"Halloween"(2007)d/Rob Zombie

"...it's pointless and why are they doing it?"-Rob Zombie,on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake
Anyone who's talked to me for more than five minutes about movies knows how furious I was when Rob Zombie signed on to remake John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic,Halloween.Once I reattached my mandible to my face,I set out to be as vocally opposed to such a project as anyone possibly could be.I added Rob Zombie as a friend on MySpace so I could shit on him directly and have him see my hatred firsthand(he deleted me after a few choice wall comments helped him realize I wasn't one of his sphincter-licking moronic fans).I went to Blockbuster the week his movie was released on dvd and ridiculed anyone I saw walking up to the checkout with the box in their hands.Above all,I vowed NEVER to see it,and more importantly,NEVER to pay money to see it and feed into the rehashed cycle of Hollywood unoriginality.Well,that was three years ago now,and though I still hate remakes,I figured enough water was under the bridge that I could actually objectively watch this thing,and if it was better than I thought it would be,I'd apologize openly to Zombie for being a dick about it,and if it sucked like I thought it would,well,it'd make for one helluva funny read here at the Wop.So I queued it up online,in keeping with my vow to never pay money to see it,threw on my headphones,and viddied well,little droogs.The verdict???
It seems I owe Mr. Zombie one hell of an apology,folks.He's not only a gifted writer with a great directorial eye,but he's actually improved....Of course I'm kidding,people,it fucking sucks sore-ridden AIDS ballbag at a Haitian hospital all day long.Giving a blowjob hack like Zombie a project like remaking Halloween to tackle is like throwing a blind double hand-amputee a hammer and chisel and putting him in front of a seven foot high pile of shit and demanding that he create a Michelangelo-level sculpture of Megan Fox out of it.After enduring the entire clusterfuck I wouldn't trust that douchebag to direct traffic.Of course I realize there's a small minority of diehard Zombie fans who'll idiotically defend anything the guy does,including this huge mistake,and to those people,I say:Walk blindfolded into rush hour traffic on the West Side Highway in Manhattan.You,along with Insane Clown Posse faggalos,and anyone who thinks Bono of U2 is some sort of humanitarian,are everything that's totally wrong with the world today.You won't be missed,and in fact,you'll be saving me several trips when I finally completely lose my mind and go on a sweeping kill crazy rampage.Everyone responsible for this mess should be wholly ashamed of themselves,and switch careers to cripple-robbers,as it's undoubtedly more dignified work.I feel most sorry for any actors and cult genre stars who appear here,and the list is long and pathetic:Bill Forsythe,Danny Trejo,Bill Moseley,Sybill Danning,Udo Kier,Brad Dourif,Richard Lynch,Clint Howard,Dee Wallace,Ken Foree,Mickey Dolenz,Danielle Harris,and Malcolm Mc-fucking-Dowell,ferchrissakes.Did you cast the entire movie at a horror convention,shitlocks?I can only hope you people were collectively drugged and forced to deliver the drivel that passes for dialogue here against your wills,otherwise...

Sherri Moon Zombie shows her acting flexibility here as a foul-mouthed,weatherbeaten white trash stripper very much unlike the other strippers she's portrayed in the past.
I've heard retards defend this,saying Rob Zombie adds backstory to the classic,putting his own personal spin on it.What they meant to say was,in Rob's little celluloid world,everyone's either a foul mouthed long haired piece of shit or a foul mouthed piece of white trash,with no in-betweens.Hell,the whole cast is playing essentially the same charac-turd here.After his prequel of sorts,where he graciously writes his own wife into the story as Michael's stripper mother(there's a stretch),turns his sister Judith into an obscenity spewing teenaged cockacidal whore,and worst of all,Michael himself into a long haired,chunky,animal killing ten year old pussy with a fetish for masks,Zombie piles on several unnecessary and uninspired deaths that would leave most gorehounds counting sheep instead of bodies.Dr. Loomis(McDowell)is Michael's school-appointed psychologist,and even he's a fucking scumbag,writing Michael off during his sanitarium stay in favour of a book tour hawking his years with Myers under the title "The Devil's Eyes".Give me a fucking break,would you?If they're not trying to get rich off of Michael,they're long haired dirtbag orderlies taking female inmates into Michael's cell to rape in front of his mask-covered eyes,only by now,he's mutated into a seven foot tall pro wrasslin-looking,long haired shitbag,that Zombie wants the audience to somehow pity for all the wrong done to him.He might have pulled it off too,if every single character,Laurie(Scout Taylor-Compton)included,didn't talk like two ten year old boys in a schoolyard trying to constantly offend each other.

