Prom Night (1980)

Director: Paul Lynch

Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Casey Stevens, Michael Tough

Have I Seen it Before: Never. In the last few months I’ve been trawling the world for new movies to suggest for Beyond the Cabin in the Woods but have been coming up a little bit short. Movies recommended against all odds don’t play the same decades later. Others that are curiosities remain only that, curiosities.

Did I Like It: And I’m not much of a fan of this film either. I’m going to have a hard time not thinking about how much I would rather be watching Halloween (1978) whenever I’m watching any slasher film, and Curtis’ presence only makes the comparisons impossible to overcome. This is not nearly the ruthless thriller that made her a star. It’s got much more in common with the Friday the 13th series, even if it winds up being marginally more satisfying than any of those films. I even find it wanting in comparison to Halloween II (1981), but that’s probably more a measure of my unreasonable nostalgia for that film than anything else.

The film doesn’t try to avoid those comparisons, either. Further problems are added when it does absolutely nothing to avoid comparisons to both Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Carrie (1976). It’s trying to eat the leftovers of so many different contemporary films that it might as well be a Bond film. I’m surprised the students of Hamilton High didn’t end up in outer space by the end of the film, as the kids must have been real wild about Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) right about that moment.

And yet, I may end up recommending the film to the podcast. As I mentioned, I kind of liked it for its schlocky self more than any attempt from Jason Voorhees, and we’ve already done the original entry of that series on the show. Leslie Nielsen is there, and that’s always good to see. It’s also a little less consumed with the onslaught of mayhem for which other films in the genre desperately reach. It is a legitimate attempt at a revenge thriller story, even if it isn’t the best it possibly could be.

The Fog (1980)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Houseman, Janet Leigh

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It’s not like there were Carpenter movies other than Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) that I have been spending all of these years missing.

Did I Like It: Here’s the problem: I never felt like I got this one entirely. It isn’t a slasher movie, but it wasn’t like people were going to give Carpenter big movie money in 1980 on the heels of Halloween (1978) for anything without stabbings. It’s a ghost story, one supposes, but those ghosts—when they aren’t silent guys who stab things—take the form of one of the most slowly moving, easily avoidable natural phenomena of which I can readily think.

Carpenter himself didn’t feel like the film worked on first blush, and who am I to argue with the master? It isn’t all that scary. Also, there’s no Donald Pleasance in sight, and there really is no excuse for a Carpenter movie to not have Donald Pleasance prior to 1995*. Most damningly, much of the third act groans from the weight of explaining just what is within that fog, and why it wants to wreak just that much havoc. Carpenter at his best, and certainly his two previous films benefit from a ruthless minimalism in their thrills. Maybe this motif was rendered against his better judgment, or perhaps the demands of the horror marketplace and success diminished him for a moment. Ultimately, it’s not so much a case of the difficult second album, but more of a case of the difficult second album about which anyone could be bothered to pay attention.

And yet, it is a Carpenter film and can never be fully dismissed. First of all, he scored the thing, and as much as I might lament him not directing anymore, the fact that he is still producing scores is a throughly satisfying consolation prize. Secondly, even though the fog and what lives within it never quite work, I recognize an idea of unknowable horror that exists in his previous work and that he continues to reckon with. It will never be top tier Carpenter, but him on his worst day (The Ward (2010) not withstanding) is better than almost anybody of his or anyone else’s era.

*Is there a correlation between Pleasance’s passing and the Carpenter’s severe waning interest in continuing to make movies? I’m not seeing a lack of one, to be sure. Not even an injection of Kurt Russell in his life could keep things from eventually unravelling.

Halloween Ends (2022)

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matchiak, James Jude Courtney, Rohan Campbell

Have I Seen it Before: Well, that’s really the whole point, isn’t it?

