A good beginning credit sequence is really all it takes for me to like a movie. That seems like a really stupid thing to say – but when you think about it, while not all good movies have creative credits, almost all creative credits belong to good movies. It shows that the filmmakers actually cared enough to do something meaningful with their title sequence as opposed to just throwing out some stock effect… After all, the beginning credits are the opening number to a film – the handshake – and if it doesn’t make you excited about what you’re about to watch then there really isn’t a point is there?

Here are a collection that got be friggin’ pumped right from the start.

14. Inside Man (2006)

There’s nothing particularly flashy or exciting about this credit sequence – it’s just really, really solid. Clive Owen’s beginning monologue instantly hooks you into the film, as does Spike Lee’s choice in music – Chaiyya Chaiyya by A. R. Rahman. But I think what really got my attention more than anything was Matthew Libatique’s amazing cinematography throughout the sequence. You would know LIbatique’s work from such films as Pi and Requiem For A Dream – pretty much every Darren Aronofsky film – also he did Cowboys and Aliens for some reason. Anyway, if there was every a perfect example of his talent, these credits are certainly it.

13. Watchmen (2009)

Well anything to Bob Dylan’s “Times They Are A-Changin’” is going to be rather effective from the start – especially when the sequence’s timeline expands two generations. There’s something fascinating about the alternate reality portrayed in these credits – the idea of taking US history and sticking in superheroes is great, but it’s the result of that addition that really sticks. They start with the expected glory days of crime fighting and bring it all the way to the inevitable downfall that such a system would meet – something that most superhero films fail to recognize. After all, the thought of Superman is neat until you realize that his presence would limit your freedom.

12. Halloween (1978)

So simple, so effective.

You really get a clear idea of the kind of menace you’ll be facing throughout the film just from this one shot – slowly pushing in on a delightfully generic-looking jack-o-lantern with the same repetitive piano tune we’ve all grown to fear over the years. The Halloween theme has that same quality that the Jaws theme has; it’s simple and it escalates. Much like the shark from Jaws, Michael Myers is inevitable – he plows toward you at a slow but steady rate, much like his theme music does as well. It’s only a matter of time before you have to stop running.

11. The Shining (1980)

Speaking of simplicity – while the cinematography and music is quite impressive, this sequence really takes the prize for most basic titles ever. Why is it all scrolling up? What is that, sky blue? Kubrick, you are weird. I could have banged these titles out in less than a minute at my local public access station – and yet, why are they so damn awesome? I think the answer is that because of how awkward and basic they are, it almost gives off the impression that he is getting them out of the way, that the real star here are the visuals of the car driving through the mountains along with Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind’s incredibly sinister opening title music. It should be noted that Carlos is also responsible for the theme to A Clockwork Orange – which makes all sorts of sense when you compare the two styles.

It’s that time of year again, time for candy and masks and bats. I’m not sure why I singled bats outs, especially when we have them year-round here in Austin. But they fit right in during Halloween, the holiday that seems to be everyone’s favorite these days. So what better time than now to bring to you a Commentary Commentary on John Carpenter’s horror classic, Halloween?

It doesn’t hurt that Halloween is my all-time favorite film, a film I’m sure I’ve seen more than 100 times, no exaggeration. Okay, maybe a little exaggeration, but I’d be shocked to learn the number of times I’ve sat through it is far South of that. So here, presented in all its black and orange – but really just black – wonder, is the list of things I learned from the Halloween commentary.

Halloween (1978)

Commentators: John Carpenter (writer, director), Debra Hill (writer, producer), Jamie Lee Curtis (actress), and some annoying announcer guy who needed to be edited out.

• Originally Carpenter wanted Halloween to open with a dolly shot down one of the streets in Haddonfield. The shot would have come upon a mask in a gutter, but Carpenter felt the slow push-in on the glowing pumpkin would have set a better mood for the story that was about to unfold.
• According to Carpenter, Halloween was originally panned by most critics, who said the movie “wasn’t frightening”, “stupid”, “too low-budget”, and a “dumb idea”. Producer Debra Hill had set him clippings of these reviews, which made Carpenter extremely mad. A review in the Village Voice compared Halloween to Psycho, Carpenter to Alfred Hitchcock, and suddenly the positive reviews began to change. Critics re-reviewed the film, and the film’s box office began to climb.
• The opening sequence of the film inspired by the opening sequence of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, the single shot that moves around the streets of a small, Mexican border town. Carpenter also mentions the style of the film was inspired by Hitchcock. Carpenter notes the style was “driven by simplicity”, something that would completely lost on Rob Zombie 30 years later. Carpenter doesn’t say that. I say that.
• The hand that pulls the kitchen drawer open and grabs the knife as well as grab the clown mask off the floor is, in actuality, Debra Hill’s hand.
• According to Jamie Lee Curtis, the Myers’ house was actually as decrepit as it is for most of the movie. The opening sequence was the last thing shot, and the entire crew spent an entire night washing it, furnishing it, and making it appear to be in use. She also mentions, since there weren’t enough lights on set, the crew were working behind the scenes as the shot was being taken, moving lights from one room to another as the camera passed them.
• Debra Hill mentions the nudity at the beginning of the film is the only nudity in the movie. I think PJ Soles might have something(s) that negate that later on. Hill also mentions Judith Myers’ death at the beginning is the only real violence in the film. There’s a knife in a wall and a phone cord that might have responses to that. Has Hill seen this movie?
• According to Carpenter, Donald Pleasence only did Halloween because his daughter liked Assault on Precinct 13. Pleasence didn’t understand Halloween’s screenplay. Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers, he’s crystal. That wacky Donald Pleasence.
• The Dr. Loomis role was originally offered to Christopher Lee, who passed on it. Year’s later, Hill ran into Lee, who said he regretted not taking the role
• When Michael Myers, played in the early escape scene by Nick Castle, smacks the window of the car, Carpenter points out you can see him holding a wrench.
• Debra Hill is originally from Haddonfield, New Jersey. Haddonfield, Illinois, in the Halloween movies was named after her hometown. According to her, rumors about Halloween being based on a true story that happened in her hometown started.
• Shot in Pasadena, Carpenter and his crew made every effort to keep palm trees out of the shot, since the movie takes place in Illinois. They don’t always succeed. You can see palm trees in the background of some shots. I’m originally from Illinois, and I can attest there are no palm trees unless you’re in a seafood restaurant. This gives me an idea for a Halloween remake set entirely in a seafood restaurant. Surely someone will finance that.
• Jamie Lee Curtis thought she would be fired after the first day of shooting. That night Carpenter called Curtis, who thought she was about to be let go. He obviously didn’t. The fact that she was Janet Leigh’s daughter probably didn’t hurt. According to Hill, Curtis wasn’t Carpenter’s first choice. She says he wanted the daughter of the person on Lassie. Oh, yeah. Her.
• Carpenter wanted to set Laurie Strode up as a lonely character. He mentions the movie was criticized by critics who felt the movie was saying Laurie’s friends who have boyfriends deserved their ultimate fates and Laurie, a virgin, survived because of this. Carpenter notes this is absolutely true, that Laurie’s friends are killed off because they’re too busy to notice what is going on around them. Hill also mentions there was never a conscious effort to make the virgin of the group be the sole survivor. She believes it was critics trying to place some sense of morality on the film that made this such an important aspect to the film, one that several horror movies after would take on, as well.
• Originally, the screenplay had a phone conversation between Dr. Loomis and his wife. It was Donald Pleasence’s idea to cut this dialogue out of the film. He didn’t want his character to have a family or even a past. Carpenter was afraid to disagree wit him at the time, so the moment was cut.
• The Phelps Garage truck Dr. Loomis discovers also served as the craft services truck on set when not being used in the film.
• 19:56, some guy’s voice randomly comes in announcing Jamie Lee Curtis, as if she hadn’t been speaking this whole time anyway. I wonder how much that guy gets paid. It can’t be enough.
• 21:06, that same guy announces Debra Hill. Okay, we get it, dude. You’re important. Can someone announce me whenever I’m about to speak? That wouldn’t get old in a hurry.
• Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t see herself as the repressed virgin, and was surprised when she found out which of the three girls she would be playing. She notes she would have probably been better suited as the smart aleck of the group.
• 23:05, John Carpenter is announced. I wonder if that guy gets invited to parties just to announce when people arrive. Or, more appropriately, announce them 20 minutes after they’ve shown up. Okay, I’m done bitching about this announcer guy, mainly because I don’t think he’s going to pop up again.
• The score Carpenter came up with for Halloween was inspired by and reminds him of the score from Dario Argento’s Suspiria and Tubular Bells from The Exorcist. Hill notes Carpenter had the music in his head before filming began. He would play the theme for her on the piano as they were working on the screenplay.
• The idea for Halloween came about when producer Irwin Yablans came to Carpenter wanting to make a $300,000 film called The Babysitter Murders. He asked Carpenter if it could be done. Carpenter said it could if he was given creative control. It was also Yablans’ idea to have to the movie be set on Halloween and name it after the holiday, as well.
• Hill notes the teenagers in Halloween were written to reflect the teenagers of the time, the way they experiment and interact with one another, particularly during Halloween. She recognizes this is one of the main reasons why the film did so well financially.
• While filming the opening sequence, they realized the running time on Halloween would be too short. Debra Hill, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis who plays Annie, and a cameraman went out in a car and shot a sequence of dialogue to pad the running time. The scene with the girls talking about Annie’s dad was improvised and directed by Hill.
• The story Loomis tells about meeting and treating Michael Myers was something Carpenter experienced while attending Western Kentucky University. A class visited a mental institution. Carpenter saw a boy there that matches precisely how Loomis describes Myers, devil’s eyes and all. Does Bausch and Lomb make anything for devil’s eyes?
• Carpenter reminisces about the first movie he saw in the theater, It Came From Outer Space in 3-D. He remembers the opening of the film when the meteor flies at the audience and explodes. “It suddenly made me feel completely alive and terrified, but there was nothing to be terrified of. I was in a movie theater.” He realized then that was what he wanted to do, to achieve that same reaction from other audience members.
• To achieve the shot of Michael Myers strangling the dog, the trainer on set held the dog in his arms and dropped him naturally. This was shot in slow motion to make it look as if the dog had been killed.
• 45:37, the announcer guy is back, this time with a “Director, John Carpenter”. Because Carpenter was just speaking two seconds ago, and we might have forgotten who he was in this time. I’m beginning to wonder if this guy is an elaborate prank perpetrated by Anchor Bay. Well played, Anchor Bay. Well played indeed.
• The idea of creative control comes up. Hill, after being announced yet again, mentions Carpenter getting creative control on Halloween was a big deal for him, especially at a young age. She notes he gets upset on films where he doesn’t have it and has actually walked away from projects because he couldn’t get it. Carpenter notes creative control has been a struggle with every director he’s ever talked to but that it’s absolutely worth the struggle to achieve it for the sake of art.
• Hill mentions when NBC ran Halloween it edited out the shot of Nancy Loomis’ ass as she’s stuck in the window. There’s no nudity in this shot. A moment of a woman’s ass with underwear on was too much for them. And NBC is struggling today. It can’t be a coincidence, right? Hill goes on to talk about censorship and how she hates and fights it when it comes as an arbitrary decision.
• Curtis brings up how she admires people who can take themes from works of art, the idea of looking at something and finding an underlying statement that’s told through it. She doesn’t believe that Carpenter or Hill put such themes in Halloween, at least not consciously, but she admires people who can find them. She also thinks these people probably have bad breath. I concur.
• Carpenter notes the pace of Halloween, how it moves with a confident, steady progression and nothing is rushed. He notes Pauline Kael said in her review of Halloween that he has no sense of timing, but that the pace in Halloween is very deliberate to build the tension of when this killer is going to strike next. “All horror is basically a question of when is it going to happen?”
• Dennis Quaid and PJ Soles were living together at the time Halloween was filmed. They tried to get Quaid to play Bob, Lynda’s boyfriend, but scheduling didn’t work out.
• Hill talks about the teen splatter film and how it differs from the films she grew up with. When she was younger, the movies that scared her weren’t about the same things as the movies that scare younger audiences now. “Somewhere along the line either the audiences got sophisticated or the studios got scares, and they needed to have more and more and more graphic violence.”
• Michael Myers tilting his head back and forth to admire his handiwork was Nick Castle’s idea on set to indicate the character’s deranged mental state.
• Curtis mentions a quote she gave once about feeling more exploited in mainstream films than the “exploitation” films she’s appeared in. She explains that in exploitation films, she was never playing the character who was being exploited. She was playing the strong, capable leads. It wasn’t until she was in mainstream, studio films that she played characters who were being exploited, ie Trading Places. If you haven’t seen Trading Places, you’re missing out on some quality Jamie Lee Curtis exploitation.
• 1:13:34, and he’s back. 1-2 punch announcing Carpenter then Jamie Lee Curtis. This guy shows up more here than Michael Myers. I’m now wondering if he wears a mask while making these announcements.
• While filming, there was a number given to Curtis as to Laurie’s “terror level” during any given scene, indicating to the actress where her character is mentally, since Halloween was shot out of order. She also mentions Carpenter allowed her to make the character vulnerable by explaining to her it wasn’t a character weakness but a way to allow the audience in to where Laurie was mentally.
• Curtis mentions the way the moment where she stabs Myers with the knitting needle then drops the knife looks stupid, since it was shot wide. She explains if it were shot closer, you would be able to see the revulsion on her face from holding the knife. As it is, it just looks like a dumb, careless act. She can’t explain why Laurie throws the knife away the second time.
• Carpenter showed Halloween to an executive before it was finished. He showed the movie without the music. The executive didn’t find it to be scary at all. After the film was released, and she saw it, she changed her mind, an indication of how much Carpenter’s score adds to the film’s atmosphere.
• According to Carpenter, Donald Pleasence asked him how the director wanted him to react when he looked down and saw Myers’ body had disappeared. The actor said there were two ways he could react, either shocked or as if he expected Myers to be gone. Carpenter had him play it both ways and used the one he felt worked better.
• Hill and Carpenter saw very little of the money Halloween made, at the time the most successful independent film of all time. According to Carpenter, a sequel was going to happen whether they wanted it or not. Hill and Carpenter worked on it out of a business necessity, to get the money that was essentially owed to them from the first film.

