Latest / Haunted Ozark Theater / Episode 48 - Halloween Franchise Part 1 of 2

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Episode 48 - Halloween Franchise Part 1 of 2 · Haunted Ozark Theater

0:19
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Haunted Ozark Theater.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: H O T.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Your Hot Horror Podcast.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: It is all Hallows Eve.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: And if you're listening to this, it might be Halloween or it might be a day or two after Halloween.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: But it's our time of the year to shine, folks.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: We're here to have a good time and celebrate all things spooky.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: And I say we, but once again, it's just me.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh Cody's extending his little mental health break.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna have to put up with me for another couple episodes by myself.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: Um I was really nervous about the last episode, but I feel like it went well, and then I got some good feedback on it.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: So I'm glad about that, and thank you all very much.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: And it gave me a little more confidence going forward with these next couple that are gonna again be by myself.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: But as I mentioned, we're gonna celebrate the Halloween franchise starting now.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's 13 films.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: I thought there was more.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: I think I thought that because with the two Rob Zombie films and with the new trilogy, I thought certainly it was getting up there, but it has 13, the exact same number of films that the Friday the 13th franchise has.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna do six today on this episode.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna do seven on our part two episode, and that'll cover the entire Halloween franchise.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: But first, we have to do this date in horror history, and wouldn't you know it?
2:10
SPEAKER_00: Today is the release date of Halloween 2.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna spend a lot of time talking about well, I'm not gonna spend any time talking about Halloween 2 right now, because I'm gonna talk about it in the main segment here coming up, because it is one of the first six films that we're gonna discuss.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: Um so let's get on to rewatches.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I re-watched pretty much all of the Halloween movies over the last month, I'd say.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: Um I knew that we were gonna be doing this a couple of episodes, so I've been doing my homework.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: And again, I'm not gonna discuss it right this second because it's all gonna come up in the main part of the show.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: However, I will add a watch, not a rewatch, to this conversation.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: It's a shutter movie that I've been anticipating for a while.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: It finally came out this past week.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: It's been getting really good reviews, and I've been really excited about it.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: It's called The Cycle with Deborah Ann Wool.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: And I've finally got a chance to sit down and spend some time with it, and it's very good.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: It's very, very good.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: She plays a um forensic anthropologist who is estranged from her father, hasn't seen him in like 20, 30 years, and then his body shows up in a crime scene, and she's forced to contend with that.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: Premise, um, it is like a police procedural at the beginning, and then it comes a full-on creature feature, and I'm gonna spoil it just a tiny bit.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: And if you can't tell by the way it's titled, the cycle, it's a werewolf movie.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's the big reveal, but they get they get to the reveal pretty quickly, so I don't feel too bad about spoiling it.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: But it's a werewolf movie, folks, and it's a good werewolf movie.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: Um the one thing I will say, without spoiling anything, is practical effects.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: Practical effects, practical effects.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: They're really, really, really good in this film.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think there's even a performer inside the werewolf.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a puppet.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: I think they full-on went puppet with this particular iteration of a werewolf, and it is fantastic.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it doesn't look, you know, hyper realistic, but it harkens back to those great creature effects from the 80s, and it just warmed my heart and made me super excited and super glad that there are still people in 2026 uh dedicating themselves to that craft, and it was just really cool to watch on screen.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Really, really good.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's a good movie, it's it's a very good movie.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: I think it lives up to the hype.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: I think you should definitely check it out.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: It's got wonderful acting, wonderful directing.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: The story is fairly average, it's not like anything that really blew me away, but uh the effects, the acting, the directing is all top shelf.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: And so uh it's totally worth watching and worth re-watching.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: I will re-watch this at some point.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: It was it was good enough to warrant a second viewing for sure.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: It's on Shudder.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Um I don't think it got a theatrical release, so just get on over to Shudder and check it out.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: So here we go with the first six of 13 Halloween movies for this part one episode.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: So let's talk first and foremost about John Carpenter, who is the father of the Halloween franchise.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: Um I did not know about Mr.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: John Carpenter is the very first film that he was ever involved in was called The Resurrection of Bronco Billy.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: Came out in 1970.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: I believe he was the editor on this movie, and it won the Academy Award for Best Short Film.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: So his first ever job on a film set.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know if he personally got the Academy Award, but the but the movie itself was given the Academy Award for Best Short Film.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: So that's a pretty impressive way to start your career.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: The next um movie that he was involved in, and the first one that he directed, is a movie called Darkstar.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: You might have heard of Darkstar because it was written by Dan O'Bannon, and Dan O'Banon took a lot of the ideas from Darkstar and put them into the next movie he wrote, which is a little film called Alien.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: So Darkstar is kind of like the godfather to Alien.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: And then uh John Carpenter in 1976 did Assault on Precinct 13.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: You may or may not be familiar with that film.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: It's not a horror film, but it was a very well-received kind of action thriller.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: And he met a lot of crew and actors on Assault on Precinct 13 that he would later use in all of his various movies, whether it was Halloween, The Fog, The Thing.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Um he definitely you know found his people during Precinct 13 and kept coming back to him.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: So then in 1978, he goes on and produces, or not produces, but writes and directs.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: I think maybe he was a producer as well.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, Halloween, what we're all here for.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: Um the story goes that Erwin Yablons, who was definitely one of the producers, he had two ideas.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: He said, I want to make a movie about babysitters getting stalked and killed, and I want it to take place on Halloween night.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: And then John Carpenter had apparently had a conversation with Bob Clark, who was the director for Black Christmas, and John said something along the lines of, if you were to do a sequel to Black Christmas, what would it be about?
