Trading Places

All right, it's time to review one of my absolute favorites.  It has a great cast, led by two successful SNL alumni, and a still-in-his-prime John Landis directed.  It's hard to comprehend almost thirty years after its release, but Trading Places could have been pretty terrible.  Even though it was released in 1983, back when Eddie Murphy could do no wrong, he was far from a star; this film was released only six months after his film debut in 48 Hours, and Murphy was still known more for playing Buckwheat than for being a theatrical draw.  Dan Aykroyd was a bigger name than Murphy at the time, but he had only made one good movie (The Blues Brothers) since leaving Saturday Night Live; most of his efforts had actually been pretty terrible --- I'm pretty sure that the only living and mostly sane fan of Doctor Detroit is my own father, and even he admits that it's crap.  Sure, they got John Landis to direct, but his post-Twilight Zone career (that movie was released the same month as Trading Places) was a steep slide down in quality.  This was also Jamie Lee Curtis' first non-horror role.  Trading Places was blessed with having the right actors at the right time in their careers with a director that was still on his A-game; if this had been made a few years earlier or later, we might have had something like Nothing But Trouble.

Laugh while you can, boys.  Comedy is a fickle mistress

Mortimer (Don Ameche) and Randolph (Ralph Bellamy) Duke are the owners of Duke & Duke, a commodities brokering firm; alike in so many ways --- style, pride, greed, etc. --- the two seem to have only one major difference in opinion: nature vs. nurture.  Randolph is a proponent for nurture; he believes that anyone can succeed in society, if they are given many socioeconomic advantages.  Mortimer believes in breeding; essentially, the cream will always rise up to the top.  But what can they really do to solve this argument? 

I should mention that they had a knife fight to settle bow vs. regular tie

Well, they can test their theories out.  When the company's heir apparent, Louis Winthorpe (Dan Aykroyd), had a (moderately) innocent street urchin, Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy), jailed over a misunderstanding, the Dukes had their two extremes --- Winthorpe was born with a silver spoon in his various orifices, while Valentine was a poor minority from a broken home ---  and the Dukes finally had some suitable test subjects.  Together, the Dukes manage to disgrace Winthorpe, put him in the poor house, and get his friends to forsake him.  They also bring in Billy Ray to manage their company, offering him wealth and self-respect in exchange.

Their explanation for pork bellies cracks me up every time

And nurture wins!  Well, kind of.  Valentine naturally enjoys the high life and Winthorpe doesn't take his fall from grace well.

Best.  Santa.  Ever.

However, just because Billy Ray is good at is new position doesn't mean that the Dukes have any intention of keeping him around; they still see him as gutter trash.  So when Billy Ray overhears the Dukes congratulating themselves on their experiment, he decides to team up with Winthorpe so they can turn the tables on the Dukes.

Above: the scene where that happens.  Not pictured: the table

I absolutely love this cast.  Dan Aykroyd was nearly perfect as a high-born weenie, and his drunken Santa bit makes me smile every time I think about it.  Eddie Murphy was also very good as the street-smart Billy Ray; he doesn't get enough credit for how sympathetic he made his character.  Jamie Lee Curtis was fine as a hooker with an accountant's mind and sliding scale for impropriety.

"Exposition while I undress because boobs"

This is also my favorite Denholm Elliot role --- anyone can play a smart-mouthed manservant (well, any man can), but Elliot walked the line between faithful butler and annoyed house servant beautifully.  Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy were also perfect as the villains; only Michael Douglas plays a money-grubbing bastard better than these two, only he's not funny.  Paul Gleason was also perfectly mean as the Dukes' hired hand; Gleason has always done a great job playing jerks, but this is the only time I can recall where he was a jerk that was not an authority figure.  Those are really the only performances worth noting, although this film is packed with recognizable actors in bit parts.  Giancarlo Esposito was an easily-impressed con, blues legend Bo Diddley didn't care about the time in Gstaad, Bill Cobbs was owed $17 and change by Billy Ray, Frank Oz was a corrupt cop, Al Franken was a stoner, James Belushi was "a gorilla, you fucking clown," James Eckhouse was lucky to get a speaking line, and Stephen Stucker made his only non-Airplane! appearance I am aware of.