Best in Commentary

“Still to this day, I can’t tell you, but I think the audiences as opposed to the critics created Halloween.” – John Carpenter.

“It’s the idea of confusing the mythology of Halloween that we all know and love and the reality of something that’s happening in this small town.” – Debra Hill

“I think what scares me scares every human on the planet. We’re all aware of the forces of darkness, of evil, of loss, death. We know it as little children. I think all of this is dealt with in Grimm’s fairy tales. I think it’s dealt with in horror movies. Horror is a universal language.” – John Carpenter.

Final Thoughts

Carpenter, Hill, and Curtis all give relatively insightful commentary for Halloween here. The commentary was lacking in on-set stories. Much of the commentary comes about from a philosophical angle, talking about censorship or creative control. Some of that commentary gets old after a while, especially after the third or even fourth time Hill brings up the morality critics have brushed the film with. However, those moments aside – and that damn, unnecessary announcer – the commentary is great.

Each of the three commentators were recorded separately, so as not to lose focus on what they’re talking about. Perhaps having them record together would have brought up some more fun anecdotes from filming. It would have also kept us from needing an announcement as to who was talking. As it is, though, it’s a very fruitful commentary track that any fan of the film or horror movies in general would find beneficial.

Editor’s Note: We’ve spent a while searching for a fitting replacement for Ashe (who we still miss), but we’re elated to welcome David Christopher Bell to our team. He’ll be writing insightful lists for us every Thursday from now until we stop blackmailing him for that thing he did in Florida in 1986. Please give him a warm welcome!

It’s funny. After Anthony Perkins first appeared as Norman Bates there was absolutely no going back from it. No matter what role he was put in after Norman, when audiences looked at him all they could see was the shower-interrupting taxidermologist that they feared so deeply. This proved to be a major hindrance in his career, causing him never to land any major role in the industry afterward. Now if only he had worn a mask.

After all, if horror films have taught us anything it’s that no matter how effective a performance is, if you have a bunch of rubber on your face, mainstream audiences aren’t going to end up learning your name or recognizing your face. So in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, the following are some of those very names and faces that are responsible for some of the greatest movie nightmares of modern horror. People who you could walk right by on the streets and never know that they are to thank for all those times your childhood-spawned neuroses forced you to double-check under your bed.

8 & 7. Dane Farwell & Roger Jackson – Ghostface

Anyone nearing thirty no doubt recalls the first Scream film with only the finest high-school nostalgia, a feeling unfortunately followed by disdain at the lofty amount of tired sequels and formulaic slasher flicks that the film made way for. Nevertheless, one iconic constant of the series has been the frantic but calculated pursuits of the Ghostface character throughout the films.

While a handful of actors have revealed themselves to be the killer in these films, there are two people who we have to thank for the Ghostface performances. The first is Dane Farwell, the stuntman who was physically behind the cloak and mask for the majority of Ghostface’s screen time.

It was Farwell’s imposing stature and frenzied movements that really defined the corporeal aspects of the villain, which he did make sure to change depending on which masked character he was currently standing in for. If you watch the first film, for example, with a keen eye you can actually speculate whether the killer is Stu or Billy in any given scene by judging the level of aggressiveness or awkwardness during the attacks. Take a look at this scene that, despite the later reveal of Billy’s cell phone, seems most likely to be Stu’s dirty work:

But of course, chances are that it’s primarily, if not exclusively, Farwell under there the whole time, mimicking his interpretation of which character is the current killer. His work was continued in the second film, and was unique, so that when he opted out of the third film fans actually noticed a change. Luckily he did return for the fourth and is said to be involved in the upcoming fifth installment as well.

It should also be noted that Ghostface’s signature move of wiping the blood off his knife with his forefinger and thumb was in fact a move created by Farwell himself.

So that’s the body, but what about the voice?

The sinister voice behind the entire series, what is explained to be a voice-changing device in the films, was in fact voice actor Roger Jackson. A man with over 150 credits to his name, including the Martian translator in Mars Attacks, as well as Mojo Jojo in The Powerpuff Girls, he worked directly with the actors on set via telephone as opposed to pre- or post-recording his lines. However, despite being physically on the set, in order to make the performances more authentic director Wes Craven made sure that none of the actors actually interacted with Roger face-to-face to preserve the mysteriousness of the conversations. The same goes for him in real life, as most interviews with him about Scream are done with a shroud of darkness to conceal his face.

What is no doubt both Jackson and Farwell’s best moment in this entire series of films is of course the unforgettable first scene of the first film. It’s this moment when we are first introduced to Jackson’s creepy charm and gradually increasing menace as well as Farwell’s threatening stance and surprise attacks that, much like Billy and Stu, we can instantly see just how deadly of a team these two really are.

