10/2/14 (Part Two): Holiday Leftovers

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'80s films, '80s slasher films, 31 Days of Halloween, Charles Cyphers, cinema, Cliff Emmich, co-writers, Dean Cundey, Debra Hill, Dick Warlock, Donald Pleasence, electronic score, film reviews, films, Halloween, Halloween 2, Halloween II, horror, horror franchises, horror movies, hospitals, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jeffrey Kramer, John Carpenter, Lance Guest, Laurie Strode, Leo Rossi, Michael Myers, Movies, Nancy Stephens, Pamela Susan Shoop, Rick Rosenthal, Sam Loomis, sequels, slasher films

Memory’s kind of a funny thing. I remember really disliking Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween 2 (1981) when I first saw it, probably because I felt cheated that John Carpenter didn’t direct it. I was a huge fan of the original Halloween (1978) and I’m pretty sure that the thought of a Carpenter-less continuation of the story really ticked me off. Several years ago, I decided to watch the entire Halloween franchise in one fell swoop and I, likewise, remember being disappointed by the second entry, albeit not as disappointed as I was by the Busta entry.

This, of course, brings us to the present day where I decided to screen Halloween 2 back-to-back with the Carpenter classic. I assumed that my findings would be pretty much the same as they were in the past: this was going to be a lame cash-grab. At this point, I figured I could finally give up on the film and relegate it to the special hell reserved for sequels like Wishmaster 4 (2002) or Psycho 3 (1986). And then something kind of funny happened. Perhaps it was the warm glow from seeing the always-dependable original film…perhaps it was my complete focus on the picture at hand…regardless of the reason, I ended up…well, kinda liking the flick. It’s no patch on the original, mind you, and only barely in the same universe, quality-wise, but it actually makes perfect sense as a direct sequel (to a point) and would have brought the series to a pretty decent conclusion if the producers would have opted to end it here.

If younger me would have paid closer attention back in the day, I probably would have realized that Halloween 2 didn’t have as tenuous a relationship to Carpenter’s film as I thought it did. Not only did Carpenter and partner Debra Hill co-produce the film but they also co-wrote it and Carpenter once again provided the musical score. Dean Cundey, the masterful cinematographer from the first film, returned to shoot this, as well, insuring that the overall look would, at the very least, be pretty similar. Many of the original cast members, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence and Charles Cyphers, reprised their roles from the first film and the movie actually takes place immediately after the events of the original movie: not as in “One week later…” but as in “5 minutes later…” In fact, beyond the fact that Carpenter handed the directorial duties over to Rosenthal, both Halloween and its sequel look pretty damn similar.

All of this being said, Halloween 2 is most definitely not in the same league as Carpenter’s film. For one thing, the film falls victim to the biggest sin of sequels: more is not necessarily better. If there was one building blowing up in the first movie, level a city block in the second. Did Rambo kill ten guys in the second movie? Better give him forty for the third. The idea of escalation doesn’t technically help the quality of the film so much as keep setting a higher and higher bar for future sequel makers to leap over. In the case of Halloween, we go from a small handful of deaths in the first film (including at least a couple off-screen ones) to a small battalion in the second. It’s a curious move for the series, since the original film was all about mood and suspense with very little actual gore. Halloween 2, on the other hand, is much freer with the red stuff, including a thoroughly ridiculous scene where a victim’s blood is completely drained out onto the floor, creating something akin to a lake. There’s also a scalding, an eyeball puncture, throat slashings and the like, although nothing ever seems too gratuitous or mean-spirited (even the pool of blood pays off with one of the best ever slasher film deaths…let just say, people should always watch their step…).

The film’s other big issue is the introduction of several extraneous plot elements that seem destined to add depth to the mythos but instead just end up unnecessarily cluttering the narrative. We get druid lore, a surprise lineage revelation, a power struggle at the asylum and an angry mob throwing rocks at the old Meyers place, none of which actually pay off in any meaningful way. Part of the problem with all these plot threads is that it seems to completely push poor Jamie Lee Curtis off the screen: while Laurie was the hero of the first film, she gets so little screen-time here as to be more of a supporting player, while Loomis ends up picking up the hero reins and running roughshod. It’s also a bit disconcerting to see the strong, resolute Laurie of the first film reduced to the weak, bed-ridden Laurie of the sequel: Curtis doesn’t even sound the same in this, seeming to dial the passion down a full notch or two.