I normally don't praise John Landis for the pace of his films, but Trading Places is a rare example of a two hour comedy that doesn't have a portion that drags.  At least some of that credit goes to the screenplay from writing collaborators Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod; the pair seemed to specialize in goofy-ass concept stories (Twins, Kindergarten Cop, Space Jam, etc.), but they managed to make this Prince and the Pauper update seem only highly unlikely instead of batshit crazy.  It is also worth pointing out how much of the humor in Trading Places comes from reactions and not punchlines; that means they wrote this to be an ensemble piece, not a showcase for Murphy and Aykroyd to ham it up, and it actually worked.  While the script was pretty good, it is Landis' ability to edit the film to capture all the comedic beats that makes this movie great.  Without his eye and ear for timing, this script would have been wasted.

The lawyer joke following this is so simple, but so effective

As good as Trading Places is, it isn't exactly a work of art.  I love this script, but the entire scheme to steal the crop reports was incredibly stupid.  Even if you ignore the Halloween-quality costumes the group wears to travel incognito, there is a bigger problem. 

And I'm not talking about the black-face.  This time.

Okay, so the good guys need to trick Clarence Beaks and steal his briefcase, right?  So far, he has personally hired Ophelia and has personally planted evidence on Winthorpe.  Logic would dictate that those two would not be involved in the plan, because he knows what they look like.  The script, however, dictates that Winthorpe --- the pansy-ass white boy --- pose as a Jamaican and Ophelia is dressed like a stereotypical German girl...with a Swedish accent.  Sure, having Coleman pose as a priest and Billy Ray as an African exchange student and having them all sit in the same train car was not exactly a stroke of genius, but there's stupid, and then there's functionally handicapped thinking.

Although I see how they thought she could be useful

That scene is one of the few that treads the line between stupid funny and obnoxiously dumb --- the other is arguably the whole "one gorilla, two gorilla" issue --- but I will commend it for not being dull, at least.  Hell, I actually kind of like it, even though it is SOOOO dumb!  What makes Trading Places a classic for me, though, are the little touches that I notice more and more with every viewing.  Have you ever noticed that Winthorpe's prison numbers are the same as John Belushi's in The Blues Brothers?  How about the other tribute to himself that Landis inserted, his customary "See You Next Wednesday" reference? 

Hint: it's above and left of the nipples

What is that referencing?  I have no idea, but it pops up in most Landis works, for whatever reason.  If you know the story behind it, please leave a comment.  It's not just the Easter eggs in the movie that I enjoy, though.  I have come to love the punchline-free jokes and sayings.  No matter what day of the year it is, if you say "Looking good, Brian," I will inevitably respond with "Feeling good, [whoever you are]."  It's not exactly a gag, but I adore that exchange between characters in the beginning and end of this film.  How about Billy Ray imitating the deep-voiced tough guy?  "Yeah" isn't normally enough to make an impact on me, but this is a wonderful movie for contextual jokes.  This is also one of the few movies that manages to get racist humor exactly right; the racists are so obviously the bad guys, and the things they presume are so inoffensive that I have to laugh at their racist stupidity.  I mean, seriously --- who wouldn't get into a limo with two elderly white dudes offering "whiskey --- all you want"?!?  That's not a racial tendency, that's how you pick up any man between the ages of 18-35.  It blows my mind how funny I find this movie, even though it is relatively light on jokes.  I don't know if it is thanks to the excellent characterization from the script, the spot-on acting from the cast, the excellent editing from the director, or the fantastic orchestral soundtrack (how many comedies can boast that?), but Trading Places is a rare comedy that is clever and stupid and still makes you care about the characters.  This easily makes my top three comedies of all time.

Halloween: Resurrection

Part of my month-long goal of watching/reviewing nothing but horror movies was to delve a little deeper into the Halloween series.  I love the first film (who doesn't?) and thought the second was not-quite mediocre.  I opted to skip the next four in the series, partly because I preferred seeing the direct sequels to Halloween II and partly because Netflix was streaming Halloween H20 and Halloween: Resurrection, the seventh and eighth in the franchise, respectively.  I watched these two movies back-to-back, and while I found a lot of stupidity in H20, I was still entertained.  Will that trend continue with Resurrection?

