Halloween is probably the most played out movie of them all 'round this time of year, so I decided to take a little different route. Instead of watching the 1978 classic, I watched Halloween 25 Years of Terror; a documentary about the entire series of films called. I had been thinking about buying this for a while and found it the other day at the record store (yes, I know it's lame that I call it the "record store") in a double pack with Halloween for $19.99. I take it up to the counter and find out that there's a buy one get one free deal going on. So, I bought Slither too. And then on top of everything else, the whole mess of DVDs rang up as costing $14.99! I have to say, though, that this documentary would have been worth the $19.99 on its own.

Originally intended as a convention video, the documentary contains a lot of footage from the 25th anniversary "Return to Haddonfield" convention where thousands of Halloween fans from around the world converged on Pasadena, CA (the filming location of the fictional Haddonfield) to schmooze wi th other fans and franchise celebs. Sensing that they had much more on their hands than a simple souvineer for the attendees, the producers cobbled together what is the definitive overview of the series. With brand new interviews from the stars, directors and other sundry film people, no stone is left unturned from part one all the way through Ressurrection.

Probably the coolest feature of the disc (and, in fact, the reason I bought it) is Sean Clark's contribution, Horror's Hallowed Grounds; wherein he takes the viewer on a tour of the major shooting locations from the original film. Clark was at the last convention where he screened the Halloween episode of the show and it was so much fun that I really felt like it was something I needed to support. Shot with a good mix of humor and fanboy awe, it's a blast to watch and leaves you wanting to see it done with more movies (he's done scads of others in print, find the links at the myspace page below). It's a pretty cool concept and one that I hope he's able to parlay into an ongoing series. Check out the Horror's Hallowed Grounds myspace, here.

For genre fans, one of the biggest attendees at the convention this November will be Gunnar Hansen. For those not in the know, Hansen played the role of Leatherface in the original version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and, outside of that, never really had any other major film credits to speak of. Sure he did a few horror cameos and such but nothing even approaching the magnitude of playing the Stihl wielding maniac from this 1974 classick. As a side note; I find it completely hilarious is the fact that thes guy who played Leatherface looks exactly like my dad. So I can't wait to get a pic with him in November!

There's not much that I can say about this movie that hasn't been said before (and more eloquently). It is disturbing, gritty and leaves you feeling hollow at the end. The major players in the film are pretty amazing, especially the manical family that lure the young adults to their den of dismemberment. I mean, they pretty much set up the template for all homicidal hillbillies that came after them. Of course, Hansen pulls off Leatherface so well that I half expect him to be a tad bit 'tarded when I meet him come November. Jim Siedow is the perfect comic foil for Edwin Neal's "Hitchhiker" character. And, of course, John Dugan (also appearing at the Horror Hound Weekend) plays it straight and practically motionless as the decomposing patriarch of the family "Grandpa."

The best acting of all, however, comes from Marilyn Burns. Make no mistake. No other woman before or since has conveyed terror more believably on screen. It's not just a couple of shrieks here and there either. It is a prolonged, agonizing fright that builds and builds to the point where she is less a human being and more a frightened animal fueled by adrenaline and a natural flight instinct. It's beautiful and horrifying at the same time.

I can't imagine that very many of you haven't seen this one, but if you haven't... you should be ashamed. Especially if you've seen the remake excreted a few years back by Michael Bay and company. See the real deal. You're not likely to see a more horrifying film anytime soon.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Trailer

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Intro

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Hitchhiker Scene

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Dinner Scene

Inexplicably, in the pecking order of Horror Hound Weekend celebrities, Shawnee Smith comes in second to John Landis as far as star power goes. I can only imagine that having breasts goes a long way in boosting your rating at a nerdfest such as this. Shawnee Smith is probably best known for her role in the Saw movies. I think that she's been in all of them so far, but I could be wrong. Honestly, after seeing that the first one (which is considered by many to be the only good one) was a steaming dookie loaf I couldn't be bothered with any of the rest.

In my mind, Ms. Smith will always be the dumb receptionist from Becker, but that's not to say that she didn't make some appearances in some pretty decent feature films (even if she was just a tertiary character). While she appeared in remakes of The Blob and Carnival of Souls, my favorite film that she appeared in wasn't a horror film at all, but a high school comedy.

In Summer School Shawnee Smith is part of a pretty good ensemble of teen outcasts that antagonize Mark Harmon's as the comic foil. In some ways, they are the anti-Breakfast Club. Sure they represent most of the teen movie stereotypes; there's a nerd, a jock, a duo of knuckle headed punks, and a foreign exchange student, but here, despite their respective positions in the high school hierarchy, they are all misfits and failures forced to give up their summer to make up lost English credits. They start out with that strong bond and learn quickly that together they can bully the well-meaning substitute to do their bidding.