Despite all of this, however, Halloween 2 is actually a pretty decent film. It’s much more of a generic slasher than the first, especially since it trades the rich autumnal warmth of Carpenter’s film for the clinical frigidity of the hospital, but it’s briskly paced and no one element really wears out its welcome. The connection to the first film is so seamless as to be almost dizzying, which is a nice trick: while the film begins with “rerun” footage from the first, there’s a point where it seamlessly morphs into the “new” footage and I really couldn’t tell. I know where the original film ends, of course, so seeing the film “continue” past that point was disorienting but also kinda cool. It’s also nice to have another Carpenter soundtrack (I absolutely love his film scores), even if the score for Halloween 2 isn’t as evocative as the original: it’s a bit more strident but all of the familiar beats are there.

There are also plenty of nicely staged setpieces and some really nice shots, although none of this has the creeping claustrophobia of the first film. The aforementioned blood scene has a great payoff, as does the scene where someone passes out on a steering wheel, alerting Michael to Laurie’s presence. There’s also a really nicely staged shot where Michael strangles someone in the background while someone dithers around in the foreground, unaware. And I must certainly admit extreme fondness for the scene where a curious Michael peeks in through an old couple’s window and sees them watching Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968): I’m positive that’s Carpenter referencing his NOTLD nod from the first film (watch the scene where Loomis and the nurse drive up to the asylum in the rain and tell me the white-clothed patients don’t look like Romero’s similarly garbed undead), although I’ll freely admit that it might also just be happy coincidence.

Although I firmly believe that the original Halloween never needed a sequel (for me, Michael’s body disappearing and Laurie bursting into tears finish that story more definitively than “The End” ever could), I’ll also admit that Halloween 2 isn’t a terrible sequel. At the very least, it’s the last time that the series ever really bothered with any true connection to the first film, beyond the Michael Meyers connection, of course. Taken on its own, it’s a pretty decent little slasher with several great scenes but nothing spectacular. Combined with the first film, however, it actually ends up offering a bit more closure. The additional plot details may be largely unnecessary but they do make sense, in context, and the two films become a sort of duology. Halloween 2 may not be a necessary film and it certainly won’t make anyone forget the original but it ends up being a pretty good supplement to Carpenter’s film. If you’ve always given the film the cold shoulder, go ahead and give it a try: you might not be blown away but I’m willing to wager that you’ll enjoy yourself. Younger me was wrong: Halloween 2 definitely doesn’t suck. It’s pretty okay…and there’s nothing wrong with that.

10/2/14 (Part One): The Reason For the Season

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'70s films, 31 Days of Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, auteur theory, babysitters, Brian Andrews, Charles Cyphers, classic films, co-writers, cult classic, dead teenagers, Dean Cundey, Debra Hill, Donald Pleasence, electronic score, favorite films, Film auteurs, Haddonfield, Halloween, horror, horror franchises, horror movies, iconic film scores, independent film, insane asylums, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Carpenter, John Michael Graham, Kyle Richards, Michael Myers, Nancy Kyes, Nick Castle, P.J. Soles, Sam Loomis, set in the 1970s, slasher films, small town life, writer-director

Apparently, I owe John Carpenter’s classic Halloween (1978) an apology. Despite regarding the film as one of my favorites for more years than I can remember and revisiting it at least once a year, it seems that I’ve been taking it for granted. Call me “lazy” or “too comfortable” but I’ve been treating the film as background noise for far too long now: something to have on while serving up gift-wrapped sugar treats for the young’uns or to zone out to after a particularly long day at work. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I’ve seen the film so many times, kind of like how we all used to get burnt out on big radio singles back when there was radio. I’ve been looking at the movie for years but I haven’t really been “watching” it for some time now. Obviously, this was a situation that needed to be rectified.

