I'm going to be live-blogging along on this here page, so refresh later in the day for any updates from me. Throughout the day, I'll be
10:15am - Right, so, I've got my tube of cheese and onion Pringles, I've got my movies lined up and I am totally, hopelessly unprepared for what I am about to embark upon. Let's begin.
10:20am - First up it's John Carpenter's horror masterpiece "Halloween," the film that in 1978 helped spark the slasher genre and gave birth to a terrifying icon of horror: silent, unkillable stalker-slasher Michael Myers. It's also the film that in 2001, when I was 7 years old, scared the bejesus out of me when I watched it on DVD for the first time.
10:25am - Dun-dun-dun dun-dun-dun dun dun, dun-dun-dun dun-dun-dun dun dun... Ahhhh, that famous piano riff, scored by Carpenter, as we zoom in on a smiling, flaming jack-o'-lantern.
10:26am - Here's the famous opening shot, in which we witness a brutal murder in a quiet suburban neighbourhood one Halloween night from the point of view of the killer. It looks like a single tracking shot, but actually there are three well-hidden cuts; one when Michael puts on his clown mask and the other two when he is exiting his sister's room (thanks, IMDb!).
10:27am - "Michael's around some place." Why yes, yes he is. In fact, he's looking through the window, watching you two canoodlin' on the couch (so rarely a good thing to do in a slasher movie).
10:30am - First kill: a kitchen knife repeatedly stabbing at Michael's teen sister Judith (the hand we see swinging the knife does not in fact belong to the young actor about to be seen playing Michael, it actually belongs to producer Debra Hill). And shock reveal: this psychopathic murderer is -- dun dun dun! -- just a little boy! *shocked face*
10:36am - 15 years later, Michael escapes from Smith's Grove Sanitarium, stealing the car of nurse Marion, played by Nancy Stephens, and driving off into the night. Michael's long-time psychologist Dr. Loomis, played of course by Donald Pleasence, doesn't look too happy. Here's a question: how on earth does Michael know how to drive? He's been locked up in an asylum since he was six.
10:38am - It's Jamie Lee Curtis! In her film debut! As a suburban high schooler! Called Laurie Strode! It's Halloween, and as Laurie walks to school with little Tommy Doyle, played by Brian Andrews, she drops off a key at the old abandoned Myers house, soon to be sold by Laurie's family. Inside stands Michael, who steps outside and watches as Laurie walks away.
10:40am - Michael is now wearing his iconic white, expressionless mask and boiler suit. Fun fact: Michael's mask was actually a "Star Trek" William Shatner/Captain Kirk mask but spray-painted white and with the eyebrows removed and the eyeholes reshaped. But you already knew that, didn't you?
10:42am - In class, Laurie looks out the window to see a strange masked man standing across the street, watching her. She looks again and he is gone. Creepy...
10:46am - Dr. Loomis, making his way to Michael's home town of Haddonfield, Illinois to find Michael, discovers an abandoned tow truck by some train tracks and a naked body lying in the grass nearby. Michael's killing spree has officially begun.
10:51 am - While walking home from school, Laurie, frightened by the sight of the strange masked man watching her and then disappearing behind some bushes (creeeepy), is startled when she walks right into Sheriff Brackett (Charles Cyphers). "It's Halloween, everyone's entitled to one good scare," he says. Why yes they are, sheriff! Yes they are... Mwahahaha!
10:55am - From her bedroom window, Laurie sees the masked man standing between hanging laundry in the garden, watching her. She looks again, but he has disappeared. Creeeeeeeeepy...
10:57am - Laurie's friend Annie, played by Nancy Kyes (credited as Nancy Loomis), is smoking pot. Death sentence. Laurie smokes a little too, but doesn't like it. No death sentence for her.
10:59am - Dr. Loomis arrives in Haddonfield, goes to the local cemetery and discovers that Judith Myers' headstone has been stolen from her grave. "He came home." He approaches Sheriff Brackett to warn him of Michael's return.
11:02am - Ha! Michael's watching Annie now! I told you so!
11:04am - Whoa! That jump scare in the old Myers house with the rock smashing through the window got me -- looks like it got Dr. Loomis too. I forgot about that. Well done, Mr Carpenter.
11:09am - One of the things I love about this movie is Michael's constant presence. He's always lurking in the background, watching, waiting. It's terrifying.
11:10am - Michael's killed the dog! Bastard!
11:13am - "No tricks for Annie tonight.." Oh there might be a few...
11:15am - "Lock your doors! Bolt your windows! And turn off the lights!" Listen to the TV, Annie...
11:17am - Annie drops off little Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards), who she's supposed to be babysitting, for Laurie to look after while she goes to pick up boyfriend Paul (voiced by none other than John Carpenter). Laurie's also babysitting little Tommy (who, after some teasing from schoolmates, is frightened of the boogeyman) at his parent's place and watching "The Thing from Another World" (which Carpenter would later remake in 1982 as "The Thing").
11:19am - Aaand Annie's dead, strangled before having her throat slashed in her car in the garage by Michael, who was hiding in the backseat. I told you: you shouldn't have smoked that pot!
11:24am - "Hey Lonnie, get your ass away from there!" Oh Dr. Loomis, you ol' prankster. Apparently, Carpenter was initially intimidated by Pleasence, being such a big fan and with Pleasence the oldest and most experienced on the set, but was surprised to find him good humoured and big hearted. Pleasence would go on to star in two other Carpenter movies: "Escape from New York" and "Prince of Darkness."
11:27am - Here come the horndogs, Lynda and Bob (P.J. Soles and John Michael Graham). And they've come to screw (and drink!).
11:30am - The horndogs are screwing. And drinking. Death sentence.
11:32am - "I'll be right back." Oh I'm suuure you will...
11:34am - Horndog #1 is down. Or rather, pinned to a wall with a knife in his chest.
11:35am - Michael stands at the bedroom doorway in front of Lynda, wearing a bed sheet and Bob's glasses. Lynda, mistaking him for Bob, exposes her breasts and asks, "See anything you like?" Apparently when this scene played in a movie theatre, actress P.J. Soles was amused to hear an audience member in the front row reply to the screen, "Hell yes I do," unaware that she was sitting right behind him.
11:36am - Aaaand Horndog #2 is down, strangled by a telephone cord as Laurie picks up the phone on the other end of the line. Once again, I told you so: you shouldn't have screwed each other (or drank).
11:41am - Concerned, Laurie puts Tommy and Lindsey to bed and wanders over to the Wallace house, where she finds...
11:44am - ...Annie, dead, lying on her bed under Judith Myers' stolen headstone, Bob's body dangling from a doorway (epic jump scare!) and Lynda's body in the wardrobe. The sinners!
