Halloween (franchise discussion) (1 Viewer)

[Michael Elliott]

Had Carpenter never gone for the "money" and did HALLOWEEN II, I think it's a great chance that every single HALLOWEEN would have been something different. It's great to wonder what the series would have been like. HALLOWEEN III gets a bad wrap because it doesn't have Myers but on its own I think it's a good film.

Plus, as much as I love the sequels, they really did ruin the ending of HALLOWEEN. It must have been great walking out of the theater in 1978 just knowing that The Shape was still out there somewhere. No explanation. He's just out there somewhere.

 

[Tommy R]

Had Carpenter never gone for the "money" and did HALLOWEEN II, I think it's a great chance that every single HALLOWEEN would have been something different. It's great to wonder what the series would have been like.

I believe Carpenter has said that because of the contract he had, that the powers at be were going to do Halloween II “with or without him” and that Michael returning was a requirement.

 

[TravisR]

If Carpenter hadn't returned for Halloween II, I don't think that Jamie Lee Curtis would have come back (everyone has a price tag but how much would they have really paid her?). At that point, I guess Halloween II would have been like 4, 5, or 6 where Dr. Loomis is hunting Michael and protecting Haddonfield on Halloween of whatever year the movie was made.

And without Carpenter, I think Halloween III would have basically followed the path of the Friday The 13th movies with Michael Myers killing more people each Halloween.

 

[SFMike]

Other than the first movie I really find this franchise worthless and I'm only posting something this negative as I find it sad for all the money and time wasted on upgrading and repackaging these extremely mediocre movies when there are so many better films not even on blu-ray.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

People routinely rebuy these films making them a viable release for the labels putting them out. If other films sold as well, they’d get similar treatment.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

It must have been great walking out of the theater in 1978 just knowing that The Shape was still out there somewhere. No explanation. He's just out there somewhere.

It was! Back then the mindset was not "Oh when is the sequel?" as this was not the thought. It was "That was a great movie!" which meant a whole stand alone film. Not a "universe" and not a bunch of films that attempted to explain things from the first film.

Halloween gave us a great beginning, middle, and ending. It was perfect. We did not need another film to "explain" anything. Halloween 2 does just sort of play a greatest hits package of Halloween. Carpenter made sure to end Myers in this one so they could not continue to make 8 more pictures where a guy in a Captain Kirk mask walks around killing people on Halloween night.

It was, in truth, idiotic that they brought Myers back for all of these other films. It was a cash grab and that's all. Which is why the films are mostly so lousy.

However, people want what they want and if you release a new Myers film showing the same thing every Halloween...well...people will pay to see it.

If I am ranking the films I would rank Carpenter's film by miles the best. I would rank Season of the Witch the second best film, again way ahead of the others. The third best would be Rosenthal's Halloween 2. As sequels go this is a good sequel but also as sequels go it is an unnecessary sequel that basically only exists to make more money and gives us a worse ending than the fantastic ending of Halloween.

Every other Halloween film basically is nothing but a very sad cash grab. It is a bad idea to remake a great film, so the Zombie films should not have been attempted.

The most recent Halloween film series that I guess is meant to be more "faithful" sequels to the Carpenter film seem to be a way to get a younger audience into Halloween movies I guess. Again, it just seems like a cash grab with some mediocre stabs (ha!) at being sort of like Carpenter's film.

I mean in the end hopefully people just have fun with these pictures but yes, most of them are really bad ideas.

I will say I was surprised when I enjoyed the producer's cut of 6 but it plays kind of like a gothic twisted 1970s era Hammer film. I don't know what the hell it has to do with Carpenter's film as it creates this entire bizarre twisted sex cult backstory for where Michael came from but it has atmosphere and it is weird and that makes it better than all the other pictures outside of the first three.

By the way, I don't know what the "Thorn Trilogy" is and I don't recall any Thorn stuff from 4 but I did not see 5...do they develop the Thorn thing in 5 leading up to why it is a big part of 6?

