HALLOWEEN HORRORS (cont.)

For the 2024 Season!

Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN (2007)

Fans and casual viewers alike decided to HATE on this film (AND its sequel) for reasons that remain largely inexplicable. Especially when one considers that the bizarre, nonsensical spate of RECENT Halloween films (the bizarrely titled, ‘‘Halloween Kills’’ and its follow on movies) featuring 80 year old Michael Myers and an ancient, Wine Aunt version of Laurie Strode moping about in what seem like made-for-TV movies heavy on ‘‘trauma’’ fetishism were well received by this same target market of nonsensically fickle morons.

Rob Zombie is a much maligned filmmaker - and Nicholas Refn he is NOT, but he’s NOT claiming to be. He has a great passion for and love of horror movies and especially the first THREE, original ‘‘HALLOWEEN’’ properties and it shows. The ZOMBIE version of ‘‘HALLOWEEN’’ also has a spectacular cast - William Forsythe, Brad Dourif, Malcolm McDowell to name a few - and the players absolutely DELIVER in their roles, without scenery chewing or half assed phoning it in. Although Halloween IS self-aware enough to be funny when appropriate.

THIS version of the Haddonfield Horror both humanizes Michael Meyers and makes him more overtly demonic and liminal. The first third or so of the film follows Michael as a small boy - and tracks his development amidst an abusive and warped environment. Its suggested that empathy and normal, human emotional development is slowly being crushed out of him. But after a horrific crime, whereafter he is committed to a sanitarium for the criminally insane, he becomes something definitely NOT human.

Michael is played by former wrestler Tyler Mane - a giant of a man who towers over everyone and everything he encounters in the film. THIS version of Michael Meyers is like a cross between a Panzer and a wild animal. He smashes into things that put him on target and destroys them utterly. And virtually EVERYTHING that lives and breathes that comes within his field of sensation puts him on target.

Dr Loomis is reinterpreted in THIS version as something of a clout thirsty CON MAN - he is clearly brilliant, but at some point, he became derailed and ceased to abide both the Hippocratic Oath, the demands of his own conscience, and anything approaching the quiet professionalism befitting a forensic Psychiatrist who has the most severely disturbed and violent of criminal offenders in his charge. A subplot of the two Rob Zombie HALLOWEEN entries is that Loomis is clearly looking forward at all times to a way to monetize Meyers’ murder spree, and the macabre celebrity that attends these horrifying events.

This absolutely TRACKS with the culture and zeitgeist of the last 20 odd years - every FBI ‘‘profiler’’ (which itself is the zenith of JUNK SCIENCE) seems to have taken to cultivating a media career and a content brand suggesting that they are, ‘‘MINDHUNTERS’’, singularly charged and capable of tracking down and capturing, ‘‘human monsters’’ as the cliche’d trope goes. McDowell is also hilarious even in serious roles, and he really shines here.

Brad Dourif takes on the reimagined role of Sherrif Brackett - whose tragic character arc is not fully realized until the second (and to this point final) film in the Rob Zombie Halloween franchise, but the short screentime he gets is great. Ditto William Forsythe as young Michael’s loutish, moronic, White Trash stepfather.

HIGHLY recommend! For fans of both the ORIGINAL first two HALLOWEEN films as well as peoples who appreciate Rob Zombie’s unique brand.

LIFEFORCE (1985)

The story of this film’s production is just as entertaining, wild and unlikely as the dark and fanciful narrative of the movie itself.

CANNON FILMS - which despite being little more than a glorified PONZI scheme managed by two Israeli hucksters - produced some of the most interesting projects of the 1980s. One of the shining moments of the firm being when they signed Tobe Hooper (indie film auteur extraordinaire who was the creative mind behind, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) to a THREE PICTURE deal - the magnum opus of which was LIFEFORCE.

Based on cult author Colin Wilson’s 1976 novel, The Space Vampires, LIFEFORCE had a massive budget for a sci fi horror film and an epic runtime. As well as an impressive cast and crew. Dan O’Bannon - the primary screenwriter on Ridely Scott’s ALIEN - enjoyed a substantive writing credit on the film. Patrick Stewart, Frank Finlay, Steve Railsback (who played Charles Manson in the tv-movie treatment of, ‘‘Helter Skelter) and Northern Ireland native John Hallam round out the cast.

LIFEFORCE is also a period piece - the framing device is the return of Haley’s Comet after nearly 80 years (which was a major cultural event in 1985-86). In the coma of the comet, a massive object is detected. A European Space Agency mission discovers that the object is in fact a technological signature and not a naturally occurring, astronomical phenomenon. It is in fact a massive space craft, many MILES long and immense in diameter.

Within the tomb-like craft are hundreds (if not thousands) of mummified and decayed bat-like, demonic looking creatures who apparently perished in some state of suspended animation; and three nude humanoids (2 men and 1 woman) who appear to be alive and healthy although in a deep, presumably medically induced, hypersleep.

The shocked crew of the ESA space shuttle (named, ‘‘Churchill’’) reports its findings back to mission control, then abruptly breaks contact, which is never re-established. A rescue mission to Churchill finds the shuttle gutted by FIRE, the crew to be all dead and the escape pod to be missing, presumably having been deployed by a frantic sole survivor who abandoned ship in the nick of time. The suspended animation pods remain on the Churchill, with their alien humanoid cargo still alive and well, but still in deep sleep.

The jist of the film is that, the creatures discovered on the craft are energy vampires - who literally feed on the, ‘‘LIFE FORCE’’ of humans. Upon draining their victims of life energy, the hapless victims become ‘‘infected’’ in a sense with vampirism - and then must constantly feed on the LIFE FORCE of other humans to prevent their bodies from withering down to corpse like husks and ultimately exploding into dust.

As the female humanoid alien awakens, she goes on a seductive rampage, infecting hundreds of people all across the United Kingdom - these victims in turn infect thousands more who in turn infect millions. The British Army, the ESA, the civilian executive rapidly realize that they are not merely dealing with a plague and a quarantine emergency - rather, the END of the WORLD is upon them.

This is a great movie for what it is - GREAT special f/x for the time, GREAT set pieces (the film FEELS like a BIG movie - in the OLD SCHOOL Hollywood epic sense. The orchestral soundtrack is great as well).

Unfortunately, LIFEFORCE as a flop - as was the FOLLOW UP that Hooper did for CANON FILMS, a re-imagining of INVADERS FROM MARS (1987) - which is also criminally underrated.

ESSENTIAL viewing for HORROR fans, SCI FI junkies, and people who appreciate the DRIVE-IN auteur sensibilities of Tobe Hooper.