It depends.  Is Michael singing along to "Hip-Hop Hooray"?

Three years after the events in H20, we catch up with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).  The past few years have not been kind to Laurie.  It seems that the person she decapitated at the end of the last film was not, in fact, Michael Myers.  Apparently, Michael managed to find an EMT worker with a similar build, crushed his larynx, swapped clothes (and mask) with the worker, and scampered off into the night, leaving poor innocent EMT guy to get his head chopped off by Laurie.  Aside from going against twenty years of Michael Myers logic --- this is the Timex of slasher villains, the man who won't stop ticking --- and having Michael resort to trickery, like any normal wuss, this also means that Laurie has been committed to a psychiatric institute, which may or may not be for the criminally insane.

Well, she has the "crazy eyes" part down pat

I'm not exactly sure, since Laurie has resorted to faking a comatose state to avoid medication and treatment, but it sure seems like she's there against her will.  Oh, and there's a patient who is celebrating Halloween by wearing a clown mask (a la John Wayne Gacy) and reciting his favorite serial killer statistics.  Side note: Gacy, Dahmer, and Myers all came from the greater Chicago area...do losing sports teams contribute to serial killing?  Anyway, Laurie is faking the degree of her craziness because she knows Michael will come for her someday.  And he does.  This time, he kills her when she stops to do something absolutely, ludicrously stupid.  They could have stretched this into an entire movie (Halloween II, anyone?), but the filmmakers opted to squeeze all that into the first fifteen minutes or so.

Huh.  The last film went to great lengths, completely ignoring the continuity of the previous three films, to bring Michael back to his family-hating roots, and Resurrection has him finally kill his little sister in the beginning of the film.  What the hell is this film going to be about, then?  A reality television-styled webcast, naturally.  Freddie (Busta Rhymes, who seriously got top billing in the movie) and his business partner (Tyra Banks) are filming a webcast, because that is how you make money in the 2000s, right?  Um, sure.  The pair select a group (that happen to mostly know each other) to spend the night in Michael Myers' childhood home in Haddenfield, Illinois.  The idea is for Freddie to dress up like Michael and scare the crap out of the group as they discovered "clues," planted by Freddie, that explained Michael's behavior.  Think Ghost Hunters, but with a prankster involved.  There is only one problem...Michael Myers is actually living in the sewers beneath his old home, and he doesn't like visitors.

Michael, about to kiss a man to death

At this point, I would like to point out that two of Halloween: Resurrection's most famous cast members are African-American.  Why does that matter?  Really, it doesn't.  It just reminded me of Eddie Murphy's classic stand-up:

So, just in case Haunted Mansion hadn't convinced you already, Eddie Murphy is not always right.

The acting in Halloween: Resurrection is fairly shitty, across the board.  When Busta Rhymes is the top-billed actor in the film, you know there is a problem.  It's not that Busta is terrible (although he is), it's just that he's not good enough to headline a major film.  I thought he was alternately ridiculous (like when he laughed like Muttley)...

...and just plain annoying (when he tried to act), but I wasn't expecting a whole lot from him, as an actor or a character.  The main girl, Sara (Bianca Kajlich) was practically void of personality, which is usually enough to survive a slasher flick.  American Pie alum Thomas Ian Nicholas and Save the Last Dance-r Sean Patrick Thomas were similarly underwhelming.  The only supporting cast members that stuck out were Katee Sackhoff (for being a fame whore), Daisy McCrackin (for showing intellectual boobies), and Luke Kirby (for being obnoxious and unrealistic). 

Katee Sackhoff, in her best scene

Jamie Lee Curtis was fine, but her character dies before the opening credits, so that's not much of a help.  Look, I don't normally care how good the acting is in slasher films, but the quality here is such a huge drop from H20 that it distracted me.  Aside from Kajlich's good girl --- who has no motivation to be in this plot --- everyone character was ridiculously one-note.  Everything Sean Patrick Thomas said involved food, Katee Sackhoff spent her entire time trying to act like a wannabe actress, and Kirby and McCrackin jettisoned logic as soon as they entered the Myers house.  As for Busta...well, he occasionally narrates his thoughts aloud.  I would have been fine with stereotypes (they're all going to die, anyhow) but these characters were just obnoxious.

