Latest / Haunted Ozark Theater / Episode 49 - Halloween Franchise Part 2 of 2

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Episode 49 - Halloween Franchise Part 2 of 2 · Haunted Ozark Theater

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Haunted Ozark Theater.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: H O T.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Your Hot Horror Podcast.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I am back to complete our exploration of the Halloween franchise.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Last week we did the first six films.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: This week we're going to do the final seven films.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: But before that, we have to take a look at this day in horror history.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And today is the day that marks the passing of Dominique Dunn.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Dominique Dunn played the older sister in Poltergeist.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: She was tragically killed in her driveway by her boyfriend.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And she was only 22 years old and was a very promising up-and-coming actress.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And her death adds to the mystique surrounding the poltergeist films.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Some people say that they're cursed.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Heather O'Rourke also passed away under tragic and somewhat mysterious circumstances.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of films, The Exorcist being another one, where they claim the production was cursed.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that we could explore maybe in a future episode.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: But for today, we're just going to remember Dominique Dunn on the day of her passing.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Rest in peace and thank you for your work on the original poltergeist film.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now I got to talk about my rewatches.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: This past weekend was Halloween, and uh on the night before Halloween, the 30th, uh, I watched House of a Thousand Corpses because that takes place on October 30th, and then you know goes throughout the night and bleeds over into Halloween Day.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then on Halloween, I had to uh watch the next one, The Devil's Rejects.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I love both of those films and I Love Three from Hell, the final chapter of that trilogy.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: I know that a lot of people are not huge fans.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I know that Robin Zombie is a kind of love him or hate him situation.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Most people, I think, agree that Devil's Rejects is a quality film.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I really don't understand how people don't like House of a Thousand Corpses.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's fantastic, in my opinion.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: But to each his own, horror is a completely acquired taste.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's completely subjective, and that's one of the things that we love about him.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's get down to business.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get on to the next film in the Halloween franchise.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in this case, it is 1998's H2O.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just gonna say right up front, I love this movie.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think this movie is really good.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of people were left with a bad taste in their mouth uh after the quote-unquote thorn trilogy.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And H2O just kind of is a return to form, and it's really, really enjoyable, I think.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, directed by Steve Minor, who directed Friday 13th, 2 and 3, so he comes with some horror pedigree and a sensibility that's probably good for a movie who's attempting to get things back on track.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: H2O is interesting because this represents the first timeline split in the Halloween franchise, but not the last.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so what I mean by that is you know, we have the first two films.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of its own thing.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Then we have part three, which is Season of the Witch, which is a completely separate standalone thing.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So this is it may or may not exist in the Halloween universe, but it really has nothing to do with the first two films.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it it may be part of that timeline, it may not be, it might maybe its own timeline.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Then we have four, five, and six, which continue the story set forth in one and two, but then along comes H2O, who decides to ignore four, five, and six.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: So H2O is a sequel to one and two, but it ignores everything else.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why I mean we're now we have the stories diverging, and and this like a new timeline is branching out off of um part two, and it's ignoring four, five, and six.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it does keep some of the elements that were set forth in part four, such as uh, you know, Lori dies off-screen but has a child who survives, and in four, that child is Jamie Lloyd.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: But in H2O, it's not the case.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um they acknowledge the fact that Lori did quote unquote die in a car crash.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: But what she actually did, according to H2O, was take that opportunity to fake her death and go into hiding.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: So she goes to California and she becomes the headmistress of a very exclusive private school.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And she doesn't have a daughter.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: In this one, she has a son, and her son is played by Josh Hartnett, and this was his first movie role.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, much like part four said, introducing Daniel Harris, uh, H2O says introducing Josh Hartnett.