9:14
SPEAKER_00: And Bob Clark said something along the lines of the killer from Black Christmas ended up in a mental hospital, and then he escapes and returns to finish what he started.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: So John Carpenter and Deborah Hill, who was his writing partner at the time, took all these ideas, put them together.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: You got uh the antagonist who escapes from a mental hospital, returns to his hometown to finish what he started, um, and that involves stalking killing babysitters on Halloween night.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: So it was like an idea from Erwin Ya Blondes, an idea from Bob Clark, an idea from John Carpenter and Deborah Hill, and they just kind of put all these things in a pot and stir it around until they got Halloween.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: And Halloween doesn't need a whole lot of conversation.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, we've talked about it many times, and even on the very last episode where we talked about the anatomy of the slasher's subgenre, you know, we spent a significant amount of time talking about Halloween being the movie that took, you know, all the rules and tropes that had come before it, all the proto-slashers that had established these certain patterns or certain tropes that would recur throughout slashers.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Halloween was the one that took all of them and put them together for the very first time and kind of created the blueprint.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: And it was the first slasher that was a commercial success, a critical success, a success with the audience, and basically launched the 80s, the slasher craze of the 80s, and still to this very day is the apex that everybody is chasing.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's trying to climb to the top and get where Halloween has already been.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: So that's part one.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: That's the little background and breakdown.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: Again, we've talked about this one a lot.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to this podcast, you've probably seen it and heard all the stories, and I don't think we need to go much deeper than that.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Which brings us to the sequel, Halloween 2, which today is the anniversary of the theatrical release.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: So John Carpenter didn't want to direct this time.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: He did want to write the script, which he did once again with Deborah Hill.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: And this was supposed to be it.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: In his mind, he was going to use two films to tell the complete story of Michael Myers.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And then he was going to close the book on this particular tale.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: So him and Deborah Hill write it, they hand the directing duties off to someone else, and after three years, Halloween 2 comes out, it's back in the theater, Michael Myers is back in the theater, people are excited, people were lining up to go see it, and people were a little bit disappointed.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Now, I will say that this is not a bad film in any way, shape, or form, but it does not live up to the first movie, and really, frankly, how could it?
13:06
SPEAKER_00: The first movie, like I said, was The Pinnacle, and every movie has been chasing that high still to this day, almost 50 years later.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about a few of the little things that stood out to me when I re-watched it recently.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, what a lot of people didn't like, uh, and I didn't mind this, I didn't mind it when I saw this movie back in the 80s.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: I didn't mind it now, but I hear a lot of people complain about it.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: Most of the movie takes place in a hospital, and most of the movie has Lori lying in bed.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: She's kind of a non-participant for the first part of the movie.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot of people have a problem with that.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, it doesn't bother me that much.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, the other thing that people talked about a lot, which to me this isn't not something we're talking about, but they talk a lot about Jamie Lee Curtis's wig in this movie.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, she had cut her hair short, really short.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, she was kind of famous for that short haircut in the 80s.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: Um but she had done that and it didn't line up with her hairstyle from the original Halloween, and it was important that it did because part two literally takes place like that same night.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: So they put a wig on her for the entire film, and it's very obviously a wig.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: But come on, like we can suspend our disbelief for Michael Myers, but we can't do it for this wig.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: Like, I always thought that was a kind of a silly nitpick, but anyway, that's some of the things that people have an issue with.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think they just wanted Lori to be more involved in the action, and I get that, I get that.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, the story is the story, and it's John's story, and it's he cooked it up in his brain, and we gotta respect that.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: We gotta respect that, and what his vision was for this second part and conclusion in his mind to the Michael and Lori story.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh, a couple of other little things that I picked out.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: There's a paramedic in the film that Lori kind of develops romantic feelings for, and he develops romantic feelings for her, and his name is Jimmy Lloyd, and that is gonna be important later on, so don't forget that.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: Lori has a little bit of a fling with paramedic Jimmy Lloyd.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: And when Michael breaks into the school towards the third act, I think, I think still in the second act, but leading up to the third act, he breaks into school and um two things happen.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: He stabs a little kind of a crayon picture that has uh like a mom and dad and a brother and sister.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: He stabs the sister, and that is like the first clue towards the big reveal in this film, which is that Lori and Michael are brother and sister, and a lot of people didn't like that twist either.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: But uh once again, John Carpenter wrote this, so you know he had a vision that they were gonna be brother and sister, and a lot of people kind of roll their eyes.