This isn't director Rick Rosenthal's first experience with Michael Myers.  He also directed Halloween II; this time, though, John Carpenter wasn't around to ratchet up the effectiveness of the gore.  While I am willing to blame the awful acting on Rosenthal (somebody had to tell the actors to keep it up), I do get the distinct impression that his directorial intent was overridden a few times in this film.  The first clue comes from the alternate promo poster, which was used for the DVD cover:

Someone took the original poster and photoshopped-in the supporting cast.  That's not a crime, of course, but it was done incompetently.  Aside from the odd and unnatural position of the knife, Jamie Lee Curtis is shown as she appeared in H20, with short hair.  It is also worth noting that the end of the film throws an unexpected twist in; the entire film seems to be building up to having Sara rescued by her internet buddy, but at the last minute somebody else --- who should have died from multiple stab wounds --- comes in and saves the day.  That was unexpected and also makes the internet buddy subplot fairly worthless.  That is because the theatrical ending wasn't the original one; through terrible editing, Monster Crap has still-frame proof that internet buddy was supposed to save the day, but the ending got changed --- they were just too lazy to completely re-shoot the sequence.  So how much of this mess is Rosenthal's doing, and how much was due to the interference of the producers?  It's hard to say, but I think both failed to make this movie entertaining, suspenseful, or horrifying.

Case in point: Michael politely waits for their conversation to end

Halloween: Resurrection is not completely without value.  Tyra Banks was killed off-camera, so audiences were spared her "acting."  There are ten kills and some ridiculously inappropriate nudity.  The actions of the characters are frequently idiotic enough to evoke laughter from any thinking person.  Michael Myers gets electrocuted in the testicles, an area that I don't think anyone has thought to attack before.  Even when you add all that up, there isn't much going for this movie.  When you factor in the fact that Michael isn't being creepy, he is just killing trespassers in his own home, it becomes obvious that Resurrection has lost sight of what makes Michael Myers cool.  He needs to kill for unknown reasons, and he shouldn't ever resort to trickery.  What a mess; no wonder they let Rob Zombie reboot the series after this piece of crap.

The entire time I spent writing this review, I had this song stuck in my head.  Mister Busta Rhymes, tell 'em what I did:

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

I'm not a huge fan of the Halloween franchise.  It's not that I dislike the premise or anything, I just never got around to seeing most of the sequels.  The original film is still one of the best horror movies ever made, and Halloween II was an entertaining, but mediocre, slasher flick.  From what I've heard from fans of the series, the fourth, fifth and sixth entries are pretty ridiculous, which might explain Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later.  The seventh movie in the series is a direct sequel to Halloween II, and completely ignores the existence of any films that occurred between II and this one.  I was considering watching Halloween III and Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers this month, but a direct sequel to movies I enjoyed seems like a much better idea.

Pictured: pages 3-42 of the script

It is almost Halloween in 1998, twenty years after Michael Myers returned to his Haddenfield, Illinois home and killed a bunch of people for no particular reason.  One of the survivors was his sister, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis); while she managed to avoid being killed on that Halloween night, she knows that Michael's body was never found.  In the intervening years, it seems that Laurie has faked her own death and moved on with her life.  She now lives in sunny California as a teacher in an expensive prep school.  Not surprisingly, she is not well-adjusted and self-medicates with pills and alcohol to cope with the fear of Michael tracking her down again.  But she's just being silly, isn't she?  It's been twenty years!  What kind of person would wait twenty years, staying under the radar all that time, before making a second attempt?  Maybe the kind of person who waited fifteen years after his first killing to strike a second time.  Hey...Michael Myers is that kind of person!  Laurie starts to calm down a bit, but she realizes that she was seventeen when Michael first attacked her.  So what?  Well, her son, John (Josh Hartnett, in his film debut) just turned seventeen!  OMG!  That means Michael must be on his way to kill them both right now!!!