6. Roberto Campanella – Red Pyramid

The somewhat underrated movie adaptation of Silent Hill was one of the most visually striking horror films in a good long time, and this is partly due to Roberto Campanella, who not only plays both Red Pyramid and the mangled bathroom janitor Colin, but also served as the film’s choreographer. Take a moment to consider that – think about the movement of those terrifying faceless nurses or the even more horrible armless walking condom dude at the beginning of the film. This was all thanks to Campanella, who worked with all the costume actors of the film.

That aside, his own costume for Red Pyramid was a task in itself. It required a five-piece prosthetic that took three hours to put on, 15-inch-soled boots to make him 7 feet tall, a 12 lb. pyramid mask that completely blinded him, and to top it all off he had to be completely bare-assed the entire time.

Try to imagine what it’s like to hit a mark and pretend that a foam sword is actually made of heavy steel while clopping around a set with your naked ass at chest height with everyone else. In the below behind-the-scenes video, Campanella compares the sensation to being a little kid, which says all sorts of things about his parents.

5. Nick Castle – Michael Myers

To be fair, at least five different people actually portrayed Michael Myers in the original Halloween film – most notably Tony Moran, who was the actual face of Myers when he is unmasked near the end of the movie. However, the person we see the most, the one that walked the walk and talked the uh-…the heavy breathing…is Nick Castle.

Castle, who was John Carpenter‘s long-time friend from the University of Southern California and an aspiring filmmaker himself, took on the role for a mere 25 bucks a day and then proceeded to completely define the multimillion-dollar franchise psychopath with his patient and precise body language. Michael Myers is indeed a man who takes his time, almost aware that he is in a horror movie and therefore has no need to rush things, his movements are slow and somewhat dull up until the final moments when he decides to pin you to a wall with a knife and then go see what your girlfriend is up to.

After owning the role, Castle made the jump from aspiring filmmaker to actual filmmaker, directing several films, including the CGI pioneer The Last Starfighter, as well as co-writing Escape From New York with his buddy John.

4. Gunnar Hansen – Leatherface

What makes Leatherface so incredibly terrifying is the childlike naiveté he has towards the gruesome acts that he commits. He kills in a dog-like manner, either out of obedience or protection. This was no mistake in the performance, as Hansen himself has described him as being “afraid of his own family.”

It’s hard to tell from all that beard, but that is the face of the man who brought the squealing out-of-control behemoth Leatherface to life. After playing football in high school and then later working as a bouncer while making it through graduate school, Hansen decided to try out for the role of Leatherface. After receiving the part, he celebrated by spending four straight weeks running around on camera wielding a chainsaw over his head for 12-hour-a-day shoots. He was then handed $800 and then pretty much stopped acting for a decade. Hard to imagine why he found acting so unfavorable, right?

At one point during the shoot, he was supposed to use a rigged knife to pretend to cut actress Marilyn Burns’s finger – after several unsuccessful takes using the rig, Hansen decided the more efficient technique of removing said rig and actually cutting the actress would prove to get better results – he was correct.

3. Bolaji Badejo – Alien

The story of the 7-foot-tall, Somalia-born, North London graphic designer who was picked up at a bar to play the star villain in Ridley Scott’s Alien before completely vanishing off the face of the earth is a weird story indeed.

In fact it’s so weird that you no doubt had to read that last sentence more than once.

One day, one of the films casting directors noticed the extremely lean 6’ 10” Bolaji at a local pub – aware that the film has yet to find anyone tall and slender enough to correctly portray the alien of the film, he was brought to director Scott, who asked the young man if he wanted to be in the film. According to Scott himself, Bolaji’s answer was “Sure.” And, just like that, he spent the next ten months of his life becoming a monster movie legend.

He trained with movement coordinators and used various rigs to get the unnatural look that they wanted for the creature, and was kept away from the other cast in order to create a feeling of unfamiliarity in the performances.

And then after the film was complete and on it’s way to becoming the hit that it now is, Bolaji just sort of…vanished. There have been various hoax pictures of him in his older years, but the producers and fans were never able to officially track him down for later interviews. Sadly the most popular rumor, which has yet to be confirmed, is that Bolaji committed suicide not long after the film was shot – but if that were the case then surely there would have been some kind of evidence of it. Perhaps, for the sake of irony, he was simply abducted by aliens.

2. Billy Bryan – Stay Puft Marshmallow Man

Anyone who is surprised to see Stay Puft on a list of costumed terrors is either a sociopath or a professional clown or most likely both. In what could be called the most loved film of its generation, Ghostbusters also featured one of the most dread-inducing monsters since Godzilla (who, by the way, is only absent from this list because he fell more into the sci-fi/monster genre than the horror genre). With his blank eyes and plastic smile, the marshmallow man killed hundreds upon hundreds as he made his delicious yet deadly-looking rampage down the streets of New York City. While the character was portrayed at times through stop-motion and model work, most of the work was done by special effects master Billy Bryan – who not only performed as Stay Puft, but created the costume as well!

Because Bryan was creating something that he himself intended to wear, the process naturally resulted in a rather comfortable and well-ventilated suit. Bryan had no troubles portraying the iconic mallow, and has since felt only pride about having the credit. After all, wouldn’t you?

Also – it should be noted that this isn’t the only iconic horror character Bill Bryan has played:

That’s right – he was also the pit monster in Army Of Darkness. Even if those were the only two things he did, he would still have the best resume ever.

1. Kevin Peter Hall – Predator

Kevin Peter Hall is without a doubt the best person who ever lived. Better than Gandhi. He was able to take a totally silent, mostly faceless, and often completely invisible character and make it the most physically intimidating presence of a film that starred Jesse Ventura, Carl Weathers, and freaking Arnold Schwarzenegger.

At 7’ 2” he towered over his co-stars, but his size wasn’t what did it – it was the way he moved, his hunter stance and walk that just made you want to run for your life. Mannerisms that, after his unfortunate death, were mimicked in every Predator film to follow the sequel.

The kicker is that he also happened to be as sweet as a newborn bunny rabbit – according to producer John Davis he was “big and tall and soft and sweet inside.” Which absolutely has to be the weirdest performance review by a boss ever, that is until you actually watch him on the set:

Who knew the Predator was so damn huggable? And for anyone who happened to notice from his face, he does make a cameo in the film as the helicopter pilot who rescues Dutch.

And finally, if after all of that you still need a reason to love Kevin Peter Hall, here it is:

Monster movies have a special place in any horror fan’s heart. Whether you’re a fan of giant mutated ants, hybrid beasts, strange aliens, or any crazy old weird thing someone dreamed up that crawled out of a swamp and raped a cheerleader, monsters are awesome. The bigger, badder, and bloodier the better.

It seemed for years that even if you weren’t looking for a monster, one would come out of the darkness and tear your face off. Nowadays, you’re hard pressed to get your shit packed in by a mythical beast even if you go defecating on Native American burial grounds.

Yes, of course some monster movies have come out in the last few years – even a few of them were big time movies. But overall, finding a true monster movie has been difficult and finding a good one has been nearly impossible. Defining a monster movie can be difficult, but let’s be clear – I don’t count vampires or zombies or Twilight werewolves. When I say monster, I don’t mean a mutated human a la I Am Legend, I mean a mutated human a la C.H.U.D. or a hybrid beast like in The Relic. Something animalistic with almost nothing relatable.

Theatrically speaking, the monster movies that come to mind over the last three or so years include Cloverfield, Piranha 3D, and Super 8. Yeah, two J.J. Abrams films, one that barely showed the monster and another that just made that same monster a lot smaller and showed him a few more times. Piranha 3D I guess counts, though that’s more of a monster sub-division since they’re just uglier, larger piranhas.

If you switch over to SyFy Channel, you get the great joy of watching shitty movies about MegaPythons, Wyverns, or MegaSharks and Sharktopusses. These are monstrous animals, and I’ll use them here because there aren’t a lot of examples of monster movies.

Expand to the DVD market and you find some good monster movies, like 2008′s Splinter or 2007′s Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, some okay ones like the Feast franchise or Outlander, and plenty of bad ones like Hyenas. Include foreign films that you later get from Netflix and you’ll find stuff like Monsters or Troll Hunter.

Sure, I’ve come up with a few titles to talk about – and most of them suck or are barely monster movies. Where are the cool ones?

I mentioned a few good ones earlier, and now I return to you with such enjoyable films as The Howling, Monster Squad, The Blob, Pitch Black, Basket Case, Tremors, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Host, Gremlins, Critters, Pumpkinhead or any number of others.

Monsters are cool. Monsters should be on the big screen. Again, if Hollywood only really cares about money, take a look at how much money can be generated when a monster movie gets good word of mouth like The Host or any of the other foreign films that gained a lot of traction. These movies don’t cost a lot to make and people want to see them. Monsters fascinate us. They can represent our greatest mistakes or just pure evil. There is no need to feel sorry for the monster – you can kill the fuck out of it for shits and giggles and just have a damn good time.

I personally love monsters – the creativity of the design, the mythology and backstory. When I find a cool looking monster toy or statue, I snap it up. If only there was some way to see these things on the big screen again.

So where are the monster movies? Where are the malicious, mean, killer monsters? The blind, ravenous pre-Cambrian worms or the swamp creature who lusts for women? Let’s move away from humans as monsters and boring ass, cliched, obvious allusions to our humanity and whatever other bullshit the zombie and vampire movies are trying to push on us.

