SPOILER WARNING: We don’t often review movies that are still in the theater, so usually don’t bother with worrying about giving away major plot points. Seeing as how this one is in the theaters right now, you may want to see it. We’d rather not be to blame for giving away plot points, twists and turns or influencing your decision to see it. Movie watching is an incredibly personal experience and we respect everyone’s opinion, even when it’s wrong and we laugh at you in the privacy of our own home about your lack of aesthetics and taste.

Nearly every review of the new Halloween starts out by stating the problematic nature of the franchise. In my perfect world, Halloween 2 would have been the end, with Halloween 3: Season of the Witch starting off a yearly anthology of pre-Samhain related mayhem. But my wife has so much love for this series that she endorses everything save Halloween Resurrection and the second Rob Zombie film. And even then, she’ll still watch those. We can’t hide the fact that we are fans — our shelves speak to it, with multiple versions of the first film and every cut of 6.

That’s why the possibility of a new Halloween film with a major budget, nine years after the last abortive attempt to make one of these films, raised such hope. David Gordon Green, the director of Pineapple Express, along with frequent collaborator Danny McBride would create the film along with the participation of the original creator, John Carpenter and the acting skills of Jamie Lee Curtis. For the last year, we’ve been inundated with the assurances that these creators are people who get what makes Halloween work. This would finally be the sequel that fans had been craving since, oh, 1981.

The first chink in the hype armor, for me at least, was the knowledge that this film would invalidate Halloween 2, being seen as the only sequel that counted. The convoluted history that we mentioned earlier may keep some from understanding the series, but I’ll be honest. There’s no reason why this movie had to erase the second installment. It could have still happened and it wouldn’t impact this film at all.

There’s really no nice way to say this, so let me jump in feet first. Beyond being a movie that fundamentally doesn’t comprehend what made the original Halloween such a great film, the 2018 version of Halloween is a movie with no understanding of what makes a great horror movie, either.

That isn’t to say there isn’t a great set-up. Forty years after the 1978 Haddonfield murders (referred to as “The Babysitter Murders,” a nod to the film’s original title), a Serial-like podcast team makes its way to the area to investigate the story and try to see both sides. The first mistake the journalists make is to show Michael Myers’ mask his iconic mask. This scene is pretty chilling, as the entire yard of Smith’s Grove Sanitarium rises up in chaos, dogs barking, insane men screaming, Myers just silent and not turning his back. Let’s not let the logic of how two podcasters got such a crucial piece of evidence out of police custody or how any hospital in its right mind would allow this interview to happen this way get in the path of the movie.

The podcasters then make their way to the fortress home of Laurie Strode, who has spent the last forty years preparing for Michael’s return. If this seems like 1998’s Halloween H20: 20 Years Later twenty more years later, we should be so lucky. After a quick interview in which the British duo shows that they just don’t get it, Laurie kicks them out.

That night, Dr. Ranbir Sartain and a maximum security crew transport Myers and other prisoners from Smith’s Grove to a maximum security prison. Of course, the bus crashes. Of course, Michael escapes. And of course, the footage echoes the escape from Halloween 4 while simultaneously telling us that that movie no longer exists. There’s a moment here, where Michael kills a young boy, where I felt like this was this film announcing that it wasn’t going to play by the traditional slasher rules. If young kids were fair game, everyone was. Sadly, this was one of the last surprises that the film would have in store.

Michael then finds and kills the podcast team, which has no real emotional heft because we have no reason at all to care whether they live or die. Sure, they tempted fate and must be destroyed in order for him to get his mask back. It’s a brutal scene, putting over the power that Michael has, but if we follow logic, The Shape should by 61 years old. Co-writer McBride stated that “I think we’re just trying to take it back to what was so good about the original. It was just very simple and just achieved that level of horror that wasn’t turning Michael Myers into some being that couldn’t be killed. I want to be scared by something that I really think could happen.” I haven’t seen many 61-year-old men that can throw people around like this. The refusal to embrace the supernatural evil of Myers is one of this film’s first failings.

Back to Laurie Strode. She’s had two failed marriages and had her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) taken away from her at the age of twelve. Today, they have a tenuous relationship, with Karen’s daughter Allyson working the hardest to understand her grandmother. Learning that Myers is loose, Laurie breaks into her daughter’s home and warns her and her husband Ray that they need to be ready. This is another narrative misstep. Are we supposed to believe that Laurie’s PTSD and constant battle readiness has cost her way too much? Or is she the only person who is right in this whole film? The way it plays out, as she’s pretty much the only protagonist who actually does something, proves that she’s correct all along.