Malcolm McDowell watches as his cinematic integrity,raped and freezing,runs screaming away,never to return.
"Just make it your own. Hell. That's the most important thing. Make it yours."-John Carpenter to Rob Zombie,on his Halloween remake
...which roughly translates to:"I know you won't do my movie any justice,but do it anyway,because the stink of yours will only make people appreciate mine that much more."It's almost like Zombie doesn't get what made the original such a great piece of cinema,and even when his awful prologue is finally over,and he sets out to film the Carpenter section of the film,his glaring incompetence smells up the screen.The beautifully framed shots that drip with suspense and tension have been replaced with flat spastic,jerky camerawork,completely bereaft of anxiety or fear.He hamfistedly adds kills to the body count(Annie's boyfriend Paul,and both of Laurie's parents),with precious little flair or style,and then negates the entire gripping Laurie v Shape climax of Carpenter's masterwork in favor of yet more bromidic examples of Michael's humanity(In case you haven't figured it out yet,turning a blank,expressionless,inexplicably indestructible vessel of evil into an abused white trash mutant with a sliver of humanity remaining inside is NOT scary.It sucks.),erasing the entire balcony scene and replacing it with an empty inground pool and hostage negotiation with Loomis and a slew of trigger-happy cops.The sum of these pitiful parts is equivalent to the soulless McDonalds assembly line unhappy meal of slasher flicks.Lots of people may have paid money to eat it,but it's bland,bad for you,and a complete waste of time and money.

Remember the scene in the original where Michael butchers the Strodes?You don't?That's because IT NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED!
I spent an hour or so trying to salvage something positive out of the whole experience,apart from the fact that I remained true to my word,and added none of my own money to the box office of this pile o'shit,and all I could come up with was this:Danielle Harris,who laboured away in the fourth and fifth craptacular Halloween sequels as little Jamie Lloyd,and signed on here to anonymize Nancy Loomis' Annie Brackett character,really grew up into a hot little number,and is the only eye candy I happened to notice throughout this mess.Hearing her spout filth like "Do you wanna fuck me?I wanna hear you say you wanna fuck me." while writhing topless on a couch was probably the only time I perked out of my Michael-esque catatonia during the entire hundred and twenty-one minute ordeal.I'll most likely endure the sequel to the remake sometime soon,after seeing how many hardcore Zombie-ites thumbs downed it,it's sure to make for another piece of review-based comedy.As for this toilet log,it merits ZERO wops,just as I predicted it would.Keep up the bad work,Rob!

Outside Wrasslemania XXXV,Kane searches a squad car for Hulkamaniacs.

"Halloween"(1978)d/John Carpenter

Truth be told,for the longest time,this was my favorite horror movie.After seeing it opening night at the Gateway Twin Cinema back in 1978 with my father,I have seen it almost four hundred times to date.Arguably creating the motivation for the modern slasher movie wave that followed,Carpenter draws his inspiration here from Hitchcock and Bob Clark,among others,and crafts a beautifully composed,brilliantly simple film,packed with tension and jump scares,and whose terror stems not from body counts or elaborate gore effects,but from implied violence/visuals,first person killer's eye view camera work reminiscent of "Black Christmas"(1974),and a gripping,unforgettable score penned by Carpenter himself.Word of mouth quickly earned tonight's entry a heavy reputation,and before long,the little independent film made for three hundred and twenty thousand dollars went on to gross nearly fifty million at the box office.Regardless of where it happens to fall on your list,surely it deserves rank among the greatest horror movies of all time.Jamie Lee Curtis,a nineteen year old relative unknown at the time,would secure her place as the top scream queen of the next decade with her talent and tonsils both receiving ample screen time here.The cast,made up mainly of Carpenter regulars and unknowns was led by the late,great character actor Donald Pleasance(who shares a birthday with your humble N,by the way),who signed on for twenty thousand dollars,in place of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee,who both declined the role,with Lee later admitting that doing so was his biggest career mistake(!).What follows is the legend of the indestructible evil from behind the two dollar William Shatner mask,and the legacy that grew out of it...

