The now semi-retired film critic Nathan Lee, when writing at his most unfettered, is one part connoisseur, one part provocateur, one part contrarian, and three parts…well, probably best not to go into that. He’s not afraid of passionate advocacy, or of stirring shit up, or of pissing people off. He contains multitudes; witness his most recent defense of director Richard Kelly in Film Comment (not online, alas; it’s in the Nov./Dec. 2009 issue), wherein he seems to embrace a “it’s-so-bad-it’s-good” perspective on the abysmal Southland Tales before going on to castigate its detractors (e.g., the folks who pointed out how bad it was, you see what I’m getting at here) as “mental midgets.” When you go back, you realize he’s not really embracing a so-bad-it’s-good reading of Tales, but something considerably more complex. Something that, as far as I’m concerned, gives Kelly too much credit, and is pretty untenable.
But anyway. My point is, for as many unpleasant exchanges as we might have had, and as irritating I’ve often found some of his provocations, Lee is both a genuinely sharp writer and what one should consider un vrai critic (in the same sense that Godard pronounced Scorsese’s New York, New York “un vrai film”). Which is one reason why I thought it would be worth the time and effort to take his high praise of both 2007’s Halloween and 2009’s Halloween 2, rethinks of the John-Carpenter-originated 70s horror myth by rocker-turned-filmmaker Rob Zombie, seriously.
Now by “high praise,” I’m referring to plaudits that have scant prose backup. Lee hasn’t written at length about either picture. [UPDATE: This assertion, as Lee reminds us in comments, is incorrect. Lee wrote about Halloween at some length in an article for Film Comment’s March/April 2008 issue. Sorry for the error, and for having missed the piece.] The sole testimony to his regard for Halloween 2 is its number two place on his 2009 Ten Best list for indieWire, right between The Headless Woman and Summer Hours, two pictures I myself have a very very great love for. As for Zombie’s first Halloween, there’s a very brief Village Voice review in which Lee describes the picture as “a biopic, and a superb one at that…every bit as reverent, scrupulous, and deeply felt as any Oscar grubbing horrorshow.” One would hope for something more reverent, etc., than an Oscar grubber, but you see his point. In terms of evidentiary support, Lee asks us to consider the film’s “strange circumspection, the discipline of tone, the utter lack of snark, the absolute denial of gore-for-gore’s sake.”
I have to say, Lee is on to something here. Whatever Zombie’s talents and/or limitations as a filmmaker, his Halloween is, absolutely, conscientiously determined to respect its material. A near-obsessive student of the horror genre (hell, I used to run into the fellow back when they had the Chiller Theater Expos in East Rutherford before the Meadowlands Hilton…), he’s an apt pupil with respect to both visuals and mood. But his style, at its best, is not without humor. I was particularly taken by the hilariously overdetermined horizontal planes (see almost any widescreen Italian horror flick from the ’70s) and the blown-out lighting (see, of course, Kubrick’s The Shining) in the shot at top, in which Malcolm McDowell’s Dr. Loomis examines young family-killer Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch). As for the actual content, well, the specifics of young Mr. Myers’ family situation do tend to lay on the white-trash histrionics pretty thick (and one suspects that Mr. Zombie learned most of what he knows about white trash from watching Spider Baby and such), but the scenario itself is not unconvincing and is conveyed with genuine verve. So much so that the viewer can actually feel Zombie’s interest level dropping at the point wherein he’s obliged to explicitly revisit the Carpenter original.
So I’m happy to give Nathan his head here (can you believe I just said that?), with the caveat that, despite much of what he says about the film being absolutely correct, it is correct within the context of that the film demonstrates no actually compelling reason to exist. Beyond the fact that, you know, some people thought they could make a shitload of money rebooting the Halloween franchise and Zombie considered himself the person who could do the job with the most…respect.
Halloween 2 presents some knottier problems. I had heard that it was in some respects an inversion of Zombie’s initial Myers picture in that it was pretty much an almost unmitigated stab fest. As I was going to be watching it with not just an eye to what it actually was, but what Sir Lee saw in it that compelled him to place it between two whatcha-might-call-bonafide art films in his 2009’s ten best list, I tried to imagine the possibilities. Could this be Zombie’s version of a post-structuralist film? A Jeanne Dielman pulled inside-out, with endless violent stabbings substituted for the peeling of potatoes?
As it happens, the film begins promisingly, brutally. The images are very nearly drained of color, making the copious blood decorating the bodies of the two survivors of Myers look almost black. The chronicling of various medical procedures is both gruesome and matter-of-fact. The hospital atmosphere is grey, oppressive. An old TV clip of The Moody Blues lip-synching “Nights in White Satin” plays on a seeming loop on various television sets. As the looming, silent Myers infiltrates the hospital, in search of his sister Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton), the atmosphere grows ever more dank. Outside it’s pouring buckets.
This great shot of the soaked, and soaking, hospital parking lot at one point intimated to me just what a great, revolutionary horror film Halloween 2 could be. A film in which the instances of violence became so insistently numbing that the real horror lay in the interstices, the moments in which nothing was happening. These moments usually function as a way of building tension; in the opening half hour of Halloween 2 they signify a nihilistic blankness, affectless space. Genuinely negative space, as it were.
I have to admit, I was pretty impressed. But then…spoiler alert…most of the above, if not all of the above, turned out to be a dream sequence. A damn fine dream sequence, but a dream sequence nonetheless. And the film devolved from there, a victim, among other things, of Zombie’s defects as a writer. He turns the Loomis character into an opportunistic, vicious media whore, and limp satire ensues; his account of Laurie’s psychological torture pretty much subsists of the character mocking self-help bromides and then screaming “fuck” over and over again; and so on. Which isn’t to say that some nice touches don’t appear. Certain subsequent dream sequences also impress, and show that Zombie’s absorbed not just some Joel Peter Witkin but some Carl Theodor Dreyer; the sight of the Myers matriarch materializing in white in the middle of the strip club where she used to work is an almost Lynchian vision; and the way he dresses up the heroine and her pals in Rocky Horror Picture Show costumes for a climactic party scene shows some commendable cross-culture-critique ambition. But that part scene is precisely where Zombie lets the movie get away from him for good, spending way too much film on the less-than-awesome “psychobilly” band Captain Clegg and the Night Creatures, allowing whatever tension he’s built go slack, and erecting yet another banal promiscuous teen abattoir.
For all that, to entirely dismiss Halloween 2 seems, to my mind, a mistake. But that doesn’t mean that putting it on one’s ten best list doesn’t constitute a form of overcompensating. Or something. Sorry, Nathan!