That’s one of the critical flaws in this movie. Outside of Laurie, there isn’t a single character that we get to know or care about. Her daughter is someone who has given up connecting with her. That’s her one note. Her granddaughter is in a crappy relationship and wants to get to know her grandmother a little better. And that’s it. Every single other person we meet — save for Dr. Sartain and we’ll get to him later — is just fodder. Contrast this with the original, where we get to know Laurie, Lynda (P.J. Soles shows up so quickly here you don’t even catch her, by the way) and Annie really intimately before the first hint of bloodshed. I defy you to tell me one character’s motivation or reason for being beyond words on a page here. For a movie that aspires to be above and beyond the slashers of the 1980’s, even the worst of those had a character you wanted to root for other than the final girl.

Meanwhile, Michael has started to kill people all over again. Allyson’s friend Vicky is babysitting instead of attending the school dance and she gets slaughtered. The scene where Myers is hiding in the closest was so much better effect in the trailer. Here, the way it’s framed, it loses any narrative punch. That’s when we get to the next flaw in this film: it has no idea how to be suspenseful. There is no moment where you get that heart pumping feeling where the killer is stalking his prey, where you feel compelled to yell out words of help to the hapless victim onscreen. We saw this movie in a totally sold out environment of people ready to shout, scream and shriek. You could have heard a pin drop during this movie.

The only character that seemed to get a reaction was Julian, the young boy who Vicky is babysitting. Now, I’ll be honest. The kid was hilarious. And I’m not one of those people who can’t deal with a little comedy in my horror. But I’m also of the belief that once the horror truly begins, humor becomes a release valve that isn’t always necessary. In fact, Julian is so funny that he breaks the movie here, although he gets off a great line as he exits the film, telling one character that he shouldn’t even go into the house because he’ll definitely get killed.

At this point, Laurie has become Dr. Loomis, patrolling the streets on her own, gun in hand. This is something that the cops have seemingly no issue with. Maybe it’s because Sheriff Frank Hawkins was the cop who stopped Loomis from killing The Shape when he was in police custody. That’s probably better than the original script for this that had Loomis being killed before the police could stop Myers’ original rampage.

For all the time the movie spends in setting up the leader of the police, Sheriff Barker, he never appears again once the carnage really starts. No, instead of the police doing what makes logical sense — putting everyone in protective custody in a location far from Haddonfield — they allow everyone to go to Laurie’s fortified house while they search for Allyson. Keep in mind that Laurie has been wantonly shooting handguns off all over town, so she seems like the most level-headed solution, right?

Allyson is on the run, having found the body of her boyfriend’s geeky best friend impaled on a fence. She doesn’t have to run all that far or all that long. There’s literally no pretense of suspense, as Sheriff Hawkins quickly finds her and they set off for Laurie’s house, while Dr. Sartain makes a miracle recovery after being shot in the heart earlier. Seriously, the guy is near death in one scene and somehow shows up with just a sling and band-aid twenty-five minutes later. Seeing Myers on the way, Hawkins hits him Ben Tramer style with his squad car, due process and Miranda rights be damned. As they inspect the body, the “new Dr. Loomis” reveals himself to be evil, killing the cop and locking Allyson in the squad car along with the stunned Myers. That’s the only other surprise in the film, as the now mad doctor dons The Shape’s iconic mask.

“I realized right then that if this guy was the bad guy for the rest of the movie and that was it for Michael, I was going to just have to walk out of the theater.” That’s a quote directly from my wife, probably the biggest Halloween superfan I’ve ever met.

Luckily for everyone but the characters in the film, Myers survives and makes his way to Laurie’s home, stopping to stomp out Sartain’s brains all over the backyard and kill off Allyson’s dad, who outside of being cool to her boyfriend about doing drugs and bad at baiting mousetraps has no discernable character traits or reasons to exist.

As Laurie puts her daughter into the saferoom she feared as a child, she battles Michael throughout her house in a war that fanservice echoes the initial film. Instead of Michael falling off the balcony and disappearing, this time it’s Laurie’s turn. That said, there’s no real dread or worry for any of the main character’s safety — even Karen ends up having no issues shooting Myers and helping her mother trap him in the basement, which was the goal all along. They blow the house up and drive away in a truck that made me wistful for the end of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the second movie this year after The Strangers: Prey at Night to totally rip off the ending of a much better movie.