Evil personified or trick or treat candy sugar-induced violence,you decide.
The sleepy little suburb of Haddonfield,Illinois is forever marred by the brutal stabbing of Judith Myers on Halloween night,1963,by her six year old brother,Michael(Will Sandin),who spends the next fifteen years in Smith's Grove Warren County Sanitarium under the watchful eye of Dr. Sam Loomis(Pleasance),who recognizes the catatonic boy for what he really is,the living embodiment of pure evil.Just before the fifteenth anniversary of the murder,Loomis is called upon to transfer his patient,so that he can be tried as an adult,but in the midst of a violent thunderstorm,Michael escapes into the dark night,stealing the very vehicle intended for his transfer.The doctor knows exactly where the silent killer is headed,and follows the bloodtrail(a mechanic with his head twisted around)and morbid clues(Judith's tombstone has been stolen) to Myers' hometown,enlisting the local sheriff, Leigh Brackett(Charles Cyphers) who's investigating a hardware store break in where knives,rope,and a mask have been stolen,to assist in the manhunt,though plainly,this isn't a man they're after...
Laurie Strode(Curtis),a bit of a wallflower compared to her sex-starved girlfriends Annie(Nancy Loomis)and Lynda(PJ Soles),promises her father she'll drop of the keys to the Myers house on her walk to school,immediately overcome by the feeling she's being watched by...somebody.While daydreaming during class,she notices a station wagon parked outside the school with a state seal on the door.When she looks towards it again,it has gone.After school,as the girls walk home planning their Halloween festivities around Laurie and Annie's babysitting gigs at the Doyle and Wallace residences that night,they're interrupted by the same station wagon playing tricks with them before screeching off.Later on the walk,Laurie notices someone up ahead hiding behind the bushes,but by the time the girls investigate,the figure is gone.

"Before we pull up to the main gate,Marion,wanna do some thorazine and hit the back seat?"
At the Myers house,the doctor and sheriff find the mangled remains of a partially-eaten dog,but little else,as Michael has been watching Laurie as she babysits Tommy Doyle,and later Lindsey Wallace,who gets pawned off on her while Annie drives to pick up Paul,her boyfriend who's been grounded from car priviledges for egging and soaping.Her red Monte Carlo will never leave the Wallace garage though,as she's strangled by Michael from the back seat,before he cuts her throat.When Lynda and Bob show up,they find an empty house,and after finding out Annie's alleged whereabouts from Laurie,they go upstairs and fuck in the Wallace's bedroom.When Bob goes downstairs for beers,Michael bounds out of a pantry door,pinning the boy to a wall with a one-handed chokehold,then lifting him off the ground,and pinning him to the wall with a knife.When the bedroom door opens,Lynda is surprised to see a silent figure covered with a bedsheet and Bob's glasses,but when she calls Laurie to check in,the shape strangles her to death with the phone cord.Laurie,concerned by the gasping and abrupt end to her phone call,puts both children to bed and decides to walk across the street and find out what's going on for herself.To her horror,she discovers the scare-traps Michael has set up for her in the upstairs bedroom involving the bodies of her friends and his sister's headstone.She narrowly escapes back to the Doyles,and after believing she's killed her masked attacker,sends the kids screaming out into the street for help,drawing the attention of Dr. Loomis who's been wandering around looking for signs of his patient's presence.As he rushes up the Doyle steps,he finds Laurie struggling with Michael,pulling his mask off in the melee,which he sheepishly pulls back over his face,as the doctor empties his revolver into him,the force of the bullets sending the killer off an upstairs balcony onto the lawn below.Laurie tearfully asks the doctor what the boogeyman is,to which Loomis replies,"As a matter of fact,it was."He looks out the balcony window to where Michael's body lay,but it's gone,as he knew it would be.Reading the doctor's expression,Laurie sobs uncontrollably.