 

[Tommy R]

By the way, I don't know what the "Thorn Trilogy" is and I don't recall any Thorn stuff from 4 but I did not see 5...do they develop the Thorn thing in 5 leading up to why it is a big part of 6?

It’s been a while since I’ve seen 5, but I remember some shadowy figure who walks around occasionally during the movie with a tattoo on his hand showing. And in the end of the movie it alludes that Jamie Lloyd is kidnapped by whoever this guy is. I don’t believe 4 had anything about the Thorn cult at all in it.

I HAVE seen the theatrical cut of 6 at least a few times, and I can never make heads or tails of what all that Thorn cult stuff was suppose to be about. I’ve wanted to see the Producer’s Cut, but it looks like used copies of it are going for a pretty penny online. I hope Scream Factory will put it out on 4K (and I’d take H20 too, and call my Halloween collection good), as it seemed an odd place to stop at 5 with their new releases this month. Perhaps next year…

 

[TravisR]

It was! Back then the mindset was not "Oh when is the sequel?" as this was not the thought. It was "That was a great movie!" which meant a whole stand alone film. Not a "universe" and not a bunch of films that attempted to explain things from the first film.

Halloween gave us a great beginning, middle, and ending. It was perfect. We did not need another film to "explain" anything. Halloween 2 does just sort of play a greatest hits package of Halloween. Carpenter made sure to end Myers in this one so they could not continue to make 8 more pictures where a guy in a Captain Kirk mask walks around killing people on Halloween night.

As much as I love Halloween II (1981), the original's idea that he's just a sick maniac killing people for no real reason is infinitely better and scarier than he's trying to murder his sister. And that sister motive is so ingrained in Halloween that when Rob Zombie also used it in his remake, it seemed perfectly natural to do that. One thing I love about the 2018 movie is that it drops the sister story and he's back to being an unreasoning madman.

By the way, I don't know what the "Thorn Trilogy" is and I don't recall any Thorn stuff from 4 but I did not see 5...do they develop the Thorn thing in 5 leading up to why it is a big part of 6?

I used to think of them as the Jamie Lloyd trilogy (even if the character doesn't have a big part in H6) but the Thorn trilogy has become its unofficial name amongst fans in the last few years. None of the Thorn nonsense is in Halloween 4. It starts in Halloween 5 and then when Halloween 6 was written by a huge Halloween fan who, like any crazy fan, felt a duty to follow up on what was established in the previous entry so he had to deal with it all.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I HAVE seen the theatrical cut of 6 at least a few times, and I can never make heads or tails of what all that Thorn cult stuff was suppose to be about. I’ve wanted to see the Producer’s Cut, but it looks like used copies of it are going for a pretty penny online. I hope Scream Factory will put it out on 4K (and I’d take H20 too, and call my Halloween collection good), as it seemed an odd place to stop at 5 with their new releases this month. Perhaps next year…

So, I have never seen the theatrical cut of 6 but I can say what made me watch the producer's cut was reading about the picture it was described as much weirder than the theatrical cut. I can't make a comparison having not seen both cuts but if I recall correctly it was said a considerable amount was changed. I think 45 minutes of the film is different including a totally different ending. As far as I recall most of this pertains to the cult aspect of the story. It's been a while since I read about it.

The cool thing about the producer's cut to me is that it has the weirdness of an Italian Giallo and this strange dark gothic atmosphere. I love Giallos and Hammer Horror and this picture, at least in the producer's cut form. plays as a mix of those.

Not sure what hardcore Michael Myers fans would think of it as it does take his character in some really bizarre directions. I enjoyed it as...well...just as a weird horror picture. It's got way more story and plot that it is juggling than the elegant and simple approach Carpenter took to the original film...which was just going to be something about babysitter murders and still is really.