***knock, knock***    "Um, somebody order a pizza?"

Wait...what?  Is that the actual logic behind this film?  Is is?!?  Good lord.  The film opens with Michael breaking into the home of the late Dr. Loomis's nurse (Nancy Stephens, resuming her role from the first two films) and ransacking her confidential patient records, which she inexplicably keeps in her home office.  There, Michael presumably discovers a) that Laurie is alive b) her new name and location and c) that she has a son, who just turned seventeen.  So, if you put any thought into it at all, the whole "my son is seventeen, and so was I when Michael attacked me" bit is more of a coincidence than anything else.  And exactly what has Michael Myers been up to for the last twenty years?  Since nobody has heard from him in two decades, I'll assume that he hasn't been killing his way across America.  No, I think we have to presume that Michael Myers has settled down, found a creepy woman who bore him some creepy kids.  This just seems like an older man, trying to reclaim his youthful glory; Michael is forty-one in this, after all.  Maybe he was listening to his favorite band, Pulp (that's a little-known and completely made-up Myers fact), in 1998 and this song really clicked with him.

So Michael went into his closet, dug out his old mask and jumpsuit and found that they still fit.  It was finally the day where he took the time to accomplish the one thing in life that he has never gotten around to: murdering his little sister.

First reactions to this script

Okay, maybe the premise this time around is a little weaker than usual.  While that is disgraceful (especially comparatively), at least they came up with a (poor) reason for bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back into the fold.  While never what I would call a fantastic actress, she is quite good here.  Her scream queen lungs still work quite well, and age makes her determination seem more plausible and mature when she decides to face Michael head-on.  As for the rest of the cast, Adam Arkin seemed fairly reasonable as Laurie's boyfriend, which is quite an accomplishment in a film like this.  LL Cool J was pretty awful as the world's least effective security guard/romance novelist; it's not that his character was annoying, he was just a truly awful security guard.

You're so fired

Josh Hartnett was decent enough as a high school kid who apparently cuts his own hair and wears a school uniform that is two sizes too big for him, but he was definitely the best part of the young cast.  Michelle Williams, Adam Hann-Byrd, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were all just movie stereotypes: the nice girl, the horny guy, the alternative rock chick, and the stupid skater, respectively.

"I could be so much more, if you only gave me a chance!"  I know.  I'm sorry.

There could have been dozens more underdeveloped characters in this film, but the story --- which features Michael Myers infiltrating a prep school and killing everyone he finds --- opts to send most of the students off on a field trip for Halloween.  Reducing the possible number of victims is always a bewildering choice in a slasher movie, just like having Janet Leigh make a cameo and not scream.

How do you not want to kill her in your movie?  It's not like a shower scene is mandatory!

Director Steve Miner was responsible for a lot of stupidity in Halloween H20, but there were some good moments, too.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt's death was one of the more entertaining I have seen in this franchise, and I really liked that the nurse, who shouldn't be expecting any Michael Myers trouble, was totally on her A-game and didn't fall for the typical slasher movie cliches.  Sure, she died anyway, but her character seemed a hell of a lot smarter than most of the victims I have seen in this series.  While the body count was small (just six dead) and the nudity was non-existent, I thought Miner crafted a respectable slasher pic with the tools he had available.  Some scenes, like Michael trying to kill Harnett and Williams through a gate, even looked pretty cool.  But for every cool idea, something lame popped up to counter it.  I disagree with the choice to bring back and prominently use the "Mr. Sandman" song (first used in Halloween II).  I also thought the fate of LL Cool J's character undermined a super-cool scene.  More than anything else, though, I tired of the recuperation skills of Michael Myers.  The man takes an axe wound, six stab wounds, falls from a balcony, gets his by a car, crashes through a windshield, and is crushed between a tree and an automobile --- and it still able to attack, without any hint of taking damage.  I know that this is kind of Michael's "thing," but if there was ever a time to update a character, it is in the film that ignores most of the character's history.

Despite all the stupidity, I managed to enjoy Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later.  It is certainly not groundbreaking, or even good, but I was entertained.  I laughed at the story logic, I enjoyed the kills, and I felt that the adult acting in the movie was some of the best of its type in this subgenre.  In fact, I would rate this the best Halloween sequel to date.  Of course, I have only seen one other Halloween sequel...

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.