I probably would have used something different to choke Lynda(PJ Soles).Ahem.
As another film with loads written about it already,I'll entertain you with bits of Wop-based Halloween trivia instead,as nauseatingly fan boy as that is,this time around.Halloween was the first vhs tape(of thousands)I ever bought,for fifty bucks,back in 1981.Being brought up in an Italian catholic household,I spurred on the wrath of my uncle,who was my sponsor,when I took Michael(after Myers,of course)as my confirmation name,which I use as my middle initial to this day.When I turned sixteen,my parents got me a jack o'lantern shaped cake for my birthday,as I had reached my two hundredth viewing of the film shortly beforehand.Fittingly,for one Halloween(the holiday,not the movie,in this case) party,I did the whole to-the-letter Michael Myers right down to the coveralls and Don Post mask from the original mold,and stayed in character the entire evening(if you wanted to talk to me,you had to wait for me to take the mask off haha),even when doing shots,beers,and bong hits(I also went down to dinner one night with the damned thing on,while under the influence of a certain three lettered hallucinogen,and ate with my parents who barely noticed).At one point I could recite the whole movie,down to the credits,as they rolled,and probably still could if I gave enough of a shit(Fear not,I don't.).I still have loads of memorabilia,scripts,foreign release posters,novelizations,etc.,and though I've gotten over my adolescent obsessions(mostly) with said film,it retains a spot in my Top list forevermore,regardless.It spawned a slew of unwarranted and mostly forgettable sequels,and...a dogshit remake by a blowjob hack,which I'll finally be shredding here sometime next week.The original,of course,merits the highest possible rating,and remains necessary viewing for all.

I'm your boogeyman,I'm your boogeyman,turn arouuuuuuund...

"Halloween II"(1981)d/Rick Rosenthal

"Heyyyyy,man,this ain't H2!"Fret not,Rob Zombie fans,when I choose to tear apart your favorite dreadlocked egg-purse's sorry excuses for remakes here at the Wop,you'll know.Tonight we examine the real sequel to Carpenter's 1978 horror masterpiece,which might not be all that great of a movie,but it's still light fucking years ahead of anything Zombie has the balls to slap the Halloween title upon.So we're still talking the original faceless Boogeyman and living embodiment of evil here,and not the abused,mutant piece of white trash with the mask fetish,to set the record straight.
Despite a few spirited moments of hilarity(mostly unintentional,and Loomis-based) peppered throughout the production and Alan Howarth's excellent electronic collaboration on Carpenter's superlative original score,ultimately,this sequel falls flat.Despite the fact that sequels rarely live up to their preceding films,there are a few glaringly obvious reasons that tonight's entry only manages to be average at best.In the original film,Nick Castle portrayed Michael as the ultimate evil with a child's perspective,on a perpetual and deadly trick or treat,hiding in the shadows,setting up horrific scares for his victims,looking on with wonderment at his trophies as the night progressed.In the sequel,Dick Warlock clocks a lot of on-screen time,methodically plodding through victims,churning out a lot of on-screen violence,where the original implied most of its kills,relying instead on good old fashioned white-knuckled suspense and jump-scares.That suspense is non-existent here.Sadly,it all seems like a contrived,punch the clock affair in the end.