Glenn, I wrote about HALLOWEEN II at length for The House Next Door. Zombie is highly problematic as a director, to be sure, but…how to put this. He’s got sand.
I tried to put together an accurate picture of Zombie’s assets and liabilities – both of which are considerable, I think.
So if you have time to spare:
http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2009/11/you-the-horror-halloween-ii-2009/
Forgive the cut-n-paste from Facebook, but:
“Whatever Zombie’s talents and/or limitations as a filmmaker…” Sorry Glenn, but you’re unlikely to discover those only by looking at his (admittedly highly personalized) works-for-hire. I’m with Nathan 100%, and I put HOUSE OF A THOUSAND CORPSES on my 10-best-of-the-decade list, and EL SUPERBEASTO on my best-of-09 lists, and that very reason. Expand your field of vision a bit and you might begin to see what the fuss is about.
As for this wholly retarded comment: “…and one suspects that Mr. Zombie learned most of what he knows about white trash from watching Spider Baby and such…” – jesus, one hardly knows where to begin. How about: there’s nothing remotely resembling any standard definition of “white trash’ in Jack Hill’s wholly underrated and every-frame-a-classic SPIDER BABY. And that “…and such…” totally gives your ignorance away: there are no other films like SPIDER BABY! Hill’s masterpiece is so ahead of its time, and still so little understood that most folks might let you get away with this bullshit. I certainly won’t. Try actually watching that film. Again. Then we’ll discuss.
Allow me to rephrase on line above: I put HOUSE OF 1000 and SUPERBEASTO on my lists out of admiration for Zombie’s (contemporarily) peerless filmmaking – though I also agree with Nathan Lee’s high marks for the HALLOWEENs in every respect.
I wrote about Zombie’s first HALLOWEEN at some length in a piece I did last year (maybe the year before?) on horror remakes for FILM COMMENT. Worth a look.
” it is correct within the context of that the film demonstrates no actually compelling reason to exist.”
Well, despite Chuck’s nuanced appraisal I must agree with you Mr. Kenny. I think the biggest problem with Rob Zombie’s filmmaking (and don’t get one started on his musical career), and, yes, this does pertain to House of 1000 Corpses (his “personal” works as Chuck may have it), is quite simple: He knows his chops, he has clearly studied the horror genre and has an awareness of how it works technically (his films I would say are mired in their never-ending games of reference), but, simply stated, he just isn’t that smart. There is an emptiness to much of his work beyond the references and knowledge of the genre (though I think his knowledge is more that of tropes and visual/audio techniques) he just isn’t intelligent enough to have anything interesting to say.
Much of the original Haloween, despite being shot in California and it showing at times, is about the rhythms and realities of growing up in the suburbs. Perhaps the best moments of the film are those mid/late afternoon shots and sequences of walking around in the ‘burbs.
Ugh. Zombie has an eye, but so does Eli Roth, and I don’t see where all this praise for Zombie is coming from. HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES is a hopeless movie, until the end which is weird enough, to no good end, to fool people into thinking Zombie has Lynch-like chops. THE DEVIL’S REJECTS is effectively nasty at times, but so morally bankrupt by the end (William Forsythe was just as bad! Don’t ask me how, he just was!) that I’d be tempted to give credit to Zombie for making a nice little joke, if so many people didn’t swallow it whole. Which is maybe their problem, not Zombie’s, but I have my doubts.
As for his HALLOWEENs.…it’s just more of the same. Zombie is a miserable writer, whose not-even-armchair psychoanalysis of Myers robs his film of any true dread, or mystery, which is an element of horror films that is sorely lacking these days. Why in the world would you want to explain Myers? And how could you think that giving him a drunk dad and stripper mom is somehow good enough? Biopic? That’s the problem! Biopics are simpleton’s genre, thinking cherry-picked moments describe and explain the whole of someone’s life. To cherry-pick moments to describe and explain why someone becomes a hulking butcher of his fellow human beings is, well, simple.
Again, Zombie has an eye, and I would agree that it’s best displayed in the HALLOWEEN films. But his good eye, which only works occasionally to begin with, never connects to anything worthwhile. As Glenn says, it indicates what could be, in Zombie were a much, much better filmmaker, which he’s not.
I hestitate to say all this, lest Chuck Stephens call me retarded, but there it is.
The missus and I were reasonably impressed with the first hour or so of Mr. Zombie’s Halloween, though we almost turned it off somewhere between the impossible-to-wash-out-of-my-brain lines “I’m going to skull-fuck the shit out of you” and “Fuck you, sit on my pole right now”. We agree that that white-trashy unpleasantness was a little thick, even if thick was what he was going for. And the second hour was mostly competent but nothing spectacular or, as you say, necessary.
And HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES is the most noxious piece of shit I’d seen in a long time, and I still haven’t forgiven the friends who dragged me to it, or the minor siblings who I had deputized to take to it. That’s right, I had to sit through it twice, and for me, it did not improve on a second viewing, though I’ll admit that I’m probably not the right audience for it. I hear his second film is much better but never really felt compelled to take the dive after slogging through the first.
As far as Halloween films go, let me say that besides the first one, my favourite would have to be the fifth. Psychic-link mumbo-jumbo and the comedy-relief policemen aside, it has some very appealing characters, is loaded with atmosphere, and contains the single most frightening sequence in the franchise– the little girl trapped in the laundry chute. That moment is intense and extremely cinematic.
Chuck Stephens, Nuanced Retard – get my business card printer on the horn!
Did you view the DC or theatrical cuts of these movies? Very different animals, I discovered.
Personally, I’m in love with Zombie’s HALLOWEEN II, if for no other reason than that the movie goes back to finish the job on survivors of the first film. In a year where I experienced the futile death of a friend, Myers’ ultimate inexorability across two movies with the same characters cut to the bone of mortality much more profoundly for me than the antiseptic grief of the SUMMER HOURS bourgies. Between HII and ANTICHRIST, it was a great year for the depressed horror picture.
(I also love that Zombie shot HII in grungy 16mm. That’s putting your money where your mouth is.)
@ Alexander – I see where you’re coming from – more than most, as THE DEVIL’S REJECTS made me unbelievably angry – but I’d be in trouble if I had to jettison films that I love based on whether or not they had “something to say.” On the other hand, I’ve always tried to be on the side of looking at what the films ARE and what they DO. At the risk of putting myself across as a pure formalist (I ain’t; too much pleasure would be excluded in that decision), two of the most important aspects of movies are also the two most frequently left out of the discussion: (1) what is the image, and (2) what does the cut do to it. Safer for reviewers to search for the ninety-nine-thousandth way to recount the plot with delight or derision.