11:48am - And Michael attacks! Laurie tumbles down the stairs, flees, runs out the back door. The suspense here's just awesome: Laurie screaming desperately for help, realising she doesn't have her keys, tired little Tommy looking out the window and then coming downstairs to open the door as Michael walks towards Laurie from across the street slowly but determined. And Carpenter's "dun... dun-dun!" riff helps, of course.
11:50am - Michael's in the house! Laurie sticks a knitting needle in his neck. He pulls it out, collapses. Well, that was a great movie, now onto the next...
11:53am - Fuck! Michael's awake! Run!
11:55am - Laurie hides in the bedroom closet, whimpering as Michael bursts through the door. Laurie pulls apart a clothes hanger, sticks it in his eye and stabs him in the chest with his own knife. He collapses. Well, that was a great movie, now onto the next...
11:58am - Fuck! Michael's awake! Run!
11:59am - Little Tommy and Lindsey run for help outside as Dr. Loomis walks by.
12:02pm - Michael attacks Laurie and is unmasked in the struggle -- for a mass murdering psychopath locked up in an asylum for 15 years, he's not that bad looking. Fun fact: audiences have told Carpenter over the years that they were horrified by Michael's hideously disfigured face, unaware that it was actually just the actor's real face (the poor guy). Carpenter has cited this as an example of the power of the suggestion of cinema: audiences saw Michael as a monster, so assumed he must look like a monster underneath his mask.
12:03pm - Dr. Loomis comes running up the stairs and repeatedly fires his gun at Michael. Michael falls out the window, lands on the grass outside, dead (?).
12:05pm - "Was that the boogeyman?" Laurie asks. "As a matter of fact, it was," Dr. Loomis replies. Well, I'm glad that's all over, poor Laurie was about to have a heart attack from all that...
12:06m - Fuck! Michael's gone! Run!
12:07pm - End titles.
And that right there is how you make a slasher movie: simple, suspenseful, with an endearing protagonist in Jamie Lee Curtis' virginal Laurie Strode and a terrifying boogeyman in Michael Myers. Many have copied it, none have bested it. I give John Carpenter's "Halloween"...
...10/10! Obviously.
Now here's a question: are those my hands or are those someone else's hands? Answer: those are my hands. Why would they be someone else's hands?
Anyway, onto "Halloween II."
12:15pm - The Chordettes' Mr. Sandman opens the movie. I say they should've gone with I'm Your Boogie Man by KC and the Sunshine Band, but alright.
12:17pm - Now, unlike "Halloween," I haven't actually seen this before, so I really am winging it here.
12:18pm - Ooh, a recap of the end of the first movie. That's handy. Looks like this kicks off straight after the first movie, and Dr. Loomis is adamant to find Michael before he kills again.
12:21pm - Carpenter's iconic theme tune has gotten noticeably groovier. It's all synthy now. Does Michael go disco dancing in this? I hope so.
12:25pm - Here we have a voyeuristic shot from the POV of Michael as he prowls about the outside of a house, just like the opening of the first movie, but split up with cuts to inside the house.
12:29pm - First kill: Laurie's teen neighbour Alice, played by Anne Bruner, with a knife through the throat. Interestingly, in television showings of the film, Alice is not killed.
12:32pm - Laurie, in shock from her close encounter with Michael and with a nasty cut down her arm, is taken to Haddonfield Hospital and is sedated.
12:36pm - Whoa! Holy explosion! Some poor trick-or-treater with a Michael Myers mask just got fried alive after being crushed by a speeding police cruiser. That's some unruly police work right there. Fun fact: this poor trick-or-treater is later revealed to be Ben Tramer, the boy Laurie admits to having a crush on in the first "Halloween." Looks like that ship has sailed.
12:45pm - Ha, the scary B-movie music playing from a TV while security cam footage from the hospital shows Michael walking by outside is pretty clever.
12:47pm - Michael's in the building!
12:50pm - "Amazing grace, come sit on my face. Don't make me cry, I need your pie," sings pervy paramedic ol' Budd, played by Leo Rossi. Methinks ol' Budd's gon' die (not just a pervert, he's also smoking!).
12:54pm - Afro'd paramedic Jimmy, played by Lance Guest, tells Laurie, sitting in her hospital bed, of Michael's origins. Fun fact: this is the first time Michael's full name is stated in the franchise.
1:02pm - Second kill: a claw hammer through the poor security guard's head (who was just scared by a pussycat outside, the big goof).
1:06pm - Ol' Budd just scared a nurse, played by Pamela Susan Shoop, by pretending to be a patient, grabbing her and kissing her. They're now making plans to screw in the therapy room. Yep, ol' Budd's gon' die. Probably the nurse too.
1:11pm - Ol' Budd and the nurse are now canoodlin' inside a hot tub. Michael's turning up the temperature to scalding levels. Here we go...
1:14pm - Yep. Michael strangles Budd and pushes the nurse's head down into the scalding water (which was actually freezing cold on the set and ended up giving Shoop an ear infection). Told you so: no screwing in these movies.
1:17pm - Michael's written "Samhain" on a classroom blackboard in blood. "It's a Celtic word. It means the lord of the dead, the end of summer, the festival of Samhain. October 31st," explains Dr. Loomis, who still searches for Michael. I disagree: I think Michael's looking for some dude called Sam Hain. And whoever this Sam Hain is, he'd better look out! Cos Michael's a-comin'!
1:20pm - Uh oh. Afro'd Jimmy is falling for Laurie. Death sentence.
1:22pm - Two kills! Dr. Mixter with a syringe in the eye and an orderly with a syringe in the temple. Michael's new favourite murder tool?
1:25pm - Michael goes to kill Laurie in her room, he stabs at the figure in her bed, but oh thank god! It's just a bunch of pillows. Phew. I didn't see that one coming.
1:26pm - Turns out drugged up Laurie's up and about, wandering through the hospital, frightened and alone.
1:33pm - Bahaha! Afro'd Jimmy just slipped on a nurse's blood and banged his head on the floor. Someone really oughta put a "wet floor" warning there. Fun fact: actor Lance Guest did his own stunt for this in one take.
1:37pm - Laurie's seen Michael in the hospital corridor! And now he's chasing after her!
1:42pm - Laurie's managed to get outside the hospital and is now cowering inside a car in the car park. Michael is nowhere to be seen.
1:46pm - *gasp* A shocking revelation! Laurie Strode is... Michael Myers' little sister! *Shyamalan voice* What a tweest! Upon learning this from a colleague while being forcibly driven back to the asylum, Dr. Loomis realises Laurie is Michael's target and forces the US Marshall driver at gunpoint to take him to the hospital to save her.
1:48pm - Jimmy, concussed from his embarrassing little slip-up, steps into the car Laurie is hiding in and collapses on the horn. Uh oh! That might alert Michael!
