Tag: Michael Myers

Oct262012 by Chris Holmes3 Comments
GFS Home Movies — Halloween III: Season of the Witch

GFS Home Movies — Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Movies
To understand just how large a failure Halloween III: Season of the Witch was, first consider the premise. An evil scientist/company owner seeks to use a vaguely mystical and ancient pagan technology to kill millions of children wearing Halloween masks. Now say that out loud. Sounds awful, doesn't it? And yet this was the story that John Carpenter and Debra Hill ostensibly signed off on for the third installment in Carpenter's legendary Halloween horror series. Look, bonus points to Carpenter and Hill for boldly moving away from what was already becoming a tired genre -- the slasher film. It's hard to imagine now, but their 1978 original was just that -- original. And the sequel, while not nearly as groundbreaking, was almost as good. But by 1982 it was already clear that Hollywood stud
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Oct22012 by Chris Holmes1 Comment
Check Out This Awesome Deleted Scene from Halloween (1978)

Check Out This Awesome Deleted Scene from Halloween (1978)

Internet, Movies
Fans of the horror classic Halloween have noted quite a few inconsistencies over the years. Like, why are the trees full of green leaves in Illinois during late October? Why do all the cars have California plates? And most importantly, how the hell did Michael Myers learn to drive a car when he's been locked inside Smith's Grove Sanitarium since he was 6 years old? Well thanks to Adam Green of ArieScope Pictures, now we know. Turns out there's a deleted scene that explains the whole thing. Check it out: Nice. Oh and how cool is it that Michael is played by Kane Hodder, who also played Jason Voorhees in four Friday the 13th films? Very cool indeed.
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Oct142011 by Chris HolmesNo Comments
Retrotisements: Halloween (1978) U.S. and Foreign Movie Posters

Retrotisements: Halloween (1978) U.S. and Foreign Movie Posters

Featured Posts, Retrotisements
This piece originally ran in October 2008. I've republished it because, really, this should run annually. But to show I'm not just being lazy, I've added posters from Denmark and Italy below! October 25 marks a momentous day in horror history — the 30th anniversary of the release of John Carpenter's slasher classic Halloween.  While it certainly wasn't the first horror film on the block, it is one of the best and most influential. I and many other fans of classic horror consider it to be part of the holy trinity of the genre, alongside Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). In retrospect, it seems like such a simple concept that it's hard to believe it hadn't been fully explored before. A psychopath is on the loose in the streets of a quiet, suburban town (Haddo
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Jul192008 by Chris HolmesNo Comments
GFS at the Movies: The Dark Knight

GFS at the Movies: The Dark Knight

Movies
The most dangerous villains, the scariest ones to watch, are the ones with no clear reasons or motives behind their mayhem.  They enter from the darkest corners of our imaginations and exist solely to inflict pain on others.  They are not driven by greed, revenge, or lust for power. So how does someone (say, a hero or a district attorney) on the side of right stop such a villain?  How much are they willing to compromise themselves; and how much collateral damage is acceptable in the process? This is the central theme of The Dark Knight, the second of the Christopher Nolan-helmed Batman reboot films.  It is a superhero movie only in the sense that its characters have their origins in the paneled pages of comic books.  In almost every other way it's dense and unsettling psychological e
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Sep32007 by Chris HolmesNo Comments
Rob Zombie gets a rock

Rob Zombie gets a rock

Movies
Credit Rob Zombie for at least this much -- he opted to offer a different perspective on John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic Halloween rather than to simply update it. The problem is not that his new take fails to improve upon the original story, but that it detracts from it in crucial ways. While this was perhaps predictable, it is nonetheless disappointing. Zombie's biggest miscalculation is in providing a more detailed look at Michael Myers' early life in an abusive and low-class household. Not only does this demystify the character - for part of what made the original so great was that Myers was seemingly as blank as his iconic spray-painted William Shatner mask - but it reduces him to a clichéd white trash psychopath. He is picked on at school, tortures animals, and lives with a d
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