Give me a big ass monster that is killing people because people fucking taste good. And when you make that movie, Hollywood, release it in October. Every time I go hunting for a monster movie, either I come up short or it does – and that’s pushing me past my boiling point.

Stop drinking that toxic waste and read more Boiling Point

When the calendar page turns to October, we Rejects have only one thought: horror. To celebrate this grandest and darkest of months, we’ll cover one excellent horror film a day for the entirety of the month. That’s 31 Days of Horror and 31 Films perfect for viewing on a dark, chilly, October night. If you, like us, love horror and Halloween, give us a Hell Yeah and keep coming every day this month for a new dose of adrenaline.

Synopsis: Picking up immediately after the events of the first film, or more accurately, starting during the last few minutes of the first film, Halloween II follows an injured Laurie Strode to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, where no amount of ambulance drivers, doctors, or nurses can keep her safe from the relentless Michael Myers.

Killer Scene

I’ve always found the first two Halloween films to be masterful examples of understated horror. In this film, one of my favorite scenes occurs when Myers silently enters an elderly couples home and steals a kitchen knife. No one is killed, there is no jarring music, and it works. But that’s boring (actually, it’s quite tense) so for the purpose of this article I’m going to say the Killer Scene is when Michael Myers stealthily strangles a paramedic and then drowns a nude nurse in scalding hot water. Score.

Kill Sheet

Violence

While there aren’t actually an overwhelming number of kills, when they do happen, they can be quite brutal without being graphic. The two best, in my opinion, involve a car accident fireball while the other is a simple needle to the brain. Simple, but effective.

Sex

Unfortunately Halloween flicks never really embraced nudity like other 80′s slasher films, so in this installment we really only get one nude scene, which ends with the owner of a nice pair of boobs getting her face scalded off. It was pretty sexy right until then.

Scares

Halloween II never really makes it into the realm of scary, falling a bit short of its predecessor. The film makes the wise decision of ignoring jump scare tactics pretty completely, and rather relies on atmosphere, a classic score, and the audience knowledge that Michael Myers is always lurking just behind you. It may be unsettling for some and scores a respectable number of creepy moments.

Final Thoughts

This is an important film for a couple of reasons: first, it invents Michael Myers as the personification of evil. Dr. Loomis repeatedly refers to him as inhuman, he survives six gunshots, and takes a lot of new damage before ‘dying.’ Second, it’s one of the few continuous sequels to pick up immediately after the events of the first film, a style that is imitated today, with Hatchet II for example.

While clearly inferior to the first film, it’s one of the better sequels in a land full failed and disappointing continuations and represents the shifting of “The Shape” into Michael Myers, the unstoppable slasher. If you’ve never seen it, take a look, and if you have, consider owning it on the newly released Blu-ray that comes with a couple of cool extras.

Click here for more 31 Days of Horror

People love Halloween, they love scary movies, and they love combining the two. During the month of October, more people than ever are interested in seeing scary flicks and having fun in a theater. You can look at positively mediocre movies, like most of the Saw franchise, Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies, and Paranormal Activity, that are released in October and make oodles of money — money they wouldn’t make at any other time.

It’s sort of like when poker started appearing on television, everyone started buying poker sets. Poker movies started coming out. SyFy Channel and The Asylum make a living off of making rip-off movies that play around the release of huge movies, when people are most interested in that subject. If only there were a way to know when people would be interested in what…

Oh wait, it’s called a fucking calendar. Halloween happens every fucking year and every year people want to watch horror movies. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even science. It’s common sense.

You’d think that after 40 years of making slasher films, Hollywood would have an idea that releasing them around Halloween might be cool. So let’s see what 40 years of experience has given us this October in terms of horror releases.

• The Thing
• Trespass (not actually a horror movie, but it’s almost kind of close)
• Red State (just Kidding, you can buy the DVD)
• Human Centipede II (only if you were in Austin in September)
• Paranormal Activity 3

So really, if you want to watch a horror movie in a movie theater in October, you either have to find a cool joint showing old movies, settle for a home invasion movie, check out a remake or watch a sequel. How does this make sense?

Why are there no horror movies in theaters right now? It’s Halloween time! I mean, there are literally businesses that open for two months a year, every year, just to capitalize on people’s love of Halloween. Candy companies pop huge Easter/Christmas-killer boners and sell specialty chocolates. Thrift stores change their signs to to advertise themselves as Costume Superstores!

I wouldn’t be surprised if Pizza Hut offered a pumpkin shaped pizza – and I’d sure as fuck buy one, because I love Halloween. I love Pumpkin Milkshakes, black and orange tortilla chips, and spooky cheap-ass gritty candy, because I love horror and everything around it.

Hollywood, you want my money? TAKE IT. I am throwing it away all over the place every October to satisfy my horror cravings. You are the one I want most, baby. You’re the one for me. I just want a few good nights this month. Can’t I just get a new horror movie every week in October? Can’t I get something special, scary, full of tits and blood? We used to be happy.

We were happy in January. Or February. When for some reason you released all the horror movies. You forgot my birthday and our anniversary, Hollywood, and I think we’re going to break up this time. You’re insensitive, bad with timing, and you don’t know me. You don’t know what I want or how to give it to me, or even when.

You’re a terrible girlfriend, Hollywood, and you’re stupid. Too stupid to make money hand over bloody stump. I don’t buy Christmas trees in July and I don’t see beach movies in December. You’re not completely blind to the idea of timely releasing – so why do you fail so badly every October?

In pure return on investment, horror films are amazing. You can triple that amount just by releasing it in October or the first week of November. Wise up, assholes, because while I love horror movies, Halloween, and October in general, every year you push me past my boiling point.

Get scared and read more Boiling Point

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a collection of news that fell through the cracks, will make you crack up, or that’s addicted to crack. How can movie news be addicted to a controlled substance? It’s unclear, but it’s a harsh world out there when the sun goes down.

We begin tonight with the vague news that Ghostbusters (the original) will be hitting theaters again in October. No, not a version of Ghostbusters III that’s been secretly filming for the past year amidst empty press releases. The original flick will play. But when? Where? The movie’s Facebook page is short on answers, and when I checked with Columbia/Sony, so were they.

As if it wasn’t going to happen, Samuel L. Jackson is now officially on the books for Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. As such, we should all fear saying “what” again.

What.

Here’s a fascinating editorial that asserts that Thor is truly a feminist movie. And, no, it’s not just because Thor has long, luxurious hair.

Have you ever wondered what Star Wars characters would be like if they were born on Earth and lived in our wondrous society? Neither have I. But someone did, and they made this chart:

Quint and the good folks of Aint It Cool have this concept test for David Fincher’s The Goon (not to be confused with Goon, the hockey movie). Fincher’s comic book adaptation has struggled to get momentum, but this video is pretty damned cool. Someone give that man a check.

How can a poster look brilliant and terrible at the same time? I was curious until I saw the new poster for Blood Runs Cold over at Bloody Disgusting. It somehow manages quality and a sheer lack of it simultaneously. The killer also looks like he’s ready for his hatchet to emit some sort of gas.

Every movie site ever is going apey over this systematic break down of the convoy action sequence in The Dark Knight. And rightfully so. Jim Emerson did his homework and creates a compelling case for how many basic rules Christopher Nolan broke. Maybe the whole things looks fantastic to you, but if it doesn’t, here’s why.

The Bitter Script Reader contrasts and contrasts Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm to mine them both for script-writing lessons. Guess what. There are more than a few, and almost none of them have to do with making your characters Jewish.

We close tonight with a bootleg video we can actually get behind. io9 has uncovered a recording of an audience watching Halloween in 1978, and their shrieks are a wonder to behold. Feed off their fear:

When I was talking with some friends a while back about how much my wife and I enjoyed Insidious (probably one of the first genuinely well-made horror films in ages), I started thinking about how they’re almost sure to greenlight a sequel any day now (still waiting on that) for some studio to run into the ground like James Wan and Leigh Whannel’s previous collaboration, the Saw series.

Saw got dumber and shittier as it went on, probably due to the fact that by fourth film or so the plot was incomprehensibly stupid. What’s the point of all this again? And Jigsaw had how many apprentices now? By the end of the series, I was expecting him to have solved the financial crisis by employing the majority of Americans to set moronic traps for each other.

But the thing that’s easy to forget is that the first Saw movie was actually a pretty damn good movie. It wasn’t unique by any means. It owes a lot to Dario Argento and his fellow Italian Giallo filmmakers, but that’s not the point. The point is, Wan and Whannel paid attention. They actually put forth an effort to make a film that wasn’t a remake or a sequel or a cheap knockoff. They showed their hand as far as influences go, but fuck, so does Quentin Tarantino. Hell, even Saw II and Saw III weren’t bad.

So maybe that’s the secret to making a horror film that’s not ball-crushingly idiotic. Maybe it just takes some faith in horror audiences and to not be a cynical prick about putting out films in a consistently critically panned genre. And when you look at some of these other franchises that started out with a bang, you can just see that cash-out mindset start to creep in with each successive entry in the series.

Let’s see more original horror. Let’s see directors and writers and producers give a fuck about the audience. Sure, it’s harder than taking the horse back to the well over and over, but… actually, I guess I can’t think of an argument that would make sense to a Hollywood producer. The Transformers trilogy has proved to me that they don’t really care about making good movies anymore or anything.