1:50pm - And there's Michael! Laurie runs screaming into the hospital, where Dr. Loomis fires at Michael. Michael collapses. Well, that was fun, now onto the next... no, I'm not gonna do that joke again. It got oooold.
1:55pm - Michael's up again. Dr. Loomis and Laurie flee through the hospital corridors. As they hide in a room, Michael bursts through the door and stabs Dr. Loomis with a scalpel (Dr. Loomis, nooooooo!). Michael walks towards the cowering Laurie, who shoots Michael in both eyes.
2:01pm - Blinded (and somehow not dead), Michael swings his scalpel at Laurie and Dr. Loomis, still alive and kicking, as they open up tanks of gas. At Dr. Loomis' request, Laurie runs out of the room before Dr. Loomis lights up his lighter, causing the whole room to explode (Dr. Loomis, nooooo! Again!).
2:05pm - Oh good god, Michael's now walking out of the fire towards Laurie, covered from head to toe in flames. This guy just won't die!
2:06pm - Ahh, now he's fallen down.
2:08pm - Laurie is driven away in an ambulance as we watch Michael's mask melting inside the flames. End credits.
So, a little unremarkable after the first "Halloween," more of the same but in a different setting and not nearly as effective. But I dunno, I kinda liked this: I like the hospital setting, I like that it takes place immediately after the events of the previous movie and also, that plot twist, which offers a different perspective to the first movie and Michael's motivations. It doesn't touch its predecessor, but it's functional enough. I give "Halloween II"...
...6/10! Now onto "Halloween III: Season of the Witch," which is an odd title for a Michael Myers movie, but I'm sure it'll make sense in the movie.
2:15pm - Boy, I sure can't wait to find out what kind of mischief Michael Myers gets up to next.
2:16pm - A man, played by Al Berry, is running on the highway towards us. Running away from Michael? Surely.
2:17pm - Oh, he's running away from a car. Michael must be driving the car.
2:19pm - The running man has just been startled by another man in a suit. The man in the suit is now strangling him. The man in the suit is not Michael.
2:20pm - The man in the suit is crushed by a car. The running man flees. Is he going to be killed by Michael? Probably.
2:22pm - Eight more days to Halloween, Halloween, eight more days to Halloween, silver shamrock...
2:30pm - The running man, called Harry, is taken to hospital, where another man in a suit comes to his room and crushes his skull. Ouch! As Dr. Challis, played by Tom Atkins, chases him, the man in the suit goes to his car, pours gasoline on himself and sets himself alight. Uhh... I wonder how Michael Myers is gonna fit into all this.
2:40pm - Two more days to Halloween, Halloween, two more days to Halloween, silver shamrock...
2:44pm - Dr. Challis, obsessed with what happened that night, and Ellie, Harry's daughter played by Stacey Nelkin, are investigating the Halloween mask company Silver Shamrock, which they suspect might have had something to do with Harry's death. They must bump into Michael when he's purchasing his new mask... yes?
2:53pm - Two more men in suits just beheaded a homeless man (who had just threatened to burn the Silver Shamrock factory down with molotov cocktails) with their bare hands. Dayum. That's some Michael Myers shit right there. Speaking of which, where the fuck is Michael?
2:55pm - Wait! Don't go round that corner! Michael's gonna be standing there!
2:56pm - Oh.
2:58pm - Ooh! Dr. Challis and Ellie just had sex! You know what that means! Michael's a-comin' for 'em!
3:05pm - ...Michael?
3:15pm - MIIICCHAAAAAEEEELLL?!?!?!
3:20pm - So, Ellie and Dr. Challis have been captured by the evil Silver Shamrock people, who are tired of them snooping on the company's evil deeds. Are... are they going to unleash Michael Myers on them...?
3:25pm- You guys, I'm starting to think Michael Myers isn't actually in this movie.
3:30pm - Okay, so, fun, very revealing fact: instead of continuing the Michael Myers storyline, producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill decided to turn the "Halloween" movies into an anthology horror franchise, starting with "Halloween III." The plan was for each movie to have its own, self-contained story centred around the Halloween season. But after "Halloween III"'s dismal box office takings and outrage from franchise fans, it was decided to ditch this plan and continue the franchise with the Michael Myers storyline. So that explains a lot.
3:40pm - Another fun fact: Joe Dante, he of "Gremlins" and "Innerspace" fame, was originally supposed to direct "Halloween III" before pulling out of the project, presumably because he realised that this whole anthology business was a stupid idea. Tommy Lee Wallace, a long-time John Carpenter collaborator who was offered to direct "Halloween II" but declined, took over.
3:53pm - So, to sum up, Ellie turned into a killer robot, a kid's head turned into a pile of snakes and scorpions while watching the Silver Shamrock commercial and despite Dr. Challis' best efforts, the evil Silver Shamrock company slaughtered the children of the world through subliminal messaging and fragments from Stone Henge hidden inside their popular Halloween masks. No Michael Myers though. Nope.
So, not a terrible movie in its own right, with an initially intriguing conspiracy plot and a pretty neat synth soundtrack, but come on, this is very silly, quite laughable and doesn't even belong to its own franchise. "Season of the Witch"? More like "Season of the Where the Fuck is Michael Myers." Heh. I give "Halloween III: Season of the Witch"...
...4/10! Now onto "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers." I think Michael Myers might actually be in this one, but I'm not betting on it.
4:08pm - Michael! I missed you!
4:12pm - So, it's 10 years after Michael's 1978 Halloween massacre and Michael, who apparently survived his full-body burn wounds in "Halloween II" and is now in a coma, is being transferred via ambulance to a sanatorium. I'm sure this'll go swimmingly.
4:14pm - It did not go swimmingly.
4:18pm - It seems Laurie has died in a car accident (umm, I've seen "Halloween H20" and I know that ain't true) but had a daughter, Michael's 8-year-old niece Jamie Lloyd, played by Danielle Harris. Michael has learned of her existence and is coming for her.
4:22pm - Turns out Michael's already in Jamie's house and has his knife out for some kiddie carving. Run, Jamie! Run!
4:25pm - Oh. It was a dream. Heh. And I fell for it... silly me. It seems Jamie regularly suffers from nightmares about her evil uncle and has visions of him coming for her.
4:32pm - Dr. Loomis is alive! Yay! Wait, how'd he survive that massive gas explosion when he was the one holding the lighter? Slasher movie logic, I'm tellin' ya...
4:33pm - Dr. Loomis hears there was an accident during Michael's transfer and immediately storms out of the room. Ha! Dr. Loomis doth rock.
4.37pm - Dr. Loomis finds a dead body strung up at a gas station and another lying on the floor of the station's diner while travelling to Haddonfield. He finds Michael and fires at him before Michael speeds off in a tow truck and blows up the gas station, taking out the phone lines. An explosive exit.
