You Only Live Twice

Ah, You Only Live Twice.  This is one of the more landmark titles in the James Bond catalog for a few reasons.  The novel (the twelfth book in the series) was the last published during Ian Fleming's lifetime.  The book took place immediately after On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which meant that YOLT essentially followed Bond as he hunted down Blofeld to avenge his dead wife.  In many ways, this was part of a decade-long evolution for the character.  The film, though, was only the fifth Bond made, and I think we can agree that character evolution is definitely not a high priority in the film franchise.  This one actually came out before OHMSS, too, so...if Bond hasn't been married yet in the film series, then what is he supposed to be doing in this movie?

Oh...right.

After the underwater ridiculousness of Thunderball, it is not that surprising that You Only Live Twice opens with a sequence set in another unlikely location: space.  When the Americans send some astronauts into orbit in a pellet-sized spacecraft, everything goes off without a hitch.  Once it is in orbit, though, another significantly larger spacecraft sneaks up behind it and pulls a Pac-Man.

"It's like my worst nightmare for my penis.  What?!?" - Actual quote from me, 10 years ago

The Pac-Man ship then returns to Earth, but the Americans are unable to track or communicate with their shuttle, much less the enormous stealth ship.  Who could do such a thing and why?  While "space pirates" may be the logical conclusion to draw, the Americans conclude that it is the Russians that are up to no good.  The year was 1967, though, and "Russians up to no good" was the step before "mutually assured destruction" on the American government's foreign policy flow chart.  Luckily, the British also paid attention to the space launch, and they tracked the mystery craft's landing to the Sea of Japan.  But who will they send to investigate?

Ninjas, obviously.  It is Japan, you know.

Normally, you would assume the answer to be James Bond (Sean Connery).  Sadly, he was murdered about five minutes into the film and given a funeral at sea.  I guess that's what happens when entire international terrorist organizations know who you are; when the "secret" in "secret agent" goes away, you are basically a walking target.  Bond was such a terrible secret agent that his death was even front page news!  Thankfully, the audience is saved from a film where Q (Desmond Llewelyn) uses his gadgets to infiltrate/seduce his way through an island fortress.  James Bond isn't actually dead, silly!  It was all a ruse to convince SPECTRE, the SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, of Bond's death.  With that one man, who they were presumably tracking constantly, out of the way, they can go about their evil plans with less secrecy and/or care.  That means they can launch Pac-Man spaceships from their secret volcano base whenever they want, especially if their next target is a Russian spacecraft; with the Americans and Russians missing ships it will be obvious that they are facing a common foe they will obviously declare war on each other!  But since Bond is really alive, he will be able to try and foil those dastardly plans.  Since he is so infamous among SPECTRE agents, though, Bond will obviously have to disguise himself as a Japanese man to make it all work.

"You have got to be bullshitting me"  Nope.

I've been thinking a bit about SPECTRE's acronym lately.  Sure, you've got to love any group of admitted terrorists and extortionists that also include revenge as a key value --- organizations that take personal interests in their henchmen are the most successful kind --- but I don't know how much I like the "SP."  Did they just come up with "SPECTRE" and then try to find words to fit the acronym, but they couldn't think of any nasty words that begin with "P"?  Or did they just add the "P" because they thought that "SECTRE" sounded too ridiculous?  Personally, I would have been happy with rearranging the acronym to spell "STREEC"; the monologues would have been great: "And we will STREEC our vengeance across the baseball field of capitalism, until security apprehends us...no, wait..."

Although STREEC would imply why so many of their agents get naked

You Only Live Twice was Sean Connery's final Bond movie, until he made two more.  While he is certainly not as charming or bad-ass as he had been in the last few films, Connery still turned in an okay performance.  His toupee (he wore one in every Bond pic) was a bit more noticeable to me this time, though, and the script required him to look fairly incompetent as a secret agent --- him getting shown up by Aki so easily was painful to watch --- but Connery managed to not look embarrassed by the film's stupidity, at least.  The villain du jour was SPECTRE Number One, Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) himself.  This was the first time audiences got to see the villain's face, and he was suitably memorable.  While Blofeld isn't terribly impressive here --- he commits the sin of not killing Bond in a timely fashion --- he is suitably ruthless and ridiculous in equal parts.  Pleasence is fine, though his role requires him to keep a monotonous vocal cadence and an effeminate walk.