Laurie Strode(Jamie Lee Curtis) wanders the halls of Haddonfield Memorial,the emptiest hospital in cinema history.
We pick up with Michael leaving the scene of the Doyle house,casually strolling through the neighborhood,helping himself to a kitchen knife at the Elrod's household(and bleeding on Harold's ham sandwich)which he uses to slash the throat of some local young gossip hound,while avoiding Dr. Loomis'(Pleasance) and Sheriff Brackett's(Charles Cyphers)bickering pursuit.The two men come upon a faceless shape walking down the sidewalk,but after he walks out into the street,he's pinned between a squad car and a delivery van,and is burned to death by the ensuing explosion.At this point,Deputy Hunt(Hunter Von Leer) arrives on the scene to inform Brackett that several teen bodies have been discovered at the Wallace house,one of which being his daughter Annie(Nancy Loomis).At this point,Brackett disappears from the story,leaving Hunt to assist the doctor in hunting down his former patient.Meanwhile,Laurie Strode(Curtis),the only survivor from Myers' bloody onslaught earlier that evening,is whisked away to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital,in shock,with a fractured ankle,and in need of stitches.The hospital staff,who seem to be the only other people in the place,are comprised of bubbleheads,sex maniacs,pot smokers,neglectful maternity ward nurses,incomepetent night watchmen,and one drunken doctor.Michael intuitively heads towards the hospital in pursuit of the one that got away.You know where this is going...

Michael helps the marshall unlodge a pesky candycorn stuck in his throat.
When the coroner examines the charred corpse of Loomis' suspect,the dental records show that the body most likely belongs to teenaged Ben Tramer(so much for Laurie going to the dance,afterall,eh)and not the Boogeyman.The good doctor and deputy investigate a break in at the school,where "Samhain" is written in blood on the chalkboard,and a crayon drawing of a family is skewered to a desk,right through the sister.Apart from obviously being a big proponent of Glenn Danzig's side projects,what's this evil son of a bitch trying to say anyway?Back at the hospital,Myers eighty-sixes nearly everyone,with hammer claws to the skull,hypodermic needles to the eyes and temples,scalpel impalings,blood drainings,strangulation with stethoscopes,boiling bobblers in overheated therapy pools,while Strode goes in and out of consciousness,amidst dreams of her adoptive parents taking her to see a young boy in an institution.Hmmmmm...Nurse Chambers(Nancy Stephens) arrives with a marshall to escort Loomis back to Smith's Grove,but when she inadvertently blurts out that Laurie is in fact Michael's other sister,the doctor forces the marshall to return to the hospital at gunpoint.In a final standoff in a room full of explosive gases,Laurie manages to shoot Michael in both eyes with Loomis' pistol(beginner's luck?),as the wounded doctor opens all the tank valves.As Laurie limps out to safety,Loomis blows the room sky high,killing himself and his murderous patient.A figure engulfed in flames stumbles out of the fire,burns for about four hours,and collapses.Laurie is whisked away to yet another hospital,cueing shots of a burning Halloween mask and the Chordettes' "Mister Sandman" for whatever reason.

Dr.Loomis(Donald Pleasance)flicks his Bic just in the nick.
Originally set to take place years later in a high rise apartment building,this sequel was a financial success,though panned almost universally by critics for its rigid slasher foundation popular in the early eighties,instead of following the successes of the original.Carpenter who declined directing here("I had made that film once and I really didn't want to do it again."Good for you,John!)in favour of producing,continued to enjoy huge success throughout the eighties with The Thing,Escape From New York,Christine,etc.Jamie Lee Curtis,a continuity no-no here with her hair still partially bleached from her portrayal of Dorothy Stratten in "Death of A Centerfold" a year earlier,went on to enjoy a fruitful career in movies and television,even revisiting her Laurie character in later retarded cash-in sequels, H20(1998) and Halloween:Resurection(2002),before mainly focusing on her family instead,in 2006.The excellent British character actor,Donald Pleasance,continued acting up until the end,in 1995,reprising his Loomis character in the fourth,fifth,and sixth movies of the series.It'd be virtually impossible to match Carpenter's original groundbreaker,but Halloween 2 stands alone as a fairly average slasher pic,with several enjoyable moments,despite its shortcomings."I'll shoot it two Wops!I'll shoot it two Wops!I'll shoot it in the heart!This film...this movie isn't human!" in my best Donald Pleasance impersonation.

We sure see a whole helluva lot of Michael Myers(Dick Warlock)in this one.