Summer School, of course, was one of the first major releases to star Mark Harmon and, despite his dearth of recent success, it's obvious why he was the "it" guy for at least a fleeting moment. Even in this inconsequential role, he is completely charismatic and charming. Harmon plays Freddie Shoop, a gym teacher who gets railroaded into teaching summer English. He's a jovial, doormat of a man that wants to be liked by everyone and that's exactly what gets him in trouble with the group of students he is put in charge of.

Summer School features two of the most original character ever to appear in a high school comedy. Dave and "Chainsaw" are a couple of horror-punks that delight in being generally disruptive, but get really nasty with an arsenal of prosthetic gore effects and buckets of blood. Of course, this all culminates in a scene of faux classroom carnage that would never pass in these post-Columbine days, but was good clean fun back int he late 80s.

Back in the day I loved this movie, but watching it again recently I realize that it has lost a little bit of its lustre for me. Honestly, it's just a lot more corny than I remembered it being. It's very broad and built to appeal to an impressionable middle schooler. And in my case, it succeeded. I'm gonna pass this one on to my middle school aged nephews to see what they think.

Video Goodness!

Summer School - School Room Massacre Scene

Summer School - Classic "Tension Breaker" Scene

Yes, we're all pretty sick of the '70s horror retreads that Hollywood has been throwing our way in recent years.There for a while you couldn't listen to a horror podcast or peruse a horror website without someone wanting to flog that old (un?)dead horse. But these days it seems that everyone has resigned themselves to the fact that crappy "re-imaginings" are inevitable. In fact, complaining about these remakes has already transitioned from being a quick and easy way to acrue geek-hipster cache to being a tired cliche that nobody in the scene wants to touch anymore.

Interestingly enough, way back in 2002 it was Rob Zombie, director of the new remake of Halloween and former astrocreep, who threw in his own two cents on the subject of horror remakes. In a quote from Are You Going? magazine concerning remakes, Zombie said, I feel it's the worst thing any filmmaker can do. I actually got a call from my agent and they asked me if I wanted to be involved with the remake of Chainsaw. I said no f***ing way! Those movies are perfect -- you're only going to make yourself look like an a**hole by remaking them. So the obvious question that raises itself is whether Zombie was able to take Halloween, a bonafide fright classic, and put his stamp on it while avoiding the curse that brought down the slew of remaking a**holes that came before him. And if you'd asked me for an answer two days ago, my answer would have been, "I don't care."

To be honest, Halloween was not my favorite of the big three horror franchise films. I adored the Nightmare on Elm Street series, dug many of the Friday the 13th films, but, at best, I was ambivalent to the Halloween movies. That is not to say that I did not recognize their place of honor in the genre. In fact, some of my earliest memories are of being freaked out watching the original through my fingers at my grandparents' house. But in the end, much like with the remakes of The Hills Have Eyes and The Fog, I was never invested enough in the original to warrant outrage upon hearing of a remake. But as the end of August grew nearer and nearer (much like a lurching, knife-weilding shape in the shadows) my desire to see Zombie's latest grew too big to ignore.

I had only recently seen his previous two films. To be honest, I enjoyed parts of both House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, but in the end felt that they were lacking. I didn't know why I had such on overwhelming urge to check out Zombie's Halloween, but I suspect its similar to the urge you get to stare at an accident as you drive by. You know its gonna be horrible, but how else are you gonna be able to explain to your friends and family just how horrible it was? No, you go into these things with a morbid curiosity, you wanna see just how bad things can be, and on this front, Halloween did not disappoint.

The primary problem with Zombie's version of the film lies in the very reason he cited as impetus for remaking the original. In interviews he stated that a remake would provide opportunity to look into Michael Myers' past and to see what made him into the ruthless killer that he is. And, in fact, Zombie spends nearly half of the film tracing Myers' backstory. But in both the original film and in the remake, Dr. Loomis is quick to point out that Myers is evil incarnate. And if he is the embodiment of evil, then he don't need no reason to do what he do. Rob Zombie goes outta his way to show that Myers makes no distinction in killing those who have wronged him and killing those who've been kind to him, but in providing a "reason" for the murderous activity, he has kinda dulled the blade.