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So this is where he got his start, and of course, he goes on to have a very successful career, which is still going.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um excuse me.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's just really good, you know, got that Halloween feel, and uh great Michael kills, and just good suspense, and it's pretty a pretty tight script.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just you know, 90 minutes and you're in and out, and uh the pace never really lets up.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's it's everything you would want from a Halloween movie, and I think it won a lot of people back over.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: I remember going to see this in theater, and uh the audience that I saw it with anyway loved it.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um it did good numbers for the box office, and I think everybody felt like Halloween's back, Michael Myers is back.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Lori, they brought Lori back.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So all of these ingredients that made people fans in the first place are back in the mix, and it was a huge success.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in my commentary on part four, I talked about uh the ending where they drive the car into Michael, and I said I wanted to bring that back up in a future uh discussion about another movie, and that other movie is this, H2O.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I want to correct one thing though.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I said that little Jamie Lloyd was driving the uh truck when she runs it into Michael, and as I was thinking back, uh that's not accurate.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Rachel was actually the one driving the truck, and Jamie was on the floor of the passenger seat, kind of huddled up under the dashboard to uh protect herself.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, I feel like the end of H2O calls back to that.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um after Lori seemingly kills Michael, and they're loading Michael into the coroner's van, and uh Lori knows better.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: She knows he's not dead, so she actually takes a gun off of a police officer and uh hijacks the coroner's van.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And she's gonna make sure that he's dead.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So she's driving down the road, uh, looking in the reveal mirror, waiting for him to kind of reanimate.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's zipped up in a body bag.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: She's waiting for signs of movement, signs of life.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And when he unzips the bag and pops out and kind of lunges forward for her, she slams on the brakes and he goes flying through the windshield.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then she hits him with the van.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I I always felt like it was very reminiscent of Rachel hitting Michael with her truck in part four.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I always thought it was kind of a callback.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I maybe, like I said in the last episode, maybe reading too much into it, um, trying too hard to connect those dots.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: But that's always what I thought.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: What do you all think?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Comment on our socials if you agree with me, or if you don't agree with me, let me know.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um after hitting him with the van, uh, it kind of sends him over the side of a cliff, I guess.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then the van goes rolling down the side of the cliff, and then Lori's ejected from the van.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: She ends up kind of bloodied and battered on the side of the hill.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Michael ends up uh with his body kind of up against a fallen tree, and then the van pins him, rolls into him, and pins him against that tree.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Lori gathers herself and uh lo and behold, the axe, the fire axe that she had been carrying around, and assume uh, you know, assume she brought it with her in the corners, and it's lying there right on the hillside next to her, luckily.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And she picks it up and she walks over to her brother, and they have a brief little moment, and then she cuts his head clean off, clean off, and you see it, you know, kind of roll in the grass, and it's very clear that he has been beheaded and that he is dead, absolutely dead, finally, and it was just a really satisfying and believable finale, and the franchise could have ended there, and I think maybe should have ended there, and had it ended there, I think everybody would have said that was great, that was right, that's that made sense.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um but as I've said many times before, if there's dollars to be made, they're gonna make another one, and that's exactly what they did.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So four years later, 2002, they come out with Halloween Resurrection, and we have said on this podcast many, many times that we are not here to trash any film, we are not here to talk bad about any film, but sometimes we gotta just be honest.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Resurrection is a bad film, it is not good in any way, shape, or form.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there is no redeeming qualities to this film, in my opinion.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not a good film.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Easily, easily the weakest of the 13 Halloween films.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm gonna spend very little time uh talking about this because I don't want to harp on it uh more than I have to, and I don't want to, you know, put that negative energy out there via the podcast.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's not our mission.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to talk positive about horror, to lift up horror and elevate the genre.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: But we gotta call it like we see it at the same time.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it's called Halloween Resurrection.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's not really resurrected, but he is still alive, Michael Myers, that is.