Did I Like It: There is literally no opinion about this movie that isn’t controversial, so we probably better get this one out of the way right away:

Yes. My name is Mac Boyle, and I enjoyed Halloween Ends. If you’re no longer here when I get to the next paragraph, I’ll understand. We’ll always have that romantic motorcycle ride we took between murders.

Still here?

Okay.

Ends is a meditation on the effect of violence on people. Some of them try to force the idea of moving on. Some collapse in on themselves. Still more try to wield that evil for their own in a vain, flailing attempt to exert dominion over their lives. It also has a little, itty bitty flirtation with a golden-year romance between two characters I have spent a lot of time liking over the past several years. I’ll admit that if your relationship to the Halloween series is entirely dependent on the series adhering to its tried-and-true formula, this film isn’t going to work for you. But I am forever a sucker—like Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)—for a sequel that Trojan-horses an entirely different genre into their series. Green’s movies have been unique echoes of what Carpenter might have done with the series had he not given up on the whole affair back in the 80s.

Now, given the amount of breath I’ve wasted over the last fifteen years complaining about Rob Zombie’s two films in the series, you would might be totally justified in thinking me something of a hippocrite. But consider this; for all of the weird new territory that this film attempts (I will admit, not everything about the film works 100%; I’m looking in your direction, band kids), Michael and The Shape (Courtney) is still that strange kid who woke up one day and decided to start and never stop stabbing people. No siblings. No Thorn. No “Love Hurts” and disappointing stripper moms. If the core of what made something work in the first place stays in tact, then I’m ready to go in a lot of weird directions

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Director: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert

Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis

Have I Seen it Before: No…

Did I Like It: Holy shit.

There was always a chance that I would go into the film overhyped. There was always a chance that, along with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), and the one-day-maybe-soon release of The Flash, the market might be a bit too flooded with multiverse films in a market that where audience’s attention spans are dwindling by the minute. There was always a chance that Jackie Chan (the fool) would have taken the offer, or Ke Huy Quan (who’s been great his whole damn life; he could have been great for years!)had stayed retired from acting.

Thankfully, that is not our universe.

It’s almost laughable how superior this film is to the Strange sequel (a film I ultimately kind of liked). There have been plenty of instances in parallel development in big Hollywood films experiencing nearly concurrent releases, but I struggle to find two films of such sharply levels of quality. Sure, Deep Impact (1998) and Armageddon (1998) have different priorities as films, but it isn’t like one of those movies beat the other one up and stole their lunch money.

I hate to contribute further to the possibility of overhyping, but if this film isn’t the best movie of the year, then 2022 will prove to be the greatest year for movies in some time. It was impossible not to love Michelle Yeoh before this, but while we all may have thought we appreciated her enough in years past, we haven’t been doing nearly enough. This doesn’t even begin to cover the absolute wonder that is the ego-less commitment to the moment of latter-day Jamie Lee Curtis.

Even if the film wasn’t one of the most chaotic, imaginative things to have ever been forged, it’s Herculean task of turning nihilism into a joyful, beautiful thing is enough to make it astonishing. Only a film with one foot in several different realities can be 100% clever plot and 100% heart at the same time.

By the time you’ve read this, Everything Everywhere All at Once will be available via VOD. You have no excuse. You should not live in a universe where you haven’t seen this film.

Halloween Kills (2021)

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Two new movies in such a short amount of time. What an embarrassment of riches. I caught the movie on Peacock because a) Still not entirely sure who would be breathing on me in a movie theater, so if there’s another option, why not go for it and b) I can take a watch through the shockingly good Saved by the Bell relaunch.

Wasn’t thinking one of my reviews of the Halloween movies would include a reference to Saved by the Bell, but here we are…

Did I Like It: Hawkins (Patton) lives! Is that enough for a review? Probably not. I so enjoyed that character, and was injured by his apparent death in the last film, I’m willing to give the whole affair a pass.