Even though I have not seen 5 I still felt it played fine as a stand alone film. It is kind of as if Dario Argento directed a Halloween picture. In some ways it reminds me of the way Season of the Witch is so bizarre and that picture also plays like a latter day Hammer picture I thought.

 

[Tommy R]

So, I have never seen the theatrical cut of 6 but I can say what made me watch the producer's cut was reading about the picture it was described as much weirder than the theatrical cut. I can't make a comparison having not seen both cuts but if I recall correctly it was said a considerable amount was changed. I think 45 minutes of the film is different including a totally different ending. As far as I recall most this pertains to the cult aspect of the story. It's been a while since I read about it.

The cool thing about the producer's cut to me is that it has the weirdness of an Italian Giallo and this strange dark gothic atmosphere. I love Giallos and Hammer Horror and this picture, at least in the producer's cut form. plays as a mix of those.

Not sure what hardcore Michael Myers fans would think of it as it does take his character in some really bizarre directions. I enjoyed it as...well...just as a weird horror picture. It's got way more story and plot that it is juggling than the elegant and simple approach Carpenter took to the original film...which was just going to be something about babysitter murders and still is really.

Even though I have not seen 5 I still felt it played fine as a stand alone film. It is kind of as if Dario Argento directed a Halloween picture. In some ways it reminds me of the way Season of the Witch is so bizarre and that picture also plays like a latter day Hammer picture I thought.

Honesty that all sounds potentially good, even if it seems very UN-Halloween. Going from memory, in the theatrical cut there was VERY little that even had to do with the cult aspect of it. It generally felt like a really boring and generic direct to video pre-Scream-90’s horror movie.

 

[TravisR]

I hope Scream Factory will put it out on 4K (and I’d take H20 too, and call my Halloween collection good), as it seemed an odd place to stop at 5 with their new releases this month. Perhaps next year…

I'm guessing that has to do with parts 6, 7, and 8 being Miramax/Dimension movies. Hopefully, Scream Factory can work out a deal with Paramount (who apparently has the video rights to Dimension movies now). If I bought 5 on UHD, I might as well buy Resurrection too.

Honesty that all sounds potentially good, even if it seems very UN-Halloween. Going from memory, in the theatrical cut there was VERY little that even had to do with the cult aspect of it. It generally felt like a really boring and generic direct to video pre-Scream-90’s horror movie.

When you get to see the producer's cut, I don't think you'll have a drastically altered perspective on the movie. You'll probably think it's better but you won't suddenly think it's a great movie either. Speaking of seeing it, there is a lousy version of it up on YouTube if you want to recreate the bad quality that many fans first saw it under and avoid paying the insane scalper prices for the disc. I bought what must have been at least a 15th generation VHS copy of the producer's cut on eBay about 20 years ago.

 

[Tommy R]

I'm guessing that has to do with parts 6, 7, and 8 being Miramax/Dimension movies. Hopefully, Scream Factory can work out a deal with Paramount (who apparently has the video rights to Dimension movies now). If I bought 5 on UHD, I might as well buy Resurrection too.

Didn’t Scream Factory release that big box set several years ago? I think it had 1-8 as well as the Zombie films. I’m sure whatever permission/licensing they got for those films was temporary, but maybe they can work out a deal again to get some single release 4Ks out. It would be cool to get the same cover scheme for the remaining films. (Though I will be continuing to shun Resurrection )

 

[Desdinova]

Saw Halloween back in "79 at a rerelease. Had to talk my mom into buying my ticket for me (I was 14) by arguing "How can I learn to direct movies and horror films if I can't see what's currently out there!?" (which somehow worked) and she adamantly informed the girl selling tickets "I don't really approve of these kinds of movies but it's okay if he sees it without me" (try that today). There was just me in the theatre with a teenage couple way at the back and it scared the balls off of me (and the couple watching it with me).

So the original is my favorite (especially a fan edit that seamlessly combines the TV footage).