Mr. Kenny described a handful of evocative images in H/H2. (I haven’t read Mr. Lee’s FC article, but I will if I find it.) Apart from those, I was also overwhelmed by an early close-up in H2, of the wounded passenger in the medical examiner’s van (after the crash), bleeding, pale, and saying “fuck!” over and over and over and over again. I can’t call H2 great film, but I don’t negotiate with images in terms of “so bad it’s good”… this was simply, to me, a great image.
I mentioned this in my essay for THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR. I also pointed out another cut – midway through the film – that probably nobody noticed because it’s pure scene-setting. Zombie shows a wide shot of the Brackett home. Then he cuts to a wider shot. I don’t know what this cut “says,” but it galvanized the image for me. That’s what it DID.
Something that occurred to me while watching H2, in terms of methodology: Zombie strikes me as a filmmaker who shoots miles and miles of footage for most scenes, giving the in-between-the-gore sequences a decided lack of forward momentum – i.e. those scenes are built vertically rather than horizontally. I’ll bet you five dollars he shoots with two cameras, just like (supposedly) Ridley Scott. Contrast this with the Correct Method for Filming: wide/master shot, medium shot medium shot medium shot, close-ups because the stars’ agents said we had to, repeat. Does Zombie’s alternative a success? I think so.
The “money” scenes, as well as the “haunting” images, on the other hand, are handled with quite a bit more “one chance to get it right.” I’m less inclined to think the images in those scenes – some of which Mr. Kenny has posted overhead – are the result of a guy who’s not that smart.
@ Bill – I don’t sense a groundswell of support for Zombie. A couple of writers – me included – are trying to come to grips with what he’s doing. Folks who have written him off are not in short supply. And there’s his dialogue, which I can’t defend from any angle.
Jaime: Perhaps I went to far in castigating Mr. Zombie (when one uses the NY Times style-guide for his name it brings up all sorts of issues) for not having anything “interesting to say”, though I would offer that is different than not having “something to say.” It isn’t about the message implied by the latter so much as the lack of intelligence of the former.
I agree with you that films should not be judged simply on the message they want to impart, and your two examples of neglected analysis of movies are spot on (looking at what a film does, and how it does this, alongside the questioning of the image and the cut ((and this would also go hand in hand with the corresponding audio)) is righfully important and unfortunately neglected). One doesn’t always have to have a profound message, and many are the movie that thinks this is what matters and are absolute shit as a result, but should hopefully have a thought behind the images and editing, etc. I think even on this level Zombie is often lost. While there are moments of interesting images/edits/etc as you offer they are surrounded by so many of ineptitude and contradiction that they seem more like happy accidents than profound investigations or innovations or statements of the very techniques of narrative filmmaking, or simply succesfull moments of filmmaking, be it focused on the visual/audio, narrative, or rhythms, etc etc. Again, perhaps this is going too far rhetorically. Let me rephrase this:
I appreciate the examples you’ve brought up and do not deny that there are moments in his films that are shot/edited well, though I would say this is not particularly consistent and thus they seem to be the techniques of genre he has picked up that work and he often fails to discern these from those he utilizes that don’t work, which are many. His films seem scattershot (and not in an intentional stylistic way that seems purposeful) and that may be a basis for the lack of intelligence I see (the inability to discern what works in in the abstract and concrete of movie-making from what doesn’t).
To go back to the point of having anything “interesing” to say versus “something” to say, I think it is quite an important distinction and one that underlies many discussions of films. One need not have a polemical message but one should have thoughts upon which images, sounds, edits are based. I don’t critique Rob Zombie’s films for lacking the “something”, as you say many films don’t do this and should be appreciated and looked at for how they do what they do (and they can be great films), but for their lack of the “interesting” which here stands in for a depth of thought (which can be found in a Russ Meyer film as much as a Straub-Huillet, it is not meant as elitest/cultured designation) that I have yet to feel or find in Zombie’s films.
Alexander – what can I say? I won’t contradict you on anything you say against his films. It’s true that they are bad! They wear a badge of badness. But the security in that conclusion doesn’t satisfy me, when bad films stir my interest – at that point, I treat the “bad” label as a flywheel, spinning independently of what I find in the image and the cutting. I don’t have an agenda to promote HALLOWEEN II to the pantheon – in fact, I would prefer to sit out the promote/demote game when I feel it limits conversation.
After a friend had looked over my Unexamined Essentials directory (which was inaugurated with the 2009 list, featuring… yes… HALLOWEEN II; the 1997 list goes live in less than an hour), he observed that my agenda was similar to what contemporary Cahierists are doing with their annual top 10s – aside from promoting auteurism, they would “play the high and low against the middle.” Not do denigrate the great films of the “middle,” but…they do not lack for spotlight. (They sometimes win Academy Awards.)
Um…where was I going…after blatant self-promotion…um…
Yes. Just this: I’m not looking to convert you re H2, or Zombie. My moviegoing last year was so sparse, my top 10 only has 7 titles, and none of them are H2. To give you an idea. If what I consider Zombie’s visual intelligence didn’t happen for you, I can at least guarantee that you *will* find it in low-brow films, at least as frequently as in any other risky moviegoing adventure. (Like going to a film festival.) I guess it’s all about trying to be flexible.
@ Jaime: That’s an interesting piece, and well worth the time of anybody who is interested in the subject. Sorry to have missed it the first time around.
@ Chuck: Oh, you, so quick to take offense. It’s entirely legitimate to object to the flippancy of my “Spider Baby” reference, and it was probably an ill-advised one, all things considered. But it did not constitute a slam at that film, any more than saying “X learned everything he knows about music boxes from ‘Rules of the Game’ ” would have constituted a slam on “Rules of the Game.” It’s true I probably could have chosen a more germane example, but it was Saturday morning. My bad.
@ Nathan Lee: “Worth a look.” If you may say so yourself. Alas, I’m missing that issue, and probably missed it back then, which is too bad, as it would have been nice to have it on hand.
As for Zombie’s other films, I find them interesting insofar as they’re attempts to craft grindhouse movies that are both self-conscious and yet aspire to a certain unselfconsciousness. Which is a whole other ball of wax that I may or may not look at some other time.
Can we get a review/analysis/critical beatdown of the current crème de la crème of the crop of current horror cinema?