As a sequel to Green’s Halloween (2018), it is probably safe to say that this film isn’t the same uniformly satisfying experience. I think that, largely, is fueling some of the negative reaction* to the film. Characters are introduced (in many cases, reintroduced) at a lightning pace, and disposed of nearly as quickly. Jamie Lee Curtis—such a vital, essential presence in the last film—is relegated to a hospital bed for the runtime, echoing some of the stranger decisions in Halloween II (1981). I don’t buy for a moment that the men who live in the Myers house now are somehow the only people in town who weren’t aware (or suspected, or were ready to form a mob because) Myers was on a rampage again. The film is perhaps a bit too obsessed with the mythology of the character that I can’t help but get the sinking feeling the next film will commit that most odious sin and try to explain Myers.

The shape (if you’ll forgive the expression) of this trilogy is incomplete, and so this film might end up being remembered as something of a fundamental mess, or perhaps just a victim of the middle-trilogy syndrome. I get the sense that Green and Company have some very specific ideas for what the forthcoming Halloween Ends will look like, and this movie is largely a clearing house from the last film, when it isn’t obsessed with setting the table for the next.

But there are plenty of things to like about the film. The flashbacks to 1978 (a sequence which was attempted for the last movie, but cut for budgetary reason) are great fun, and only add to the hero that is Sheriff Hawkins. When the film finally unleashes in its final minutes, it does so in a rather surprising fashion. A Carpenter score is a Carpenter score, and you can never go wrong with it.

Ultimately, any review really must exist in context. Anyone who hates this movie is either so weighed down by unreasonable expectations, determined to react to every movie in bad faith, or has not watched any of the other films recently. I watched all of them in the last week, and it’s clear this is one of the better films to feature Michael Audrey Myers, just not the best.

*Interesting note. Peacock posts the current Rotten Tomatoes score on the HUD when the movie is paused or just starting to play. The film’s score went up a whole percent while we watched the vanity cards. I’ve never seen the consensus change (to very nearly fresh, no less) as I started watching a film.

Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998)

Director: Steve Miner

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams, LL Cool J

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I do remember the first time I ever heard about the film. Jamie Lee Curtis was presenting at some awards show, and was introduced as the star of the upcoming Halloween: H20. I was naturally intrigued that Curtis was returning to the series, but based on the title I assumed Laurie Strode had become some kind of latter-day Jacques Cousteau and her brother had come to hunt his sister on some seabase on the ocean floor, like Sphere (1998) meets the original Halloween (1978)…

…actually, now that I think about it, that wouldn’t be the worst possible conceit for a movie. A slasher movie on a submarine. I kinda want to do that now. I might very well do it now.

Anyway…

Did I Like It: The Halloween series, after the wobbly, disjoined affair that was Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) was doomed to follow the path set by other Dimension properties—like Hellraiser*—to direct-to-video depths.

I can’t help but wonder if that might have been better for the series as a whole. The movies—free of meeting corporate requirements for a wide theatrical release—could have gotten a lot weirder. Halloween has never been better than when its being completely ignored by the world at large.

But that’s not the world we live in now, nor is it the world where Thorn governs Michael Myers’ predilections, and every employee of Smiths Grove (except that one) was in on it. This is the world where Jamie Lee Curtis decided to become nostalgic for the beginnings of her career.

The movie that results is slight before it is anything else. Indeed, it has the shortest running time of any in the series, owing largely to the fact that an entire subplot revolving around the detective called to investigate the murder of Nurse Chambers (Nancy Stephens) and his hunt for the Shape.

And yet, there’s an argument to be made that the film could be even shorter. Something has happened to my Blu Ray over the years since I bought it, and it skipped it’s way through several sequences. This didn’t take anything away from the experience, though. That’s not an exceptionally strong endorsement for the movie, I realize. I’m tempted to think that it owes too much to Scream (1996) (which, in turn, owes too much to the original Halloween). A copy of a copy won’t be as sharp as original. Multiplicity (1996) taught me that much. Also, the one-two punch of Halloween: Resurrection (2002) and Halloween (2018) rendered any of the films strengths mostly moot.

