those badly-printed covers on your Drag Me to Hell bootlegs before those real factory-sealed DVDs already out or not resting on your table. Maybe it's just me...?

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This one doesn't even deserve "quick thoughts"

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Talk about an utter piece of garbage, even by trashy Italian living dead standards. Bruno Mattei's 1980 Night of the Zombies (Virus, Hell of the Living Dead, Zombie Creeping Flesh) is definitely one of the worst zombie flicks ever. A waste of 35mm film stock so rancid, so full retard, that it surpasses personal preference into a realm of condemnation usually only reserved for Nazi propaganda. Sure, we all have our own dislikes others would be puzzled by, but I'd hope for the sake of horrordom we could all ban together in unison and let out a big "what the fuck?!?" at this pinnacle of bad zombo pictures.

This is coming from someone who fancies himself some Mattei every now-and-again. The director honed his own "unique" bad filmmaking style over the years and while never making a true great like some of his Italian brethren, shit dude, he made Strike Commando. There's plenty to appreciate and laugh along with in his filmography, but Night of the Zombies is mind-grindingly tepid.

It's not just the fact Goblin's iconic music from Dawn of the Dead and Contamination is lifted wholesale for use as the soundtrack. For that, this is the ultimate motivator to re-watch Romero's masterpiece as a way of cleansing the dog shit taste out of your mouth afterward. It's the distinct impression that no one cared at all about what's on-screen; from Mattei, the three writers, the actors, and the effects crew. Might as well shoot continuity in the face five minutes in as we agonize with unsympathetic characters bouncing around through jungle stock footage. Oh boy, bland titties amongst stereotypical Mountain of the Cannibal God natives and more stock footage of tree monkeys and water diving cranes. More badly-executed gore, everyone seemingly making it up with each scene (hey, let's have a SWAT member dawn a tutu!), and an uninspired apocalyptic ending.

I'm understating how terrible the whole experience really is and this abomination to all that is undead has the gall to exist for an entire 101 minutes. To be honest, I got to about the thirty minute mark before mostly fast forwarding to the end. I can't see how I survived through it all years ago with Anchor Bay's DVD. The nearest film in spirit to Mattei's dreck is Umberto's Lenzi's Nightmare City, but that would be a insult to Lenzi's roving encrusted radioactive maniac epic. Either see that one instead or seek out superior Mattei product in the aforementioned Strike Commando, Robowar, Cruel Jaws, or hell even Zombi 3.

The picture quality of Vestron Video's VHS is extremely rough and noisy despite being produced a mere four years after Night of the Zombies's ungodly birth. Colors are rich and the sound is serviceable, but the framing is a dead center full screen crop that never pans to accommodate the action on-screen. The film appears to be uncut, and it probably is, since the studio was usually quite reliable at providing full versions of their horror titles.

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More H2 thoughts after Zombie's thoughts

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Imagine you're walking across a flat prairie feeling rather ill to your stomach after a blackout during one helluva drunken party. To your surprise, the more you walk, the better you feel. So you're humming along and come across a enormous pile of cow shit. I mean ja-fucking-normous. So wide and tall that in order to continue forward, you gotta hitch up your shit kickers and climb this mighty mountain of feces. You get to the crest slicked in nature's smelly nutrient-rich slurry. You peer down and see your car looking like a Tonka toy just beyond the last brown clump. The sun peaking up over the horizon speaks to relief if you just slid down the hay-riddled manure for a speedy drive home, extensive shower, Pepto, and sixteen hours of sleep. Though you find yourself standing there in complete awe of your situation and the four-story heap of housefly ecstasy you're resting upon.

Stupid allegory? Yes, but this seems to be the prevailing attitude by those who haven't outright condemned the new Halloween 2. One ends up straddling a line between low expectations and genuine appreciation with a morbid fascination of the film's flaws. Zombie himself might have experienced something similar as a director coming out on the opposite end of these two features. At least we can only hope so.

I watched H2 again last night with Zombie's commentary (spoilers ahoy). The first thing noticed was the director's muted temperament. Maybe Zombie was on the edge of a head cold, sounding a little nasally, but he sounded disinterested and focused more on production woes like omnipresent rain, extremely short shooting nights, and even a portion of canned film destroyed from airport x-rays. The only performance that receives personal praise during the commentary is Dourif's Sheriff Brackett. When Zombie does expound upon his motivations; the most pressing questions are left unanswered.

Zombie states the change from the events occurring "one year later" in the theatrical to "two years later" in his director's cut was always intended because "it makes more sense." How? He never explains that directly, but he makes a lot of Laurie's descent into crazytown, so I can only assume making Laurie's slide gradual is more realistic to Zombie. The shift in Myers from the embodiment of unalternated evil to a human being is acknowledged, but at the same time, it's made clear he was indeed shot point blank in the face at H1's conclusion. Wha? Where's the head trauma both physically and mentally? How could have Michael survived if he was merely a psychotic human? The radical changes made to Laurie and Loomis also aren't explained, other than a desire to make the two different from '07's Halloween. In a sidenote, according the English subtitles, some of the opening paramedic's post-accident "fucks" are actually him calling out for his very-dead partner, "Hooks".

From these inconsistencies, Zombie wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted to stay loyal to his revisionist take and small shreds of the original mythos--even if the result was nonsensical. Though all this director malaise and half-baked explaination might trace back to the man not actually wanting to write or direct a sequel in the first place. Plans fell threw, the studio's rules were erased, and the director wanted to protect his vision. If Zombie strictly adhered to his first Halloween's logic, we'd have a sequel without Michael Myers. Sorta like Season of the Witch...or more aptly The Blob without the Blob?

Zombie does point out all the director's cut differences (the theatrical version's DVD has to be a different commentary), which is always nice, and thoroughly explains the finality of his director's cut conclusion. Loomis's death is kinda debatable on-screen, but Zombie does say Laurie, Michael, and Loomis are meant to be dead with only the devastated Brackett remaining the sole survivor. The final shots of Laurie in a dream-like hospital hallway are meant to be her dying thoughts and the photographs of the dead from the two films that appear during the credits are meant to emphasize the tragedy of the entire story. Zombie even lets a few pregnant pauses of emotion slip into his thoughts when reflecting upon these intentions. Much like The Devil's Rejects, even if you hated this sequel, you gotta respect the decision to end the characters right here. Of course, Patrick Lussier (the ridiculously Virgin Group-sponsored Dracula 2000) has been tapped for a third film, so they'll figure out a way. Perhaps we'll see a re-birth of The Shape...or just another 3D pile o' shit.

Taken as a whole with complete disregard for the original series, what Rob Zombie was trying to do can be appreciated somewhat overall, what these two features desperately needed was a partner in the screenwriting phase serving as a check and balance for Zombie's wild tangents. Hell, even Carpenter wisely had the late Debra Hill behind the screenplays of the first two entries. Ultimately, Zombie and Carpenter were in the same boat with their respective Halloween 2s. Both wanted to let their initial works stand alone, begrudgingly participated in second installments, and intended to kill off vital characters for good. At one point in the commentary, Zombie says he and those behind H2 never set out to make a slasher, and I'd say they've succeeded in more ways than one--good and bad.

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MGM is screwing with VHS-only mavens...

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The Video Dead, Terrorvision, Twins of Evil, The Tomb, and now Robot Holocaust have sprung up in glorious high definition thanks to the studio in the past few months on their HD channel and VOD...not that I'm complaining...