Aisle 34 1/4

Aisle 34 1/4: The Movie Shelf

This has been a long time in the coming, of course I haven't even begin to think out what I'm about to write down here. And with that wonderful prologue, I give you a review of Rob Zombie's crack at Halloween!

I am very enamoured with the original Halloween, truth be told I enjoyed the first three films of the series (yes I, Carl James Olson Jr. BA MA - Pretentious no? - LOVED Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, their heads exploded with bugs and snakes! AWESOME!) and while I enjoyed the rest of the movies more or less I couldn't see any point moving the series on, aside from the fact that with every new sequel that came out I had another reason to watch the original. For me the first Halloween was beautiful. It was simple, it had only a little bit of blood, and it relied on surprise, atmosphere and music to create the scares (also I have had a long standing crush on Jamie Lee Curtis).

I also am a big fan of Mr. Zombie's work (tee hee... I love saying Mr. Zombie), be it his music, his videos, his movies or just the way he protrays himself. I find the man fascinating. I know everyone has found faults with his other movies (House of 1000 Corpses was a ridiculous rip off of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Devil's Rejects felt nothing like the first one) but I found their own unique charm (Corpses was what you'd expect from a Zombie music video and Rejects was possibly one of the best serial killer road movies ever made, Natural Born Killers outs it just slightly). He mixes an absurd amount of comedy in with horrible violence, and it is quite wretched the things that happen in his films. Though this comedy he slipped in isn't the goofy things you see in Bmovies, or the self referential "isn't it ironic that we are ripping off these older movies" crap you come across in the mainstream horror films. Mr. Zombie's humor is as harsh and honest as his violence is, and it's sparse. You laugh at the characters and the relationships because they are over heightened to the point of being absurd, you see this in Halloween in the first few minutes with a glimpse into the Myers' residency. What you come across during the first ten to twenty minutes of the film is the most dysfunctional family that ever graced this moderately decent greenish-brown Earth. Growing up in a loving, but often slightly off kiltered household I couldn't help but laugh. Yes it's horrible, but if I remember well from what I've read of Aristotle, comedy, to those crazy Greeks, was all about the horrible and the grotesque. We recognize our faults in the comedic character taken to the extreme and that is what we see in the opening.

The interesting thing this film does is done in the first section of the film. Michael Myers' childhood. I have always been interested in why people act the way they do and this fascination tends to looking towards the extreme polls of the human condition, looking for the motivation behind the acts of the incredibly holy and the incredibly evil. What causes a person to go out and dedicate their life to living in a leper pit tending the sick? Or in Michael Myers' case (and too many real life cases sadly), what causes a person to one night kill their whole family and then kill again and again? This new Halloween attempts to answer some of these questions by showing all the text book signs of a serial killer in the young Michael Myers. The animal cruelty, the abusive parents, the withdrawal from society, the lack of understanding of the consequences of their actions, it's all there. But it obviously does not run in the family as Laurie Strode seems to be pretty normal (possibly due to being raised in a more loving and might I add AWESOME family). Laurie, Michael's youngest sister, was a baby when the murders too place gets placed in this awesome family, they were silly, loving and the complete opposite of the Myers - though Michael's mom was sweet (yay Sheri Moon Zombie!).

Over all I enjoyed the film. I liked the psychology behind it (not too sure how accurate is was, but what little I did know I felt jived pretty well with this film), the pacing was well done and the over all feel was a pleasant mix of the original and of a Rob Zombie film. He kept in key points, cleared up some plot holes and made it more believable, he also tried to make sure there wouldn't be a sequel (though there will be at least three more... please let them remake the third one! I need to see flashing shamrocks on TVs again). The scares sadly don't match up with the original. Mr. Zombie relied a bit too much on disturbing the audience with realistic violence, oh it was well done, don't get me wrong. This was possibly his best use of realistic violence in movies (possibly gearing up for that crime film he wants to do). I'm squeamish when it comes to violence, or seeing people get hurt, or hearing about people's pain. I tend to empathize too much and the backs of my thighs get all tingly (it's weird, I know). The film made me wince repeatedly, but it only scared me to the state of jumping, maybe, three times. You know, though, as far as horror movies go now a days three jumps in one film is quite an accomplishment, then again I felt the need to turn around and explain WHY things were happening in the film to the three teenagers (who probably thought this was an original film) who couldn't stop talking. I also noticed that all the scares that got me were simple scares, quick bits that caught me off guard. the kind of scares I like best, the ones that give me a start and then smile at the rush of adrenaline.

One thing, ONE thing that I, without a doubt loved, LOVED I say, was the music. Mr. Zombie's films have possibly the best soundtracks, his use of songs which run counter to the action on screen is genius (kudos to Mr. Zombie and Tyler Bates for doing this for three movies). I won't give too much away but Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" comes up twice and is awesome. Then there's also the use of John Carpenter's original music. It was used well, it was used correctly and Tyler Bates managed to corrupt the music slightly to give it an edge that was lacking in the original. The original was simple and effective, but to be honest it did sound like it was being played on a Casio keyboard, this new version sounds like the original Casio was used but was sightly out of tune (how a keyboard can be our of tune is beyond me but yeah there it is), it created a nice jarring effect.

This film didn't kill the original at all. It actually can stand next to the original peacefully on the video store rack and not harm the original with either purporting to be better than the first or be an embarrassment to the original intent of the film (like so many of the horror remakes). I know this film isn't for everyone, I actually wouldn't recommend it for everyone to see either, but if you like horror films and you can deal with a bit of the old ultra violence you'd like this I believe. happily it didn't live up to my greatest fear, that it would become one of those hyper torture films. Oh there was some messed up stuff to be sure but it wasn't nauseating like the things you find in Saw or Hostel and the violence didn't take up the main focus of the film. This was not a film about gruesome deaths, it was a film about family (no really... it was), and it was a film about morals (honestly!). In other words it was a horror film true and through.

Post-script or Epilogue to this whole thing:

So the reason this was long in coming (saw the film at the start of September and here it is the end of September I'm writing about it) is because a lot has been going on. Fun things, crummy things, lame things, wonderful things, and mundane things. Things that have taken up much of my time, for better or worse. I'm still going to try to keep this blog going though. Enjoy!