Well, there goes my Sophie theory. The poor gal has been shoved almost completely aside in this one, relegated to just a couple of scenes where she doesn't do anything important. I guess, technically, she's not in high school yet where this one is set, so it would be hard to use her more. Still, she should be about the same age that her older sister was in Part 1, meaning her mom and grandma, one would think, would be fighting over whether she should start training as well. Poor Sophie.
One thing that hasn't changed since the last two movies: Marnie is still a massive screw-up. In this one, she accidentally bets her entire family's magic powers that humans will be able to live with Halloweentown monsters without freaking out. What? For some reason, since opening the portal between the two worlds permanently in Part 2, she has a bee in her bonnet about getting both worlds to live together. Why? Last time in the distant past, as they told us in Part 1, humans were such meanies that they drove the monsters to make their own dimension -- Halloweentown -- to escape.
This is just the irrational X-Men thing again. Both Professor X and the Cromwells are so delusional in their hippy "let's all hold hands and dance together" crap that they want a collection of super-powered entities to invade the human world. Humans should be freaking out about this. The Halloweentown witches have, what appears to be, unlimited power to alter reality. How are these folks not going to take over the human world?
Even if they were -- very, very improbably -- all nice, they're still super-powered. Construction businesses? Gone. The witches have demonstrated they can build structures with a wave of the hand. Anesthesiologists: out of job. The witches can knock people out with magic. Airline travel? Gone: the witches can fly people on brooms. Could we humans do anything about this? Nope, the witches have a time travel spell and can prevent anything we do against them before it even happens. This is terrifying.
Sorry, as a human, I'm firmly on the side of "bad guy" Dalloway in this film who wants to close the portal forever. I'd like my daughters to grow up in a world with more career options than "Igor" or "Witch's Familiar."
Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge (2001) directed by Mary Lambert
I'm still sticking with my theory that I came up with after watching the first one: little Sophie is the true power in the family. While Marnie is being easily seduced by Kalabar's son -- who uses the opportunity to steal her grandma's spellbook and almost end normal human existence as we know it -- Sophie is immediately aware that something is not right. Later, she easily flies herself and her brother on a broom without any prior training. Sophie is also the one to figure out that her mom's crush is actually a golem made up of frogs. Meanwhile, her grandma continues to fawn over her screw-up older sister -- the so-called future leader of the Cromwell witches -- who loses and fails to memorize a time travel spell and is only required to figure out a ridiculously easy one-word spell to reverse the damage her boyfriend has done to both worlds.
My girls enjoyed the show well enough. They got a little embarrassed during the flirty bits with Kalabar's son and his fake frog-dad, but nothing was remotely scary for them this time out. It's a completely harmless little movie. My main complaint would be we didn't spend any time at all in the non-cursed version of Halloweentown, which is, you know, the name of the series and the big, fun draw to these things.
Friday the 13th Part III (1982) directed by Steve Miner
Freddy vs. Jason, Part III: New Jersey Barnyard Massacre
For me, Friday the 13th3 to 8 are the meat of the series. This is where Jason is the Jason as we know and love him: relentless, nearly indestructible, and wearing a hockey mask. If I'm going to randomly pop in a Jason movie to relax one fall night, it's gonna be one of these (OK: not typically 8).
Though, Jason seems to be in a weird mood in this one. Maybe it's because he's run out of camp counselors to take revenge on? He doesn't exactly seem to know what to do with himself. He tries out killing middle-aged grocery store owners at the beginning of the movie, but that doesn't seem to be a path he's interested in pursuing further. Luckily, some horny young people arrive at a nearby farm and he's allowed to go back to his killing comfort zone.
Still, his approach is very business-like in this movie. He marches around, calmly and quickly killing everyone in his path. There's little malice in what he's doing. Jason's simply performing the job he was made to do, as if he were a factory worker tightening bolts. A poke with a hayfork here, a slash with a machete there...
We even get a glimpse at his process at one point. Near the end of the movie when he's chasing Chris and Rick, the two are split up. When Chris opens up the door of the house to look for Rick, the camera pans right and we see Jason has caught him. But, Rick isn't dead and Jason isn't in the process of killing him; instead, Jason has a hand clasped over Rick's mouth to prevent him from making any noise. Clearly, he doesn't want Rick's screams to alert Chris. He hasn't had time to get to the business of killing Rick and wants to ensure he can later do the same to Chris. This nicely demonstrates Jason's low time preference. He's not a creature of pure id, wandering the woods and murdering whenever the urge strikes him. No, he's an intelligent planner with a goal. That actually makes the guy even scarier.