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: I I feel like I've even heard people say, Well, John wouldn't have liked that.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, John wrote it.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: He may not have directed part two, but he is the one who wrote that they're brother and sister.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: The other thing when Michael's in the school, he he writes on the chalkboard.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: I think in blood, he writes uh the word what Dr.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Loomis calls it Samhein.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: Um I believe it's pronounced Sawween, and it's the Celtic word for what we now call Halloween.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: Um and that comes into a play a little bit later on.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: So they kind of address the sister thing and then move on pretty quickly from it, and then they talk about this sawween angle, and then really do move along, move away from it really quickly.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: And um that getting that both of those things are gonna get picked back up in later episodes, later um installments of the Halloween franchise.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: So again, um when we get to four, five, and six, and people want to complain about uh the more supernatural things, the you know, kind of more druidic things, they want to complain about the brother and sister thing.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: The seeds for those storylines were planted in this movie, and they come from John Carpenter.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: So let's just establish that and accept it and move on.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: Um the climax of this film, which happens in the hospital, is one of my favorite things that happens in the entire franchise.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: Um I really enjoy the kind of final stand that Lori and Michael and Dr.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: Loomis you know have stand off against each other at the end.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: Um Lori shoots both of Michael's eyes out, and then we get this really awesome visual of the red blood pouring out of his eyes and down his white mask.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: And it's just it's a cool, cool piece of visual storytelling.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of my favorite Michael Myers look, the stark white mask with the two red lines of blood, one coming down from each eye.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: And uh, we sell this mask at Spirit, and whenever I see it, I just think like, man, that's that's so cool.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: It's just such a cool looking mask.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: I just love it.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, but then the other part of that is so now Lori shoots his eyes out and he's blind, and there's a scene that I always found hilarious, just in how long the scene goes on.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: Michael, I think he has a scalpel in his hand, and he is just kind of swinging blindly around this operating room, and you got like Lori on one side, and you got Dr.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Lewis on the other, and you got Michael in the middle, just kind of waving his arm frantically, hoping that he's gonna slash somebody with the scalpel in his hand.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: But the scene goes on for a really, really, really long time to the point where it to me it was comical.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: I still to this day when I watch that scene, I start laughing because they spend so much time on Michael, you know, kind of just blindly flailing around the room.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that anyone else thought that was funny, but that just gets me every time, still to this day.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: So, Halloween 2, somewhat of a mixed bag.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: I think I tend to like it more than most people I talk to.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: I talk to some people who really, really dislike it.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, certainly it's not as good as one, but I do think it's a worthy sequel, and I do enjoy it every time I put it on.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: And that, in the eyes of John Carpenter, was supposed to be the end of the story.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh Michael gets essentially incinerated inside that hospital room.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: Um there's like a Loomis like busts open some kind of gas canister and you know sets the whole place on fire.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: And it seems as though Loomis uh uh perishes along with Michael in the blaze, and that's supposed to be it.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: That's supposed to be the end.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Now, the studio said we want more Halloween, and John said, Okay, but I'm done with the Michael story.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: So let's do Halloween three.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a different story with different characters.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be more of an anthology kind of thing.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: Not this particular not this movie standalone by itself an anthology, but each Halloween movie going forward is going to be in the anthology style, in that part three would have had its own standalone story and characters, part four would have had its own standalone story and characters, etc.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: etc.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: So that was the idea John produced.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: He didn't write or direct, but he he had this vision that if the franchise is going to continue, we're going to go away from the Michael character.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: And um whoever wrote it, I I didn't write that part down, I'm sorry.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: They came up with this idea of Halloween 3, Season of the Witch.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: And I love this movie.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a really good um horror movie.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: But because they call it Halloween 3 and not just simply Season of the Witch, I feel like people can't get over that.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: And I've I've said this on the podcast before.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: If they would have removed the Halloween 3 part from the name and just called this movie Season of the Witch, I think people would look back and say, man, that's a really good horror movie.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: But people look back and say, that movie sucked because it didn't have Michael Myers in it.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: How can you call it Halloween three and not have Michael Myers in it?
23:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, John was pretty clear about why that is the case, but the audience just didn't accept it.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, when they made Halloween four, they had to bring Michael Myers back to please the audience.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, and sometimes that's what it takes.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, the audience is the one that's spending the money and money talks.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: So that's that's where we ended up.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: But Season of the Witch, like I said, good movie.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: I I feel like it's very overhated.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, and if it were called anything else, it would be remembered in an entirely different light.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, some fun things about Season of the Witch, it goes very sci-fi, which was totally in vogue at that time in the 80s, so that was not surprising.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, but they do kind of bring the whole Sawween thing back, uh, kind of in a roundabout way.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: I think the the connection the connecting sinew of the franchise going forward was that each story, even though they're gonna be different with different characters and standalone storytelling, each each one was meant to happen on Halloween night, and each one was meant to thematically belong to the Halloween holiday.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: And so not only does Season of the Witch take place on Halloween night, but they talk about the Solwing origins of Halloween, um, and they even talk about some of the Celtic and Druidic influences that Halloween still carries to this day, um, to the point where you know the they they they try to make Stonehenge a part of the story, um, and they even explore the old Celtic rituals of child sacrifice, believe it or not.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then they even call the company that makes the masks Silver Shamrock, just to kind of further hammer home the point that you know we're talking about a Celtic holiday here.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: Um but the story basically goes there's a company called Silver Shamrock, they produce these three masks, and the masks are top sellers.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: I th uh one's a witch, one's a pumpkin, one's a skull, if uh if my memory serves me correct.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: And these kids are gonna you know wear those masks on Halloween, they're gonna go trick-or-treating when they get home with their bags of candy.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna flip on the TV and on every major network, which in the movie it was only three networks, and that was pretty accurate.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, back in that time period, uh, I remember on our old rabbit-ear TV, we got three channels basically NBC, ABC, and CBS.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: So um, but Silver Shamrock was gonna broadcast a signal on these three uh networks, and that signal was gonna activate the little pieces of Stonehenge that were hidden in each mask, and they were going to kind of result in a death ray that killed whoever was wearing the mask.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: And since all the masks are for kids, child-sized, um, it was going to result in this kind of mass child sacrifice, which was what was demanded, I guess, by this druid sawween cult.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, but the sci-fi element comes from the fact that there was these the the little bits of Stonehenge were like hidden inside these microchips that were hidden inside the mask that responded to the broadcast signal on the three major networks.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: In addition to Silver Shamrock has a bunch of androids in their employ, which uh I don't know.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: Back then I didn't blink an eye at it because, like I said, the sci-fi thing was what was going on at the time.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: When I look back on it now, it's it's kind of goofy, and saying it out loud seems kind of campy, but that's okay.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're talking about horror movies, and I always thought as a kid, because I saw Phantasm, and Phantasm had a lot of kind of sci-fi horror mixture going on.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: When I saw Season of the Witch, I had already seen Phantasm and they reminded me of each other, and so I I didn't really think anything of it.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: I thought Phantasm did it, and now Season of the Witch is doing it, and it's just it's just another sub-genre of horror.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: It's that's the sci-fi horror sub-genre.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: Um I want to do an episode on that at some point.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: There's some great sci-fi horror out there.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, we can talk about Cronenberg, we can talk about all kinds of alien flicks.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: Um that would be a good topic to tackle one time.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: But Season of the Witch has kind of a bleak ending.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Tom Atkins, who is the star of the show, and who I guess if I know we we always talk about Scream Queens.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: I guess if Scream King is a thing, Tom Atkins would be one of them.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: He'd be he'd be one of them for sure.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: And uh I met him over the summer, and he was a super humble and kind individual, very generous with his time, and talked about just having a blast making Season of the Witch, and talked about uh how many people come up to him and say that they love the film and how much joy he gets from hearing that at the Collins and stuff.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: So it may not have been loved at the time, but I think it has definitely been reassessed over time, and I think it's a cult classic, and I think people are warming to it over the years, and I think people are able to divorce themselves from the Halloween 3 part of it and just embrace it for the season of the witch part of it.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, the ending's pretty bleak because Tom Atkins is able to stop the transmission on two of the three networks, but one network does broadcast the transmission, which means about a third of the target people are affected, which means a lot of kids died at the end of Halloween three.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: So that's what I mean when I say it does have a rally a rather bleak ending.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean the the hero does accomplish his goal for the most part, but thinking about a third of the nation's kids getting wiped out, that's that's pretty pretty bleak, if we're being honest.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: But that's season of the witch, part three, and then the public just demands that if they make another Halloween movie, it's gotta have Michael Myers in it.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what Halloween 4 is.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: It's even called the Return of Michael Myers.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: Letting the audience know that we're giving them exactly, exactly what they asked for.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: Um the movie begins with let's check in on the three main characters.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Michael didn't die in the fire.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: He's been comatosed for these last 10 years or however long it had been.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: Um Dr.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: Loomis didn't die in the fire.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: He is still alive, he's still kicking.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, he's got some burn scars, and he walks with a cane, but he's still poking around and still kind of being the gatekeeper that is holding Michael back from the rest of the world.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: But our main star and final girl, Lori, Jamie Lee Curtis either was too busy or was not interested in returning for part four.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: So they killed her off screen.