What makes the first two Halloween films work is the atmosphere — from the first frame, you realize that something inhuman is coming after Laurie Strode. The second film just amps up the pace and makes The Shape into an inhuman force that cannot be stopped. In this film, he’s just there. At no point do you feel tension from him or worry for the people he has come to kill. Things just happen. It’s sloppy, slap-dash and for all the insults lobbed at the other sequels in this franchise, much closer to parts 5 and 6 than I’m sure the filmmakers would like to admit.

This may be the first Halloween modern filmgoers see. And as such, there is no moment in it that points to what makes Michael Myers special. I can name several from the original, such as the moment where he watches Bob after he kills him or slowly rises up after we’re sure Laurie has killed him. And the end, where his body is just suddenly gone, is the stuff of nightmares. Early in the new version, Vicky’s boyfriend Dave echoes the voice of millennials, saying that Myers’ five murders aren’t such a big deal anymore in the grand scheme of things. I feel for anyone whose initial exposure to this franchise is with this film, one where Myers fails to do one remarkable thing or elicit one moment of fright.

I’ve seen plenty of reviews that state that this is the best sequel in the franchise and a return to greatness. I think that those reviews were written before anyone even saw the film, preordained so that the feel-good story of the return of a much-maligned franchise could come true. I tried to remove myself from the hype, to attempt to be surprised and enjoy Halloween 2018 on its own merits, but it really has little to none.

The sound of Michael’s breathing over the end credits signifies more than the fact that The Shape has survived. No, it means that in two years, we’ll be lining up all over again, hoping that this time perhaps someone can get what seems to be such a simple idea right.

At 3 AM, my mind works like this: “Sam, there is a movie that rips off Coma and has Linda Blair in it. We must not sleep. We must watch this.”

Director Alec Mills only did one other film, Bloodmoon, but he was a camera guy and cinematographer on several Bond films like License to Kill and Moonraker. I would assume, after watching this movie, that he did the parts that are really boring, like the travelogue footage when Bond makes it to another country.

I’m on a quest to watch every Linda Blair film, so this is part of that Quixotic endeavor. Here, she plays Maggie Healey, an American who learned to be a nurse and moved to Australia where she gets a drug-addicted rich boyfriend who likes to draw pictures of her on his sailing ship. I’m not making any of this up.

She becomes a nurse at this clinic where they advise long-term sleep therapy. Being in a medically induced coma for two weeks sounds awesome and I fully endorse whatever these wacky Aussies are doing. Unfortunately, all of the bare-breasted women and men in pajamas that they have sleeping Michael Crichton-style end up killing themselves. The drama!

I really need to get around to planning a Linda Blair week. If you want to watch it yourself, it’s on Amazon Prime.

Thanks to his work on Amicus films, Freddie Francis will always get a pass. And Jack Palance has made some of the worst movies I’ve ever seen so much better. Therefore, I wanted to like Craze way more than I ended up enjoying it.

Palance stars as antique shop owner by day, cultist by night Neal Mottram. The film starts with him sacrificing a nude woman to the African god Chuku, whom he believes will reward him with both wealth and power. Its movies like this that make being a devil worshipper seem rough and pointless. Every single turn, you have to hunt someone down, kill them, get an alibi and run from the cops. It’s a lot of work and when it’s over, you still lose your soul.

Diana Dors is in it and her life story is way more interesting than the film. She gained her first fame as a Monroe-esque blonde bombshell promoted by her first husband, Dennis Hamilton. After a career of sex comedies and Page 3-style modeling, it turned out that her husband was defrauding her. Still after that, she made further headlines by holding parties where she supplied hot young starlets and plenty of drugs to a large number of celebrities. The real stinger was that she had cameras all over the house to capture the action. The Archbishop of Canterbury even publically denounced her!

Supposedly, Dors left over 2 million pounds to her son in her will. It could be unlocked via a secret code in the possession of her third husband, actor Alan Lake, but he killed himself soon after she died from cancer. Despite the best efforts of codebreakers and even a TV special, the money has never been found.

Anyways — Craze. There are plenty of British starlets in this, too. Juli Ege from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service to name one. I chose to watch this because Suzy Kendall from Torso and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was in it. And Marianna Stone from Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? shows up as well.