In addition to being unnecessary, Zombie's portrait of a young serial killer is quite flaccid. As you would expect, the director wastes no time in taking the audience straight into the perpetually dingy world of American low-culture. Be certain, Rob Zombie considers himself quite the expert on the white-ghetto aesthetic. It's all flop sweat and carpet stains as we first enter into the white trash world of the Myers home, but what we're really supposed to be appalled at is the treatment of the aspiring slasher. He has a layabout step-dad who just doesn't understand him and, horror of horrors, a slutty big sister that picks on him! I have to say that if everyone who grew up in a similar situation ended up as murderers, it wouldn't be long before they ran outta people to kill.

I'd have much rather seen Zombie go the other route. We've seen him do the hillbilly horror thing already. If he absolutely HAD to show a Michael Myers backstory, it would have been much cooler to go all David Lynch. Do it up as middle class suburbia ... but with a dark side. I mean, that's actually truer to life, right? Jeffrey Dahmer, suburban middle-class childhood. Ted Bundy, suburban middle-class childhood. At this point, everyone knows that it's not the freaks that get picked on at school that grow up to be serial killers. They discover drugs. No, it's the quiet, seemingly well-adjusted ones. Those are the guys that go on to stockpile disembodied genitals in their grandparents' basement. Young Michael Myers should have never donned a Kiss T-shirt, but instead a turtle neck and sweater vest combo.

Another pitfall that Zombie falls into with this film is the silly mythologizing of franchise iconography. It's a pretty standard affair with remakes such as these. Sometimes it's merely a quick homage to the original film. Sometimes a little pomp and circumstance to make the occasion a little more momentous, but there's always a point in these movies where the villain gets his knife or axe or whatever, and the audience is supposed to be all like, "Hell yeah!" In Halloween, of course, this moment is when Myers gets his iconic mask. In the new version of the film, Zombie decided to introduce the mask quite early. In fact, it's introduced during a sex scene between sister Judith and her boyfriend. This was undoubtedly done so that the audience would get to see a 10-year-old Mikey Myers don his famous mask (looking much like a bobble head doll) as he commits his last murder before being locked away in the asylum. Of course, the problem that arises in introducing the mask so early is the fact that, when he comes back all those years later, he needs to have that exact same mask. Of course, young Michael did what any psychotic prepubescent on a killing spree would do: He buried it under the floorboards, thus preserving the mask in pristine condition for more than a decade. Lame.

Now, I know that I'm being pretty harsh on the movie. But please understand that it deserves it. It is, in fact, a steaming loaf. But despite this fact, I can still point to a couple of things about the film that I found mildly interesting. A lot of people talk about the visual sophistication of Zombie's films. To be quite honest, I don't see it. The stylistic flourishes and such that he throws in are pretty cliche in the genre these days. I mean, seriously, if I see one more cut away to grainy black and white "news footage" I'm gonna go on a murder spree of my own. But at one point in Halloween, Zombie did something that I found interesting. As the police are processing the crime scene at the Myers' house, he puts the action on pause and does a kind of living tableau. It's not a freeze frame or one of those 3-D whirl-arounds like from The Matrix. It was simply a pan of the entire cast as they held their positions. Nothing too profound, but just an interesting idea that would have better served just about any other scene in the movie.

Another thing that was decent in this version was the depiction of the adult Michael Myers. While I can already hear all of the fans decrying this film as the worst entry into the franchise (and that's saying something ... I mean, Halloween III: Season of the Witch?) one thing that can't be denied is the fact that Rob Zombie's Michael Myers is the most brutal depiction of the killer ever brought to the screen. Sure he's armed with his everpresent kitchen knife, but his worst blows are dealt out by hand. Umpteen times in the movie he assaults people, slamming them up against walls and windows with such speed and ferocity that I actually cringed and squirmed in my seat with every rapid-fire thud. While it was difficult to imagine that these skull crushing blows were being dealt by the chubby 10-year-old that has been locked away for 15 years, the brutality of the attacks was undeniable.

I guess if nothing else good has come from Rob Zombie's Halloween, a lot of genre stalwarts are gonna get a pretty sweet payday. In fact, the best part of the movie (that is to say ... one of the only good parts of the movie) was pointing out the parade of horror and cult film vets that make appearances. Of course, this goes to show that Zombie is the ultimate horror fan's filmmaker. As a fan himself, he wants to pay tribute to those "perfect films" he enjoyed growing up. Somewhere along the line, however, he began to assume that he was above the criticisms that other remakers have endured and in doing so has proved himself to be every bit of the a**hole that he accused them of being. Here's hoping next time around he'll treat us to an original vision.