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: Which that's one of the things that is a pet peeve of mine.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna take somebody who's important, not just in the previous movie, but important in you know, the whole genre and the history of the genre and the culture and the zeitgeist, you gotta give them an honorable and proper on-screen death.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: And I I understand their hands were tied, they had to do what they had to do.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: But Lori is killed off-screen before the movie even starts.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: So we never see her, and all we get is basically a throwaway line that explains that.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: So that for me anyway, uh, the movie got off on kind of a bad foot for me personally.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: That being said, I think Halloween 4 is a is a great movie, and by the end of the movie, they had won me back over.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think this is of the first six movies.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: I'd say this is probably the second best one, maybe the third best one, but it's it's in the top three of the original six, I would say.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: So this is what was retroactively labeled as the first part of the thorn trilogy.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: We'll get into that in a few minutes here.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: Um it doesn't make any mention of the cult of thorn or the curse of thorn in this particular movie, but it does kind of lay the groundwork that comes to a head in part six, where we learn about the the thorn, the rune, the Celtic rune of thorn, the cult of thorn, the curse of thorn.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: We learn about this full stop in part six, but it really starts here.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: So, Lori, if you remember just a few minutes ago, I told you about part two.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: She had a little bit of a romance with a paramedic named Jamie Lloyd.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, Lori had a daughter named Jamie Lloyd.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: And so she dies off-screen, but Jamie has survived.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: And Jamie is now being cared for by some relatives, I believe.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: And uh I don't think they ever directly say that Jimmy Lloyd is her father, but I think just the fact that her name is Jamie Lloyd, I think, is the inference that they give us to let us know that uh the paramedic Jimmy was her dad in part two.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh and Jamie Lloyd in this movie is played by a very young and first-time appearing Daniel Harris.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: Now, Daniel Harris has had a long and storied career, and she is a certified Scream Queen in her own right.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is where it started.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: In the title card, it even says Introducing Daniel Harris.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: So this was her first big shot, and she kills it.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: She is really good in this role.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: I think she was like eight years old when she did it, so that's really impressive.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: She's cute as a button, she's really easy to root for, um, and just does a really, really good job in this role.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh a couple of things that I noticed again, visually, I love I love these big, you know, visual set pieces.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's a great scene about halfway through the movie where Michael like grabs this municipal worker at a power plant and like throws them up against the equipment, and um the worker gets electrocuted, and it's a really awesome effect and big show stopping set piece.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: And it also knocks power out to the whole town, which I thought was pretty cool.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: So the rest of the movie takes place in Haddonfield, but power's out.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, I always thought that was really creepy and atmospheric and just a cool little touch.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: Um at the very end, little Jamie is actually driving a truck and she drives it right into Michael and hits him square on, sends him flying across the road, across a field.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: He ends up uh, I always thought it was a cemetery, but um a lot of the research that I've done indicates that uh when he gets shot by Loomis and the authorities and the kind of lynch mob that's out looking for him, he gets just riddled with bullets.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: And it says he fell down a mine shaft.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: I always thought that that was a cemetery and that that was like a a grave that had been dug, but it hadn't they hadn't put a coffin in it yet.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: That was always what I thought as a kid that they shot him and he fell into this open grave.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I guess he fell down a mine shaft.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the the hit by a truck part I wanted to bring out because they are going to uh revisit that later on in the franchise.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the movies that I'll talk about not today, but on the next episode.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: I feel like something happens and it's a callback to Jamie hitting Michael with the truck.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: So next episode I'll talk about that, and then y'all can let me know if you agree or disagree that I, or you know, maybe I'm just reading too much into it.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: But I I always felt like that was a callback.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: But the really interesting part is um, you know, if Jamie is Lori's daughter, and if Lori and Michael are sisters, then her brother and sister, then Jamie is related to Michael.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: And uh at the end, after Jamie has, you know, uh defeated Michael, she goes home, she's traumatized, and she takes a pair of scissors.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: I think her I I guess it's her foster mom, is drawing her a bath, she takes a pair of scissors and she murders her foster mother.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: And she's wearing, she chose to wear a clown costume on Halloween that's very reminiscent of Michael's clown costume from the very beginning of the first Halloween.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: And Jamie's standing at the top of the stairs, you know, covered in blood, holding the scissors, dressed up like a clown.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: It's very evocative, very reminiscent of that scene in the very first movie.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: And the whole idea here is that Jamie is gonna take over now.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: The mantle of Michael Myers, you know, boogeyman has been passed from uncle to niece.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: And Jamie's gonna.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: I always thought anyway, as a kid, like Jamie's gonna be the the new bad guy.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: So then Halloween 5 comes out, and um she is definitely in a bad situation.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, she did kill somebody, and she's in you know, being held accountable for it.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: She's like nine years old now.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh she's in a mental hospital, very similar to Smith's Grove.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it may have even been Smith's Grove.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: I I didn't I I don't know.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: She might be in the same one, but I think it was not Smith Smith's Grove, because I think this one's for kids.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, she's in a mental hospital just like her uncle was, and um she's mute, uh, and she has this kind of like sixth sense that connects her to Michael.