Beat the horse until it’s dead and then wait for someone to ride a new one in, I guess. Carry on, you budget sheet moguls. Shit. Let’s get to the list already.

6. Friday the 13th

Quick, how many people did Jason Vorhees kill in this movie? Give up? Zero. Not a single one, because he wasn’t the killer– it was his mother. Yeah, that’s a cheap question, but you get the point. People think Friday the 13th and all that comes to mind is the huge, machete-wielding, hockey mask-wearing mountain of a dude from the third film onward. But that wasn’t the original film at all.

It was a hodge-podge of the slasher films that came before, but at least it used the best parts. It used the dark, isolated atmosphere of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the rarely-seen killer and musical motifs of Halloween, the gore and sexuality of exploitation films like Last House on the Left, and the twist ending of the Hitchcock-era of horror movies like Psycho. Then, it put them all in a big blender and out came a nice, self-contained story that wasn’t (completely) ridiculous and loaded down with pointless nonsense. It was a thriller, plain and simple, and it worked.

5. Halloween

Before Michael Myers had a dumb origin story (the druid thing, not the mom being a stripper thing) and was apparently immortal, he was simply The Shape. In fact, in the original Halloween, Laurie Strode isn’t Michael’s sister. It’s never brought up until the sequel (which wasn’t even on the table until the first one did so well). Now think about what that means for Michael’s intentions. He’s stalking this girl, killing her friends, and chasing her all around her neighborhood… for no reason. He’s just gorilla-shit crazy and she happens to be the first person he lays eyes on. Consider how all the urban legends of the 70s, 80s, and 90s (before Snopes was around to debunk them) primarily centered on deranged drug addicts and other criminals committing pointless crimes, just for the thrill or because Satan told them to or something. This film is the natural extension of that cultural fear.

Another aspect of the film that I think gets frequently overlooked is that this is Laurie’s neighborhood. Her own hometown. And she’s not safe there, even with people who know her only a short distance away. The 70s were the point at which safety at home became a huge social issue– a trend that continues on into today. Again, the film really captures what freaked us out during that time period (and on into today… Minus, you know, terrorism and stuff).

4. A Nightmare on Elm Street

Believe it or not, there was a time when Freddy Krueger wasn’t a ridiculous cartoon character who killed people with video games. In the first film in the series, he wasn’t even Freddy, except in the little sing-song rhyme. He was Fred Krueger and he was actually pretty scary, being a child murderer and all. Later films gloss over that whole thing, instead turning him into a general boogeyman type who farts around and makes dumb jokes because he feels like it or something.

This film, too, picks up on the aspect of horror in a suburban environment– that idea that security comes with picket white fences. But another, lesser-acknowledged concept that it plays with is that sleep is safety. When you’re a kid and you’re scared of the dark, you know that all you have to do is finally fall asleep and, assuming you don’t wake back up, you’ll be fine until morning. Anything that happens while you’re asleep is just your imagination. The original Nightmare on Elm Street took that and turned it on its head, though. The inevitability of sleep wasn’t a safety blanket to look forward to, but something to avoid and put off as long as possible, even fighting your own body to do so. (And that’s not even getting into the drug metaphors of popping pills to stay awake and unhinged behavior the characters seem to be going through.)

3. Hellraiser

Most people solely associate the Hellraiser series with Pinhead who, like other horror icons before him, ended up just becoming a bland monster. If you watch the original, though, you’ll notice that Pinhead and his demon cohorts aren’t really just out to kill people. In fact, they really only seem interested in taking particularly morally corrupt people to Hell, and they leave everyone else more or less alone. Human beings are the only ones who commit any sort of murder in the film. The demons are basically just there to pick up the pieces, like oddly dressed janitors.

And if Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street are about horror in suburbia, then Hellraiser is horror for the upper-class. Think about it. The reason Uncle Frank ends up a gooey puddle in the family attic is because he sought out hedonism and excess. He spent his money traveling the world and adventuring, things a poor man could never indulge in. Even the puzzle box itself is presented as an expensive antique. Julia is a bored, rich housewife who engages in affairs with her husband’s brother. The demons themselves are all about mixing pleasure with pain, but it’s not solely sadomasochistic. It’s about the inhumanity that can be found just under the surface of the lives of the elite and the unavoidable punishment that results from it. It’s like a Biblical-based morality play, except it has a bum that turns into a dragon for some reason.

2. The Exorcist

This one may not even count because I don’t think many people even remember the other films in the series, but the hell with it. The first Exorcist film remains one of best horror films of all time. There was no Pazuzu stuff, Regan wasn’t psychic or whatever. It was just a little girl and the freaking Devil.

But it’s more than that, too. It’s about the child of divorced parents, raised by a nanny while her mother cavorts around with fellow actors. It’s about doctors who are unable, with all the medical science available to them, come up with a diagnosis that isn’t “holy shit, demons!” The only thing able to save her? Good old religion. In a lot of ways, The Exorcist really presents a very old-fashioned, practically Conservative idea of a horror story. The broken family unit, science unable to find the answers, Jesus saves the day. It’s like a Tea Party wishlist. It’s hard not to make the movie sound cynical in today’s political climate, but I think the reason why it works is because of our cultural fear that maybe, no matter how much we progress, there are still some problems that we just can’t solve. Not without dipping into the old ways we thought we, as a society, had left behind (those of us who aren’t Michele Bachmann, anyway).

1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

While pop culture turned Leatherface and his family into something truly absurd, the fact still stands that the original film brought something to the table that people just hadn’t seen before– a horror film that was truly horrific. The atmosphere of the film is just north of nightmarish, and the whole thing is so bleak and gritty it’s like a buzzard fucking a tumbleweed.

And there are tons of arguments about how it’s a reflection of Vietnam or that it’s anti-capitalist (because Leatherface’s family lost their jobs at the slaughterhouse thanks to technological advance), but the most compelling thing, in my opinion, is that it was the first film in American cinema to present the idea that there are some things in this natural world that we just totally can’t comprehend or fight back against because it’s so beyond our scope of recognition. For example, Al Qaeda presumably has some logic behind what they’ve done, but it’s so far outside of our experiences that we can’t even begin to comprehend it. It’s just some insane, blind anger that turns into evil. It has no real redeeming quality, it just is, and there’s little we can do to confront it. And that’s scary as hell.

More lists are also scary as hell

I like these twitter Q and A’s. The best one so far to speak of is the video Q and A with Werner Herzog, a man that could probably still give existential and out there answers to the dumbest of questions. He’s a guy I could listen to all day. Another guy I could listen to all day? The very friendly John Carpenter. From 2:00-3:30 p.m. (PST), the director behind too many to count classics will be participating in a twitter Q and A.

Sadly, this not a video one like the Herzog’s. But considering it’s been quite some time since the horror icon’s Ghost of Mars(…) and the fact that it may be a few more years until we get a followup to The Ward, it’s still a rare treat.

Here’s all you have to do to throw a question to Carpenter:

Send your questions to @ARC_Entertain and make sure to include #theward in your tweet.

And for those of you who didn’t know, Carpenter is already an active participant on twitter: @TheHorrorMaster

The Ward is now in limited release and on VOD.

Despite the fact that their plates are pretty full already, director Patrick Lussier and his co-writer Todd Farmer are chomping at the bit to get the opportunity to make Halloween 3. In a chat with MTV, the duo have said that once their insane dive into 3D with Nic Cage, Drive Angry 3D, gets it’s home release, and they get through work on a reboot of the Hellraiser franchise, a continuation of the new Halloween franchise that director Rob Zombie started is next on their wish list. “We would love it to go through,” Lussier said. “We would make that the second somebody said, ‘Yes, go make it,’ because it’s a script that we love and a script we’re really passionate about and it’s an amazing character and an incredible franchise, and it would just be a great experience for us to go back to the roots.”

Now right away I can see two potential problems with this. The first being that I saw Drive Angry 3D, and it was one of the most ridiculously bad films to get a wide release in recent memory. The second being that I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone that wants to see Rob Zombie’s take on the Halloween mythos continue. I mean, everyone was in agreement that those movies were really bad, right? Perhaps it doesn’t matter. In what may just be lip service to fans of classic horror, or what may actually be genuine sentiment, Farmer threw a bone to those skeptical about this project when he said, “Halloween is one of the movies that made us what we are today. Without cheating and with what [was] created in Zombie’s, we’d continue the story and do so in a way that sort of brings us back to the tone of Carpenter that we started with.” Though it will probably be a couple of years before a Lussier and Farmer helmed Halloween movie hits theaters, it sounds like something that is bound to happen eventually. I’m not the biggest fan of the horror genre in the world, but I would much rather see a take on these characters that was more vintage Carpenter and less modern Zombie. What say you?

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the little brother goes missing, and his sister has to find him before mom finds out about it (and about the babysitter being dead).

Schwartz is the executive producer of Chuck, one of many co-writers on the X-Men: First Class script, and a musician whose work can be found on movies as diverse as Undercover Brother and Happy Feet. The point? The guy is awesome.

He’ll be producing under his Fake Empire banner alongside Paramount who wants it ready to roll by this Halloween despite not officially greenlighting it. The script was written by Max Werner – a writer on The Colbert Report – but no actors have been cast yet.

Every week I slash a bad movie down to size and then, through a seance of praise, invite its spirit into my own heart. The result is truly terrifying. I will then pair the film with a supernaturally tasty junkfood item to haunt your waistline as the movie haunts your brain!

