September 27th

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

Richard Brooker as Jason
13 Aug 1982

Freddy vs. Jason, Part III: New Jersey Barnyard Massacre
For me, Friday the 13th 3 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!

Jason's Mood
Taking care of business.

September 24th

Friday the 13 Part 2 (1981) directed by Steve Miner

Warrington Gillette as Jason
Steve Dash as Masked Jason
1 May 1981

Freddy vs. Jason, Part II: Revenge for Mommy
More or less, the same movie as Part 1. Someone who's face we're not allowed to see stalks and kills a bunch of horny camp counselors around Crystal Lake. Crazy Ralph tells people they're doomed. There's a downpour right before the climax. One or some of the counselors go into town to a restaurant, only to return to camp to be killed. A woman uses a machete to defeat the killer, but -- surprise, surprise -- Jason jumps out of nowhere to grab her. The second time around, it's all a little duller.

Not that I hated the movie. I found myself really enjoying backwoods Jason. Normally, I'm in the "Zombie Jason is Best Jason" camp, but living Jason grew on me. As a kid, had I been allowed to watch these, I think I might have found The Town That Dreaded Sundown rip-off Jason to be the scariest. I remember stories of crazy hermits who lived in shacks in the woods just like Jason's shack in this one (and there's a lotta woods here in Michigan). Nothing would be scarier than getting lost in those woods and accidentally stumbling upon a shack and its occupant. More scary even, if he's wearing a bag on his head with just one eye hole. "The man who's gone wild" is a classic trope and great for use in a horror movie.

We also have Part 2 to thank for several slasher cliches. Killing off the main character from the previous movie at the start of the sequel is something that -- correct me if I'm wrong -- started here. There's also the first instance of nighttime skinny dipping, to be repeated and then even parodied within the series. My favorite of the cliches, the vast variety of killing implements used by the killer, begins with this film as well. Joining Part 1's rather standard machete and knife tool set is a pitch fork, a wire garrote, a rope snare, and a toy spear used as you would a real spear.

Now that they've got all of the bits and pieces they need -- an adult Jason, creative kills, unnecessary nudity -- the series can enter its golden age. Still, there's just one more iconic bit missing...

Favorite Character
Ted (Stuart Charno): the lanky, red-headed prankster who escapes death simply by getting utterly wasted at the bar in town

Favorite Sin
Primitive handheld sports video game innuendo

Favorite Kill
Mark (Tom McBride) getting a machete buried in his face and then pushed down an enormously long flight of stairs in his wheelchair.

Jason's Mood
"Git off ma land!"

Tales from the Darkside: "The Devil's Advocate" (1985) directed by Michael Gornick
Jerry Stiller plays an angry shock-jock in the Dr. Laura mold who does nothing but berate people on his talk show. I was excited when I saw this episode was written by George himself, but I soon found myself disappointed. While Stiller's performance is excellent and he was the perfect casting choice for this part, the story is a pretty standard "asshole gets his just desserts" tale. Through the course of the episode, the shock-jock demonstrates how much of a jerk he is while slowly discovering that he has died and is in Hell, doomed to listen to whiny callers for eternity. It's far too predictable and the audience is going to be way ahead of the main character for most of the story.

October 21st

Day of the Dead (2008) directed by Steve Miner

Maybe, not counting homemade low-budget affairs, the worst zombie movie I've ever seen.  The Night remake took place in the same setting and intensified the characters' personalities.  The Dawn remake took place in the same setting and intensified the action and danger.  This Day remake takes a couple of character names (one of which is copied wrong, the other for a character who dies 20 minutes in) and the idea of a zombie firing a gun and dances merrily on its way into a host of horrible ideas.

This zombie apocalypse is caused by a plague, which is first released in a small town (yep, just like The Crazies).  It's an airborne virus, so it spreads like the flu.  The beginning of the movie resembles the beginning of The Stand a little, with the sick flooding the hospitals and the town quarantined.  Once the virus really kicks in, though, the people turn into zombies.  No, really.  They turn into zombies.  Within seconds, their skin rots in places and their eyes turn milky white.  It's like the filmmakers think being a zombie is like being a werewolf: it has a set of physical characteristics you just have to take on once infected.  Pro-tip: zombies have rot in their skin because they were previously dead and rotting.  The idiocy of this makes my brain want to get up and leave.

Other things in the film that make my brain want to kill itself: in a very small nod to the original, there's a zombie who seems to be more civilized than the others.  His name?  Bud.  Not Bub.  Bud.  I would bet a million dollars that the screenwriter has always thought they were saying "Bud" when he watched the original as a kid and never realized he had it wrong.  The main character Sarah had a bit of crush on Bud before he was infected, so she zip-ties him to the car and keep him with the group.  Yeah.  She forces her fellow survivors -- including her own brother -- to sit next to a guy with a deadly infection who may try to bite them.  Luckily for them, Bud was a vegetarian before infection and -- sigh -- doesn't want to eat people meat.  So, Sarah is keeping her boyfriend safe even though he's a zombie.  When she spies her zombified mother walking in the road, what does she do?  Of course, she rams her mom with the SUV at top speed, exploding her zombie body all over the place.  No reason to keep her zombie mom around when she has a zombie boyfriend, right?

The vast majority of the film is just the characters running from and shooting at zombies, while the zombies do bad CGI crawls on ceilings and jump out of hiding spots.  Every decision the characters make is horrifically stupid.  It's all mind-numbing and feels like nothing other than a bad Sci-Fi Channel movie.  Way to ruin the "good Romero remake" streak, Miner!

Watched: stream on Netflix.

SWH: Week 5 (twenty-six)

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
This would've been a great place to let Mike simply R.I.P. (7/10)
d. Steve Miner

Halloween H20: Unmasking the Horror (1998)
Half of this documentary is just effusive praising of the original (5/10)
d. ??

Creed: "What's This Life For" (1998)