I refer, surprisingly, to the French, particularly “Martyrs” and “Inside”.
It’s not on-line, but your “Synecdoche, New York” fellow roundtabler Walter Chaw wrote ’em up in the latest Film Freak Central annual. Fucker was so persuasive that I rewatched “Martyrs” just to see it through is eyes, and while I’m not quite as keen on it as he is, the film does have, as you so eloquently phrased it above, “instances of violence becomming so insistently numbing that the real horror lay in the interstices, the moments in which nothing was happening.”
“Inside”, however, is where it’s fucking at. Beatrice Dalle in a horror film = epic win!
I’ve already hated myself for it. You deserve better.
p.s. I like Eli Roth’s films more each time I see them.
@ maximilian: I’m gonna wait before I tackle those French ones.
I don’t know if I’m getting old or mellowing out or what, but watching the two Zombie pictures back-to-back gave me a strong urge to revisit “The Music Man” some time soon.
But speaking of Beatrice Dalle in a horror film, what do you make of Claire Denis’ “Trouble Every Day?” THAT I could watch again, even at this very moment.
Glenn: oh yes. Oh yes oh yes. In fact, I just recently rented it, this time for the special lady friend, who has been jonesing for any and all vampire related film/books of late. I sold it to her as a vamp flick, with Vincent Gallo, and she was keen on viewing it, though she’s pretty sensitive to horror fare in general.
For the first hour or so, while loving every second of it, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out just why I hadn’t rented it for her previously.
And then, not to spoil anything, THE scene happened.
Oh my oh my oh my.
She was in a conundrum during the scene; sure, clasping your hands over your eyes to the horror, the horror is one thing, but then what was she to do about the slurping, munching, “schlupping” (to paraphrase Bill Lee in “Naked Lunch”) sound pumping from the speakers?
Being a wishy-washy stoner, I can’t do top 10 lists for years, let alone decades, but if I did, “Trouble Every Day” would not only be top 3 for horror films of the decade, but might even crack the top 10 overall.
Jaime, perhaps this conversation has run its course, but dosh garn it if I can’t help myself to try and clarify myself a little. It was never my attempt to say it is worth dismissing a film entirely bad as it may be, particularly when there is something that stirs your interest. It is that piqué of interest that is fascinating as a viewer and well worth examining. Lord knows there are many movies that I consider “bad” but maintain an interest in. I never meant what I said to come off as some elitest dismissal, I hope it wasn’t taken as such. I won’t strive for credibility by naming “low” films, to use the terminology in place, I like/love/have an interest in as that seems both sad and unnecesary, but sufice to say the point that I was dismissing a whole means of looking at, and a whole class of films (or even breaking films into “classes”), was far from what I offered.
I guess the salvagable point I was trying to make was I personally hadn’t had that experience with R. Zombie’s films, and those moments that did occur I found surrounded by things I found to run counter to them, hence the statement that I find him lacking in intelligence in that I think he gets lost in his own filmmaking and perhaps this is where the distinction of “interesting”, though maybe lacking, points to a thought behind the construction. I realize know that this also may not account accurately for my own thoughts as there are certainly instances where an amateurism, or something of the sort, yields tremendous results, so perhaps one has to fall back on a term as vague as “sensibility.” Ugh, murky waters here. That said, there can always be moments in movies one finds to be failing that rise above the tedium and do strike one’s fancy or interest.
Anyways, I didn’t take you to be proselytizing for H2. I don’t feel I need to be reminded that I “*will* find it in low-brow films, at least as frequently as in any other risky moviegoing adventure. (Like going to a film festival.) I guess it’s all about trying to be flexible…” as my qualms here were with specific Rob Zombie films not all so called “low-brow” films.
Fuck it, maybe my problem with his movies is I just can’t divorce the man from that god-awful music he spent so many years peddling.
RZ’s music is what kept me away from his films until just a year ago. Thankfully, though it wouldn’t be right to suggest that the films and the music are worlds apart (they obviously aren’t, from his band’s name on down), there are such significant differences that one can easily hold them at arm’s length from one another. The films – HTC, TDR and EL SUPERBEASTO especially – reward genre aficionados on so many levels that those pleasures tend to mostly compensate for the moments when you can all but hear Robin Wood shrieking in horror at what those “revolutionary” 70s American horror films he so admired and brilliantly explicated have lately wrought; and the performances of Moseley, Haig and Ms. Zombie are indelible in every respect.
Alex – muddy waters indeed. But that’s cool.
I think we see things similarly, if we differ on today’s subject. Good talk, hope to see you around!
@Glenn: “I don’t know if I’m getting old or mellowing out or what, but watching the two Zombie pictures back-to-back gave me a strong urge to revisit “The Music Man” some time soon.”
Sweet!
If that doesn’t suit, may I recommend “Mother Wore Tights”?
It’s Ed Hulse’s favorite Betty Grable too.
I hated INSIDE. Nobody asked me, but I did.
I’m not the biggest Zombie fan, but damn “House of 1,000 Corpses” is bold, scary and downright terrifying filmmaking. That final 30 minutes… talk about a horror film going down the rabbit hole.
And I think we’re all forgetting the real surprise here is Lee’s choosing of “Next Day Air” as his number 6 film? Now there’s some rationalizing I’d love to hear.…
“Lee hasn’t written at length about either picture. ” If you may say so yourself.
I consider the DVD director’s editions of Zombie’s “Halloween” and “Halloween II” to be a masterful (not saying flawless) diptych, as inseparable from each other in my heart and mind as his peer QT’s “Kill Bill“ ‘s. I’ve gotten some eye-rolls in invoking everything from Jorge Luis Borges (“Pierre Menard and the Quixote” specifically) to Fritz Lang’s “Mabuse” films in describing their effects—the ways in which they work/feed off of each other and their antecedents. But I’m putting it all out there regardless, because these films have a potent emotional undercurrent that I want to try and illuminate. (In addition to Jaime’s essay, I have a long-in-the-queue convo on the first film with Nick Schager and a recently recorded convo on the second film with Jeremiah Kipp, both of which will hopefully go up on The House Next Door sooner rather than later. Lazy editor just gotta transcribe.) These are serious works of art worth much more consideration than they’ve been given. Glad you grappled with them, Glenn.
Certain though I am that I should just leave all this nonsense alone, two aspects of this thread (how’s that for flattering the term) stick with me:
1] this comment from “Jaime”: “I’ll bet you five dollars he shoots with two cameras, just like (supposedly) Ridley Scott.”