Part III follows very closely behind for me. Being a fan of Fangoria from issue 1, I was well aware of Carpenter's intent to do the series as an annual anthology so I was MORE confused by Part II coming out and being a direct sequel than I was by III being a completely different story. Further, I had just started my career as a projectionist so I got to watch it many times from the booth (we were still running reels so you had to stay close by for reel changeovers) and never got sick of it.

The rest of the films I just feel kind of "eh" about.

 

[TravisR]

Saw Halloween back in "79 at a rerelease. Had to talk my mom into buying my ticket for me (I was 14) by arguing "How can I learn to direct movies and horror films if I can't see what's currently out there!?" (which somehow worked) and she adamantly informed the girl selling tickets "I don't really approve of these kinds of movies but it's okay if he sees it without me" (try that today).

Me and my friend bought a ticket for Halloween 5 when I was 10 years. My mom was waiting in the car to buy us tickets in case they wouldn't sell them to kids and then she'd leave but clearly, the person selling tickets didn't mind scarring the town's youth.

 

[JohnMor]

I only really take the first film seriously as a film, but here’s my ranking of where they all fall on my enjoyment meter:

HALLOWEEN (1978)
HALLOWEEN: H20 (1998)
HALLOWEEN 4 (1988)
HALLOWEEN (2018)
HALLOWEEN II (1981)
HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION (2002)
HALLOWEEN III (1982)
HALLOWEEN (2007)
HALLOWEEN 5 (1989)
HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS (1995) producers cut
HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS (1995) theatrical
HALLOWEEN II (2009)

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

As much as I love Halloween II (1981), the original's idea that he's just a sick maniac killing people for no real reason is infinitely better and scarier than he's trying to murder his sister.

It most certainly is. The sister thing was probably added so they had a good reason for Michael to continue to pursue Laurie. I mean if he is randomly just killing people he did not need to go to the hospital to kill Laurie. Laurie is mostly sidelined in the film so even though I am sure they wanted Curtis back for the sequel she is not the central character. I recall when we were kids we would complain about the Halloween films and Star Wars pictures turning everything into family affairs. We generally all felt this really was a bad choice and that the stories would be more interesting if everybody was not related to each other. The Shape is far more interesting and frightening if he is just a source of random evil slaughtering those he comes across and Carpenter as a subversive filmmaker certainly wanted the story end with that evil still lurking out there to haunt our collective nightmares.

I used to think of them as the Jamie Lloyd trilogy (even if the character doesn't have a big part in H6) but the Thorn trilogy has become its unofficial name amongst fans in the last few years. None of the Thorn nonsense is in Halloween 4. It starts in Halloween 5 and then when Halloween 6 was written by a huge Halloween fan who, like any crazy fan, felt a duty to follow up on what was established in the previous entry so he had to deal with it all.

Ha, the crazy nature of the writing in 6 does reek of fan boy desire to tie things from all the films up into a pretty bow. I like to think it is a tribute to overheated Giallo writing but it really is the result of having a huge fan of the franchise attempt to create some kind of epic mythology. For me it worked due to the sheer lunacy of it all. I like weird and this is weird. The sleazy sex cult angle seems like it would come right out of the Tarantino playbook. I mean if you know the film is not going to be great at least make it bizarre. At this level I think it succeeds in the producer's cut anyway. What I read about the theatrical cut is it is a totally disjointed mess but having not seen it I can't speak to that.

I do think it pisses off fans of Michael that they reduce him to a member of this cult and he basically has just been doing the bidding of the cult leader. I think any time you attempt to explain something that was a wonderful mystery in a previous film you are likely going to end up screwing things up. Prometheus was a perfect example of this kind of nonsense and this picture tries to explain and show us things about Michael that his fans neither wanted or needed to know.