Blofeld chokes out an incompetent underling

The rest of the supporting cast is less stellar.  Tetsurô Tanba was mediocre as the Japanese equivalent of Felix Leiter; he would have been more likable if his plans weren't completely idiotic.  Speaking of idiotic characters, Karin Dor played the entendre-free Helga Brandt, who captured Bond, has sex with Bond, drugs Bond, then puts him in a small plane, which she pilots until he wakes up, at which point she parachutes to safety.  JUST SHOOT HIM, LADY!  Dor isn't that bad of an actress here, but it's impossible to make a character like that look good.  The other Bond girl in this picture is Mie Hama, who played the traditionally named (by Bond movie standards) Kissy Suzuki.  Hama was fairly worthless, essentially spending her time on camera just running from one place to another in a bikini.  That was far less irritating than Helga Brandt's stupidity, so Hama's lack of acting skills or quality dialogue is easily overlooked.  It is amusing to note that the Japanese Hama's dialogue was dubbed over by frequent Bond-girl-voiceover artist (and German national) Nikki Van der Zyl.

L-R: Hama acting, Connery bored

Aside from that, we have the usual suspects making brief appearances.  Desmond Llewelyn reprised his role as Q, although it is worth noting that Bond requested the more ridiculous gadgets this time around.  Lois Maxwell and Bernard Lee also returned as Moneypenny and M, respectively; none of these three did anything special this time around, but in a cast of hundreds it can be nice to see some familiar faces.

You Only Live Twice was the first Bond film to be directed by Lewis Gilbert.  The result was...okay, I guess.  This movie feels like a more ridiculous version of Dr. No in many ways (which mediocre screenwriter/excellent author Roald Dahl freely admitted), and the plot elements that differentiate it from other Bond movies --- Japan, basically --- aren't handled very well.  To be fair, it is easy to laugh at the low-rent ninjas in this movie, but this film was made before any awesome kung-fu movies had success in the West.  Gilbert inherited quite a mess when he signed up for this movie --- he had a first-time screenwriter, a star openly planning to leave the franchise, they had to recast Blofeld after filming started, the screenplay essentially omits the entire book, and the Japanese actresses had to switch roles because Mie Hama's English was so bad --- so I suppose it is a miracle that You Only Live Twice is as good as it is.  Still, the only truly iconic moment this entry in the series has is the appearance of Blofeld.  Aside from that, Gilbert oversaw a lot of ridiculousness.

What sets You Only Live Twice apart from the films that came before it is just how hilariously stupid entire chunks of the plot are.  Now, I own (and have read) the novel that the film takes its title from, and I can attest that the book --- which spends a lot of time just describing Japanese things --- would have made for a difficult direct adaptation.  Roald Dahl's screenplay (the first Bond screenplay to deviate significantly from the source material) is not much of an improvement. I liked that the filmmakers attempted to address Bond's failure as a secret agent, but everything past that was just goofy.  There are suspiciously placed trap doors, villains who allegedly recognize everything about Bond (including his gun!) but fail to recognize him in a face-to-face (and, in one case, junk-to-junk) interaction, and the action highlight is Bond in a weaponized mini-copter.

I think my favorite scene in the film has Bond being driven away from some SPECTRE thugs, who are pursuing in a car.  Bond's Japanese contact then radios for help, requesting "the usual reception."  A helicopter then arrives (that was fast) with a powerful magnet dangling underneath it; the chopper then drops the magnet on the villains' car and lifts the car off the road and drops it in a lake/ocean nearby. 

And that is the "usual" reception

That naturally leads viewers to a few conclusions.  First, Japanese bodies of water are filled with automobiles and dead terrorists.  Second, there is another, more outlandish way that Japanese secret agents get rid of unwanted followers; what the "unusual" reception would be staggers the imagination.  My best guess involves Godzilla.  Of course, the biggest bit of silliness in this movie is the part where James Bond is given a Japanese makeover to make him look like an average Japanese fisherman.  This involves a bad wig, learning a few things about Japanese culture, and (I swear) altering his eyes slightly. 