40:13
SPEAKER_00: So Michael's still out there doing Michael stuff, and whatever he does, it triggers like a seizure in Jamie.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: So she's got this kind of psychic link to him, which comes in handy later on.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: Um but again, there's a scene that I always find very comical.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, just like in part two, you know, I talked about him kind of swinging the scalpel scalpel around blindly and how long they linger on that on that action.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: Just they linger on it so long it becomes funny.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, at the very beginning of part five, they show us how Michael got out of the mineshaft, and uh he basically kind of dug his way sideways out the mine shaft, and the hole that he dug and opened up deposited him into a river, and the river is like rushing real real hard, like a white water kind of rapid situation.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: And there's this scene of Michael just kind of floating down the river, and he's not just like bobbing along, like uh, you know, cheerfully, happily, gently.
41:31
SPEAKER_00: He's like really being thrown down this white water river, and the way he's just kind of tossed about and you know, bobbing up and down, he's in his, you know, his his jumpsuit and his mask, and I don't know.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: I just always again it just always struck me as funny, and still to this day, I just watched it, you know, a couple weeks ago, and I just cracked up.
41:56
SPEAKER_00: I just crack up when I see Michael just floating on down the river.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: I I don't know.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: Again, that's just maybe it's just me and my weird sense of humor.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: But let me know if you always thought that scene tickled you the way it tickles me.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: Um other than that, this is probably the weakest of the first six.
42:16
SPEAKER_00: Um there's not a whole lot going on other than you know, Michael's killing again, he's trying to find Jamie.
42:27
SPEAKER_00: Jamie is not at all following in his footsteps.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's really how they ended for is like she's gonna be a problem.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, she's remorseful, she regrets what she did, she's actively fighting against it.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh, she's using her kind of uh sixth sense to help people defeat him, track him down, and stop him.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, she even overcomes her her mute and starts talking again in an effort to you know aid the people who are who are looking for Michael.
43:08
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't really go anywhere as far as advancing the story.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: It's just kind of a series of murders committed by Michael, and Jamin's Jamie's on the run, and I don't know, it just doesn't have a whole lot of meat to the story, I I guess.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of boring, it's not terribly engaging or exciting.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: Um and it did not do well critically or commercially.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: I think the critics and the audience both had a problem with this one.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: Um it ends with this mysterious man in black who is kind of his boots kind of show up, you know, in low shots throughout the movie, and you you get the feeling that there's Somebody following the action, somebody watching from afar.
44:04
SPEAKER_00: And at the end, he this man in black shows up and breaks Michael out of prison.
44:09
SPEAKER_00: And that's the that's the big cliffhanger, I guess, that gets people wanting more, waiting for part six.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: And because it did so poorly, uh, I think you had to wait six years or seven years before part six finally did come out.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it they went through hell and back just to get this movie made.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: It was a big uphill battle to get part six made.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: And uh there was a guy named Daniel Farrens, he's the one who ends up being the writer for Halloween Six.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: He was a fan, he was just a Halloween fan, and he had a treatment for the story, and uh he produced or sorry, he approached one of the producers at a con.
45:03
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it was Yablon's or maybe a cad.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: He produced he approaches them at a con, I think, and says, like, hey, I wanna I got this idea for the for the a part six, and he pitched it or whatever, and I think the producers were like, Oh, that's great, kid, you know.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: Best of luck to you, you know, kind of not blow him off, but you know, I mean, they're not gonna hire some kid at a con with a you know, uh a screenplay idea.
45:39
SPEAKER_00: But after six years of really getting nowhere and breaking the story and trying to figure out, you know, the angle to get part six made, they actually do say to each other, remember that kid at that convention?
45:58
SPEAKER_00: And they've tracked him down and give him the job.