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in a kind of a flashback sequence, he um basically incapacitated the coroner and swapped places with him.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: So Michael's just basically walks away from the scene dressed as the coroner.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: The coroner is put into Michael's jumpsuit and mask and then put into the body bag.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so Lori actually took that fire axe and beheaded the poor coroner, not Michael.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a very thin and very hard to buy explanation, number one.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, we take Lori and we turn her into you know a murderer of an innocent man.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then before the title card even plays, um Lori gets killed by Michael.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's that you know, Jamie Lee Curtis is in it for two minutes, maybe.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the title card rolls, and you're like, he's still alive.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: The explanation for the fact that he's still alive is lame, and he's killed Lori, and so who's left for us to really care about?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's not set up well.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not set up well at all.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um the one thing that I will point out as a I won't even call it a redeeming quality, just something that I thought was interesting and worth and noteworthy.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I wouldn't I didn't pick this up, you know, back in 02 when I saw this in the theater or on any subsequent viewings until this week when I re-watched it.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um because I had seen the movie Peeping Tom, which I talked about a couple times on the podcast, I now recognize what is very obviously a nod to Peeping Tom in Halloween Resurrection.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you don't know the whole point of Halloween Halloween Resurrection is that uh there's contestants on this like web show who are being asked to spend the night in the Michael Myers house.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so there's a lot of cameras around, whether they're webcams or cameras on tripods.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in this instance, there is a guy who has a camera on a tripod.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Michael gets a hold of the tripod and he extends the leg of the tripod, and it's very it's a very pointy leg.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: But just like in Peeping Tom, he uses the leg of the tripod to kill somebody and records the kill on the camera at the same time.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it was, in my opinion, it's you know, straight out of Peeping Tom, and and it's I'm sure it's an omo homage to that film.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I just thought that was a neat little morsel that they threw in there, and probably the one and only good thing that Resurrection has going for it.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and as if that was not the rest of it wasn't bad enough or corny enough.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the big finale is uh a fight between Michael Myers and the rap rapper Buster Rhimes, and Buster Rhimes is doing kung fu.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that if that tells you anything about where we're at in 2002, uh we have fallen to the level of Buster Rhimes trying to use kung fu on Michael Myers.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he's initially kind of successful with his kung fu.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there's never any explanation that Buster Rhimes actually, his character, I think his character's name is Freddie.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's never any explanation that uh he's actually been trained in any kind of kung fu.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: There is a scene where he's watching some kung fu movies and he's kind of like mimicking what he sees on screen.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess that that alone is enough for him to hold some ground against Michael Myers, which I find that hard to believe.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that's Resurrection, and that's all I'm gonna say about it.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's really not a good film, and it's really sad that it's the last one in this timeline.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um like I said, if they would have ended H ended it with H2O, that would have been extremely satisfying, and and I think everybody would have been okay with that.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: But they kind of tarnish H2O, and in that sense, they also tarnish one and two by this cash grab that they called resurrection.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's you're not missing anything if you skip this one.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, it doesn't do anything story-wise, it doesn't connect any dots or wrap anything up, or just watch H2O and then forget that resurrection ever even happened.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: So then we get five years of no Michael Myers, and then we get uh Rob Zombies remake.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Remakes were all the rage back then, uh the early 2000s.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the first remake that came along was Texas Chainsaw, and then I think Halloween was the next one to be remade.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then they remade Friday the 13th, and then they uh remade Nightmar and Elm Street, you know, mixed results on all of them.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but Rob Zombie's Halloween is pretty good.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Cody is a huge fan of this movie.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's one of the reasons why I'm bummed that he wasn't able to join us for these two episodes about the Halloween franchise, but uh he just loves this movie.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Can't say enough good things about this movie.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I did not go see this in the theater.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not our remake guy, but when I did finally watch it, um like I got it at Blockbuster one night, I was pleasantly surprised.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I am a huge Rob Zombie fan, and I I said that in my opening statement here when we were talking about rewatches.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: But again, I just kind of avoided it, not because of Rob Zombie's connection to it, but because it's a remake and I just not much of a remake guy.