The result: a stereotypical Japanese man

Surprisingly, this movie isn't nearly as offensively racist as that might sound.  Still, it comes close more than a few times.  There's a lot more that is wrong with this movie (Why did Bond get married?  Unarmed astronauts > armed henchmen?), but I actually don't mind all the moronic moments.  It certainly isn't one of the best Bonds, but if you embrace the ridiculousness, this can be a lot of fun.  What You Only Live Twice lacks in style and utter awesomeness it more than makes up for with a brazen dedication to a truly silly plot.  When you add that to a still-young Connery in the lead role and a memorable villain, you have a solid (though definitely not great) entry in the Bond series.

THX 1138

THX?  Isn't that the annoying noise that tells you that the audience is listening?  Well, yes.  The THX company is actually a splinter company that branched off of Lucasfilms, which is of course run by George "I love prequels" Lucas.  THX 1138 is Lucas' first feature film, a science fiction movie set in a dystopian future; and if you know anything about Lucas' work, you know that he didn't try for a low-key character-driven work for his first film.

In an underground future city, where drug use is mandatory (for general compliance as well as for better job performance), sex is illegal, and everything is monitored, THX 1138 (Robert Duvall) is just another worker drone, going through the motions of what the future calls "life."  He works long hours with radioactive materials, maintains minimally interesting conversations with others, confesses his problems to a picture of Jesus with an automated voice, and then goes home and watches the government-owned holographic television channels with his assigned opposite gender roommate, LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie).  Good times, right?  Apparently, not so much.  THX (or "thux," as "luh" sometimes calls him) is having problems.  His medication doesn't seem as effective, and he's getting headaches and is being bothered by things that he usually ignores.  Well, that's because his roomie has been slipping him placebos, illegally forcing him off his medications without his knowledge.  But, once the drugs have left his system, THX experiences emotions for the first time, including his lust for LUH.  Breaking the law in sci-fi movies rarely comes cheap, so THX and LUH have to do what they can to fight The Man, before it's too late.

C3-PDestro?

The most impressive aspect to THX 1138 is the production values.  For having such a small budget, this future looks pretty cool.  I liked the appearance of the underground city and the cars, but the minimalist design for the costumes and many of the sets was really clever.  After all, what better way for a totalitarian government to fight individuality than by making absolutely everything bland?  Everyone wears only white, everyone is clean-shaven and has a shaved head, the furniture is functional and monochrome --- even the jail cell where they spend some time is just a pure white limbo.  The robotic police, with their almost-but-not-quite C3P0 faces, were a neat idea, as was the inclusion of budgetary concerns in a huge government-run complex.  And I liked the government-sponsored TV channels: one features a dancing naked woman, another has a dancing naked man, another has police beating a man (the sound of which is sampled at the start of "Mr. Self Destruct" by Nine Inch Nails --- and yes, I'm proud of myself for catching that all by myself), and the last channel has news; sex, violence, and knowledge, all in a government-sponsored box.

The acting is pretty decent, but it's a little hard to gauge in a movie where emotions are a foreign concept.  Robert Duvall is fine, but I expected more from someone as talented as him; don't ask me what else he could have done, given the script, but I was just a little disappointed.  Donald Pleasence was pretty good as a mildly sinister sociopath and Maggie McOmie was okay as the Eve to Duvall's boring Adam.  I think my favorite supporting performance came from Don Pedro Colley, and only because his cheerful ignorance kept the movie from being a total downer.  I also noticed Sid Haig in a bit part, but he didn't get to do much of anything.

Now, you might have noticed the similarities between THX 1138 and other, more famous, examples of dystopian futures.  That is because this movie borrows heavily from George Orwell's 1984, with a dash of Brave New World added in for spice.  That's not a bad thing, mind you; the concept of "Big Brother," the omnipresent monitoring of citizens by the government, is now widespread in our culture.  George Lucas (who co-wrote the film, in addition to directing it) has never been one for truly original ideas --- watch Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress and compare it to the first Star Wars if you doubt me --- but I wish he had been a little less obvious this time.  Sure, it's his first movie, but it has the feel of something written by a child.  One time, when I was little, I wrote a story about dinosaur friends on a journey that was NOTHING LIKE The Land Before Time, which I had recently enjoyed, because my story included the power of rock 'n' roll and a magical bone that turned things into butter.  I'm not implying that George Lucas was as obviously not influenced by Orwell as I was not influenced by singing animated dinosaurs, I'm outright stating it.

