. . . Sigh

Why god? Why do I keep doing this to myself? Why do I insist on watching remakes of classic flicks when it's abundantly clear that Hollywood has run out of ideas and has an undying contempt for my youth? Oh - right, I remember. Because every once in a long while - very, very occasionally - they'll actually come up with something that's not only just tolerable, but actually entertaining.

Going into Rob Zombies' remake of John Carpenter's Halloween, I was betting on that slim glimmer of hope. I thought that his previous work - The Devils Rejects - was a pretty solid if not outstanding seventies exploitation style flick. So while I was bracing myself for the worst, I had reasonable expectations from Rob to deliver at least a passable remake.

Of course he had the odds stacked against him going on. I'm a HUGE fan of the original - it goes into my October viewing cycle every year without fail, along with Night of the Living Dead and It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. While the sequels got progressively worse (although I love the heck out of Halloween II and get a kick out of Halloween III) as the years went on, the first one is a bona-fide classic of American horror, and it set down the groundwork for every genre movie since from Friday the 13th to those dreadful Saw movies.

What was the end result? Lets find out. . . .

For all two of you who don't know the plot to the original Halloween, allow me to recap: On October 31, 1963, the young Judith Meyers was brutally slaughtered by her ten-year-old brother. For the next fifteen years, Michael was locked in a mental institution under the supervision of Doctor Sam Loomis in Smith's Grove, Illinois. During his stay, Michael sat quietly in the corner of his room, fooling everyone but Doctor Loomis who "spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up" because he "realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil". On October 30th, 1978, Michael escapes - and Doctor Loomis knows exactly where he is headed: home to Haddonfield to pick up where he left off. . .

In the remake version, Rob Zombie picks up the story even earlier in Michael's life as a young kid a day or two before that fateful Halloween night. His mom is a stripper, his stepfather is an abusive, drunken bastard (played by William Forsythe) who calls him a faggot and is generally a unlikeable, dysfunctional bastard. His sister Judith is a worthless slut who blows off Michael's annual trick-or-treat outing to make the beast with two backs with her boyfriend. Michael of course is a sick bastard himself, with charming qualities like masturbating to Polaroids of various animals that he's killed and beating the school bully to death with a club.

So we're ten minuets into the film and the wheels have already fallen off the wagon. Zombie clearly doesn’t have a grasp on realize what the character of Michael Meyers is. In the original film, Meyers more than just another psycho in a mask like Jason Voorhees. He was a force of nature, more the distilled spirit of the essence of murder itself than just an axe wielding maniac. The pillowcases and hockey masks worn by other masked killers were intended to hide their identities; Michael’s Halloween mask, on the other hand, reveals his true self by giving him a new face as empty and expressionless as his own soul. He was, in essence, the boogeyman. When you explain why Michael is damaged goods, giving him troubled childhood and a completely dysfunctional family, you take away his power. You demote him from the larger than life force of nature and turn him into just another psycho in a mask. There's nothing special to him anymore.

After the murder of Judith and everyone else in the Meyer's household, the movie finds its feet again for the next half hour or so, delivering probably the best part of the flick: Michael’s stay in the Smith’s Grove sanitarium. Here we meet Doctor Samuel Loomis (played by Malcolm McDowell), the child psychiatrist who has been assigned to the Meyer's case. Loomis does his best to reach Michael, but as Michael spends more and more time making crude paper Mache` masks, and soon what little humanity is left in him is washed away forever.

The sanitarium scenes are interesting, but again they miss the point of the movie. We should be on Doctor Loomis' side, the "I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil" side. Zombie turns Michael from a being with "no reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong." To someone with mood swings, who chats away the day and makes masks of all manner of colors. It should be Loomis' story, showing where Loomis' obsession with Myers comes from. In the original (and its sequels) Loomis' fixation on his patient was borderline crazy itself. Here, you don't get that feeling of obsession.

Anyway, after Michael puts a fork into the neck of an evil shrew of a nurse who clearly needs to brush up on that whole "Do no harm" oath, Doctor Loomis washes his hands of the whole thing and we jump 15 years later. Michael is now a 6'10" and 300 lbs hulk of a man (another symptom that Zombie has no clue about the character - this kind of bulk makes him more like Jason or Leatherface than The Shape) and escapes after some good-ol-boy redneck janitors have a wee bit of the ol' in-out, in-out with a lovely young devotchka of a patient in Michael's cell.