And then there’s the mask… As much as I complain about the mask in previous sequels, here it looks mostly okay. Until it absolutely doesn’t. Some reshooting after test screenings necessitated the mask being grafted on via CGI. If there’s one thing that CGI in the 90s did really well, it was recreate things that were already real objects at other points in the film.

You can try to explain to me why they couldn’t just use a single mask, or at least a single mold of a mask, but I don’t think I’ll ever understand it.

*At one point, after Freddy vs. Jason (2003), there was even talk of forcing the Shape to go toe-to-pin with Pinhead. Let us thank Thorn that we avoided that, or at the very least, that I have avoided having to write about.

Halloween II (1981)

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Dick Warlock*, Lance Guest

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. In fact, from cable TV airings, I’m reasonably sure it’s actually the first movie in the series I ever saw.

Did I Like It: Sigh. The movie has much to answer for, but it also has a great deal to recommend it.

Yes, John Carpenter simultaneously shotgunned his way through a case of beer and the bridge between the second and third acts of this movie. In the process, he made Laurie Strode (Curtis) the long-lost sister of Michael Myers (Warlock). Sure, it gets Loomis back to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital for the finale, but it also straps an albatross of mythology onto a film series that, in its original form, was pure suspense and a minimum of history.

The violence here is amped up, probably unnecessarily so and also begins the series’ unfortunate tendency to follow the trends set up by other horror films, instead of establishing them as it did previously. Putting Strode in a sedative-laden fog for much of the movie could have added a layer of suspense to the proceedings, but is handled unevenly.

But I can discount the film entirely, and I don’t think much of it is tied to my fond memories of the movie from childhood. Donald Pleasance remains amped to his campy best, and remains a delight in the series for the rest of his life. The cinematography of Dean Cundey—one of the most understated and under-appreciated elements that made the original Halloween (1978) one of the greatest films of all time—continues to acquit itself quite well. 

Also, once the film does finally get going, it unleashes tension quite well, although I wonder if that had more to do with John Carpenter’s re-engagement with the film after an initial cut failed to satisfy anyone. The sequence where Strode is running from the shape, but is stymied by the slow ministrations of a basement elevator are simple, unnerving, and have to do this day introduced just an ounce of anxiety into every time I try to use an elevator.

If only the rest of the series could keep it up.

*Great name for a stuntman, or greatest name for a stuntman? There is no third option. Also, is it just me, or does every cast member not in the original movie sound like they have porn star names?

True Lies (1994)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Eliza Dushku

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: It is a shame that James Cameron so rarely makes films now. Indeed, his only feature directorial effort in nearly twenty-five years* is Avatar (2009), and the only films he has on his schedule are sequels to that film. Had he kept his output at the pace it was in the 1990s, we’d have 5-10 new films from him to enjoy. 

And we might be less inclined to dwell on the ones that don’t work as well as the others. I remember enjoying this film a great deal in years past, but something about it doesn’t ring as sharply now.

The action is good, which isn’t surprising, as anything less from the team of Schwarzenegger and Cameron would have been a colossal blunder. Even then, it does feel like it is not all that surprising. The set pieces you see here would be stuff that had become old hat in the James Bond franchise by that time.

Maybe part of the problem is that Schwarzenegger isn’t quite the right casting for a suave mega-spy. He’s a better actor—or at least movie star—than most people give him credit for, and his roles after leaving the governor’s mansion have been by and large pretty good, but he is a howitzer, not a device for finesse.

I think the real problem, though is that the film is at its heart a romantic comedy, and Cameron excels at action and spectacle, and not so much the smaller human stories. He doesn’t fail at it, necessarily. He brought plenty of romance to Titanic (1997), obviously, but a light comedy may not be in his blood.