Question: if RZ used two (or more) cameras, how would that differentiate him from any three dozen other Hollywood action directors of the last thirty or forty years, including Peckinpah, John Woo, McG, Tony and his brother Ridley, and on and on?
2] the way “Alexander Vladimirovich” drones on here for paragraph after paragraph without having a SINGLE specific thing to say about any of RZ’s films, though he does makes it quite clear that he regards the director as stupid. Don’t take my word for it: go back and read what Ignatiy, er, Alexander wrote: not a SINGLE specific thing. You know, examples – those things people with something to say deploy to dissipate their own hot air.
He does have this to say about the Carpenter version though: “Much of the original Haloween, despite being shot in California and it showing at times, is about the rhythms and realities of growing up in the suburbs.”
If everyone who grew up in “the suburbs” (as if the suburbs in Idaho bore some identicality with the suburbs in Maine) was a blonde babysitter with perfect grades whose entire existence consisted of coming home from school, smoking a little pot and being terrorized by an unkillable entity, that might be true. Sadly, such a description is just more hapless reaching on that writer’s part, and about on par with saying that Chinatown is a study of 1930s automobiles: remotely related to the subject at hand, but about as far from the point as one could get.
I haven’t seen the Zombie Halloweens (I prefer to celebrate Dias de los Muertos these days), but I guess I’ll give ’em a try. I had no idea, until I saw that still at the top of this post, that Michael Haneke was in the 2007 film.
Finally though (yeah right), I’m mainly upset that Glenn never mentioned the PHI ZAPPA CRAPPA poster in RZ’s H2.
Not sure I understand the question, Chuck. How can I help you?
Sometimes, I have a hard time believing I’m even reading this thread.
CS,
I’m not Alexander Vladimirovich.
Jaime, I guess reading the question would be a good place to start. It’s in English.
bill, why are you?
I, peas in a pod; my gripes stand.
You’re awfully defensive, Chuck. For Christ sake, Jaime even agrees with you! Why are you being so rude?
Aware it’s in English. It didn’t take. Mind elaborating? Just pretend you’re talking to someone not as smart as you.
Exactly how am I being defensive? I asked a very simple question. Jamie said he didn’t understand it, which I find hard to believe. I suggested he reread it.
Asking questions without responding to those you’ve been asked is considered in some circles…rude.
Chuck, I suggest you reread pretty much every comment you’ve left so far. You came in here spoiling for a fight. Nobody’s giving it to you, so you’re trying to start one. Endearing.
G’night, folks.
crushed tho i am not to have endeared myself to wee bill…
jamie, the question was, again, quite simple: you seemed to think it somehow novel (and perhaps connected to your notion (if not SE’s) of “vertical” montage) that RZ might shoot with two cameras. i asked why that might seem so, since it has been an industry-wide, nay, global commonplace for decades.
is it coming through at all?
Nope, still not getting it. Can you dumb it down a little?
Not to go off topic but…hey, how about those Saints?
Also (and I know Chuck will appreciate this), that ghastly Who medley’s the closest that Terry Riley music is ever gonna get to a Super Bowl. I was tickled, at least a bit.
Play nice!
As low as I go (and sorry, Jamie, I’m just not at your level), Glenn always manages to brighten the mood.
Nite-nite, lovers…
Chuck Stephens, I love you and accept you.
And a big gooble-gobble to you too.
Here’s the problem with Zombie: whenever he puts in an effort, you can see him being a talented filmmaker. The problem is, he works on about half the movie. “The Devil’s Rejects” should move like you’re being chased, and instead it slows to a crawl right when it shouldn’t. That plus the use of Southern-fried rock is just laughable. That “Freebird” ending just doesn’t work, and the problem is, that should have been obvious from the first freakin’ draft.
“Halloween” and “Halloween 2” are OK, but they’re god-awful next to their source material and highlight Zombie’s…unnecessary contributions to the story. My problem with them as horror movies is they’re neither scary nor interesting. Zombie’s eye has improved, but quite frankly, his interview in the movie “Heckler” is instructive: anybody who doesn’t like Rob Zombie movies just has to be a jealous fanboy or a snob because he’s a B‑movie genius.
“the way “Alexander Vladimirovich” drones on here for paragraph after paragraph without having a SINGLE specific thing to say about any of RZ’s films, though he does makes it quite clear that he regards the director as stupid. Don’t take my word for it: go back and read what Ignatiy, er, Alexander wrote: not a SINGLE specific thing. You know, examples – those things people with something to say deploy to dissipate their own hot air.”
” totally gives your ignorance away: there are no other films like SPIDER BABY! Hill’s masterpiece is so ahead of its time, and still so little understood that most folks might let you get away with this bullshit. I certainly won’t.”
“I put HOUSE OF 1000 and SUPERBEASTO on my lists out of admiration for Zombie’s (contemporarily) peerless filmmaking”
“The films – HTC, TDR and EL SUPERBEASTO especially – reward genre aficionados on so many levels that those pleasures tend to mostly compensate for the moments when you can all but hear Robin Wood shrieking in horror at what those “revolutionary” 70s American horror films he so admired and brilliantly explicated have lately wrought”
‑Chuck Stephens
“Some think they are crafty as a fox but leave their artists pockets inanimate
But i dont hang with hypocrites so I just split on some man shit” —Company Flow
“If everyone who grew up in “the suburbs” (as if the suburbs in Idaho bore some identicality with the suburbs in Maine) was a blonde babysitter with perfect grades whose entire existence consisted of coming home from school, smoking a little pot and being terrorized by an unkillable entity, that might be true.”
Yes, because one can get nothing out of reading Proust unless they are an upper-class Frenchman in the teens and 20’s, and Frederick Exley offers nothing to us unless we are situated exactly in New York in the 60’s and JR is always foreign unless we also were on Long Island in the early 70’s. Art has no means of encompassing experience beyond the specificity of time and place.
But Glen, a who set with not anything the Who did pre-Tommy? Enstwhile is dead, and they played a show, what, two days after he died?, so I wasn’t expecting Boris the Spider but still…the continual neglect of their finest work. My pipe-dream was, given the medley format of the Super Bowl half-time show, a full performance of A Quick One (While He’s Away) to rival their showing up of The Rolling Stones in Rock and Roll Circus and leave it at that. Oh well.
And the masterful Terry Riley, well, I think Prince may be closer. I’ve heard they’re tapping Henry Flynt for next years half-time show.