Wearing your influences on your sleeve doesn't make a movie bad, though.  Where THX 1138 fails is in the area of storytelling.  This is a movie about the future more than it is about the adventures of THX; if they wanted it to be about THX, we would have had more insight into his character.  So, that makes this a story about the future we could all find ourselves in.  But there is no drama to that story.  There is no horrible truth at the core of this future society, like Soylent Green being made of people.  So that brings us back to the movie theoretically being about THX again...but his character arc peaks in the first third of the movie!  This story is just an awkward mess.  It's not told clearly, either.  I was always able to get the gist of what was going on, but could never be completely sure.  And riddle me this, Batman: if THX is arrested for going off his medication and having sex, why is he allowed to stay off his medication in prison and even have sex with LUH?  I don't get it.  And the ending is pretty terrible, too.

Visually, this is a pretty impressive movie.  Too bad the story isn't there to support it.

Halloween II (1981)

What does Skelepumpkin have to do with Michael Myers?

The original Halloween is a classic horror film, so it's not surprising that the movie's villain was brought back for another round.  What is surprising is that it took three years for it to happen.  But how to make a sequel that doesn't immediately fall short of the original?  Apparently, the answer is to have the sequel pick up at the instant that the original left off.

Halloween ended with Michael Myers giving the murder of poor Laurie Stroad (Jamie Lee Curtis) the good ol' college try; he never gave up hope, even after a stab wound to the neck, a stab wound in the eye, and a stab wound in the chest.  When Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) shows up and unloads six bullets into him, well...that's a persuasive argument to take a break from the Laurie Stroad project.  After being shot, Michael falls out of a second story window and lands on the ground.  However, when Dr. Loomis looks down, Michael has vanished.  He didn't go very far.  About a block away, Michael heals his wounds the best way he knows how: by stabbing some elderly people with a kitchen knife.  And then he goes after their teenage neighbor, for some reason.  Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis and the police scour the town, looking for Michael.  They eventually find someone matching his costume (really?  Who wears a William Shatner mask painted white with coveralls before Michael Myers was famous?), but he runs for some reason, gets hit by a police car and slammed into a van, which explodes, and he silently burns to death.  That is good enough for the police, but Dr. Loomis needs more proof that Michael is dead.  If only he knew where to find Michael!

Meanwhile, Laurie was taken to the hospital to treat her injuries from the first film.  The hospital has about six people working on Halloween night, which sounds a little short-staffed to me, but I'm not in charge of scheduling shifts at fictitious medical centers.  Laurie spends a good deal of the movie drifting into and out of consciousness, flashing back to her childhood, where she learns that she's adopted and she meets a quiet older boy...somewhere.  Michael figures out where Laurie is, so he hoofs it to the hospital and starts killing his way through the staff.  Will Laurie wake up in time to save herself?  Will Dr. Loomis figure out what Michael will do next?  Why does Michael keep picking on Laurie?  The answers to all these questions and more await you in...Halloween II!

First, the bad news.  Halloween II is nowhere near as good as the original.  The main reason for this is the change of directors; John Carpenter did co-write the script with the original film's other writer, Debra Hill, and he did go back and re-shoot some of the kill scenes to amp up the gore.  Having input into the film is not the same as directing it, though, and his absence is felt.  Rick Rosenthal took over the role of director, and he does his best to follow in the footsteps of Halloween.  This is his first time directing, though, and it shows.  The POV shots are not handled as well and the acting is much worse this time around.

Actually, I take that back.  The acting isn't terrible, it just doesn't use the best assets in the film.  Jamie Lee Curtis is sleeping for most of the movie (so she couldn't utilize her famous scream) and Donald Pleasence spends waaaay too much time bossing the police around.  No, the problem is that the characters got infected with a serious case of stupiditis.  Examples?

• "Damn you for letting him go, doctor!"  Uh, Myers escaped.  And this doctor spent all day trying to convince you that Myers was a danger.
• A nurse can't work a walkie talkie, even with brief instructions.
• An EMT can enter a room with blood covering the floor, but the second he realizes that there's blood on the floor, he slips and knocks himself out.  He's not Wile E. Coyote; he's a guy who should probably have shoes designed not to slip.
• Michael kills a (naked) nurse by scalding her to death.  Kind of lame, but kind of awesome.  But his hand that keeps her face in the water doesn't get scalded.
•  Why doesn't the Haddonfield police have an officer guarding Laurie?  She is the only surviving victim of a killer that is still at large, you know.

There's more than that, but when every character does something dumb, it gets tiresome to list every example.