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: That being said, this is a good, solid remake, and um I enjoy it quite a bit.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've watched it multiple times over the last 15 years, I'd say, including last week.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh watched this and Rob Zombie's Halloween 2, which came out two years later, which we'll get to in a minute.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one of the things I really like about Rob Zombie's Halloween is the cast.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's got a huge, huge cast of just fantastic horror veterans.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all of the people that Rob Zombie loves to work with, all the players that you would expect Rob Zombie to bring to the table, Malcolm McDowell and Bill Mosley and Sid Haig and uh Ken Forey and just everybody that Rob's known for working with.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: He finds them all roles in this film, and they all do a great job.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Great job.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: One though that was surprising to me initially, and I think is just brilliant, is uh Brad Durriff as Sheriff Brackett.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: He is I mean, Brad Durriff is always good, period.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: He's never, I don't think he's ever been bad in any film that he's ever been in.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he Just is really good uh Sheriff Brackett in this film.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but man, the cast is just unbelievable.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Huge, huge cast.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing that I picked up this last week that I had not ever noticed before, because this kid was just a kid in this film and back in 2007, and he was totally unknown at the time.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't until I re-watched it that I realized he has become a pretty big actor in his own right, and that is uh Skylar Jizondo, who uh first caught my attention in the vacation remake slash reboot, but now is on everybody's radar as Jimmy Olsen in the new Superman film.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: He plays the Tommy Doyle in Rob Zombie's remake, a very, very young Skyler Gisondo.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so that was pretty cool to pick that up, pick up on that this time.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, a couple little standout moments for me.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: I really like that Rob Zombie explains how Michael and Lori are brother and sister.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the original, there's no indication in Halloween one that they're brother and sister, and then Halloween two just kind of retcons their relationship.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you're never really given a good explanation of how they are brother and sister.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Rob Zombie manages to answer that question.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Lori was just a baby in her little booster seat when uh Michael goes on his killing spree and doesn't just kill his old older sister, kills everybody in the house except for his mom and his baby sister.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: His mom kills herself out of grief, essentially, and the mom is played by Sherry Moon zombie.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Little baby uh goes into foster care, and that's how she gets the name Lori Strode because her real name is Angel Myers.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so they they very clearly uh reveal the nature of that brother-sister relationship and how she got her new name and how you know it all worked out.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I I appreciated that.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that was a neat little avenue to explore, and I think I thought it was well done and it all made sense, and it it gave us the answer to a question that we may have been asking ourselves ever since part two came up.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's no secret that Rob Zombie is a huge Texas Chainsaw Massacre fan.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the final shot of Halloween, where Scout Taylor Compton's Lori um shoots Michael in the face, like point blank.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as she shoots him in the face, uh she drops the gun and like immediately goes into hysterics.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it was very reminiscent of the final scene in Texas Chainsaw, um, where she's in the back of the truck and the truck's rolling down the road away from Leatherface, and she's just in absolute hysterics.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I I liked that little touch.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: He he just gave a little nod to Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Lori's reaction.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like that's what that was anyway, but it was good.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was a not a shot-for-shot remake, but it was very faithful to the original while expanding a little bit on it to flesh out some of the you know questions that we may have been left with.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought it was I thought it was well done.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: I I enjoyed it.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then uh he does one move one more, uh Halloween two, and it's definitely not nearly as good.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's not bad, but it's not not on the same level as the first one.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw some interviews with Rob Zombie, and I have to believe that his heart wasn't really in it.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um The Weinsteins were involved with both of these films, they were very involved with the first one to the point of interference.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Rob was super frustrated with the whole process of part one from A to Z.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he actually had signed a three-picture deal with them.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was going to make three Halloween films under the Weinsteins.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: And when they approached him to make part two, he said, I don't want to go through that again.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: That is not not something I'm interested in reliving.