Glenn, where did that quote about Godard harping New York, New York, come from?
Hmmm…quite a busy no-snow weekend you’ve had, y’all!
Not to tempt The Wrath of Chuck, but as to Alexander’s assertion:
“Much of the original Haloween, despite being shot in California and it showing at times, is about the rhythms and realities of growing up in the suburbs.”
Can’t say I agree with “much”, and it’s been a number of years since I saw the original, but insofar as it is an evocation of California teenagers in suburbia, I agree with the essential thrust of the assertion. High school and those desultory walks home in the afternoon, Laurie’s smart-girl social disconect(s), the sense of every separate house on the block being its own ecosystem if not universe, no matter how much Kitty Genovese-esque screaming may be issuing down that block, &c., &c. – the suburb-specificity does seem to directly inform the horror in H1. It’s true, I don’t believe Donald Pleaence practiced any medicine in the States (beyond self-medication on shoots), and yet…
I haven’t gotten around to RobZom’s Hollow-homages, but confess to finding The Devil’s Rejects to be unusually compelling, however derivative and sadistic certain of its particulars may be. Zombie is undeniably a director of actors, if admitedly one not giving Ulu Grosbard insomnia. He’s quite capable in building ensemble dynamics where even known showboaters like Steve Railsback and William Forsythe (who I LOVE in this, bill, and in pretty much everything else he’s done) aren’t allowed to dominate the narrative. I also get the sense of white trash being understood at the cellular level by Mr. Rob. Lastly, and surprisinigly for me as a musician who has precisely zero interest in his music, Zombie really knows how to use music, and rock music specifically, cinematically to create a certain lived-in depth-of-field to his films. Glenn mentions the “Knights in White Satin” usage in Halloween which sounds like Zombie assured ear at work, where the bickering of the Rejects to the car-radio accompanient of “Reelin’ in the Years” is one my favorite uses of a rock song in the history of cinema. Honest. As is the title sequence loping/freezing along to “Midnight Rambler”.
(This is, incidentally, precisely the group I will want to engage in a discourse around The Crazies remake when the time comes, as it will, for us all.)
@ James: Absolutely right about the closed-off quality of Carpenter’s suburban homes. The original HALLOWEEN is a movie whose every shot has been so endlessly ripped-off that it’s hard to even watch now, much less be scared by. But the one moment that every slasher movie in the world didn’t steal is, coincidentally, the most surreal, trenchant, and terrifying moment in the film—when Curtis is running from house to house shrieking, and each house turns off their lights. Genuinely nightmarish, and somehow beyond the grasp of the imitators.
P.S.: Oh, how I fear the CRAZIES remake! All the careful Army procedural stuff will be replaced by striding&shouting, and will we even have to suffer a happy ending?
For some reason I just can’t get KING SHIT AND THE GOLDEN BOYS out of my head.
I’m thrilled to have upset so many people here, and to think, pretty much all it took was using the word “retarded”!
A.V.‘s extensive inventory of things I’ve already written here – just in case people can’t, you know, read for themselves – is so…valuable. Certainly saves him once again from saying anything himself.
Mr. Keepnews, I don’t need any more enemies on this thread (and I agree with mostly everything else you’ve said, except that strangely inapt mention of Steve Railsback, who would have had a hard time “showboating” in the uncredited 30 seconds he spends onscreen in TDR), but this is such an excellent example of the complete disregard for any kind of specificity I have been talking about that I have include it:
“…insofar as it is an evocation of California teenagers in suburbia…”
Exactly how do you think that is so? HALLOWEEN is set in the fictional town of Haddonfield, IL – a strange setting if one really wanted to “evoke” those Cali teens and their burbs, no?
But nevermind, I’m sure A.V. can thumb through his card catalog in an effort to back you up.
Surprise, young people, on a couple of counts:
1] just because you have your own blog (and I’m not referring to GK in any way) doesn’t mean you actually know anything or have anything to say (neither does getting published in high profile magazines),
and 2] so-called real film critics can get emotionally worked-up and colossally irritating too!
Down, Chuck – yes, as opposed to “up”. I should have been more explicit in referencing this earlier reference of AV’s:
“…despite being shot in California and it showing at times…”
I may have been lax in my specifying my reference, but that doesn’t make that or any of my other comments unspecific. I guess you’ll have to trawl your own emotionally worked-up, colossally irritating card catalog to find a so-called real film-critical insult that will stick. Meantime, I won’t take up alot of time giving a shit.
I was well aware of the connection between yr comment and AV’s earlier one: I’ve actually been reading this thread.
Here’s my point, and for the last time: Carpenter (born in New York, raised in Kentucky) wrote Halloween. If he’d wanted to evoke California teens, suburbs, or anything else Californian, why set the film in Illinois? Why not set it in Pismo?
What is it that a film about teens set in a fictional town in Illinois seems to evoking about teens and towns half a continent away? Next you’ll be confessing that you learned everything you always wanted to know about teens in Tampa by watching THE DEVIL, PROBABLY.
And in what exact way are the suburbs and teenage inhabitants of Barstow equivalent to the suburbs of Santa Clara? or Pomona? or Daly City? Answer: in no particular or specific way, other than that they are stocked with young people and located in America.
Next time you want to take a jab at insulting me, try coming up with some vocabulary of your own.
I imagine myself, Seinfeld-like, wandering into a particularly unreceptive room, starting off with “what’s the deeeal with Rob Zombie?” All I’ve seen of his, erm, work, is House of 1K Corpses, and I don’t think I’ve ever had quite as unpleasant a viewing experience. I must be missing something, since the number and size of the posts here attest to some kind of deep engagement, but I can’t for the life of me imagine what. I mean…the movie is trash. Bad, post-Sontag trash. Content-wise, it’s puerile, sadistic, and stupid. Is there an element of formal mastery? Sure, if mimicry amounts to mastery, but to what end?
I’ve never been much of Camp connoisseur, but I do get that some people really like sifting through the trashiness of Camp (exploitation, 70s horror, etc.) to find interesting nuggets of subversiveness, self-awareness, humor. But Zombie’s movie (again, not discussing the H remakes) isn’t that. It’s painfully self-aware, with a script that is depressingly unfunny, and the film seems to have been created to delight in simulated suffering. It’s like quirky torture porn.