4:40pm - Aaww, little Jamie's being bullied at school. "Jamie's an orphan!" they're chanting. Do kids really do that? What cunts.
4:37pm - Dr. Loomis is hitch-hiking into Haddonfield with a kooky, beer swigging priest. My kinda priest.
4:54pm - Reaching Haddonfield, Dr. Loomis joins forces with Sheriff Meeker, played by Beau Starr, to take Jamie to safety and hunt down Michael. They go to Jamie's house, but -- oh no -- she's not there! She's out trick-or-treating with babysitter Rachel, played by Ellie Cornell, whose friend Lindsey is, fun fact, little Lindsey from the first "Halloween" all grown up. Ain't that cool?
4:58pm - Michael just killed a power station worker by throwing him onto a live high voltage part, taking out Haddonfield's power. Shocking!
5:10pm - Thanks to Dr. Loomis' loud mouth, a bunch of local rednecks have learned of Michael's presence in the town and are now hunting him down with shotguns and pitchforks. This won't end well.
5:13pm - Fireplace sex scene!
5:16pm - Dr. Loomis, Sheriff Meeker, Jamie, Rachel, Rachel's cheating boyfriend Brady, played by Sasha Jenson, and his big-boobed lover Kelly, played by Kathleen Kinmont, barricade themselves inside the sheriff's house. I'm sure Michael will just leave them alone (especially Rachel's cheating boyfriend and his big-boobed lover).
5:27pm - Well it appears I was wrong: Rachel's cheating boyfriend and his big-boobed lover are both dead, the former from his skull being crushed (Rachel's cheating boyfriend, nooooo!) and the latter from a shotgun impaling her chest (big-boobed lover, nooooo!). Rachel and Jamie run up to the attic and climb onto the roof while Michael chases after them. Rachel falls to her death (Rachel, noooooo!) while Jamie climbs down to safety (yay!).
5:34pm - Jamie runs into Dr. Loomis, who was out looking for Michael, and the two break into the school, where Dr. Loomis is thrown through a glass door (Dr. Loomis, nooooo!) and Michael is sprayed in the face with a fire extinguisher by -- gasp -- Rachel, somehow alive and with every bone in her body not broken! Hooray!
5:55pm - Jamie and Rachel speed away in the rednecks' tow truck, which Michael climbs onto before clawing at the driver's face and pulling him out of the truck. After falling onto the road, Michael gets to his feet and watches as Rachel rams him with the truck. The police arrive and fire round after round into his body, causing him to fall into a mineshaft, buried under rubble.
6:03pm - Upon getting home, sweet and innocent little Jamie, donning a clown mask and apparently possessed by Michael's spirit, repeatedly stabs her foster mother with a pair of scissors (!!!). Suffice to say, Dr. Loomis freaks the fuck out and almost blows Jamie's little head off before the sheriff stops him. End credits.
Dayum. That's one hell of an ending. And the rest of the movie was pretty good too, if only for Danielle Harris' little heroine Jamie: she's sweet, adorable and brings new energy to a franchise that really should've gone stale by this point. I give "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers"...
...6/10! Time for "Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers."
6:20pm - Oh goody, a recap of the end of the last movie.
6:23pm - Uh oh, looks like Michael escaped burial after all. Swimming downstream, he falls unconscious and is taken in by a man living in a shack by the woods.
6:26pm - One year later, innocent little Jamie -- not so innocent anymore -- is in a children's clinic, suffering from nightmares about that time she stabbed her step mother with a pair of scissors. She's lost her voice too, having to write on a chalkboard and use sign language to communicate. And it looks like she and her uncle have more of a connection than simple family ties: it seems they share a telepathic link, their movements mirroring each other. So this is going down the "Friday the 13th Part VII" route: when in doubt, add psychic powers.
6:38pm - Michael, waking from a year-long coma and back in Haddonfield to come for Jamie, is back to his dog-killing ways again: he's just gotten rid of Rachel's dog Max. Is dog killing worse than people killing? Discuss this important issue in the comments section below!
6:44pm - Oh good god, the two bumbling police officers were just introduced with an accompanying comedy trumpet soundtrack (possible "Last House on the Left" reference?). I bet these two are the funny ones.
6:45pm - Oh, Max is fine! Phew. False alarm, people. The dog's alive.
6:50pm - Unlike Rachel: she's stabbed to death with a pair of scissors by Michael. Poor Rachel! I liked her. And not just because I saw her naked in the shower a few moments ago.
7:00pm - John Travolta wannabe Mike, Rachel's friend played by Jonathan Chapin, is killed with a rake to the head. He kinda deserved it, if only for that leather jacket.
7:05pm - Jamie regains the ability to speak (yay!) after saving Rachel's friend Tina, played by Wendy Kaplan, from Michael's grasp with her telepathic abilities while at a totally rockin' Halloween party.
7:10pm - Spitz (or is it Swallowz?), played by Matthew Walker, wears a Michael Myers mask and, for a hilarious prank, pretends to stab Samantha, played by Tamara Glynn, on the street in front of the two bumbling police officers. What a freakin' idiot! They could've shot him to death! Geez... Actually, that would've probably been a good thing.
7:14pm - In a barn, Spitz, still wearing the Michael Myers mask, silently, creepily approaches Samantha with a knife for yet another hilarious prank. Could this guy be anymore of a moron?
7:15pm - Spitz and Samantha are now having sex in the barn. This guy's got a death wish.
7:20pm - And Spitz and Samantha are -- surprise, surprise -- killed, Spitz impaled with a pitchfork and Samantha sliced with a scythe. Y'know, Spitz, you were just asking for it.
7:23pm - Yay, the two bumbling cops are dead! No more clown music!
7:26pm - Tina and Jamie flee from Michael as he pursues them through the woods in a car, which he crashes into a tree like an idiot.
7:28pm - Tina sacrificies herself to save little Jamie, who watches in horror as Michael plunges his knife into Tina's chest (Tina, noooo!). Jamie flees and is found by Dr. Loomis.
7:35pm - Jamie agrees to help Dr. Loomis lure Michael to the old Myers house, where the police wait to take him down. Jamie sits by the window of the old bedroom of Michael's sister, combing her hair as Judith did before Michael killed her in '78.
7:44pm - Michael arrives, kills a cop, refuses to listen to Dr. Loomis' attempts to reason with him (Michael don't listen to no reasonin'), slashes his belly and throws him through a railing. Michael comes bursting through the bedroom door, coming for Jamie, who flees as Michael attacks and eventually hangs a cop out the bedroom window (cop, nooooo!)