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, of course, they kept pressuring him and they had him under contract, so his hands were kind of tied.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: But he was savvy enough to say, I'll make the second one if you let me out of the third one.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they agreed.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So he got to get out of his three-picture contract by making the second one when he initially didn't want to.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I mean when I say I gotta believe his heart wasn't entirely in it.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um where part one, you know, he was he was structurally at least, I think, trying to stick pretty close to the original.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: This one is you know, full-on Rob Zombie vision.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it doesn't follow any kind of blueprint set forth by the previous films, and it's just uh, you know, Rob Zombie doing a Rob Zombie film where the characters just happen to be from the Halloween universe.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of uh kind of supernatural things going on in this movie, or maybe they're not, maybe they're psychological.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's these vision like recurring visions of Mrs.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Myers on a white horse, and she's very spectral and angelic and you know, glowing in every scene that she's in.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um at first it's just Michael that sees her, and she's kind of compelling him to you know make whatever his next move is gonna be.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: But then eventually Lori starts to see the visions too, and I get that you know there's this family connection, and I I think that's what they were trying to emphasize, but I don't know, it just seemed a little out of place.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Every time the visions happened, it kind of took me out of it.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't feel like it was the best decision for the story and for the the screen for us as as the audience.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: I I didn't think it added much to what was going on.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what happened, and that's what we got.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: But that is probably my biggest complaint about the sequel is these vision scenes.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um Malcolm McDowell returns as Loomis, and he has had a kind of a not change of heart, but he's a different character in this movie.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, in the first one, he was he was true to the original Donald Pleasant's version, where he his concern was for Michael and for Lori and for life.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he was he was concerned with saving life and you know, not allowing more killings to happen.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in this one, he is kind of a money-hungry, fame-seeking um book author.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's decided to write a book about uh his experience in the first movie, essentially, and then he's going around to talk shows and stuff, kind of peddling his book.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he just seems kind of slimy and like he's lost his way, and it's an interesting direction to go, to be sure.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's different, it's interesting, it's not a bad choice.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that I appreciated uh was I did again watching interviews of Rob Zombie, he said he was actually inspired by Vincent Bugliosi, who, if you don't know who that is, he is uh, I think he was the prosecuting attorney for the Charles Manson trials.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he wrote the definitive book on the Manson family, Helter Skelter.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you're familiar with true crime or the Manson family at all, then you know Helter Skelter, and you probably know Bugliosi.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I didn't ever think of Bugliosi as a as a fame seeker or as someone who, you know, did some kind of uh immoral thing in writing this book, or I never thought of him as someone to be looked down upon.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: But he's painted as such through the character of Loomis in this film.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that makes me wonder uh, does Rob Zombie have some kind of disdain for Vincent Bugliosi, or did he just think that this was an interesting character choice to make?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think it was an interesting character choice to make, but it does kind of make me think that there's some hard feelings in Rob's mind towards Vincent Bugliosi.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, for whatever that means.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um kind of like the end of part four, where it seems like Jamie Lloyd is gonna take on the mantle of the boogeyman.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, at the end of Halloween 2, it's very clearly hinted at or alluded to that Lori is going to take on the Boogeyman mantle and that the killings are gonna continue, but this time, you know, with Lori as the killer.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't know because we never got the third movie, and we never got anything else in this timeline.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: So again, now we've established another timeline.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have the Halloween one and two timeline, which is continued with four, five, and six.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Then we have the Halloween one and two timeline that ignores four, five, and six and is continued through H2O and Resurrection.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: We have Season of the Witch, which stands alone as its own thing, and now we have a completely different timeline, um, the Rob Zombie timeline, where we have Halloween one and Halloween two, and they're their own thing.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: That brings us to the final trilogy, the final three films of the Halloween franchise, which began in 2018, directed by David Gordon Green, and these films ignore everything except the original Halloween.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: So now we have another timeline split.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: But instead of splitting after Halloween two, it splits after Halloween one.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we ignore part two.