*His version of Spider-Man (2002) would have really been something, though. DiCaprio as the Wall-Crawler? Schwarzenegger as Doc Ock (had they ever gotten around to it)? But in that scenario, we all would have idly wondered what Sam Raimi’s version of the films would have been like.

Knives Out (2019)

Director: Rian Johnson

Cast: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis

Have I Seen It Before?: Nope. As I write this, it feels like ages since I’ve been able to pull away from work in the middle of the day to catch a matinee. So many movies missed. Wither thou, Jojo Rabbit (2019)?

Did I like it?: It is such a singular pleasure to walk into a movie with almost no knowledge of what is about to unfold, aside from cast, genre, and director. I trust Rian Johnson implicitly. Looper (2012) looked so blissfully stupid when I saw the trailer and became one of the more satisfying time travel stories ever.

Johnson hasn’t steered me wrong, and I’m now convinced he can bring something fresh to any genre that he decides to tackle. He is certainly one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. Directors who take on the daunting task of churning out product in one of the largest franchises in the world might fall into doing so repeatedly. Directors with the level of taste necessary to bring a litany of original properties to the movie-watching public might turn up their noses at the idea of making the part 8 of anything. Johnson does both with aplomb.

Yes, The Last Jedi (2017) is a terrific film. Eat me. You think it’s a good film, too, but you’ve got some shit to work through. You know who you are.

Ahem. Anyway, about this movie…

And with that trust firmly in place, I could just sit back and let the mystery unfold around me. I wasn’t already writing a review in my head before the opening vanity cards unfurled. That is a luxury that the movie-theater-amenity-industrial-complex can’t touch. The cast is wall-to-wall stars, which is such a critical feature in a mystery. While watching any number of TV serials, I’ve had about an 85% success rating at figuring whodunit by just picking the actor who has a slightly higher profile than the other guest stars.

Here, the tagline really turned out to be true. Any of them could have done it. There was a solid stretch of the film where I even thought the victim (Christopher Plummer) was the mastermind. To illuminate any other element of the plot would take away the experience of watching the cast at work.

And what a cast it is. Everyone is doing eclectic work that is still somehow attached to their image as movie stars. Ana de Armas—the only performer with whom I had been unware—becomes a force to be reckoned with in films to come, while Daniel Craig proves that he might be the best pure actor to have ever donned the tuxedo of 007. Sean Connery and to some degree Pierce Brosnan went on to different roles after hanging up the Walther PPK, but never managed to step out of their screen persona in any real way. Craig steps out of anything suave to give us an eccentric that the other Bonds may have found unseemly. If Johnson makes good on his hints that this is not the last we’ve seen of Benoit Blanc, then I’m on board for a whole 9-movie saga about which people won’t be able to help complaining.

I will only be content with Johnson not directing Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) because in doing so he might have deprived us of the unique alchemy on display here.

Halloween (2018)

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Motherfuckin’ Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, and Will Patton (my new best friend)

Have I Seen it Before: How could I?

Did I Like It: I loved it, but stop asking me questions about my objectivity.

On spec, the new (and eleventh) film in the Halloween franchise has the potential to be the greatest fan film ever made. Bring Jamie Lee Curtis back. Check. Bring back Nick Castle to play The Shape*. Check. John Carpenter is willing to do the score. Big check. 

Thankfully, the film is even more than just the sum of it’s parts. The Carpenter score is transcendent, not content to merely rehash the themes he wrote 40 years ago, Carpenter and the members of his band add much to the proceedings, and in the process make a soundtrack just as memorable as the original.

With nine movies of obnoxious baggage—sorry, that should read “mythology”—serving only to weigh things down, this new story pointedly ignores (and more often, repudiates) every previous sequel. The Cult of Thorn is gone. Laurie and Michael are not related. Dangertainment is nowhere to be found. Tyler Mane is nowhere to be found. It allows the movie, surprisingly, to not be a Carpenter clone (which, in their own feeble way, every other movie in the franchise has tried to be), but actually becomes a movie that someone not plagued by a completionist’s compulsion might want to watch. There is plenty of fan service to be sure, but I was pleasantly surprised that there was an enjoyable movie in there.