From here, we pick up the thread of the original Halloween, remaking the original note for note: Laurie drops off the key to the old Myers place at the request of her dad, Loomis discovers a missing tombstone, Laurie catches Michael watching her out of the corner of her eye, Loomis warns a disbelieving Sheriff Brackett of the danger his town, Laurie baby-sits Tommy and eventually Lindsay so that Annie can screw around with Paul, blah, blah, blah. The problem here is that after using up half of the movie's running time setting up Michael and his psychosis, it feels like we're getting the truncated Reader's Digest version of a much better flick.

Oh, there is ONE change from the original. While I won't deny that the contemporaries of Halloween were anything but wet, messy affairs, the original Halloween was surprisingly bloodless. Don't get me wrong - it was a violent movie, with throat cutting and stabbing and the like, but for the most part Carpenter adhered to the Hitchcock "What you imagine is far more horrific than what you see" school of thought. Nope - no subtlety here! Rob Zombie is the Gallagher of slasher movie directors, serving up fountains of blood and gaping wounds all over the place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but lets assume, I hear you say, that the original Halloween doesn’t exist. How does stand up on it's own? "Meh" at best. It's not a very subtle flick - two teenagers listening to Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" while drinking beer? Death is but seconds away. What should be playing in the background while Michael looks at a picture of his mom at the titty bar, crosscut with scenes of her dancing at said club? "Love Hurts" by Nazareth. Yeah, thanks Rob - I wouldn’t have gotten it otherwise.

Or how about the complete lack of characterization? Aside from Michael and Loomis, none of the other characters/victims are fleshed out. Now, I understand that characterization in a slasher flick never consists more than "The Jock", "The Snooty Bitch", "The Nerd", "The Comedian", "The Uptight Girl With Glasses Who Never Gets Laid" and so on - but we don't even get that here! Zombie is betting that we've already seen Halloween and know who these people are and care about them. Seriously - if you've never seen the original, you'll have no idea why half way through the movie you're suddenly following this random group of people.

Which I guess gets back to my original thought. Zombie is a fair director (there were some moments that were quite effective), but he seems unable to break out of that Quentin Tarantino mold. He goes through the motions, casts all bit parts with genre favorites (Danny Trejo? Check. Clint Howard? Check. Sid Haig? Check. Ken Foree? Check. I guess Tom Savini was busy the week of the shoot or something) and comes up with something too derisive to be unique, too familiar to be interesting or good. What Zombie should have been doing was stealing a page from Zack Snyder's playbook and his Dawn of the Dead remake. By taking only the basic premise ("A handful of humans trapped in a mall by Zombies") and running with it, they took what came before and made their own stamp on it - and the end result was actually pretty good.

Here, not so much. . . .

THE DVD -
While I can't say much for the film, the DVD looks fine. The blacks (and there are a LOT of them) look strong and the colors are good. Being only a couple of years old, the film is clear of scratches and blemishes and other icky artifacts.

I should also point out that the DVD sports the unrated, uncut version. I never saw the original MPAA rated version in the theater, so I can't personally compare the two. According to the IMDB and Wikipedia, tho, it seems that about half an hour of new stuff was replaced or added. Yikes, if this is the version with half an hour of more character development, I'd hate to see what the theatrical release was like!

THE EXTRAS -
There's a couple of different releases for this flick, a two disc version (the one I wound up with) and a three disc version with way more stuff - like a four hour documentary. While I've not seen the documentary, any extra that runs twice as long at the feature it's covering has to be overwhelmingly comprehensive. If you MUST get this flick, get that version instead.

As for the two disc set, we get a commentary from Rob - which while I may not agree with any of his directorial choices, I do have to admit he gives good commentary. He's thoughtful and fills the whole track with details and ideas for the franchise. I think he's wrong, but at least he's well thought out in his wrong-ness. Following that up, there's a couple of deleted scenes that seem to exist only to pad out the running time, an alternate ending that is no better than what we got here and a couple of Electronic Press Kit supplements where everyone pats themselves on the back saying what a fantastic job they did.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
What's frustrating is that there's a kernel of a good idea here. If Zombie had a spine and decided to take his version of the movie in an all new direction and make his own Halloween, it might have been actually pretty good. But the mid act shift of tone and story leaves the end result schizophrenic at best (insulting at worst). Fans of the original series are sure to hate the changes and people new to the proceedings are sure to be disappointed with the second half.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age