The music in this film is very different from the first, as well.  The main themes return, but they have been affected by 80s synthesizers and sound tinnier.  And crappier.  Those themes aren't used much, though.  Instead, some generic horror score is provided and "Mr. Sandman" (Yeeeeeessss?  Bring them a dream) by the Chordettes opens and closes the film.  Um.  Okay.  Weird.  I guess Laurie is asleep for most of the movie, but...huh...that's just a bewildering musical choice.

The movie is not all bad, though.  In an attempt to compete with other slasher movies, there are more kills, more gore and more nudity this time around.  The kills are usually pretty cool.  This is the earliest movie I have seen a hypodermic needle to the eye kill someone.  Michael proves to be creative, too, by draining the blood of one victim, scalding another, and just having fun with the rest.  The body count in the first film was five.  I counted fifteen this time.  As a standard slasher film, this is a respectable movie.

As the sequel to an awesome slasher movie, it falls short.  The changes made from movie to movie make sense, for the most part, but I think this film was dumbed down to compete with lower quality films.  I had several small but serious gripes when watching the movie.  First, Myers' mask has more detail; I thought the pure white of the first film's mask was scarier.  Michael takes a ridiculous amount of damage without dying, even if you don't count the first movie; if you do count the first film, he survived eleven gunshot wounds, a knife wound, a needle to the neck, a wire to the eye, a two story fall and then --- after all that --- he gets shot in each eye and keeps fighting.  Seriously, what the hell.  Perhaps my biggest problem with the movie is that they answer why Michael is chasing Laurie.  One of the most frightening things about the first movie was the randomness of his obsession, but if he has a reason then he has a logic that can be understood, and you don't fear (as much) what you understand.  And, in the first movie, Michael primarily killed those that he knew Laurie cared for.  This time, it seems to be some (but not all) of the people he meets.  I just liked it better when I didn't know why or who he would kill.  Now, I feel reasonably assured that I would survive a trip to Haddonfield, Illinois, and "assured" isn't a feeling I like to have after watching horror flicks.

Halloween (1978)

Driving through the great state of Illinois, outside of Chicago and its suburbs, can be pretty dull.  As part of the Great Plains, any trip that goes from end to end of the state is going to be dreadfully boring, unless you have some sort of corn fetish.  Little did I realize that I have come this close to danger on my trips; just off Interstate 55, near the city of Pontiac (whose website proudly points out public restrooms and a "Most Wanted" list) lies the fictional town of Haddenfield, best known as the home town of slasher movie Hall of Famer Michael Myers.

Halloween begins, against all odds, on Halloween night (shock!) in Haddonfield, 1963.  A young girl and her boyfriend decide to go up to her bedroom and get their sexy freak on, as long as someone named Michael is away.  The camera is clearly serving as the point of view of a character watching the couple; in the time it takes this unseen character (admittedly, probably Michael) to move from his place, peering in from an outside window, where he hears this exchange, to the kitchen, where he grabs a knife, the guy has already finished, dressed, and leaves the house with a noncommittal remark about maybe calling the girl again sometime; this scientifically proves, once again, that the speed of light's got nothing on the speed of a teenage boy.  After Don Juan (possibly not the real one) sneaks out the door, the unseen character picks up a clown mask, puts it on, and walks up the stairs to the girl's bedroom.  The girl, brushing her hair while nearly nude, identifies the character as Michael and swiftly dies from several knife wounds.  Moments later, the girl's parents come home and we finally get a camera shot of the savage Michael; he is a six year-old boy, dressed in a very ugly clown outfit, and he has just murdered his own sister, thus fulfilling the desire of many younger brothers, across the world.

On the bright side, it appears to be stain-repellant

Fast forward fifteen years, and it is 1978.  After eight years of trying to treat young Michael Myers, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) concluded that Michael is a soulless killing machine and has spent the last seven years trying to ensure that Michael stays in confinement for the rest of his life.  Because, you know...that's what doctors do.

That sounds reasonable

On Halloween's eve, 1978, Michael escapes from the Smith's Grove institution, steals a car, and drives off into the night.  Convinced that he knows Michael better than anyone --- despite the fact that Myers has not spoken a word in fifteen years --- Dr. Loomis heads to Haddonfield, expecting the worst.  Meanwhile, Michael has already arrived in Haddonfield and has even broken into his old home, now the local haunted house.  He also made a shopping stop during the night, breaking into a general store and stealing a mask, some knives and a rope.  Exactly what his motives are is never clear, but it is obvious that he is in town to pull some major They Live action.  He is a picky psychopath, though.  Instead of killing just anyone, Michael chooses to stalk a well-behaved teenager, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, in her first film role).  Sucks to be her.