The film also manages to shake itself free from the Weinstein’s grip in both spirit and practice. This film is a direct result of Dimension Films losing the rights to the franchise (and that had all worked out awesome), but where those mid-90s to late-00s films went willingly into the trap of a film that hates women, this new movie is boldly, and with a goodly degree of wit, opting for the other direction.

It’s recently come to my attention that some are upset that the movie ignores the continuity of the other films. Ugh. Let me explain something to those of you out there who might be upset by this. These films have been notorious for throwing away continuity. So by being upset that the other movies aren’t being deferred to, you’re actually ignoring what those other films have been about. Deal with it. This movie is great. Not, Carpenter’s original great (few films are) but definitely one of the better times I have had in the theater with a horror film in recent memory. I think there is a possible context where a reasonable person may not like the film, but dismissing it because it is trying to blaze a new trail (and still celebrate the past) is not that context.

* And, according to some sources, Tony Moran for scenes with Michael Myers unmasked, but at press time the internet has not provided a final answer as to whether he is actually in the film. 

John Carpenter's Halloween (1978)

In my nearly fevered anticipation for the forthcoming rebootquel Halloween (2018), I thought I might re-watch all of the original series(es). My gushing in this entry leads me to think that I may not have the strength to suffer through Rob Zombie again, to say nothing of Paul Rudd. We’ll see.

Director: John Carpenter’s John Carpenter

Cast: Donald Pleasance, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis, and (ahem.) P.J. Soles.

Have I Seen it Before: I’ve at least seen it as many times as Anchor Bay has released it on either DVD or Blu Ray, so that’s got to put it somewhere in the 100s.

Did I Like It: Oh, how do I count the ways?

It will be supremely difficult to write thoughtful reviews about some of my greatest-of-all-time movies. John Carpenter’s Halloween is one of them. The acting is sublimely modulated cheese, especially with the world’s supreme scene chewer Donald “I SHOT HIM SIX TIMES” Pleasance. The cinematography is perfect. Each frame harnesses a perfect sublime banality, that when the horror really kicks into high gear, the tension is there, but there’s also a palpable sense of tragedy at the same time. The music is so beyond perfect that it a) completely removes any pretext at criticism I might hope to reach for, b) makes the film without this music unimaginable, and c) elevates the sequels and (ugh) remakes into (on average) watchability.

And all of it was made with next to nothing. It is an unbelievable achievement that no amount of sequels, copy-cats or (again, ugh) remakes could hope to replicate, nor ruin.

Now, the long arm of legacy is what this film consistently has to fight against, but if you can put yourself in the mindset of someone living in a universe where the other films don’t exist (a feat which I think is going to become significantly easier in a few weeks), the film is even more unnerving. Here Michael Myers (Will Sandin as a child, Tony Moran unmasked as the adult Myers, and Nick Castle as the form commonly referred to as “The Shape”) isn’t the Freshman Abnormal Psych paper of the latest Rob Zombie films, the scion of the Cult of Thorn, Laurie’s brother, Jamie’s uncle, or budding Dangertainment star*. He was purely a kid—and he could have been any kid you knew growing up—who one day picked up a really sharp knife and never looked back. He slithers through the vast majority of the movie simply watching his prey, and when the moment comes, he zeroes in to take what he wants, simply because he wants it, and should therefore be entitled. He is every man, and if we’ve learned anything recently, he cannot be stopped.

That’s the movie I love, and if you don’t… Well, then fuck you, Rob Zombie.

That may be harsh, but it’s not like I don’t totally mean it. Totally.

*God, when you really unpack Halloween: Resurrection (2002), the more of a headache it becomes.