7:51pm - Jamie hides in a laundry chute, which Michael repeatedly stabs until Jamie manages to climb up into the attic (how she's not sliced to pieces I do not know). In the candlelit attic lie the bodies of Michael's victims, including Rachel's dog (fuck! The dog did die!) and a dug-up child's coffin. Jamie lies in the coffin as Michael enters the attic. As Michael raises his knife, Jamie asks Michael to remove his mask. After a pause, he does. "You're just like me," says Jamie. Noticing a tear rolling down Michael's cheek, Jamie reaches up to wipe it away, to which Michael reacts violently. Jamie flees.
7:56pm - Dr. Loomis, still alive, reappears. Using Jamie as bait, Loomis traps Michael in a heavy metal net, shoots him with a tranquiliser gun and beats him unconscious with a wooden plank. Fun fact: while filming this scene, Pleasence accidentally broke the nose of Michael's mask. The actor playing Michael, Don Shanks, later admitted in an interview that Pleasence also broke his real nose. Oops.
8:01pm - Michael is transported to the local police station, where a mysterious Man in Black, seen earlier getting off a bus in Haddonfield, causes an explosion and shoots all of the police officers dead. Jamie, sitting in a patrol car outside, walks into the station to discover -- dun dun dun! -- Michael's cell is empty. Jamie starts sobbing. End credits.
Yeah, the franchise is really feeling tired at this point: this is pretty uninspired stuff and telepathic Jamie aside, it didn't quite grab my interest. I give "Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers"...
...5/10! Now onto "Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers."
8:12pm - A young woman, played by J. C. Brandy, gives birth, surrounded by cloaked cult members in a candlelit basement. The newborn baby is carried away by the Man in Black from the end of the last movie and has a strange symbol drawn on its belly in blood. Intriguing...
8:15pm - Oh, the young woman is Jamie! A kindly nurse helps her and her baby escape. Michael appears, kills the nurse and pursues Jamie and child. Jamie steals a car and flees.
8:20pm - Apparently Halloween's been banned in Haddonfield since 1989. It's like the town in "Footloose" where music is illegal, but not quite as stupid and with less dancing Kevin Bacon.
8:22pm - Holy shit, it's Paul Rudd! I know him from teh Apatow movies! And he's playing little Tommy from the first "Halloween" all grown up! Awesome!
8:23pm - Dr. Loomis is now retired, living in peace in the country. While refusing to go back to work at Smith's Grove Sanitarium as requested by former colleague Dr. Terence Wynn, played by Mitch Ryan, Loomis is startled to hear Jamie's voice on the radio, begging for his help.
8:25pm - Jamie flees once again when Michael finds her hiding at a bus station. Driven off the road, she runs into a barn where Michael impales her on a corn thresher that tears her apart (Jamie, nooooooo!). But where's the baby? It's not in the truck. It's nowhere to be found.
8:35pm - Looks like Tommy's been obsessed with Michael Myers ever since that fateful night of October 31st, 1978. He now lives in a boarding house run by the mysterious Mrs. Blankenship, played by Janice Knickrehm, across the street from the old Myers house. After finding clues as to Jamie's whereabouts when she called the radio station, Tommy finds Jamie's baby hidden in a cabinet and takes him into his care, calling him Steven (hey, that's my name!).
8:40pm - Tommy bumps into Dr. Loomis at the hospital and tells him that the Strodes, the family who adopted Laurie, are now living at the old Myers house (of all places!). I'm really starting to notice that Paul Rudd's performance in this is *awful*. His line reading is hilariously melodramatic. Though to be fair to him, the script's not helping much.
8:44pm - Dr. Loomis goes to see the Strodes to convince them to leave before Michael comes for them. The mother, Debra, played by Kim Darby, is convinced, but is beheaded in the garden by Michael (so much blood on that hanging white laundry! Those stains will never come out!)
8:45pm - Fun Fact: there exists a producer's cut of "Halloween 6" which, after bad test screenings, was never officially released but is available online in bootleg form. Containing 43 minutes of alternative footage, it has since developed a strong cult following among franchise fans.
8:50pm - So it turns out Michael has been inflicted with the Thorn curse and is killing all the remaining members of his family as part of a ritual sacrifice. Well that sure took a hell of a long time to find out. Tommy and Kara Strode, Laurie's cousin played by Marianne Hagan, also discover from Mrs. Blankenship that Danny, Kara's six-year-old son played by Devin Gardner, has been hearing voices telling him to kill and may be next in line to receive the Thorn curse.
8:55pm - Kara's abusive father, John, played by Bradford English, comes home to find bloody sheets in the washing machine and is stabbed and electrocuted to death by Michael. Shocking! Oh wait, I already used that joke. Erm, moving on...
9:20pm - The baby's gone! And the cult members are in Tommy's house! And Michael's slaughtered Kara's family! And Mrs. Blankenship was with the cult all along! And Dr. Wynn is the Man in Black! *shocked face*
9:30pm - Tommy, Kara, Dr. Loomis, Danny and baby Steven are taken to Smith's Grove, where a mysterious operation is to be performed on Steven. Michael storms into the operation and slaughters the cult members, Dr. Wynn included, realising he and his curse have been exploited for their own personal gain. I think. I dunno, I'm a little confuzzled.
9:45pm - After a hot pursuit through the sanatorium, Tommy offers baby Steven up to Michael but then injects him with corrosive chemicals and, like Dr. Loomis did in "Revenge of Michael Myers," beats him unconscious with a lead pipe. As Tommy, Kara, Danny and Steven are about to drive away in a jeep, Dr. Loomis tells them he has "a little business to attend to here." Dr. Loomis goes back into the building and his screams of pain are heard as we see Michael's mask lying on the floor (Dr. Loomis, noooooooo!). End credits.
Well that was confusing. Production problems are understandable (there were reportedly lots of re-shoots and re-edits, as well as in-fighting among the crew), but they don't excuse that confusing shambles of a plot, the palpable blandness of the thing and Paul Rudd's embarrassing lead performance (he's srsly much better in "This is 40"). Still, kudos for trying to give a fresh perspective on Michael's origin: the whole Thorn curse business was quite intriguing. I give "Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers"...
...4/10! Time for "Halloween: H20: 20 Years Later," aka the best "Halloween" movie that's not "Halloween."
10:20pm - Mr. Sandman! It's the same song that opened "Halloween II." I still think they should've gone with I'm Your Boogie Man. Ah well.
10:22pm - It's lil Joseph Gordon-Levitt! He's super famous now!
10:24pm - So, nurse Marion Whittington (whose car Michael stole in his escape from Smith's Grove in the first "Halloween"), once again played by Nancy Stephens, arrives home from work to find her house has been broken into. Frightened to enter on her own, she calls the cops and sends lil Joseph Gordon-Levitt (he's super famous now!), wielding a hockey stick, to go investigate. On his search, he finds an empty medical file labelled "Laurie Strode" (!!). Startled by a loud noise, he messes up the kitchen and after finding no one inside, blames the mess on the absent intruder. Naughty.