So, as it turns out, horror sequels win the month of October here at JFC. And being that we are just two days removed from my favorite holiday, I thought it best to wrap up the year’s creepiest month with another film in the Halloween franchise. Today’s film is Halloween H20.

Quick premise rundown. Laurie Strode, sister of mass murderer Michael Myers, survives not one but two attempts on her life by her sibling on Halloween night in 1978. Shortly thereafter, not convinced that her brother actually died in that hospital fire, she fakes her own death and moves out to California. Twenty years later, under an assumed name, she is the head mistress of a prestigious preparatory school which her own son attends. She struggles to put the past behind her and just when she thinks she has made strides toward recovery, an unexpected family reunion opens the door to her worst nightmare.

What Makes It Bad?

I think, more than anything, Halloween H20‘s biggest setback is its title. Yes, I understand that this film was released twenty years after John Carpenter’s immortal classic and there is a momentousness there worthy of celebration. But perhaps it would have served the film better to not have employed 6th grade chemistry to bestow a catchy label on this sequel. Halloween H20 sounds as if Michael Myers will be squaring off against Aquaman and spooks the trick-or-treaters of Atlantis. Actually, that might sell. I’m going to write up a treatment of that. Dibs!

Remember how amazing the 90′s were for cinema? Me neither! But unfortunately, the 1990′s went and threw up all over Halloween H20. Unlike most films that make the mistake of dating themselves, fashion disasters are not the chief violations of timelessness in H20. While the hopelessly unwashed hockey hoodlums at the beginning do reek of Kevin Smith runoff, the majority of the film takes place at a preparatory school so the uniforms do their part to conceal any potential decade-influenced apparel nightmares. But all the hard work the costuming department did to not seal the film in a 90′s time capsule is undone by the radio blasting Creed…you know, to set the mood for a horror film? Oh, and the words “introducing Josh Hartnett” solidly cement this film in the 90′s as does the inclusion of then 3rd Rock from the Sun star Joseph Gordon-Levitt; wonder if we’ll ever hear from that kid again. Ironically, he does get Inceptioned in this film, but instead of an idea, Myers incepts a hockey skate into his brain.

The other element that painfully dates H20 is the fact that, structurally, it’s a carbon copy of Scream. Originally, the script for H20 was to be written by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson and, though that didn’t pan out, much of his treatment made it into the final film; explaining the similarities. There is of course the famous Williamson opening kill sequence that became his trademark in the Scream franchise. The music in this film sound familiar by any chance? That’s because H20 composer John Ottman’s score was rejected late in post so instead they just recycled the music cues from the first two Screams. There is something insulting in the assumption that a Halloween film in the 90′s couldn’t stand on its own without a Scream influence when if not for the former, the latter wouldn’t even freaking exist!

But beyond all the petty, fanboy needling, H20‘s real failure as a horror film is that the kills just aren’t that great or near plentiful enough. By the time we reach the climax, we are dealing with a victim pool of seven people. This may seem mathematically nitpicky, but for my money there is no reason more than half of those people should survive! Would American really have been that heartbroken if L.L. Cool J. had died? Seriously, does that guy have the Fred “The Hammer” Williamson you-can’t-kill-me clause in his contract? Because there is also no reason he should have survived Deep Blue Sea. In the film’s entirety, there are six kills and three of them are off screen. I think they had to intentionally drop a few more f-bombs lest the film had earned a PG-13 rating. Super lame!

I don’t like that the film almost completely ignores Halloweens 4-6. While I’m fairly certain none of those films appear on AFI’s Top 100 list, a little more research is needed to confirm, it muddies the chronology not to acknowledge them. More specifically, the problem is that Halloween 4 is the film that introduces the plot device that Laurie Strode died in a car accident which justifies her not being around to raise her own daughter Jamie. But when H20 uses the same car accident device, it makes us wonder if Laurie didn’t just abandon her daughter to move out to California and start a better life. What a bitch!

Why I love It!

About a year ago, (I gushed obsessively over Halloween and my love for it. It is a film that defined my movie geekdom and this was the first sequel to come out in theaters while I was old enough that my parents would let me see it. I remember liking it then, but even revisiting it as a critic now I still enjoy it. I honestly think it’s the best love letter in cinematic form ever written to the original. Especially in hindsight of Rob Zombie’s butchering of the film he claims to love so much, H20 is a monument to Halloween fandom.

From the moment the film opens, you get the sense that the filmmakers just plain get it. Not only does it begin with an eerie chorus of Mr. Sandman-the opening song of Halloween II that became almost as indelible to the franchise as the Carpenter theme-but the prologue also centers on Nurse Chambers. Why does this matter? This seemingly insignificant character is actually the same nurse who was in the car with Dr. Loomis the night that Michael first escaped. I dig the fact that they brought back a character so connected with the original mythology and yet one to whom most viewers probably never gave a second thought. There are also bits of dialogue and the framing of shots that either subtly allude to the original film or wholesale steal from it…lovingly so.

Jamie Lee Curtis rocks the house in H20. Having her come back to the series is nothing short of inspired. The destinations to which the franchise sailed without her are unique, but it is a concentrated commitment to the series’ roots to bring her back and complete her story. What’s really interesting to me is the shift in her character between the first two films and H20. She goes from being a weak, put-upon victim to a powerful heroine in full control of her destiny. The transition is very similar to the change in Linda Hamilton from Terminator to Terminator 2. When she locks herself into the campus, when it’s just she and Michael, and she marches toward a final showdown with axe in hand, I got chills.

The ending of the film is triumphant and puts the perfect punctuation on the entire franchise. When she refuses to believe Michael is dead and hijacks the morgue van, you already know shit is about to get real…again. In that final moment, when Michael is pinned by the wrecked van and reaches out to Laurie, there is a hint, a glimmer of compassion in both their gazes. But Laurie is smart enough to know that the evil inside him can never be quelled and makes the smart, albeit brutal, choice to end his life forever. The jarring squeal of the theme starting up again as she severs his head from his body is breathtaking. She breathes heavily for a moment and the credits roll. Few horror franchises ever have a conclusion that satisfying. That is it, the denouement of their entire relationship and conclusion of one of the greatest horror sagas ever written. I will now stick my fingers in my ears as you remind me of the existence of Halloween: Resurrection.

Junkfood Pairing: Hershey’s Candy Corn Kisses

Thank God for Hershey’s. If not for them, I would have to eat handful after handful of kisses AND candy corn in order to create the effect now eloquently encapsulated in their new Candy Corn Kisses. In this metaphor, Halloween would be the candy corn; classic treat as integral to the holiday as any other tradition. H20 would be the sleek, sweet update that adds to the original without taking anything away from it. In any event HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYBODY!

Haven’t had your fill? Pig out on more Junkfood Cinema

And then go check out the rest of our 31 Days of Horror by clicking on the banner below.

These are the questions that haunt me in the moments just before I close my eyes to go to bed. Fortunately, someone else out there is even more obsessed with the possible worlds out there where Boris Karloff was Freddy Krueger (and the resulting movie posters).

Over at Hartter there’s a collection of some of the posters for these alternate moving pictures. We’ve included just 6 of our favorites here, but there are about 30 or so on the site.

There are some clever plays here for the seasoned film trivia fan, but for the most part they are relics from a time that never existed. Antiques from a false history.

Very, very cool.

Which one is your favorite?

With that in mind, I browsed on over to Yahoo Movies today to find this fancy new infographic. I’m told these are all the rage in Europe. This one pits three of cinema’s most prolific slashers together in a good ole fashioned kill-off. Who killed more in their cinematic careers, asks the graphic, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees or Freddy? According to this, it’s Jason by a landslide victory. More impressive is his victory when you consider the fact that he took his first movie off, letting Mama Voorhees do all the slicing.

So here’s my question, horror lovers: are there any more prolific killers out there? Also, which of these fine hellions had the most interesting series of kills? Check out the full infographic after the jump if you need a reminder as to which movies these kills came from.

I love horror movies. This much is true and obvious. That doesn’t mean I give them a blank check written out to idiocy. There are plenty of bad things in horror movies, even in good ones. Primarily, people making bad decisions. Granted our victims are almost always young teenagers, unwise in the ways of the world, potentially inebriated, and often thinking with their sex organs rather than their central nervous system. Still, even in my most obliterated of states I know that I’m not going to fit through the doggy door in the garage.

So hey, horror movie characters. Quit making dumb decisions and kill the mother fucker.

I say kill the mother fucker because in hundreds of slasher movies, from Halloween to Friday the 13th to any of the sequels and spin-offs and rip-offs, almost every time our victims score a minor victory and stun the villain. They knock him down, they knock him out. They stab him or shoot him. They, somehow, slow his progress and put him in a vulnerable position.

What then? Why, they run away. Or, more often, they run somewhere, but not away. They run around. Upstairs, downstairs, down the hall, out the door. Never to safety. Always somewhere the danger still exists, where the killer will soon look. This is the wrong thing to do. What should they do? What should anyone do when faced with some psychotic being who has killed several of your friends and seems pretty impervious to most means of harming flesh and, despite his weakened state, still scares the shit out of you? Say it with me kids.

Kill the mother fucker.

Kill the mother fucker good. Smash his head in. Shoot him in the face. Cut his head off. Stomp on him until the police arrive. Player soccer with his lungs. Eat his heart. Run him through a wood chipper. I don’t care what you have to do, if you’ve found yourself in some sort of fucked up magical situation where a freaking 6’4″ 260lb maniac is tearing through your birthday party, you come up with an explanation for the cops later and you turn that asshole’s brains into mush and set his balls on fire.

