Entries Tagged 'halloween no' ↓

SHOCKtober Day 14

It's a dark, windy, rainy day around these parts and it's really got me feeling the spooky scaries of the season! And let me tell you, it's the perfect time to be all pumped about those spooky scaries because tonight is the night I'm fixin' to see Halloween Bangs Part Two. As I mentioned on SHOCKtober Day 9, I am positively broken out in a rash of anticipatory hives (gross) over it. However, I thought I was excited about participating in a good old fashioned hate watch...but in the time since that post (has it really only been five days?), it seems that I am genuinely, unironically looking forward to seeing it. 

Don't get me wrong, I haven't tricked my brain (nor has my brain tricked me) into thinking I'm going to like it or "maybe it will be good." This feeling is something else entirely, and I can't explain it. Maybe it's Jamie Lee Curtis and Kyle Richards reuniting again a couple of days ago on Part 1 of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season 12 Reunion. Maybe it's the leaves blowing around outside. Maybe it's that even though the movies are awful, the yearly release schedule has somehow reignited the excitement I would get as a child when it was time to watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown or something. I don't know!

But I do know that today would have been a better day to talk about that lady with the iron in Halloween Bangs. That's okay though, we're still sticking with a Haddonfield denizen...

THAT KID WITH THE RAZOR BLADE IN HIS MOUTH IN HALLOWEEN II (1981)

Halloween II is such a weird movie. (I love it! And if you subscribe to the Patreon for The Evolution of Horror, you can listen to me talk about it (and its predecessor)! The empty halls, Jamie Lee Curtis's wig...it all comes off as really low budget and ultimately feels much nastier than the first film. 

That nastiness is exemplified by that kid who accidentally chomped on a razor blade--we get a bloody close-up that's much gorier than anything we saw in 1978, but more over it means that Michael Myers isn't the only Haddonfield wackadoo on the loose that Halloween. Some Brenda Bates-type out there made one of the most enduring urban legends come to life and gave any number of kids a lifetime's worth of trauma. That's a special kind of fucked up-ness we don't often see in horror movies, and one that wasn't matched until...why, until Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) wherein magic Druid power made bugs come out of kids' faces. And yet it's boring old Michael "stab stab" Myers who's still the focus of this franchise? Please. He doesn't even have bangs.

Which reminds me! If you'll excuse me I have to get ready to watch the conclusion of the Lindsey Wallace saga.

SHOCKtober Day 9

I tells ya, I feel like Linus sitting in the pumpkin patch awaiting the arrival of the Great Pumpkin as I sit here in a dumpster awaiting the arrival of Halloween Ends. However, there's one major difference between me and Linus: he wanted the Great Pumpkin to show up! But these new Halloweens...man. They're like a recurrent rash for which there is no curative unguent. Nary a salve! They keep coming back and coming back and I know I shouldn't scratch because that will just make it worse but I can't help myself because they're so damn itchy.

I did not enjoy 2018's Halloween H40 at all. Not at all! And when it was over, I would have been happy to abandon the series forever--though to be honest, even if I didn't rush out for the remaining films, curiosity would have gotten the better of me at some point. But on Gaylords of Darkness I said right out loud that the only way I'd consider seeing Halloween Kills on release was if they dared to bring back Kyle Richards as Lindsey Wallace. And they did it! And Kyle Richards cut her goddamn bangs for the role! And so Halloween Kills became known as Halloween Bangs!

I was 1000% sure they were going to kill her off at some point, but instead they merely wheeled her off-screen (literally) and killed off just about everyone else. So they're bringing her back again for Halloween Bangs Part Two, aka Halloween Ends (It does? THANK GOD) and I am honor bound to see it on release. I bet I'm going to despise it. I bet for sure they're going to kill her off this time, if only because there's practically no one else left. It's a problem of my own making, obviously. Had I known the extent of my ability to will this whole scenario into being, would I have done it again? Yes. I mean, those bangs!

Sitting here (in the dumpster) typing all of that out makes me think hmm...I probably should have chosen Lindsey Wallace's bangs as today's favorite character. But I didn't! I chose...

THAT LADY WITH THE IRON IN HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021)

The scenes of the angry mob that takes to the streets of Haddonfield and the hallways of Haddonfield Memorial Hospital and incessantly chants "Evil dies tonight!" compose what is undoubtedly the most insipid method of torture ever devised by humankind. To merely say "I hated it" does not remotely do justice to the power of my loathing!

And then, in the immediate wake of the film's release, someone pointed out that lady with the iron. I am ashamed to say I didn't spot her on my one (and only) viewing of the film, but to my credit I was probably trying to pluck out mine eyes during her fleeting seconds of screen time. But I love endlessly her nonetheless, and consider her Lindsey's bangs-adjacent in terms of being the best (or is that the only good?) things about that cinematic atrocity.

The idea that she was riled up enough to join the shouting mob but couldn't take a moment to grab anything more useful than an iron with which to murder Michael Myers...the image of her getting in at least one good wallop with it before Michael, like, stabbed her a hundred times or something...she is why movies were invented! She is the reason for this spooky season! What if she, like Lindsey and Lindsey's bangs, is returning for Halloween Bangs Part Two? The very thought of it has me quaking in anticipation more than I already was! I can't wait to hate it!