That...is just an unflattering screenshot

There are two aspects of this film that really stand out.  The first is the music.  Director John Carpenter also composed the film's score, which includes the main theme (which acts as a cue that Michael is around and about to be creepy/evil), as well as the slightly less creepy through line that seems to follow Laurie around when she's not in danger.  Most horror movies have mediocre and often instantly dated scores, but Carpenter created one of the best musical mood pieces in cinematic history.  The music is classier and more unsettling than the Friday the 13th CH-Ch-ch AH-Ah-ah, and strong enough to follow Michael Myers into every one of his sequels.  The camera work is the other noteworthy technical part of Halloween.  In the opening scene POV shots (which, while done well, has been done before), it was an inspired idea to have the character don a mask and then have the camera see only through the eye holes of the mask.  The rest of the movie is only nearly POV, with the camera actually just peeking over Michael's shoulder.  This is far more effective than POV shots because it is more stable; this way, you aren't supposed to always know where Michael is and can still be surprised when he pops up.

...like in a closet.  For the record, he's looking for a crushed velvet jumpsuit.

The acting and directing in Halloween are much better than you might expect, especially if you have seen the sequels.  Jamie Lee Curtis wasn't spectacular in the film, aside from her Scream Queen shrieks, but she was as good here as anything else I've seen her in.  Donald Pleasence is very good as the not-overreacting-at-all Doctor Loomis; he gives such a good speech about the evil of Michael Myers that you don't really need any proof to back up those claims.  The supporting cast isn't great, with PJ Soles as the only stand out, partly because she is awesome at saying "totally" and partly because she shows her boobies.

Totally!

The direction is the real star in this picture.  John Carpenter took the story that he co-wrote with Debra Hill and shot it in a way that provides suspense and implies violence.  The violence in this film looks great, but a lot of it is not shown; you don't notice that, though, when you're watching the movie.  When it needs to be spectacular, it is (like the mounting of a guy on the kitchen wall), but the subtler moments are still the more memorable ones.  In the kitchen scene, it's pretty sweet when Myers kills the guy, but the creepy moment comes as he steps back and tilts his head, pondering his victim's death twitches.  Those are the moments that make Michael Myers, as an unimaginably evil character, work.  That's important, because the character has some pretty ridiculous survival skills; he manages to get stabbed in the neck, eye, and chest, shot in the chest, and he falls out of a two-story window, but he still keeps chugging.

Read the directions, Laurie: stab repeatedly, until victim is definitely fertilizer

While totally awesome, this movie does have some minor flaws.  For starters, the POV camera in the opening scene is clearly being held at an adult height, despite Michael being only six at the time.  That's not a big deal, but I refuse to believe that a six year-old that can hack his sister to death for no reason would allow anyone to dress him in that ugly costume.  I mean, unless his sister dressed him; in that case, she had it coming.  Still, that was a pretty cool scene, even if it was done just to add a tiny bit of shock when the killer is revealed to be a child.  Another strange part comes when Michael stalks the boy Laurie is going to babysit that night; how would Michael know who the kid is?  If it's just Michael being Michael (read: creepy), then why don't we see him stalk anyone not connected to Laurie?  Another odd moment comes when viewers catch a glimpse of Michael without his mask on; he's nowhere near as frightening when he looks like an ordinary guy.

Also odd: when he took a bathroom break and was out of position for this kill

Probably the biggest gripe I have with the movie is the prototypical slasher "ending," where Laurie seemingly kills Michael, but decides it's better to walk away than to check to see if he's dead.  She does that twice.  The first time I can understand because she has never tried to kill someone before, but horror movies have steep learning curves --- you already smoked pot in this movie (a slasher pic deadly sin), Laurie, so you had better get your game face on if you want my sympathy.

Despite those minor flaws, this is still a great movie that holds up to repeated viewings.  Actually, those flaws become amusing and charming to those who are familiar with the movie.  I may be a bigger fan of Jason Voorhies, but this is the movie that truly gave birth to the slasher subgenre and still towers over it to this day.