I should add I’m not saying that Zombie=camp is the prevailing argument here, just that it’s the only position I can conceive of, and I don’t think its tenable. Maybe I’ve got a weak stomach – I don’t do well with medical shows – which prevents me from seeing the wacky fun and inventiveness of Zombie’s film. But that would let him slide for all of the crude white-trash stuff – before I lift off completely here, let me just point out the genre-typical American demonization of poverty, a familiar ideological strain (take your pick of American horror films, Deliverance, the list goes on and on) that if Zombie is aware of (unlikely), he displays no interest in subverting or examining.
So yeah, I don’t get it. I would say that maybe I need to see more, but…life is short, and I haven’t even begun to catch up on Rhomer. Enough snootiness for one morning, yes?
Sorry, Chuck – I thought rubbing your face in your own overwrought terminology was insult enough.
I was being flippant when referencing AV’s Cali reference, but since you’ve gone so far down a rabbit hole with your agonized, well-overstated point at this point, I’ll simply inquire: ANY discussion and/or reference to suburbia in art needs to be longitude/latitude-specific? Boy, shame you didn’t get to Eric Bogosian in time. Or Jonathan Kaplan. Or Tim Hunter. Or Robert Bresson – ah, but, of course, The Devil, Probably took place in Paris, not in a suburb. Or Tampa. Maybe you were simply being flippant, in lieu of humor, much less in lieu of specific criticism of anything I said specifically wrote.
How about giving your comically inordinate hostility here the rest on this thread we and your hogoblin-ed little mind so richly deserve? Hope that’s original enough for you – failing that, see above in re: not giving a shit.
“… ah, but, of course, The Devil, Probably took place in Paris, not in a suburb.”
Do tell.
Next time I’m having difficulty telling Steve Lacy from Steve Potts, I’ll be sure to give you a call.
The trouble with Zombie is this- he’s talented, and he gets some amazing work out of his actors (seriously, can you look at Scout Taylor Compton the same way after Halloween?) but he has no interest in actually writing a coherent screenplay. He doesn’t make films so much as he makes objects of study.
I probably shouldn’t jump in the fray here, but I did want to say a few words about the specific vs. the universal in slasher horror films.
I do think Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN, and the better parts of the franchise as a whole, do get a lot of mileage from the suburban mileau. Sure, it takes place in one specific Midwestern suburb, but that doesn’t make it any less identifiable to suburbans on either coast, nor does it make the moment that Mr. Bastard cited any less frightening.
Beyond that, the whole idea of the everyday/ordinary being encroached upon by violence (certainly not new; see: SHADOW OF A DOUBT) is essential I think to the terror that Carpenter provokes. The first film is terrifying because of the ordinariness, the non-specificity, of this small town.
“But,” someone might say, “if that’s true, if it’s effective at least in part because it’s a suburb, then why would big city-types still be frightened?” And I think the answer to that is two-fold: partially, because decades of cinema, television, radio, and theater have romanticized small-towns as The Base Standard populated by Ordinary Decent Folk that the big cities deviate from (cf. countless “Now-I’m-Not-A-Fancy-Big-City-Lawyer” monologues). And partially it’s because the film grounds us in the ordinary in other ways: for example, the rituals of Halloween, which are the same for much of the country, or the fact that the inciting act of violence comes from the home, from the family. That bravura opening scene is in many ways more disturbing than anything in the film that follows.
If Carpenter’s second HALLOWEEN is still pretty damn scary, it’s because it takes place in an already scary but still commonplace locale, a hospital. Everyone’s been to a hospital, and everyone’s been frightened there. Oh, shit, I made a sweeping statement that might not reflect everyone’s experience. My apologies to the Amish and Christian Scientists.
Coming back to my point, look at one of the worst films in the franchise, HALLOWEEN: WATER. Er, H20. It takes place at an élite boarding school. It’s not really scary, at least in my opinion, and a big part of that is because the locale is too alien from my experience. Now, if the film was _about_ creating a sort of alien or otherworldly atmosphere, like Argento’s SUSPIRIA, I could buy into it. But because I believe, again, that the Meyers character works best when he intrudes upon the vulnerable and the ordinary, some closed-off school is trying to hard. It might as well be set on a space station. (Cf. JASON X, which *is* set on a space station and is terrible because Jason becomes the least frightening/interesting/awe-inspiring aspect within the setting; ALIEN works because, like SUSPIRIA, it’s about immersing us in another world and its atmosphere rather than making us feel unsafe in ordinary and thus putatively safe places [suburbia, family, summer camp].)
Nothing makes my eyes glaze over more than the idea that lead characters can’t be specific lest the audience can’t “identify” with them, because the last thing I want to do 90% of the time is identify with somebody. I want to be interested in them instead. But I do think the identification/audience surrogate effect is viable in certain types of horror films, because anything that removes us from the immediate and visceral experience often deadens its impact.
Look at HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION, which pits Michael Meyers against reality show contestants: I, for one, don’t care about these people and in fact at certain points in the film was cheering Mr. Meyers on. More than that, though, I wasn’t frightened, because at no time did I say, “This could happen to me”. No scenario you concoct could result in me being a contestant on a reality show, especially a reality show that asks you to spend the night in a house where dozens of people have been murdered over the years. It’s just like the boarding school in H20, like Jason in outer space.
Yes, HALLOWEEN takes place in a specific suburb, with a specific babysitter being hounded by a specific bogeyman for, as we learn in the sequel, a specific reason. But if the film works it’s not because of how specific it is. Haddonfield isn’t Haddonfield so much as it is Anytown and Everytown, and that’s why it works.
Mr. Zombie’s redux makes Meyers extremely specific, and in that first hour, yes, he’s very interesting. It’s a compelling case study. But it’s not really scary, for me, because in making Meyers so specific, by giving him a voice, Zombie removes the vague Otherness that allowed us to project our Bogeymen on Carpenter’s Shape. I think that’s why the second hour doesn’t work for me, doesn’t get me invested: there’s no mystery. (I will say again though that I did find that first hour interesting and a bold choice, even if I don’t think it ended up working for the film as a whole.)
At least, that’s my opinion. It could certainly be possible that I don’t know anything or that I have nothing of interest to say.
Chuck – you are a brilliant critic, very thoughtful and inspired. I especially enjoy your writing on Japanese cinema. That said, speaking as someone who has never seen a Rob Zombie film and has no truck in this debate whatsoever, you are unquestionably behaving like a troll here. It’s been a bit shocking, given how much I’ve admired your criticism over the years. I really hope you can dial down the insults, perhaps by simply ignoring the baser of the criticisms leveled at you–or even by ignoring the more obviously barren posts–and spend that energy forging more interesting observations about films.