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um part two didn't happen according to David Gordon Green's trilogy.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're uh Michael and Lori are not brother and sister.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we have this whole new look at these characters uh 40 years later, now at this point.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um just something that I noticed that I hadn't really thought of.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: With David Gordon Green's 2018 version of Halloween, we have three films in the franchise that are simply called Halloween.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: We have the original, of course, we have Rob Zombies, which is just called Halloween, and now we have David Gordon Green's, which is just called Halloween.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're doing just a search on your streaming device for Halloween, you're gonna get three different movies pop up, and you gotta make sure that you're clicking on the one that you really want to watch.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um so 40 years has gone by.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Michael has been sitting in Smith's Grove for 40 years.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, he survived the 1978 events.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um he didn't continue those killings or that spree in the hospital in 1978 like he did in part two.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: He just got locked up, and for 40 years he's been locked up, and he hasn't spoken a word in 40 years, not a word.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: During the same 40 years, Lori has turned into this kind of like doomsday prepper, and she's not prepping for um you know the days where society crumbles and we have to go off the grid.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: She's prepping for the day that he comes home, which is kind of like the tagline from the original movie, the day he came home.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um her house is a fortress, she is very well trained in firearms and combat and you know anything deadly.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: She has turned herself into a killing machine that can rival Michael because she's convinced that you know these 40 years of silence are gonna come to an end, and he's gonna come back and he's gonna come after her, and she's going to be the predator this time.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty cool, actually.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like Jamie Lee Curtis is back, and to see her play Lori in this way was really, really interesting and really, really good.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: She did a great job, and she's very believable as someone who has just kind of honed herself into a human weapon so that she's ready, she's prepared.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Loomis is dead, of course, and in his place is a doctor named Dr.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sartane.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Dr.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sartane actually orchestrates Michael's escape from Smith's Grove so that he can quote unquote study him in the wild, which is dangerous to say the least, and not a decision that, you know, I think any sane doctor should make, but apparently he was at least a little bit infected by Michael's madness.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so now Michael's loose.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, he's gonna go after Lori.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Lori has a daughter played by Judy Greer, and Judy Greer has a daughter, so Lori has a granddaughter, and they all think uh grandma's nuts.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: They think grandma is kind of lost her mind with all this prepping and you know this obsession with Michael.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but she turns out to be correct in her assumptions and in her preparations because Michael does get loose.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Michael does come back for her, and she's ready for him.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, another new character is Will Patton as uh deputy Frank Hawkins, who I don't I couldn't find any Frank Hawkins character in the original uh film, but they say that he was the arresting officer from the original movie.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it wasn't played by Will Patton back then, but um Will Patton's a great addition to this trilogy.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's in all three movies, and I I have always admired Will Patton as an actor, but he does a great job in this film or in all three of these films um as kind of a new supporting character in this in this new trilogy of Halloween films.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Really enjoyable.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um but of course it leads to a big showdown at the end between Lori and Michael.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and just like in the original, where Michael goes over the balcony, and when then when they look down to see, you know, hopefully to see his dead body, it's gone.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this time they reverse the roles, and it Michael pushes Lori over the balcony.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: And when Michael looks down to see her dead body, she's gone.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that leads to uh a final showdown in Lori's house.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, she's turned it into a fortress.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she's got her basement rigged to lock anybody down there who you know might go down there.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Judy Greer's character, um Lori's daughter Karen, she you know, kind of is playing the helpless damsel in distress, and but she's really uh faking it, and she's acting as the bait to lure lure Mike Michael down into the basement.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when he gets down there, um, or when he gets in a the position that she wants him to, she drops the axe, drops the act and shows that um she has been heeding her mother's warning, she has been learning her mother's lessons, and she has been um keeping herself frosty and and prepped for this moment.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: And she comes through.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: And together the uh grandma, daughter, and granddaughter um successfully trap Michael in the basement, and it's rigged to lock him in, but it's also rigged to uh go up in a blaze.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so her house just burns down in a huge inferno with Michael in the basement, and Lori seemingly comes out on top after 40 years.