46:01
SPEAKER_00: They give him the job to write part six, and so that's who wrote part six.
46:06
SPEAKER_00: And um, as far as six being like some kind of technical achievement, it's not.
46:15
SPEAKER_00: But let's be honest, or at least from my point of view, Halloween six is super fun, it's a really fun and enjoyable, it's kind of just a romp, you know, it's just kind of a good time horror movie, and it was very 90s, and it was very, you know, Michael Myers doing his thing, and uh I don't know.
46:39
SPEAKER_00: I I just think it's it's a good one, it's a really good one, and and it kind of brought the fun back and kind of helped you know ease the pain of five, so to speak, and just get things back on track.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: So uh it starts off with Jamie.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: Um she has been kidnapped by the same man in black who broke Michael out of prison.
47:08
SPEAKER_00: And uh the man in black is the head of this cult that I told you we were going to talk about in part six, the cult of Thorn.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: Halloween six, the curse of Michael Myers, refers to the curse of Thorn.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: And basically it's a druid kind of ritualistic curse that the man in black put on Michael when he was a kid that compels him to kill anyone related to him on Halloween night.
47:39
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't know what the point of that is, what's the what's accomplished by him killing all his kin, but that's what the cult of Thorne is, the curse of Thorne, and that's why these four these three movies together, four, five, and six, are known collectively as the Thorn trilogy.
47:58
SPEAKER_00: Um Daniel Harris was not able to reprise her role as Jamie in part six, because they I guess they made it very clear that they wanted someone who was 18 so they didn't have to uh be held to the rules that are employed when you're shooting with underage actors.
48:24
SPEAKER_00: So they straight up told her like you can't you can't have the role because you're 17, you're not old enough.
48:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, um Daniel Harris goes through all this trouble and spends like her own money and a large amount of her own time to get emancipated so that as a 17-year-old she could work like an adult.
48:51
SPEAKER_00: She goes through all of this effort thinking that the role is waiting for her.
48:57
SPEAKER_00: She gets emancipated, she gets, you know, the green light to reprise her role as Jamie.
49:06
SPEAKER_00: She reaches out to the producers, the director, whoever it was that was in charge, and says, Hey, I good news, I'm I'm ready to shoot.
49:15
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Oh, we got somebody else.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, you're out.
49:19
SPEAKER_00: So they didn't wait around for her, even though she was putting in all the work, uh, they didn't wait for her to uh complete her emancipation.
49:31
SPEAKER_00: They went ahead and recast the role, which that's kind of messed up, and I know that Daniel Harris wasn't happy about it, but that's what happened.
49:43
SPEAKER_00: So while Jamie has been uh being held by the cult of Thorn, um they get her pregnant, and it's kind of like a like a genetics experiment that they're doing.
49:58
SPEAKER_00: Um and it's implied that Michael is the one who impregnated her.
50:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they don't ever expressly come out and say that, but it is implied, and that's kind of weird that he would impregnate his niece.
50:12
SPEAKER_00: But I guess you know, if we're talking about um primitive rituals of the boogeyman, I guess it's not too far out of bounds.
50:23
SPEAKER_00: Um so Jamie gets gives birth to a little boy named Steven, and then she promptly is killed.
50:31
SPEAKER_00: Um and then it comes out that there are strodes who have you know survived or outlived Lori, and they have a daughter, an adult daughter named Kara, and then Kara has a little boy named Danny.
50:53
SPEAKER_00: So basically, Kara, Danny, and Steven are now in Michael's crosshairs.
50:58
SPEAKER_00: They gotta go because of this whole curse of thorn thing.
51:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh as I'm saying this out loud, this sounds really bad, but I'm telling you, it's it's a fun romp.
51:10
SPEAKER_00: It is really makes for a good movie.
51:13
SPEAKER_00: Now, who lives across the street from these surviving strodes?
51:17
SPEAKER_00: But Tommy, the same Tommy that Lori babysat all the way back in part one, played by the one and only Paul Rudd.
51:28
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't think this was his very first role.
51:31
SPEAKER_00: I think Clueless came out before uh Halloween six.
51:36
SPEAKER_00: And I think he had done some TV or some commercials or maybe both.
51:40
SPEAKER_00: But this was one of his first film roles.
51:44
SPEAKER_00: And um can I just say that he overacts the crap out of this role?
51:53
SPEAKER_00: And I love it.
51:56
SPEAKER_00: I love it because um it's so over the top, he's overacting it like at every chance he gets.
52:04
SPEAKER_00: But for some reason it works.
52:05
SPEAKER_00: It works for the character of Tommy, it works for a Halloween movie, it works for the time that it came out, and um it's just really, really entertaining.
52:17
SPEAKER_00: And you know, Paul Rudd obviously figured things out and became a huge star and is a fantastic actor now.