10:26pm - Marion, feeling safe, enters but is startled when she discovers the back door mysteriously open. She runs next door and finds -- oh no -- lil Joseph Gordon-Levitt with the blade of an ice skate jammed in his face (lil Joseph Gordon-Levitt, noooo!). Michael appears and struggles with Marion. As she yells for the cops who have just arrived outside, Michael slits her throat with a kitchen knife. As the cops find Marion's body, Michael drives off into the night with Laurie's medical files. A terrific opening scene.
10:33pm - Dr. Loomis' speech about Michael's incarceration from the first "Halloween" is heard over the opening titles. This is not, however, Donald Pleasence's voice; it's sound-alike Tom Kane.
10:35pm - Laurie's back! Which means Jamie Lee Curtis is back! Yay! And she's having nightmares about Michael coming for her. And she's the headmistress of a boarding school. And her teenage son John is played by Josh Hartnett in his film debut.
10:41pm - A mother and daughter pull up their car outside a gas station to go tinkle. But uh oh, isn't that the car Michael stole parked right outside? Michael's seen passing by the cubicles, the little girl screams, the mother runs to her aid, but oh! It was just a spider. Outside, Michael steals their car and drives off into the distance. He's a-comin'!
10:55pm - Reaching Laurie's new town of Hillcrest, Michael follows her to her swanky, gated home. Laurie reprimands security guard Ronny (LL Cool J!), who has an interesting passion for writing erotica, for letting John out when she specifically told him to make sure John stayed inside (it's Halloween, and Laurie's still nervous around this time of the year). Michael drives off.
11:03pm - And here's a cameo from the legendary Janet Leigh, aka Jamie Lee Curtis' mother, aka Marion Crane in "Psycho." Her character's name is Norma (as in Norma Bates), she complains about the showers being blocked (nudge nudge) and she drives away in the same car model she drove in "Psycho," which, by the way, also has the same license plate: NFB 418, NFB being Norman F. Bates' initials. Now that is just awesome.
11:05pm - That night, a car pulls up outside Laurie's home. Ronny opens the gate to find... no one inside the car! How strange.
11:10pm - "Scream 2"'s playing on t'telly! Fun fact: at the request of Dimension Films, "Scream" screenwriter Kevin Williamson wrote a treatment for "Halloween H20" that was a heavy basis on the final film. However, the WGA deemed that Williamson did not deserve writing credit on the screenplay and as such he is only credited as an executive producer.
11:15pm - Laurie reveals to her boyfriend, fellow teacher Will, played by Adam Arkin, her true identity, much to his shock. Meanwhile, John and his friends, skipping a school trip, have a secret Halloween party in the deserted school.
11:19pm - John's friend Charlie, played by Adam Han-Byrd (young Robin Williams in Jumanji!), is found dead in the dumbwaiter with a corkscrew in his neck. Ouch! Other friend Sarah, played by Jodi Lynn O'Keefe, is then stabbed repeatedly after her leg is hideously broken on the dumbwaiter. John and his friend Molly, played by Michelle Williams, go to investigate the noise, find the bodies and understandably freak the fuck out.
11:25pm - John and Molly run outside, flee from the pursuing Michael and run through the front door of John's house. Laurie, letting them in, then comes face to face with Michael for the first time in 20 years, through the glass of the door. It's a happy family reunion!
11:30pm - So, Laurie's entered badass mode now. Ordering John and Molly to hide in a room and barricade the door, she takes out her gun and goes on the hunt for Michael.
11:32pm - Will takes Laurie's gun, shoots at Michael and then realises it's Ronny wearing Michael's mask (Ronny, noooo!). The real Michael pops up and kills Will (Will, noooooo!). Laurie gets the kids and runs out of the house with them as Michael pursues, knife in hand.
11:37pm - Laurie, John and Molly get in the car and drive up to the shut gate. Opening the gate, Laurie tells the kids to go without her while she stays behind to kill Michael. Oh hellz yeah, girl! You a certified badass!
11:40pm - Entering the house with an axe in hand, Laurie plays a game of "hiding under the table" with Michael, throws a flag at him, throws knives at him and boots him off a railing. Going down to his unconscious body, she's about to stab him when... Ronny, alive, jumps in and stops her, telling her Michael is dead. Damn it, Ronny!
11:55pm - As the coroners put Michael's body in the back of their van, Laurie takes out her gun (wat), points it at the coroners (wat!) and steals the van (WAT!). Driving to a hillside, Laurie tumbles the van down a hill and finds Michael pinned against a tree. Michael reaches his hand out, Laurie reaches hers out and then -- WHAM! -- slices his head off with her axe. End credits.
[insert "we got a badass over here" meme here] This is undoubtedly the best of the sequels: it's fresh, it's smart, it's fun, it's self-referential, it has that terrific opening scene and of course it has Jamie Lee Curtis back as the series' greatest heroine, the strong, endearing Laurie Strode. It's not perfect, with the slasher stuff a little generic (we are 7 movies in, after all) and the supporting cast not particularly strong, but for a love letter to the franchise it is pretty damn awesome. I give "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later"...
...7/10. So, it's not technically Halloween anymore (it's actually November now, holy hell), but I'm pressing on with this marathon, even if it means I have to watch this piece of crap:
12:15am - A piece of crap which, I must say though, has a pretty cool opening. Laurie discovering to her horror that the man she viciously decapitated at the end of "H20" was not Michael but was in fact one of the paramedics, her locked up in an asylum, Michael coming for her, her luring him into a trap on the roof, her checking his mask to make sure it's him, him stabbing her, her kissing his mask, saying, "I'll see you in Hell" and then falling, quite gracefully, to her death (Laurie, noooooooo!). S'good. S'a good opening.
12:25am - And it's all downhill from there. Fun fact: Jamie Lee Curtis agreed to be in the film only to make certain that her character wouldn't appear in another sequel. Funny, 'cos there weren't any sequels after this: this movie's so bad they had to reboot the whole franchise.
12:30am - So, the story is, a bunch of college kids have been picked to enter the old Myers house to take part in a Halloween horror show broadcast live on the internet (wow! Ain't technology just amazing?). Cameras are laid out around the house, where the teens (also wearing head-cams) will spend the night being scared, splitting up and searching for clues as they investigate the mystery of Michael Myers. Zoinks! Like, I sure do hope that creepy creeper Michael Myers doesn't show up, Scoob.
12:32am - Oh look, Busta Rhymes!
12:33am - Oh look, Tyra Banks!
12:34am - Oh look, Kevin from "American Pie"!
12:40am - The camera watches Tyra Banks' ass as she dances. Classy. I'm sure John Carpenter would have done the same.