A few movies have gotten it right, those few that give a wink and nod to the audience but rarely take themselves too seriously. Hatchet II has Marybeth doing the right thing with a hatchet and Scream sort of got it right, waiting for the killer to leap back into action only to catch a bullet. I say “sort of” because you don’t give the killer a chance to leap back in action. You blow his brains out on the ground.

There are so many more stupid things horror characters do that I could address – but I’ve got save something for next year’s 31 Days of Horror Boiling Point, don’t I? So in the meantime, horror movie characters, wise the hell up. This paranormal demon zombie psycho serial killer has got a few screws loose and the tenacity of a meth-head cranked up to eleven. He’s already killed and eaten bits of your girlfriend, raped your best friend, and smashed most of the windows in your house. When you get that opportunity, kill him beyond dead or I’ll watch you die shortly after reaching my boiling point.

Whether you’re seeking a degree in Literature, love movies, or just love seeing things explode, our feature should have something for everyone. If it doesn’t, please don’t stab us numerous times with cutlery.

Part 32 of the 36-part series takes a look at “Slaying of a Kin Unrecognized” with John Carpenter’s Halloween.

The Synopsis

On Halloween night in a small, Midwestern town in the 1960s, six-year old Michael Myers stabs his older sister to death. Fifteen years later, he escapes from a psychiatric hospital and wreaks havoc on Halloween night in his hometown, killing promiscuous teenagers one-by-one with an apparent special interest in pursuing the chaste Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). As Myers is pursued by his psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance), he evades capture and defeat at every turn with what seems like superhuman abilities.

The Situation

“Slaying of a Kin Unrecognized” is a rather complex situation that has far fewer concrete examples in film than most of the other situations explored in this feature. Honestly, it took me a while to think of a film in which this situation fit properly, and I had to consult the team at Reject HQ to get some help. I owe this particular entry to Mr. Adam Charles, esq.

This situation involves the “Slayer” and the “Unrecognized Victim.” As shown in the supposed original example of this situation – the Oedipus story – the slayer implicitly doesn’t recognize that the victim him or herself is kin until the act of slaying is complete. This situation is tweaked in a particularly interesting way in Halloween’s third act, where the roles of “slayer” and “victim” become reversed.

The Film

While it technically isn’t revealed until Halloween II that Laurie is Michael’s sister, Michael’s deliberate pursuit of her in the original film is evidence of how and why his pursuit can’t be interpreted in any other way, especially since his murderous streak is set up with the slaying of a female sibling in the film’s famous opening scene (also, the tombstone placed on the bed next to Lynda’s naked corpse for Laurie to see really says it all). So in Michael’s blood-spattered pursuit of Laurie, it’s clear that Laurie is not the “unrecognized victim” as Michael is implied to be acting in full awareness that Laurie is his kin, which operates as the central motivation for his murderous intent.

However, in the incredible closing minutes of Halloween, as Michael follows Laurie throughout the house, these respective roles are completely turned around. Laurie becomes the Slayer of Michael, and in fact “slays” him in one way or another multiple times: first with a sewing needle, then a wire hanger to the eye, and finally with Michael’s own kitchen knife (the icon of Michael’s first slaying of a kin “recognized”), all the while operating in complete oblivion to the fact that this murderous psychopath is her own brother.

Sure, Laurie doesn’t kill Michael, but Michael also doesn’t kill Laurie, and there is no doubt – whether or not the job is finished against an antagonist that is so literally impossible to defeat – that Laurie’s three major actions that temporarily stop Michael would be characterized as “slaying” if inflicted upon any ordinary mortal. It’s odd, of course, to refer to one of cinema’s most notorious villains of modern horror as a “victim” in any sense, and he certainly isn’t one in the moral context implied in contemporary use of the term, but being “slain” multiple times does make him the victim of certain actions intended to defeat him, whether or not those original situations were started by his murderous stalking in the first place.

It goes without saying that Halloween is one of the most important horror movies ever made, and it continues to hold up amazingly well (the very end in particular gets me every time that music starts back up again), but within this game-changing horror film is a complex twist on an ancient dramatic situation that dates all the way back to Oedipus.

Bonus Examples: Oedipus Rex, that episode of Lost in Season 5 where (spoiler alert!) Daniel Faraday is killed by his mother before he is even born, NOT The Empire Strikes Back

Click here to read our entire series of 36 Dramatic Situations, 36 Movies

Supplication – The Most Dangerous Game

Deliverance – The Rescuers

Crime Pursued By Vengeance – Death Wish

Vengeance Taken For Kindred Upon Kindred – The Lion King

Pursuit – Silence of the Lambs

Disaster – Airplane!

Falling Prey to Cruelty/Misfortune – Misery

Revolt – Lucky Number Slevin

Daring Enterprise – The Professionals

Abduction – The Chaser

The Enigma – Se7en

Obtaining – There Will Be Blood

Enmity of Kin – Once Were Warriors

Rivalry of Kin – Grumpy Old Men

Murderous Adultery – Match Point

Madness – Grizzly Man

Fatal Imprudence – The Fly

Involuntary Crimes of Love – Oldboy

Slaying of Kin Unrecognized – Halloween

Self-sacrifice for an Ideal – Hunger

Self-sacrifice for Kin – Harakiri

All Sacrificed for Passion – A Single Man

Necessity of Sacrificing Loved Ones – The Seventh Continent

Rivalry of Superior vs Inferior – Toy Story

Adultery – In the Mood For Love

Crimes of Love – Dog Day Afternoon

Discovery of the Dishonor of a Loved One – Festen

Obstacles to Love – I Love You Phillip Morris

An Enemy Loved – Underworld

Ambition – Wall Street

Conflict With a God – The Truman Show

Mistaken Jealousy – My Best Friend’s Wedding

Erroneous Judgment – The Contender

Remorse – In Bruges

Recovery of a Lost One – Gone Baby Gone

Loss of Loved Ones – Dear Zachary

Editor’s Note: This article was part of our April Fools 2010 project, in which our site was transported back to April 1, 1980. To see all of the retro articles written for this event, please visit our April Fools 2010 Homepage.

As we move into this new, promising decade, I feel I need to take a moment to bid adieu to a trend. So many fads come and go these days and while this particular craze had a healthy run, I am ready to declare it legally dead. The deceased trend was once called 3D and its demise is met with nothing but relief.

As a scientific advancement of filmmaking, the concept of 3D is as old as the movies themselves. It began as legitimate experimentation and inadvertently produced the technology that made stereoscopes a household distraction in the early part of the 20th century. The early attempts involved two images on two screens that audiences would then reconcile through the use of an instrument; this proved too cumbersome for theatrical enjoyment. The red/blue anaglyph 3D technology that we know today was created in the early 1920s.

But the true golden age of 3D had to be the 1950s. During that time, 3D became a marketing tool to net a larger share of the thriving movie theater business. The fare that typified this era were low-budget horror and sci-fi. Already, you should get a sense of just how much this groundbreaking technology became trivialized. Suddenly teenagers were flocking to movie houses to be scared out of their wits when a giant bug or doofus in a costume came shambling off the screen and into their faces. Vincent Price became the unofficial king of this era as he starred in a multitude of schlock including House of Wax and The Mad Magician. But the allure of 3D, and the subsequent box office grosses it elicited, were too much for even an auteur like Alfred Hitchcock to ignore; releasing Dial M for Murder three-dimensionally.

When the crazed cooled by the end of the 50s, many people thought it would eventually find resurgence and perhaps even be improved upon. Well, it totally found resurgence…in the exploitation industry. What we got over the last decade were a series of shysters who decided that if sex sold tickets, it stood to reason that 3D sex would sell infinitely more tickets. Therefore, the 42nd Street crowds were subjected to multidimensional atrocities like Stewardesses and Andy Warhol’s bastardization of the Universal Monsters called Flesh for Frankenstein. So instead of reviving 3D, this resurgence amounted to an ugly, awkward flailing before it ultimately, unceremoniously expired.

Good riddance! I’m sorry to the children of the 50s who frittered away their hard-earned allowances to watch The Creature from the Black Lagoon slime his way into their laps. But the fact of the matter is that 3D is nothing more than a cheap gimmick designed to divorce chumps from their cash. It is fodder for directors who, like William Castle, became more carnival barkers than actual artists to pad out meager scripts and shoddy productions with fantastical devices that made a mockery of film as an art form. I imagine the pioneers of 3D being transported to a grind house theater to watch The Stewardesses and experiencing what Oppenheimer felt when he watched the atom bomb tests.

The fact is that 3D, in the extreme unlikelihood that it should ever stagger back to life, will never be legitimized. It is as important to film as multiple cup holders in the seats or free toys distributed as you exit the theater. I admire the scientific experimentation and the thirst for advancement inherent in those who forged the technology, but the corruption of the innovation has left it permanently stained. 3D will always be a lowly, gaudy window dressing that adds absolutely nothing to film. I can’t imagine a situation where 3D would actually enhance the viewing experience because we’ve reached the limits of its scope and the fruit it bore was indeed sour. There is no way a studio would be able to improve upon 3D without spending upwards of $50 million and I just don’t see any of them shelling out that kind of green for such a meaningless gimmick.