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: But like I said, this is the first movie in a trilogy.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the next one comes out three years later, 2021.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Halloween Kills.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember for the longest time when it was in pre-production and product production, they were calling it the shape, and I just thought that was cool.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wish they would have stayed with that name.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: I wish they would have, you know, we had Halloween, and then we could have had the shape, and then the third one maybe would have been called the Boogeyman or something.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: But uh they did end up changing the name from the production code, the shape, to Halloween kills.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: Ummy Doyle is back this time, not played by Paul Rudd, but played by Anthony Michael Hall.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a good casting choice.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: I like Anthony Michael Hall quite a bit, and he does a good job as Tommy.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's uh he's very angry.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: He's held this grudge for 40 years.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: And when Michael becomes a threat again, um, Tommy organizes kind of a lynch mob, kind of like the townspeople did in Halloween four.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: I always felt like that was kind of a nod back to that.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: And Lori um spends most of Halloween kills in the hospital, which I thought was an obvious nod back to Halloween 2.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: So paying homage to the original movies, even though it's ignoring the original movies.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I mentioned that Michael comes back and becomes a threat again.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and how do you ask when he was being burned alive in the uh basement of Lori's house?
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he's supernatural.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: He just uh he just found a way to not die in the fire, and he found a way to break out of you know a basement that was designed to imprison him.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we get one of the coolest scenes, maybe in all of the films, and that is Michael doing what Michael does, and he just slaughters I mean, massacres a whole company of.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Firemen.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're there to fight the blaze, and he just emerges from the fire and just cars every last one of them up.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's an amazing spectacle, an amazing set piece, a showstopper, sensational, you know, just action sequence.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, really good.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, after all, it's called Halloween Kills, so he's got a he's gotta kill.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he does kill granddaughter's boyfriend, uh Cameron.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: Allison is the granddaughter's name.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so Cameron gets killed, and then eventually Karen gets killed.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Lori's daughter and Allison's mother, Judy Greer's character.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: So when Halloween kills is all said and done, he has done some killing.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: He kills the whole Lynch mob, including Tommy.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: He kills uh all the firemen, he kills Allison's boyfriend, Cameron, he kills Karen.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's kind of like the Empire strikes back of this trilogy, like it's it ends on a pretty sour note and it's dark.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, but it you're feeling good about the trilogy.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: First one was good, second one was good, uh second one got dark, you know.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Michael got his revenge, and now we're primed for a big, big finale.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then we don't really get it.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of poops out.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm not saying that Halloween ends 2022 is a bad film, but it's nowhere near as monumental as it could have been.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: Nowhere near as monumental as the setup leading up to it.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, nowhere near as monumental as I feel like we were promised.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's not bad.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people do say it's bad.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm gonna give it a little more credit, but I am going to tell you what most people don't like about it, and I'm gonna agree that this was probably the biggest mistake they made.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the focus isn't on Michael as the villain, the focus is on a new villain, a kid named Corey.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this kid's had a rough go, and you know, you can understand his trauma and you can understand his motivations to do evil things, uh, and he kind of becomes a protege of Michael at the same time as being kind of like a replacement for Michael.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we wanted Michael, we didn't want a stand-in for Michael, we wanted Michael, and this film is very Corey-centric.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um it does have a really good kill though in this film.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he attacks Michael, uh, or no, Corey, it's Corey.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not Michael, it's Corey, he attacks a DJ, like a radio station DJ.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um he just grabs him by the back of the head and like smashes his face into the turntables uh over and over again to the point that like his teeth are coming out of his mouth, and you see the teeth like falling on the on the turntables.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's a cool, cool kill.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's in my uh opinion, it's the redeeming or the one shining bright spot of Halloween ends, is the the kill with the DJ and the the teeth on the uh on the turntable.