52:25
SPEAKER_00: But go back and watch him in Halloween 6 and just kind of kind of giggle at um him really just delivering these lines.
52:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh anyway, Tommy is back and he is obsessed with Michael, he's obsessed with the uh events of that original night in the first movie, and he's just never really gotten himself out of the shadow of that, and it all comes to a head in this movie for him.
52:56
SPEAKER_00: So the cult of thorn, curse of thorn thing, uh resulted in like Michael having a tattoo on his wrist, and it's again, it's not totally explained, but it's kind of implied that the tattoo is the thing that like supernaturally compels him.
53:15
SPEAKER_00: Like the reason why he can't be killed, and the reason why he doesn't stop, no matter what you do to this guy, is because uh he has the he bears this tattoo, and the tattoo is emblematic of the curse of thorn.
53:31
SPEAKER_00: And if you have ever looked up, you know, horror-themed tattoos, or if you've ever had friends, or maybe you yourself are a horror fan with some tattoos, or if you go to these conventions, it's a pretty common tattoo.
53:45
SPEAKER_00: You'll see it on horror fans, the curse of thorn tattoo on the wrist.
53:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, anyway, it's it's kind of given as an explanation as to why Michael is unstoppable.
53:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, Dr.
54:00
SPEAKER_00: Loomis is in the mix.
54:01
SPEAKER_00: He is talking with a colleague and associate named Dr.
54:06
SPEAKER_00: Wynne, and Dr.
54:07
SPEAKER_00: Wynne is like chief of staff at good old Smith's Grove.
54:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, come to find out, Dr.
54:14
SPEAKER_00: Wynne is the man in black.
54:16
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
54:16
SPEAKER_00: Wynne is the leader of this cult, and uh he's the one that took Jamie and you know uh kind of orchestrated all of this stuff that's been happening, at least throughout these last three movies, but kind of implying that, you know, all the way back to the first movie, um, he's kind of the one that set Michael in motion.
54:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh they think they've got Michael under control and they don't.
54:51
SPEAKER_00: And evil can't be controlled, you know.
54:55
SPEAKER_00: I think they even say that, or that's maybe even a tagline or something.
55:00
SPEAKER_00: But uh Michael bucks the control and uh he flips and basically murders the whole cult by himself, and then he uh intervenes to protect Kara and Danny and Steven, and it's Tommy who defeats Michael.
55:24
SPEAKER_00: And I always thought that that was poetic because you know the the franchise starts off with Tommy being so scared of the boogeyman, and Laurie trying to assure him that the boogeyman's not real, the boogeyman's not gonna come and get you.
55:45
SPEAKER_00: Turns out the boogeyman is real, turns out the boogeyman is gonna try to come and get you, Tommy.
55:51
SPEAKER_00: And in the end, it's Tommy who defeats the boogeyman and gets to, you know, quote unquote put the nail in that coffin, so to speak.
56:03
SPEAKER_00: I always thought that was pretty poetic, I always thought that was good writing.
56:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh, kudos to Daniel Daniel Farrens for that master stroke.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: I always appreciated that.
56:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh say what you want about this porn trilogy.
56:20
SPEAKER_00: Say what you want about part six in particular.
56:24
SPEAKER_00: I think part six is fun.
56:26
SPEAKER_00: I think four, five, and six make for a good back-to-back-to-back watch.
56:32
SPEAKER_00: Five is definitely the lull in the middle, but four and six are strong bookends to the story, and I think I think that they're quite enjoyable.
56:43
SPEAKER_00: And as I close up this chapter on these first six films, you know, we got a solid six here, one through six.
56:53
SPEAKER_00: Um three being kind of the outlier, having nothing to do with the Michael Myers story, but still being a good horror film in its own right.
57:00
SPEAKER_00: And then five films telling the Michael Myers story.
57:05
SPEAKER_00: Um overall, pretty pretty, um, pretty great collection.
57:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, one and four and six being the stronger of the entries.
57:25
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I think I've taken up enough of y'all's time, and we've got those first six covered.
57:33
SPEAKER_00: Come back for the next episode, which will be out next week, to kind of, like I said, complete the Halloween sandwich.
57:40
SPEAKER_00: We got part one of our Halloween coverage, then we got the actual Halloween holiday, then we're gonna have part two of our Halloween coverage.
57:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's your Halloween sandwich that I'm offering you up on a plate.
57:54
SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed it.
57:55
SPEAKER_00: Come back next time.
57:56
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about uh H2O and Resurrection, and then the two Rob Zombie movies, and then the David Gordon Green trilogy, which caps everything off.
58:07
SPEAKER_00: So thanks for listening and happy Halloween, y'all.