For this year’s screening of the seasonal chiller, I decided to give it my complete and undivided attention: rather than just put it on, I wanted to try to view it (if possible) through unbiased eyes. Essentially, I had a question: if I were viewing this for the first time today, would it still have the same impact on me that it did when I was a kid? It’s a flawed experiment, obviously, since there are so many other factors to consider, not the least of which is that at the time I saw the film, I didn’t really have much to compare it to: by this point, I’ve seen more horror films than I probably thought could ever exist back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Nonetheless, I wanted to see if the film could actually still affect me: I’ve been hearing stories lately about young people laughing their way through recent screenings of the film and wanted to see if this forefather to the slasher film still had any of its raw power left. As it stands, I found out two separate things: the film hasn’t lost any of its power over the 36 years since its release…and it’s entirely possible that modern audiences have rocks in their head. I’ll try to prove the former but you’re just gonna have to take my word on the latter.

Since I find it nearly impossible to believe that there are any film fans out there who aren’t at least familiar with Carpenter’s masterpiece (or Rob Zombie’s brain-dead remakes, if that floats yer boat), I’ll just give this the Cliff Notes synopsis: 15 years ago, young Michael Myers (Will Sandin) brutally stabbed his sister to death and was sentenced to an insane asylum. Dedicated psychiatrist Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) spends the next eight years trying to cure and the seven years after that trying to keep him locked away. When Michael escapes from the asylum on the day before Halloween, Loomis tracks him back to his boyhood home, the small town of Haddonfield. Michael arrives in the town on Halloween, steals some supplies (knives and a William Shatner Halloween mask) and quickly sets his sights on decimating the town’s supply of teenagers, in particular Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), Annie (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda (P.J. Soles). As day gives way to night, Michael skulks about, picking one person off after the other. Loomis is on the case, however, and has been scouring the town from top to bottom, hunting for any sign of his elusive ward. As Michael closes the distance between Laurie and her two young charges, Tommy (Brian Andrews) and Lindsey (Kyle Richards), will Loomis get there in time or will the resourceful babysitter be forced into a fight for her life against a silent, inhuman monster?

But back to that earlier question: did the film have any impact on me this time around or did I find myself re-evaluating my lifelong love for the film, ala Kevin Smith’s now odious Clerks (1994)? As it turns out, the film is still just as impactful (to me, at least) today as it was a couple of decades ago: despite knowing every twist, turn and plot development, I was still glued to the screen and even caught myself reacting to a few setpieces that I was sure would be old hat by this time. Now that the “Is it still effective?” question is answered, time to think about the “Why?” part. Why is Halloween still such an effective horror, even as it rapidly approaches its 40 anniversary?

The easy answer, of course, is that Halloween is still so damn effective because it’s such a well-made film. Yeah, that’s a bit of a cop-out but let’s increase the magnification to 1000x, shall we? First off, Carpenter is an absolute master filmmaker: that’s no hyperbole, rather one of those accepted scientific facts. By the time of Halloween, he already had a massively entertaining sci-fi epic under his belt (Dark Star (1974), as well as one of the most undisputed badass films in the history of popular cinema: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). I’ve already written extensively about Assault on Precinct 13 in another blog but here’s the recap: Assault is one of those raw, primal films that sprung fully formed into the world, like Athena out of Zeus’ head, and proceeded to rewrite the rule book on what low-budget action films were capable enough. Suffice to say that Assault on Precinct 13 would be a feather in anyone’s cap: for Carpenter, he just called it his sophomore film.

