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...

Harper

When I watch movies from the 1940s and 50s, I usually don't notice much that seems anachronistic.  Sure, the technology is outdated, but their language and dress are pretty classic.  If I went out to dinner, dressed and acted like Humphrey Bogart or Carey Grant, I wouldn't get confused looks from strangers.  Films from the 60s, though, sometimes show their age more, thanks to their hep slang and groovy fashions.  Harper is an interesting watch, partly because it is clearly a product of the mid-60s, but also because it is just as obviously inspired by classic film noir.

Lew Harper (Paul Newman) is a private eye that's seen better days; he's been living out of his office, reusing coffee filters, and his car looks beat to hell.  Sure, it's a Porsche, but that doesn't mean it's looking good.  Harper is hired Elaine Sampson (Lauren Bacall) to find her husband, a very wealthy man with a history of being flaky.  Elaine isn't worried about her Mr. Sampson shacking up with another woman --- she is an invalid and turns a blind eye to that --- but she doesn't want her gullible husband getting suckered into giving some hussy a bunch of money.  The last time Sampson disappeared and got generous, he literally gave away a mountain to a crooked church.  Why not call the police?  Well, they'd rather handle things quietly, if possible.  Harper makes the rounds, questioning his ditzy and flirtatious daughter, Miranda (Pamela Tiffin) and his pilot/cabana boy, Allan Taggert (Robert Wagner), but they don't really give him much help.  That's not too surprising; Sampson wasn't out with a woman, he was kidnapped.  There's something fishy about the kidnapping, though.  Somehow Harper has to put the pieces together to explain how an overweight former starlet (Shelley Winters), a drug-addicted jazz singer (Julie Harris), and the crackpot church all have something to do with Sampson's disappearance.

I love movies like Harper.  You have a too cool for school lead character that loves to swagger, even when that confidence gets him nearly killed.  Like all classic noir, this story has a lead actor with a heart of stone, who is clever, tough, and willing to do whatever it takes to learn the truth.  Of course, that means that his actions aren't always legal, and he might not take legal actions to solve the big problems, either.  Basically, if you like tough guys that are charming as hell and solve mysteries, Harper is a good choice.

It never hurts to have Paul Newman playing the charming bastard in the lead role.  Newman was one of the greats, and I like him best as the guy that would fun to hang out with, but not necessarily someone you would let your sister date, if you know what I mean.  The supporting cast in this movie is pretty awesome, even if they all have relatively small parts, compared to Newman.  For starters, having Lauren Bacall in a noir is always a good choice; her appearance here is a clear allusion to The Big Sleep, where her father in that film played a rich invalid that pays a detective to find a missing man.  Bacall still was magnetic, even when reduced to sitting down in all her scenes.  Robert Wagner and Pamela Tiffin weren't particularly impressive, but they played flaky characters well enough.  Shelley Winters was sad as the past-her-prime star and Julie Harris did a good job as the tough jazz singer.  I was particularly happy with the small parts played by character actors Strother Martin and Robert Webber.  The best surprise for me, though, was the chemistry between Newman and Haper's ex-wife, played by Janet Leigh.  I'm not terribly familiar with Leigh, aside from her small part in Psycho, so it was nice to see her in a substantial role.  She played one of the best tired-of-her-man's-bullshit parts I have ever seen on film, and she managed to be tough, cranky, and sensitive all in one go.  And their dialogue...!  Here's a taste:

Leigh: What do you want from me?
Newman: Anything I can get.
Leigh: At least you're honest.
VIOLENT SMOOCHING

Man, that's good stuff!

You can credit the fun dialogue to William Goldman, who has a talent for memorable lines. You want more?  "The bottom is loaded with nice people. Only cream and bastards rise to the top."   Just typing that put a smile on my face. And this film has one of the better ambiguous endings I've seen. Goldman's screenplay is brought to life by director Jack Smight, who does his best to keep the tone and the pace of Harper in keeping with Bogart-esque noirs of yesteryear. I'm not a huge Smight fan, but he handles the dialogue and the action sequences well and keeps the story from being too confusing, which is very important in thrillers like this.

But this is definitely a film that has aged less gracefully than other Newman classics.  Really, any movie that shows characters dancing to rock music is going to look silly in retrospect, but this one has more dancing than any self-respecting noir should have.  I will admit that Pamela Tiffin dancing to surf music while standing on a diving board was pretty funny, but I don't think it was supposed to be that funny.  Most of the lines coming out of Robert Wagner's mouth are dated by his slang, which adds unintentional humor to a movie that isn't trying to make jokes.

Aside from the funny dancing and slang, there's not a whole lot wrong with Harper.  It is definitely an homage to noirs, so it doesn't feel terribly original, but that's not always a big deal.  The one area where this film could have been improved was in the overall feel of the movie.  The characters in this story are pretty sleazy, but the film is dazzling with its handsome cast and bright colors.  Newman manages to look a little scuzzy, but he's the only one who puts any effort into looking the way his character acted: dirty.  Still, the dialogue is often great, there are several memorable scenes, and it's always fun to watch Paul Newman outsmart people.