12:41am - Ah, a "Peeping Tom" homage (Michael shoving a tripod leg through a cameraman's throat, as seen from the tripod's POV) while generic hip hop plays in the background. Michael Powell would be proud.
12:45am - The six teens have entered the old, dusty Myers house. "Let the danger-tainment begin," says Busta Rhymes before blowing an airhorn. In spite of its name, danger-tainment is surprisingly boring.
12:50am - Whoa! That dude in the Vincent Vega costume, played by Ryan Merriman, is playing with one of those super advanced computer thingies. This movie's so hip and down with the kids, yo. Named Myles, he watches the broadcast at a Halloween party.
12:57am - Who would watch this show? Seriously? I mean, aside from the dude in the Vincent Vega costume. The camerawork's crappy, the teens are uninteresting, nothing is happening and this is just insanely boring. The internet show too.
12:58am - Kevin from "American Pie" is killed, Michael bursting through a mirror and plunging a knife through his head (Kevin from "American Pie," nooooo!).
1:01am - Two teens have decided to screw in the basement of the Myers house (apparently forgetting their every move is being broadcast on the internet). I think Michael might have a word or two about that.
1:09am - Two different teens are now smoking from a bong (with their head-cams still on, idiots). It's like these people have never seen a "Halloween" movie before.
1:10am - Busta Rhymes enters the house dressed as Michael to scare the teens while the real Michael, unbeknownst to Mr. Rhymes, walks behind him. Believing the real Michael to be the dead cameraman, Busta Rhymes shouts at Michael, who then walks away. Uhh, Michael, couldn't you have killed Mr. Rhymes just then? Michael?
1:13am - Donna, played by Daisy McCrackin, discovers a secret tunnel behind a wall. Inside the tunnel, Michael chases after her and impales her on the sharp piece of a metal gate. Meanwhile, partygoers watching the live feed with Myles cheer and hoot, believing Donna's death to be fake. Social commentary? Nahhh.
1:15am - Finding Busta Rhymes in the Michael costume and having discovered other "jump scare" traps, the teens realise the whole thing is a set up and are preparing to leave when Jen, played by Katee Sackhoff, is decapitated in front of everyone by the real Michael. Everybody freaks the fuck out.
1:20am - Watching the live feed, Miles guides Sara, played by Bianca Kajlich, away from Michael by messaging her online while Michael kills Jim, played by Luke Kirby, and Rudy, played by Sean Patrick Thomas, downstairs.
1:24am - Busta Rhymes, apparently a kung fu aficionado, just kung-fu kicked Michael Myers out of a two-storey window. I don't know how, but this movie exists.
1:25am - And Busta Rhymes is now dead, stabbed through the shoulder twice. Yay! Through the secret tunnel, Sara reaches the garage and finds Tyra Banks' body hanging from the ceiling (Tyra Banks, noooo!). Michael enters and Sara attacks him with a chainsaw before the garage catches fire.
1:29am - Oh for god's sake, Busta Rhymes is not dead. He just burst through the garage door and said, "Trick or treat, motherfucker." Once again, this movie exists.
1:33am - Busta Rhymes and Sara run out of the burning house as Michael, entangled in electrical wiring, burns inside. After an impassioned speech by Busta Rhymes about how Michael is a "killer shark in baggy-ass overalls," Michael's body is taken to the morgue, where his eyes, of course, burst open. End credits.
What else is there to say? Not just a massive comedown after the excellent, refreshing "Halloween H20," it's also an insultingly lousy, stupid and borderline snooze-inducing slasher movie that belongs nowhere but the bottom of a bargain bin. The opening Laurie/Michael showdown aside, it's a cheesy, thoughtless, braindead doozy and an embarrassment to the franchise. Busta Rhymes, man. BUSTA RHYMES. I give "Halloween: Resurrection"...
...2/10! And that right there is the end of the original "Halloween" franchise. Which means now it's time to delve into Rob Zombie's sick, twisted mind with his 2007 remake/reboot/re-imagining/really not that good "Halloween" (director's cut).
1:52am - "Bitch, I will crawl over there and I will skull-fuck the shit out of you!" Rob Zombie starting his "Halloween" off classy and subtle.
1:56am - "I heard they had to pump the cum from her stomach!" And getting classier!
2:00am - Malcolm McDowell's Dr. Loomis is lookin' groovy. Credit where credit's due: that's a great piece of casting right there. So, it's Halloween, and 10-year-old Michael Myers, played by the talented Daeg Faerch, has been taken to the headmaster's office after a fight in the school toilets. Michael's mother Deborah, played by Rob Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie, is called in to talk about his behaviour. From Michael's rucksack, Dr. Loomis takes out a dead cat and several photographs of other mutilated animals.
2:05am - Walking home from school, Michael viciously beats his bully, ex Spy Kid Daryl Sabara, to death with a heavy branch in the woods. Yeah, I hated "Spy Kids 3D" too, man.
2:13am - That night, while his mother is out at work, Michael slits the throat of his insanely abusive father (William Forsythe), bashes his sister Judith's boyfriend (Adam Weisman) to death with a baseball bat and stabs his sister (Hanna Hall) to death with a kitchen knife. There's much more blood, much more brutality and much more tears than in Carpenter's opening scene and yet the impact just isn't the same. Shows the power of simplicity.
2:20am - Danny Trejo! As the asylum's janitor! I love Danny Trejo!
2:23am - Michael is taken to Smith's Grove, where he is initially cooperative with psychologist Dr. Loomis but over time begins to shut down, focusing his attention on making paper mache masks. As his mother leaves after one of her weekly visits, Michael kills a nurse by stabbing her in the neck with a fork. Unable to cope, Michael's mother commits suicide.
2:33am - See, what I loved about Michael Myers in Carpenter's movie was his mystery. There was no explaining him: he just was. Here, Zombie's trying to explain him and rather ironically it takes away from the character. As Dr. Loomis said countless times throughout the original franchise, Michael's not a man: he's a thing. Zombie has turned him into a human being and now he's just another bog-standard psychopath, not the boogeyman we came to know.
2:35am - 15 years later, Dr. Loomis, wishing to move on with his life, gives up on Michael, now a towering, uncommunicative hulk.
2:38am - Eugh, here comes the completely pointless rape scene. Why do the two guards take the prisoner into Michael's cell to rape her anyway? What a weird thing to do. And who the hell employed these hillbilly sickos to look after mentally disturbed prisoners?
2:42am - Danny Trejo, nooooo!
2:45am - And Michael's escaped. And here the film turns into just another generic slasher movie, rendering the opening half utterly pointless.
2:47am - Michael goes to a rest stop and steals the clothes and truck of a groovy-looking truck driver, played by Ken Foree, sitting on the toilet reading a porno mag.