On a different subject, I love the incredibly cheezy 3-D effects in this film. Even though I watched it in 2-D, the "wooo, this is 3-D" shots are awesome. People are constantly shoving things directly at the camera: sticks, yo-yos, snakes, weapons, eyeballs... Even without the 3-D effect, it's still a ton of fun.
Favorite Character
Shelly (Larry Zerner): the chubby, socially awkward, horrible-with-girls, practical-joking dork. Or, the representation of all of us horror geeks in the Jason universe. That he is the one who gives Jason his iconic mask: icing on the nerd cake.
Favorite Sin
Eating and drinking bits of food from your own grocery store and putting the rest back on the shelf.
Favorite Kill
Rick (Paul Kratka) getting his head squeezed between Jason's hands until his eyeball pops out in 3-D!
Sunday is a great day to start the Six Weeks. No work for me, no school for the kids: we're free to wade into the holiday pool as we see fit. This year, that involved a morning shopping trip to the Halloween sections of several stores where we picked up all of the bits we needed for the kids' costumes (a witch and a black cat - thanks to the double-feature of Bedknobs and Broomsticksand Kiki's Delivery Service we had a few weeks back). After returning, we popped in the first movie of the season:
"Well, I jumped the gun on this one.... Ah well, maybe I'll give it another shot with the daughters in 2015 or so..." I wrote back in 2012 when last I watched this. I'll be damned, but I just happened to follow my own advice today without even knowing it. And, Past-Me was right; the daughters dug the movie just fine this time around and no one had to hide behind the couch.
Me, I feel the same as I did back then: it's a charming kids movie with some nice Halloween flavor. All of the adult actors seem to be having a hammy ball, especially Debbie Reynolds, who delivers every line just a hair over the line that divides serious from silly. I like the message of not ignoring your roots, no matter what they are. The classic trope of "you're not the normal kid you think you are" is always fun.
I did notice that, while the older daughter Marnie was supposed to be the main character, the younger daughter Sophie is the only one of the two showing any talent with magic. Sophie floats a cookie, changes a lock into a frog, and manages to perfectly memorize her grandma's spell to activate the wand-thing. Marnie doesn't do anything remotely as useful. We'll be watching a couple more of these movies, so I'd be curious to see if this becomes some kind of sibling rivalry side story. Though, I'm probably giving the writers too much credit, I suspect.
Well, I jumped the gun on this one. I already knew this was a cute kids' show, having watched it seven years ago, and I was thinking it'd be great to watch with my daughters for Halloweentime. It will be... just not yet. The near-three-year-old, lacking a nap today, almost immediately fell asleep. The near-five-year-old was fine and even got a kick out of the kooky monsters that lived in Halloweentown... until the real bad guy showed up. From there, she made a series of strategic moves: to behind the couch, to just outside the door, to all the way upstairs. It's really not that scary, but she has a low tolerance for creepy-looking characters acting mean to pleasant characters. Even with less than 10 minutes of bad guy-ness in the whole show, well, that was beyond her limits.
It really is a charming little made-for-TV movie from Disney. Debbie Reynolds has a ball and hams it up as the family's grandma and Halloweentown's most powerful witch. The town itself is really fun, with a werewolf hairdresser and a giant jack-o-lantern in the square and a zombie Elvis broom salesman. This also the only really girl-centric Halloween special I can think of, focusing on a 13-year-old girl's discovery that she's destined to be a great witch like her mom and grandma. Ah well, maybe I'll give it another shot with the daughters in 2015 or so...
Tales from the Darkside 1.10: "Djinn, No Chaser" (1985) directed by Shelley Levinson
Another goofy Darkside, this time with a pair of married goofballs acquiring a magic lamp. In the realm of genies-played-by-basketball-players stories, this is easily the best. Sorry Shaq, but Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has got you here. He plays a genie who's so grumpy about being tramped in a tiny lamp for 10,000 years, he refuses to grant wishes. Instead, he drives the married couple crazy. He conjures lions in the hallway to trap them, makes the walls ooze slime, and won't stop yelling in a really loud voice. Overall, the guy is pretty annoying. Once they find the key to his release, though, all is well. Not a story I'd imagine coming from a darkside, but funny and full of energy.
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