So I implore you, the good theater-goers of America, to just let 3D rest in peace. I shudder to think of the consequences of its resurrection. Being that the go-to genre for this gambit is horror, we would be in a fairly precarious position as fans. When I think of my favorite horror films of the 70s, I can’t abide the idea of Halloween, Jaws, or The Amityville Horror in 3D. Luckily that is a baseless concern as Amityville‘s story precludes any type of sequel, and the well of sequels has already run dry for the other two. So I for one will happily chuck my red and blue glasses into the garbage and look forward to someday, in the distant future, reading dissertations from young film students regaling the pop culture footnote that was 3D.

Editor’s Note: This article was part of our April Fools 2010 project, in which our site was transported back to April 1, 1980. To see all of the retro articles written for this event, please visit our April Fools 2010 Homepage.

John Carpenter has been a busy guy. He followed up his gritty Assault on Precinct 13 with the surprise hit Halloween, introducing a new name for children to whisper in fear… Michael Meyers.

Carpenter may have a franchise on his hands, and pre-production work has already started on Halloween II. Carpenter is co-writing the script with producing partner Debra Hill, but has stepped back from directing this one. We haven’t heard who he’s handing the reins over to yet, but I for one hope they take a long hard look at Bob Clark. Clark’s horror film Black Christmas seems to have had an influence on Carpenter’s Halloween as the two share some undeniably similar stylistic choices, and I’d love to see what Clark could do with the Halloween follow-up.

Carpenter on the other hand, just recently released a new vision in terror. The Fog, which he wrote and directed, rolled onto screens in February, and I know I speak for my partner-in-crime Brian Salisbury when I say that we loved it. Will anything rival the theatrical experience of seeing a great scary movie at the drive-in? I hope not. Brian and I caught the film at the Lone Star drive-in here in Austin, and I’m still wearing his fingernail marks in my arm.

And now Carpenter is already hard at work on yet another writing/directing gig titled Escape from New York. We’re hearing that Carpenter and the studio are clashing over casting choices right now, with Carpenter lobbying for Kurt Russell for the main role and the studio wanting Tommy Lee Jones. Not sure what Carpenter sees in Russell, but the studio is obviously looking to ride the wave of buzz that Jones has generated with the release of the fantastic Coal Miner’s Daughter this past March.

I’m leaning towards Tommy Lee on this one, I’m not sure Russell has what it takes to carry a more adult film since most of his work up to this point has been in family-friendly fare. Actually, I’d love to see them go with someone like a Robert Forster for this, but it probably won’t happen. I guess we’ll have to wait awhile longer to see how things play out.

Filming on Escape is tentatively scheduled for August of this year, and we’ll see a lot more from Carpenter in the near future.

What do you think?

The fine folks over at Bloody Disgusting have made my day, or at least made it a little brighter.

They caught a video featuring an online chat with Scout Taylor-Compton – the new Laurie Strode in the Rob Zombie-era Halloween movies – where she explains how they attempted to hire her for the next installment despite 1) not having a director b) not having a script and 3) wanting to shoot it in two months.

Remember how badly Zombie’s versions sucked? Keep that in mind as you watch:

Fantastic.

I have no idea whether to praise her for using common sense now or mock her for not using it a year ago when they were shooting scenes with a horse.

But wait a minute…I thought the third installment was about haunted Halloween masks. Don’t they have to remake that one?

I’m kidding. Unless you think it’s a good idea. Because I do. But I’ll let you decide.

Although Halloween has come and gone, the FSR universe of readers and contributors alike have hardly satiated their horror fix, so this week’s Culture Warrior presents three movies that were major game-changers for the genre.

1960 saw the horror film, and filmgoing at large, change dramatically and permanently. Long gone was the horror of the literary monster that characterized 1930s Universal classics personified by Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, and the dawn of a new decade in turn also said goodbye to the 1950s B-movie creature features. In 1960 horror switched its gaze to a far more terrifying direction: inward. Horror now focused on the horrific capacities of the human being, on the grotesque monster potentially inside all of us. No longer would horror be relegated to B-movie status, instead enabled with the capacity, through depiction of psychological trauma and inner monstrosity, for a unique kind of profundity that other genres couldn’t even come close to. Three different films from three different countries, all released in 1960, manifested the new brand of horror in fascinating ways. The following films are, without a doubt, essentials of modern horror.

USA: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)

Hitchcock’s magnum opus was a game-changer on many levels. Within the horror genre itself, it challenged expectations by removing villainy from a one-dimensional locale of pure evil and replaced it with all the vulnerability and nuance entailed in being human. Like the still-reverberating horrors of WWII, Anthony Perkins’s Norman Bates embodied an evil so banal that it couldn’t be ignored or dismissed by the one-dimensionality implied by the “evil” label. Bates represented something different: the evil made possible through insecurity, through a fear that projected more fear onto those who encounter him. What’s so horrifying about Bates’s evil is that it’s hardly evil at all. His actions, rather, seem something, given the right conditioning and abuse, that any impressionable mind is capable of embodying. Evil in Psycho is not a brute force that can be wiped out without further concern, it’s instead an unstoppable presence that moves its way through people and culture. Bates proves that being meek or (seemingly) sincere is not antithetical to manifesting horrible actions, that the villain can simultaneously be the victim of devices far beyond himself. The world of Psycho is the world of the grey, refusing the simplistic, irrelevant delineation implied in a perceived war between the opposing Biblical forces of good and evil.

Psycho also changed the course of filmmaking narratively, articulating its confusion of good/evil movie logic by getting rid of its perceived protagonist shortly after the first act break, thus establishing a no-rules brand of mainstream horror. This extended to a drastic change in film spectatorship, as venues which previously allowed patrons to come and go as they please (audiences often bought tickets at any time of day and would walk into the middle of a movie to wait for the movie to end, start over, and come back around to where they began) were now forced to make audiences come exclusively as the movie started, refusing latecomers so as to not ruin the shock value of the film’s well-kept secret. Every serious moviegoer that appreciates a quiet, orderly theater is in Mr. Hitchcock’s debt for this.

UK: Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)

Sure, while Hitchcock explored voyeurism to disturbing degrees with Rear Window, Vertigo (anybody that can make Jimmy Stewart a creepster is doing something right) and even Psycho, nobody had the brass balls Michael Powell had to depict a sexual obsession and psychosis as troubling as this. I’ll defend any day of the week Psycho’s stance as a classic, but one has to admit that its scares have become so iconic that it’s lost a great deal of its shock value. Powell (this time without his directing cohort Emeric Pressburger), however, made Peeping Tom fifty years ago and the film is still as discomfiting as it ever was in its exhibition of a film production assistant who captures his murders of women on film, complete with a mirror beside the camera so that his victims may witness their own final moments of life. The psychology of obsession, misogyny, and sexual inadequacy aside, Peeping Tom is at its most confrontational when it frames these murders from the first-person perspective of the eye of the camera, thus making this film the forerunner for the recent trend of found footage horror filmmaking as established by Paranormal Activity and [Rec].

Seeing murders through the camera’s eye, of course, is not the same as seeing it from the murderer’s, so the focalization of the frame makes the camera itself as complicit in the act of violence as the murderer. Enjoying this film can be a complex and troubling experience, as Peeping Tom’s audience was one of the firsts to ever be confronted with their own desire to witness violence on behalf of genre, and seeing death face-to-face (despite the fact that it’s staged) implicitly makes us and the murderer one in the same. Added interpretive value comes from the tripod-knife he uses to kill his victims, making for quite the penetrating phallic symbol (read feminist film scholar Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” for more on the typically masculine complicit violence of the audience found in films like these). Although I’d be wary of a remake, I’d honestly be interested in what Peeping Tom would look like with an update to the seriously invasive DIY culture of voyeurism through digital technology/media, YouTube, and social networking sites.

France: Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju)

Where Psycho and Peeping Tom make the monster human, Eyes Without a Face turns the human into a monster. In an innovative spin on the classic mad scientist formula, Franju’s film finds a surgeon routinely hunting down beautiful women so that their faces can serve as sources of surgical transplant for his daughter’s face, which was disfigured in a tragic automobile accident. The film serves as a scathing critique of the lengths people will go to achieve allegedly objective standards of beauty, but its real enduring appeal lies in Franju’s eclectic filmmaking which finds him altering between slick, elegant, assured style and gritty, visceral gore. It’s a beautiful contradiction that prevents its spectator from ever getting too comfortable in their seat, priming them for the inevitable squirming that entails the narrative trajectory of this film.

So many horror films are indebted to Eyes Without a Face that it’s impossible to name them all, but it’s undeniable that the disquieting surgery scene stands the predecessor for visceral horror at large (see, at your own risk, Franju’s short “Blood of the Beasts” (1949) for a primer on his relentless depiction of violence (it’s possibly a Holocaust allegory, but it’s undeniably his unique brand of horror)) and David Cronenberg’s visceral style especially (e.g., Dead Ringers). Also, the mask Christiane wears allegedly inspired Michael Meyers’s immortal façade. But what places Eyes Without a Face thematically alongside Psycho and Peeping Tom is that it employs the mad scientist and takes away the madness. Of course the surgeon’s actions are unforgivable, but he is never depicted as psychotic, and, through his daughter’s tragedy, the film even approaches empathy for the motive of his actions, if not approval. The true protagonist and antagonist of this film, like the delineation of good and evil between the three of these films, is made indistinguishable, even irrelevant, as no real understanding can be attained through dismissing society’s agents of horror as evil.

Culture Warrior is our weekly walk on the wild side with actual film school graduate Landon Palmer. To read more from Landon, you can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/landon_speak