I Guess I'm Just Getting Old

I remember the first day of class at S.C.A.D. (Savannah College of Art and Design) and the instructor asked the class to introduce themselves and tell who were their favorite directors. Spielberg…Scorsese…Coppola…George Lucas (he hadn’t made Episodes I-III yet) were of course the general consensus, when it came to my turn I announced John Carpenter as my choice. The instructor looked at me perplexed and quizzically asked why? I simply responded…Escape from New York.

Of course those other guys are exceptional directors, but they have typically had the budgets and studios to do what they wanted, whereas Carpenter was usually producing box-office hits on a shoe-string budget and some how pulling these really cool movies out of his ass.

When I was growing up VHS/Beta rentals had not yet been introduced so HBO was the only game on the block, Showtime came along later and I remember at that time HBO would not show “R” rated movies until after 8pm. I had a babysitter whom I had made an arrangement with; she could have her boyfriend over without me telling mom and dad, but I got to watch whatever I wanted on HBO. The first time I saw Halloween was on HBO. It scared the living P-Jesus out of me, not the actual scenes of violence but that white mask fading in from the darkness and that creepy cool-ass music. I was hooked, now I realize that Halloween is a mediocre horror film at best, but I didn’t have those skills when I was younger to analyze the film and I think the only reason Halloween has remained so close to my heart as well as others, is for the nostalgic aspect of when I first saw it. Even with all of its flaws, good or bad, it is a classic and part of our culture. And another piece of trivia, it was Jamie Lee Curtis’ (the Activia Lady) film. Maybe she should have offered some Activia to Michael, get him regular and everything turns out fine.

Flash-forward to 2007 Rob Zombie’s reimagining of Carpenter’s Halloween is released. I realize it is a reimagining so it should be judged independently, on it’s own. I had seen House of 1,000 Zombies and The Devil’s Rejects and had determined Zombie wasn’t for me, but I saw his release of Halloween, just because of my love for the original, as I’m sure it was for many. I thought the first-act was pretty descent giving Michael Myers a background and developing his character but the third-act completely lost me, especially the scene where Michael gouges out Dr. Loomis’s eyes and a few scenes later Dr. Loomis re-appears with eyes in-tact. At least Zombie was smart enough to use the original theme in his release, that theme is as much a character of the film as Michael Myers himself. Can you imaging watching Jaws without the shark’s theme.

The only reason I bring all this up is because I recently tried watching Zombie’s release of Halloween II, which starts out as a reimagining of the 1981 original and then I realized it is the sequel to his Halloween release in 2007. It was one of the most violent movies I have ever seen, now I appreciate a good scary-horror flick but this was more like a snuff film. It is amazing how a white mask fading in from the darkness with a knife scarred me to now having to see someone violently stabbed 10 times to get the same. I was told that Halloween was going to be re-made one way or another and if Zombie didn’t do it someone else would, I wish they would have let someone else.