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I just thought that was a really, really good kill.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not Michael, it's Corey doing the killing.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um Corey does get I I can't even remember, honestly, if he dies or not.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: He just gets a he's not he's out of the picture, he's not part of the narrative anymore, one way or the other.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Michael comes back to um finish what he started.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um Lori and Allison managed to basically pen him to like a dining room table kind of thing, and they slit his wrists and he bleeds out, and that's that's the death of Michael.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, like I said, all this buildup from 2018's Halloween through the sequel Halloween Kills, and then we get to Halloween ends, and it's more about Corey than it is about Michael, and then Michael dies from having his wrists slit.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now they do drive to the local dump or whatever and send his body through an industrial shredder to make sure that he's dead, and that certainly does ensure that he's not coming back because there ain't nothing left of him after that.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: But uh all although that was his ultimate end, um, it wasn't the thing that quote unquote killed him.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that you know killed him is that they cut his wrists.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I just thought that was Wimpy.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um on my notes here, I just put meh.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, that's how I feel about Halloween ends.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is it it was meh.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um especially compared to the first two in this trilogy, which were fantastic, and especially compared to the entire trilogy, which you know, 13 films of uneven quality, you know, as anything is gonna be when you have 13 entries and you have different creative teams helming those 13 different entries, it's gonna be uneven.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be stinkers, there's gonna be highs and lows.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um it just seems that Halloween for it being such a fantastic franchise for being such an important part of not just horror history, but cinema history, and um such an important and huge part of just pop culture um kind of ends with a whimper.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's done that a couple times.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's been a couple times in the in the 13 films where it's either supposed to be the end, or it does end up at least being the end of a particular timeline, and it just goes out with a whimper instead of a bang.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: That being said, uh, you know, there's no denying Michael.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's no denying he is an icon and he's an amazing antagonist, and he is an absolute powerhouse.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um and these 13 movies are important, they all have uh uh a right to exist and they all need to exist, but just some are better than others, and that's that's all I'm gonna say.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um but overall, I mean, it's Halloween.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's fantastic overall.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's you I can't imagine the landscape of horror without the 13 Halloween movies.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're that important.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even when they're not at their best, they are important.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's probably the best way I could wrap it up.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it for time, and that's it for this episode, and that's it for our two-parter on the Halloween franchise.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hope y'all enjoyed it.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is technically our 50th episode, if you count our episode zero, which is just kind of uh getting to know your hosts, me and Cody.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Cody has been absent, and he's gonna continue to be absent for a little while.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: But next week is our big uh 50th anniversary episode or 50th episode extravaganza.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, like I said, this is technically the 50th episode because we did an episode zero, but numerically, next week's episode is our 50th episode, and it's gonna be a special one, it's gonna be a video episode.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be able to listen to it here on whatever format you're listening to this podcast, but you're also gonna be able to go on YouTube and watch the video of us making this podcast episode.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I say us because I'm gonna have Sam, who is the engineer and producer of Don Amantis.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna be my co-host, my uh guest co-host for episode 50.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna talk about um like toys, board games, and cartoon shows that were in the 70s, 80s, and 90s that were straight up horror.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was an interesting time because they were they were trying to make money, and the way to make money in the 80s, especially, was to target the children, sell to the children.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, kids liked horror in the 80s, that's why uh we're little horror freaks now as almost 50-year-old guys or girls, because we were horror kids in the 80s, and there was a lot of toys and cartoons and board games and such that sold horror to us on Saturday morning and on the aisles of Toys R Us.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: And man, there was some fun, fun stuff, and we're gonna revisit and relive some of those memories on this next episode.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: So come back next week for the 50th extravaganza, me and Sam, and we're gonna be in studio.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be able to see our lovely faces, and uh it's gonna be so much fun.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really, really, really looking forward to it.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope y'all are too.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll see you then.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.