It’s not horrible, but it’s very slow. Palance is great — of course he is — but even he has a lot to contend with here. You can watch it for yourself on Amazon Prime and see what you think.

Have I ever written here about how much I love Lucio Fulci? Oh that’s right — I’ve written about a few of his movies, like Aengima, The Beyond, The Black Cat, Cat in the Brain, Conquest, Contraband, Demonia, The Devil’s Honey, Don’t Torture a Duckling, The Four of the Apocalypse, House by the Cemetery, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Manhattan Baby, Murder Rock, The New York Ripper, Sodoma’s Ghost, Touch of Death, Voices from Beyond, Warriors of the Year 2072 and Zombi 2. Heck, I’ve even written about The Curse and Zombi 3, films that Fulci just did effects on or quit part way through. Yet I was missing this film — also known as One on Top of the Other — until Mondo Macabro re-released it this year.

At this point in his career, Fulci was mainly known for comedies, so the move to the giallo genre was a major shift. Bava had invented the form only six years ago with his one-two punch of The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace. And Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, which would turn the form into a genre all unto itself, wouldn’t be made until the next year. Gathering inspiration from Vertigo, Fulci felt that the script for Perversion Story ranked among his best.

Unlike many of his later films, this movie enjoys a decent budget, with eight weeks of principal photography and location shooting in San Francisco, Reno and Sacramento, including a gas chamber sequence shot at the San Quentin State Prison.

George Dumurrier (Jean Sorel, Belle du Jour) is the protagonist, a wealthy doctor who runs a clinic with his younger brother Henry (Alberto de Mendoza, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh). He’s leading a double life. He’s caring for his asthma-stricken wife Susan, (played by Marisa Mell, just as gorgeous here as she is in Danger: Diabolik and could be the ultimate Fulci girl, as she nearly lost her right eye in a 1963 auto accident, with the distinctive curl of her upper lip the only remaining evidence of the damage) while he’s also having an affair with Jane (Elsa Martinelli, The 10th Victim).

George and Jane travel to Reno for a romantic getaway whole Susan remains in the care of her sister Marta (Faith Domergue, The House of Seven Corpses) and a nurse. Jane confesses that while she loves our hero, she doesn’t see any future in their relationship. There’s an amazing scene here where we watch the lovers from under the bed — Fulci almost shoots it as if the camera is below them and we’re caught in the space between reality and dream, true life and forbidden passion.

When they arrive at a casino, George has a message waiting from his brother: his wife is dead. Returning home to San Francisco, George meets the disapproving gaze of Marta who believes that he has to be behind her sister’s death, as he stands to receive $1 million dollars in life insurance, money he desperately needs for his business. That said, an insurance agent has been following George and Jane and informs police inspector Wald (John Ireland, I Saw What You Did, The Incubus) of his findings.

In the midst of all this scandal, George and Jane get an anonymous tip that leads them to The Roading Twenties strip club, where they meet Monica, an exotic dancer who looks exactly like Susan with blonde hair — shades of Vertigo fed through Italian sleaze! Monica and George begin an affair that may start with him seeking answers but ends with him being seduced. Fulci masterfully frames these scenes with Monica/Susan in positions of submission while obviously being the one in control of every single action that she allows to happen. For someone who would later contribute to some of cinema’s most stomach-churning excesses, this sequence is an exercise in beauty.

What’s striking about Perversion Story is that on the surface, the film seems like its going to be pure exploitation. But even in moments like when we first see Monica at the strip club, she is the only girl on stage clothed. And she appears on a motorcycle, at the time seen as the very symbol of male independence, mastering and dominating it, in complete control of her sexuality. She owns the entire room and every gaze — male and female — within it.

The police arrest Monica — due process be damned in late 60’s giallo — and she informs them that she’s an in-demand callgirl who was hired to pose as Susan by a woman she only knows as Betty. Fulci again stages an incredible looking scene here as the police begin testing the evidence and autopsy, as the screen fills with no less than five different frames all containing splashes of color and movement, a look and feel that Ang Lee would later attempt in his 2003 version of The Hulk. Again, a rare example of constraint by Fulci here, as we only see a hint of the corpse instead of actually seeing viscera.