But back to Halloween. So we’ve got a master director who’s just taken his first baby steps towards on helluva career. What else do we have? How about that iconic electronic music score? Short of the Jaws (1975) theme song (and maybe Jurassic Park (1993), come to think of it), I’m hard-pressed to recall another film’s instrumental score that’s so easily recognized and functions so Pavlovian among genre fans. The responsible party? That’d be our man John, again, who also wrote the instantly memorable score for Assault. So we have a master director and an amazing musical score…what else we got? Well, we’ve also got a pretty impressive cast, even if they’re mostly unknowns (with the exception of the legendary Donald Pleasence, of course). Despite appearing in a few TV shows prior to this, Halloween was also the big-screen debut of Jamie Lee Curtis, which also adds a few feathers to its cap: film fans, genre or otherwise, know Curtis as being one of the most dependable, strong and fun performers to tread the boards in this modern film era. Curtis’ performance as Laurie is a true watershed moment in horror, since it introduced the horror world to the notion of a strong female lead. While Laurie might not be quite in Lt. Ripley territory, her character is anything but a damsel in distress: Loomis may shoot Michael several times from a safe distance but Laurie goes mano a mano with the fucker, employing hangers, knitting needles, knives and whatever else she can get her hands on to inflict maximum damage. Loomis may be the guy who gets in the final shots (for all the good that does) but Laurie’s the one who softened up the devil, in the first place.

Unlike the scads of “dead teenager movies” that followed in its wake, the “victims” in Halloween are not a clichéd, unlikable bunch of cannon fodder: they might not be fully developed characters in the way that characters in The Godfather (1972) are, for example, but they’re also a light year away from the “horny/stupid/asshole” stereotypes that would pop up in just about every other slasher film ever made. Laurie and her friends may not quite look like teenagers but they definitely sound like them and it’s pretty impossible (for me, at least) to not feel empathy for them. Contrast this to something like Hatchet (2006), which delights in introducing super-shitty characters so that audiences will cheer when they get fed into a wood chipper: it’s a subtle but big difference.

Alright…so far, we have a film with a master director, excellent musical score, effective acting and sympathetic characters. What else does it have going on? Well, it’s got an exceptionally tight script, for one thing, a script which manages to dole out just enough information to get us intrigued but not enough to make us glaze over (I’m absolutely looking at you, Rob Z). It also has some pretty astounding cinematography, courtesy of Dean Cundey, the man with the camera who shot everything from Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976) to most of Carpenter’s catalog (including The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China and Escape From New York), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and Jurassic Park (to name but a very few out of a very impressive career). Cundey uses plenty of gorgeous wide shots in the film, along with that (by now clichéd) “killer’s POV” that’s name-checked in just about 99.9% of slasher films. If you watch Halloween and think, “Gee, this stuff is so cliché,” ponder this, Poindexter: this was the film that pretty much wrote the rulebook on this kind of stuff (if you held up your hand and said, “Bay of Blood (1971)!,” you get points for that, too).

So all that stuff’s thrown into the mix, which should go a long way towards answering the question, “Is Halloween actually a good film?” (Short answer: Of course.) The deeper question, however, is why is Carpenter’s film still so effective despite all the films that have come and gone since? There have been plenty of bloodier, rawer, more frantic, more hopeless and more eye-popping films over the years, no two ways about it. How, then, could I stand on my apple-box and bend your ears about this old dinosaur? Well, folks, there’s a pretty simple answer: like Hitchcock before him, Carpenter is an absolute wizard at creating tension so thick that you could cut it with a knife. From the opening credit sequence (and let’s be honest: it’s one of the coolest, if simplest, credit sequences in the history of the medium) to the final shot, Halloween is nothing short of a barely concealed live wire. Much of the credit for this impenetrable mood is due to Carpenter’s amazing score: rarely have there been musical tones that seem more suited for reaching into someone’s chest and squeezing their heart into strawberry jam. The film also has a deadly serious tone (despite some welcome comic relief via the ultra-snarky Annie), which helps with the oppressive atmosphere. Digging deeper, however, there’s another reason for this: Carpenter has purposefully crafted a world that oozes menace and threat from every pore, regardless of the time of day, the characters involved or the storyline.