 

[TravisR]

Ha, the crazy nature of the writing in 6 does reek of fan boy desire to tie things from all the films up into a pretty bow. I like to think it is a tribute to overheated Giallo writing but it really is the result of having a huge fan of the franchise attempt to create some kind of epic mythology. For me it worked due to the sheer lunacy of it all. I like weird and this is weird. The sleazy sex cult angle seems like it would come right out of the Tarantino playbook. I mean if you know the film is not going to be great at least make it bizarre. At this level I think it succeeds in the producer's cut anyway. What I read about the theatrical cut is it is a totally disjointed mess but having not seen it I can't speak to that.

I do think it pisses off fans of Michael that they reduce him to a member of this cult and he basically has just been doing the bidding of the cult leader. I think any time you attempt to explain something that was a wonderful mystery in a previous film you are likely going to end up screwing things up. Prometheus was a perfect example of this kind of nonsense and this picture tries to explain and show us things about Michael that his fans neither wanted or needed to know.

All that "he kills because of a Druid curse" stuff is garbage but I'm somewhat forgiving of them using it in H6 because the writer was playing the hand he was dealt by the previous movie. It's lame if H5 ends on the cliffhanger of Michael being busted out of jail by some mysterious guy with a tattoo on his wrist that Michael also has and then H6 is just Michael running around Haddonfield stabbing people and no explanation to what happened with all of that. That being said, it does come off as a fan writing the movie (and the guy was a big enough fan that there's all kinds of nods to names and places from the first two movies). The movie turned out lousy but I respect that they were between a rock and a hard place after H5- if they use the Druid curse stuff, people say it sucks and if they don't use the Druid curse stuff, fans wait 6 years for an answer to what happened and they don't get an answer, they'll say it sucks.

And if I'm being honest, I kinda like the Thorn/Druid curse stuff because it's silly enough that it becomes entertaining and that makes it a more watchable movie than the simply bad or boring entries like H5, H20, or Resurrection.

As an aside, one of my favorite things in H6 is the Howard Stern rip-off radio show host. I remember reading at the time that Howard Stern was asked but declined to be in the movie. Knowing Howard, his agent (rightly) said no without even asking Stern (who also definitely would have said no) and so when they couldn't get him, they just had a guy copy his schtick of that era.

 

[Tommy R]

I just watched Halloween III last night on my new 4K disc. Had only previously watched maybe the first 20 minutes of it on tv at least 20 years ago, so this is really my first time watching it. The only thing I remembered was that Silver Shamrock jungle (how could anyone forget that? ) Overall I thought it was very good and a good example of what could have been if they had gotten the public at large on board with a theatrical anthology horror series. While it’s not anywhere near as scary as the original, it definitely has its own unique feel, a certain horrific ness that has some real bite to it.

 

[TravisR]

The only thing I remembered was that Silver Shamrock jungle (how could anyone forget that? )

It is just a beautiful piece of music on par with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata or Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

...a certain horrific ness that has some real bite to it.

It's tough to think of something worse than targeting millions of children and probably their families via something that is supposed to be fun for them. And it seems likely that Cochran is fairly successful in his plan. Even something like Avengers, Thanos didn't aim to kill kids.

 

[benbess]

Had Carpenter never gone for the "money" and did HALLOWEEN II, I think it's a great chance that every single HALLOWEEN would have been something different. It's great to wonder what the series would have been like. HALLOWEEN III gets a bad wrap because it doesn't have Myers but on its own I think it's a good film.

Plus, as much as I love the sequels, they really did ruin the ending of HALLOWEEN. It must have been great walking out of the theater in 1978 just knowing that The Shape was still out there somewhere. No explanation. He's just out there somewhere.

Yeah. I saw the movie as a 13 year old on Halloween night in 1978 with my sister and some friends. We were scared and even screamed along with the rest of the audience. I guess it worked, because in all the years since I've only seen one more of them, the one that came out a couple of years ago. In comparison the new one didn't seem very scary. But now I'm in my mid-50s, and so you can't really compare the two experiences.