Benjamin Wormser (Riccardo Cucciolla, Rabid Dogs) comes to bail out Monica, as he is one of her most besotten clients. However, when he arrives at the station, he learns that her expensive bail has already been arranged by someone the police will not reveal. There’s also a great interrogation scene here where Jane conducts a sexually charged photo shoot with Monica, all to learn why his life has been turned upside down. They need to know — who was his wife’s nurse Elizabeth O’Neal and where is she now? This scene sets up everything we expect from the girl on girl seduction scene, yet it’s all in the service of advancing the plot, something usually unheard of in the genre.

As the police search Monica’s apartment, they discover an envelope filled with money and marked with George’s fingerprints. While the femme fatale goes missed, Goerge is arrested, tried and convicted for his wife’s murder. On the eve of his execution, Henry visits and spills the entire plot to him. Monica really is Susan and they faked her death to get the money and leave him to pay for the crime, with the dead body really being the missing nurse. Of course, we already know this, thanks to a bravura scene where Monica sheds her blonde tresses and contact lenses in an airport bathroom, transforming herself into the woman she has always been, Susan. There’s even a POV shot that puts the viewer directly into the role of the customs officer reviewing her passport.

As Henry leaves his brother to rot, George tries in vain to get anyone to listen and Inspector Wald’s investigation comes up short. The only person left who believes in him is Jane. We follow him from his cell to the gas chamber, but it looks like there will be no last-minute reprieve. Or will there be? As the film intercuts between Henry and Susan’s romantic reunion and George being prepared for the gas chamber, the answer reveals itself. Keep your eyes open for an appearance by Bobby Rhodes from Demons as a prison guard!

Truthfully, George is out of control and powerless for the entire running time as the results of her actions. Even the denouement is out of his control — we hear the end of the story from a reporter and none of the film’s heroic figures have anything to do with the close. It’s the film’s most pathetic character that actually closes off the tale.

Perversion Story doesn’t have all of the trademarks of the giallo — multiple on-camera murders, POV shots of mayhem and black-gloved killers. But don’t let that keep you from watching. I can sum this film up in one word: gorgeous. You can really feel the spirit of the late 60’s and pop art in every single frame, making this look and feel unlike any other film in Fulci’s catalog. Instead of splatter and dread, you get longing gazes at Marisa Mell. Trust me — it’s not a bad trade-off. Throw in a jazz score by Cannibal Holocaust composer Riz Ortolani and you have the complete package.

Now, Mondo Macabro has released what they refer to as the longest, most complete form of the movie ever released (Severin released the French version in 2007). Complete with an uncut 108-minute version with English and Italian audio tracks restored from the original negative (with additional scenes provided by a 35mm print), this edition also features interviews with Jean Sorel and Elsa Martinelli, as well as an incredibly insightful commentary on the movie by Stephen Thrower, author of the book Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci. Credit where credit is due — this version of the film looks incredible, fully realizing Fulci’s color choices and sumptuous imagery. You can grab a copy yourself at their site or on Diabolik DVD.

Disclaimer: I was sent this film by Mondo Macabro for review and in no way did that impact my review.

I love Comet. It’s like having old-time TV back, finding movies that you never knew existed as they are beamed directly into your home without you having to search for them. One Sunday afternoon, before a great nap, I discovered this one.

The Vicious Lips are trying to become the biggest rock band in the galaxy. Made up of Bree Synn (Gina Calabrese, The Dungeonmaster), Wynzi Krodo (Linda Kerridge, Marilyn from Fade to Black!) and Mandaa UUeu (Shayne Farris, who was also in Down Twisted with Kerridge), they’ve just lost their lead singer Ace to, well, death and need to get to a gig across the universe. Luckily, they find Judy Jetson (Dru-Anne Perry, who also plays Ace) and give her their dead singer’s name and get on their way.

I wanted to love this movie based on the first ten minutes or so, but then I realized that it came from Albert Pyun (The Sword And The Sorcerer, Cannon’s Captain America), so I had to adjust my excitement level. Here I was, hoping to get a movie about a punk rock girl band hellraising through the cosmos with the art direction of Heavy Metal and what I got was a hair ballad playing girl group slowly moving in a boring plot with art direction by whoever did the Rinse Dream’s Cafe Flesh or The Dark Brothers’ movies. That doesn’t sound like a bad thing actually. But here it is, as this film commits the cardinal sin of being boring.

If you still want to watch it, Shout! Factory has released it on blu-ray and you can watch it for free with your Amazon Prime membership.