@Glenn – Dude, I told you that you’d be better off with Betty Grable. But noooooo…
UWC, thank you very much, that was very thoughtful and kind. Your criticism of me and my behavior here is the best criticism of any kind I’ve read in some time, entirely on point, and I am being in no wise facetious. I got worked up, what can I say? I’ve given it a lot of thought, and have pondered at length the glee I sometimes take in these fracases. Had someone as insightful and well-spoken as you stepped in long ago (try though Glenn did), I would have shut my trollish trap sooner. Thank you, UWC, whoever you may be, very much appreciated.
‘He does have this to say about the Carpenter version though: “Much of the original Haloween, despite being shot in California and it showing at times, is about the rhythms and realities of growing up in the suburbs.“ ‘
I agree with Zombie, actually – the Jamie Lee Curtis character doesn’t smoke pot in the first Halloween film (if she ever does, it must be very fleeting) but there’s a lot of attention paid to her walking leisurely down the street, meandering, overseeing the kids watching TV, chatting on the phone, looking out the school window, hanging out with the girls, chatting in the car etc, all frequently shot with Carpenter and Cundey’s long takes and slow, drifting camera. Zombie’s description of the film pertaining in that way to the ‘rhythms and realities’ of teens growing up in the suburbs is clever and apt, not ‘far from the point’ at all. Carpenter’s “Halloween” differs from the countless other slasher clones it inspired precisely because of those tangential evocations of teen living (reminding me of Danny Peary’s comparison of ‘Halloween’ to ‘Carrie’, noting that he felt Carpenter viewed the behaviour of teenage girls with affection and bemusement, while De Palma held a grudge). I haven’t seen ‘1000 Corpses’ but like ‘Devil’s Rejects’ a lot, the latter playing as an energised amalgam of Hooper/Craven backwoods redneck horror and Peckinpah’s 70’s work like ‘Alfredo Garcia’. I’m yet to see both of the ‘Halloween’ remakes discussed here but I’ll probably spring for the director’s cuts at some point.
‘He does have this to say about the Carpenter version though: “Much of the original Haloween, despite being shot in California and it showing at times, is about the rhythms and realities of growing up in the suburbs.“ ‘
I agree with Zombie, actually – the Jamie Lee Curtis character doesn’t smoke pot in the first Halloween film (if she ever does, it must be very fleeting) but there’s a lot of attention paid to her walking leisurely down the street, meandering, overseeing the kids watching TV, chatting on the phone, looking out the school window, hanging out with the girls, chatting in the car etc, all frequently shot with Carpenter and Cundey’s long takes and slow, drifting camera. Zombie’s description of the film pertaining in that way to the ‘rhythms and realities’ of teens growing up in the suburbs is clever and apt, not ‘far from the point’ at all. Carpenter’s “Halloween” differs from the countless other slasher clones it inspired precisely because of those tangential evocations of teen living (reminding me of Danny Peary’s comparison of ‘Halloween’ to ‘Carrie’, noting that he felt Carpenter viewed the behaviour of teenage girls with affection and bemusement, while De Palma held a grudge). I haven’t seen ‘1000 Corpses’ but like ‘Devil’s Rejects’ a lot, the latter playing as an energised amalgam of Hooper/Craven backwoods redneck horror and Peckinpah’s 70’s work like ‘Alfredo Garcia’. I’m yet to see both of the ‘Halloween’ remakes discussed here but I’ll probably spring for the director’s cuts at some point.
The double post was unintentional, BTW. Only just cottoned on to the fact that this is a 3 pages comments thread, and after I waded through the intermittent snark up to this point saw that my brilliant comment has appeared twice – sorry. Glenn also has nothing to apologise about for the lingerie shot of Jane Leeves – don’t know if she was a Benny Hill dancer (love those Hill’s Angels) but she did appear as a boobs-out angel in the final number of MONTY PYTHON’S MEANING OF LIFE.
Chuck, bygone be bygones and all that, and my apologies for the snarkiness of my response in pointing out your lack of examples and specifics when that you chastised myself for the very same crime (though I will stand by letting El‑P provide my response), do you have any response to Tom or Anthony’s well stated (far better than my own) comments above about the original HALLOWEEN’s evocation of a certain mood or experience of a moment or type of American life? You can claim I simply went to my “card catalogue” but I don’t think the point I tried to make, perhaps poorly, by reference or allusion, rather than citing specific examples, was entirely devoid of content; that films and movies and music and comic books and all these things we take in though perhaps not of the exact same time and space that we have inhabited can indeed resonate and describe a similar experience or spark or remind one of analogous thoughts. I am not trying to continue any sort of internet sparring, though lord knows it doesn’t often take much to do so. I am honestly interested in your thoughts on the matter as, from your comments above, you seem to be defiant in claiming this as an impossibility and I am genuinely intrigued as to the reasoning that has led you this conclusion.
“the Jamie Lee Curtis character doesn’t smoke pot in the first Halloween film”
She sure does. In a whole driving scene with “Don’t Fear The Reaper” on the stereo (in today’s world the whole scene wouldbe a montage set to that song). And it’s a nice touch to give the supposed goody-goody a li’l hint of vice. The most subtly effective parts of HALLOWEEN are the atmosphere of leafy suburban streets at the end of October – Carpenter made the film feel as if it were taking place in Autumn.
I’ve always kind of poo-pooed Zombies films having seen HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and digging it, but just kind of forgetting about it. I actually really liked the first 1/2 of his HALLOWEEN but never felt compelled to see more of his stuff until, actually, I saw Nathan Lee listing HALLOWEEN 2 in his year end best.
And sure, I knew it was done to gain attention and cause arguments/make people think he’s zany. But I wanted to see it anyway (since the main producers on my film are the execs of the HALLOWEEN franchise) and man, it’s really a great, weird film. I really can’t remember feeling so wrong and well, dirty, after a mainstream film. Stuff like IRREVERSIBLE, MARTYRS, INSIDE and GRACE gave me a queasy, gross feeling, but Zombie got to me in HALLOWEEN 2 and I respect him for it. I think it was the *SPOILER ALERT* scene where Brad Dourif finds his daughter murdered and then there’s a cut to her as a toddler in that old movie footage. Ugh. I think the violent buildup climaxed at that point and it really did a number on me.
Someone mentioned a few posts back that Zombie has a weird way with undercurrent and I totally agree. The white trash stuff doesn’t get to me nor does the violence per se. It’s *something* else and I can’t quite pinpoint it. To me, that says something about his filmmaking.
Thank you for the kind words, AV.