Despite seeming the obvious way to go, the majority of Halloween’s narrative doesn’t take place during the evening: some of the flat-out creepiest shit happens right out in broad daylight. Carpenter does something so simple, yet devious, that I’m surprised no one else has really figured this out yet: he lets his monster just walk around among the unsuspecting sheep. During the lead-up to the night-time festivities, Carpenter manages to stick Michael into the corners or margins of just about every shot. Laurie notices Michael watching her from across the street, while she’s in school…Laurie notices Michael hanging out on a sidewalk, in her neighborhood…Michael is just driving a car around through the streets of Haddonfield, as natural as if he were cruising on a Saturday night. Unlike other cinematic monsters, Michael doesn’t seem to strictly a “creature of the night,” as it were. The majority of the kills occur after dark, but the stalking is pretty-much a 24-7 deal.

There’s a reason this works so beautifully and it has to do with that old chestnut of Hitchcock’s regarding showing the bomb: if a couple are sitting at a table and suddenly blow up, the audience is surprised and shocked but only momentarily. If the audience witnesses someone place a bomb under the table, set the timer and leave, however, than we suddenly have a whole other animal…we have suspense. The characters might not know about the bomb but we do, which has the natural effect of keeping us on the edge of our seats: we keep yelling at the screen, telling the idiots to get the hell away from the table but they, of course, won’t listen.

Carpenter’s bomb, so to speak, is Michael. In many ways, he’s like a living ghost that haunts Haddonfield. Since we already know who and what he is, thanks to the opening, Loomis’ description and the harrowing asylum escape, we already know what he’s capable of once he shows up among the “normal” folks. Laurie and her friends might not know who the goony guy in the Shatner mask is but we do and that makes all the difference. Since Michael is an omnipresent force in the film, we never reach a point where he’s not on our minds: we might temporarily forget him, as we get caught up in some bit of teenage minutiae but he’s always right around the corner to remind us. Once the killing begins in earnest and Michael becomes an unstoppable force, it’s almost like our fears have been confirmed: if only those idiots would have listened to us about the bomb, none of this shit would be happening. Thanks to this technique, Halloween has about a million times more resonance and power than generic slashers that merely set up a group of people, establish a threat, wait until dark and kill ’em all.

These are all great reasons to love Halloween, as far as I’m concerned, but there are plenty of other reasons. Nick Castle’s performance as Michael may be mute but he manages to instill no small amount of characterization, none the less: one of my favorite scenes in any horror movie, ever, is the bit where Michael lifts Bob (John Michael Graham) off the floor, nails him to the wall with a knife and proceeds to stare at him, slowly cocking his head to the side as if he were a dog watching a caterpillar. It’s a terrifying moment precisely because it’s such an innocent, human expression: we don’t expect this emotionless monstrosity to express curiosity, after all, since that makes him more uncomfortably human than we’d like. There’s another fantastic scene (in the same part of the film, ironically enough) where Michael puts on a sheet and Michael’s glasses and goes to see Lynda. She expects Bob while we know it’s Michael under the sheet: her goofing around turns to frustration when Bob won’t end the joke, while our hearts jump from our chest to our throat like a strongman test at the carnival. There are about a million ways this scene could have been played out but only one that achieves maximum chills and Carpenter nails it.

And there, in a pretty huge nutshell, you have it: my rationalization for why Halloween should still be considered not only a forefather to modern horror films but also one of the best examples of the genre that we’ll probably ever see. Like Hooper’s landmark The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), the original Halloween is surprisingly light on actual gore: there are plenty of strangulations and off-screen killing but this is about the furthest thing from something like Friday the 13th (1980) that you can get. This, of course, makes the numerous (and increasingly violent) sequels seem even more half-baked than the numerous TCM sequels: while there was some (small) precedent for graphic violence in Hooper’s film, there’s virtually none in Carpenter’s, despite the subject matter.

Despite not really thinking about Halloween in any meaningful way for years, all it took was one good, close viewing to remind me of all the reasons that this film was always one of my favorites. Like eating comfort foods, there’s just something about watching Halloween that seems natural and…well…good, to me. In a day and age where one-upmanship is the name of the game and jaded viewers have seen just about everything short of actual snuff films, it’s refreshing to return to something like Halloween and remember a time when it was possible for a horror film to make you think and feel without battering you into submission. Watching Halloween in this way has only reaffirmed my earlier love for the film: horror films wouldn’t be the same without Carpenter and Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without…well…Halloween.