2:51am - It's new Laurie, Scout Taylor-Compton, much more of a prankster and a joker than Jamie Lee Curtis' virginal character.
2:53am - Fun fact: Danielle Harris, the actress who plays Annie, also played little Jamie in "The Return of Michael Myers" and "The Revenge of Michael Myers." Okay, that is pretty cool.
2:55am - Dr. Loomis learns of Michael's escape and heads for Haddonfield to stop him. Meanwhile, having reached Haddonfield, Michael stalks Laurie and Annie from afar.
3:00am - And it's Brad Dourif as Sheriff Brackett. Did you know he's the voice of Chucky in the "Child's Play" movies? Of course you did. Also, Sid Haig, aka Captain Spaulding in Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects," is the cemetery keeper.
3:06am - It's the horndogs again, played by Nick Mennell and Kristina Klebe! With full-body nudity this time round. Also, they're in the old Myers house this time rather than the Wallace house.
3:10am - Michael slays the horndogs, slays Laurie's parents, played by Pat Skipper and Dee Wallace, and then attacks Annie and boyfriend Paul, played by Max Van Ville, killing Paul but only injuring Annie.
3:20pm - "You're talking like we're dealing with the Antichrist!" says Sheriff Brackett. "Well maybe we are!" replies Dr. Loomis. See, that doesn't quite ring true here.
3:35pm - Discovering the body of Paul and a quivering, bloodied Annie, Laurie is chased into the Doyle house by Michael and hides in the bathroom with little Tommy, played by Skyler Gisondo, and little Lindsey, played by Jenny Gregg Stewart. After taking out a couple of cops, Michael bursts through the bathroom door and grabs Laurie.
3:40am - An interesting departure: Michael carries an unconscious Laurie to the attic of the old Myers house. As he shows her a photo of her as a baby, trying to show her that she is his little sister, she stabs him with his own knife and escapes before slipping and falling into an empty swimming pool. As Michael marches towards her, Dr. Loomis appears and fires at Michael, who falls, unconscious.
3:50pm - Laurie and Dr. Loomis go sit in Sheriff Brackett's police car. "Was that the boogeyman?" Laurie asks. "As a matter of fact, I think it was," Dr. Loomis replies. WHAM! Michael's hand comes crashing through the car window and grabs Laurie. Michael drags her kicking and screaming into the Myers house. Dr. Loomis follows and is attacked by Michael. Laurie runs off, hides and Zombie's just padding out the 2-hour runtime here, isn't he?
3:55pm - Eventually, Michael runs at Laurie, throwing both of them out of the window and onto the ground below. Laurie, on top of Michael, grabs her gun, aims it at Michael's head, pulls the trigger multiple times until she finally reaches a live round and lets out a blood-curdling scream. End credits.
I appreciate what Zombie was trying to do here in examining Michael's childhood and psyche, but this was just a misguided project: it reduces Michael to nothing more than a super-strong nutjob and honestly, there's not much to the film outside of relentless gore and high production values. A decent stab, but the knife is blunt. I give Rob Zombie's "Halloween"...
...4/10! Now onto... sigh... Rob Zombie's "Halloween II" (director's cut).
4:15am - Right. I remember buying this on DVD after kinda liking Zombie's "Halloween" remake (I was 14!) and I really fucking hated it. As in, I found it just a miserable, depressing viewing experience that I almost considered ending sometime around the midway mark. Let's see if my opinion of it has changed 4 years later.
4:20am - Laurie, covered in blood and in a state of shock, is treated at Haddonfield Hospital while Michael's body is taken away by paramedics. After the ambulance crashes into a cow on the road (!), Michael -- you'll never guess -- escapes from the ambulance and kills the one remaining paramedic. At the end of the road, he sees a most peculiar sight: his dead mother Deborah in a glowing white gown standing next to a white horse. Weird, right?
4:30am - Octavia Spencer!
4:32am - Well, Octavia Spencer didn't last very long.
4:35am - So, this whole opening's basically a condensed version of the original "Halloween II," with Laurie fleeing from Michael when he comes for her at the hospital. Except, as it turns out, this is all a dream, and Laurie's actually fine. *Shyamalan voice* What a tweest!
4:45am - Well, I say she's okay: it's two years later and she's still haunted by that night, suffering night terrors, undergoing therapy and having to take medication to calm her nerves. She now lives with Sheriff Brackett and his daughter Annie. She's also turned into a hardcore goth rocker, just like, oh I dunno, Rob Zombie.
4:53am - And in a bizarre change of character, Dr. Loomis is now a complete sell-out douchebag and a massive drama queen throwing hissy fits over promotional photos and cups of PG Tips on his book tour. What the fuck? Malcolm McDowell's performance in this is particularly laughable, his character barely recognisable from that of the previous film.
5:00am - Here comes Michael the hobo, with his big bushy beard, wandering through a field. A vision of his angelic mother tells him to kill for her. And so he does, slaughtering a bunch of hillbillies who attack him.
5:10am - Looks like Michael and Laurie have some sort of telepathic connection, like Michael and Jamie in "Revenge of Michael Myers." E.g. Michael eats some dead dog (gross!), causing Laurie to feel sick and puke into the toilet. Which is very odd, considering Zombie stated he aimed for this to be more "realistic" than its predecessor and yet, out of nowhere, he's throwing telepathic abilities at us. Yes, very realistic.
5:20am - Laurie's going nuts. Suffering horrifying nightmares and visions of killing Annie, she's out of her meds and is resorting to drink to calm herself. It ain't workin' -- she's a goddamn wreck. And, I might add, very difficult to root for: not to sound cruel but Laurie does literally nothing in this film but whine and sob and moan, and we are given pretty much no reason to care about her other than the fact that she's the protagonist. She's a far cry from Curtis' Laurie, who's endearing in her fight for survival.
5:25am - Hobo Michael arrives at a sleazy strip joint for some T&A. Also, some totally pointless, grisly slaughtering. Oh goody. This whole scene's particularly pointless, serving no purpose other than serving up some nasty gore and padding out the runtime.
5:35am - Oops. Thanks to a lil peak inside Dr. Loomis' new book, Laurie's found out about her and Michael's blood relation. Now she's sobbing in her car. Good god, Laurie, lighten up! You're *such* a misery guts.
5:42am - Dr. Loomis is on stage with Weird Al Yankovic. What the fuck?
5:46am - Fun fact: this is a terrible movie.
5:50am - Okay, actual fun fact: Zombie originally stated he would never do a sequel to "Halloween." That is, until the studio decided to make "Halloween II," at which point Zombie signed on because he didn't want someone to ruin his vision. I for one think he's done a pretty good job of that himself.
5:53am - Oh god, they're showing the Dr. Loomis / Weird Al Yankovic interview again. MAKE IT STOP.
6:00am - Laurie returns home from a rave to discover Annie butchered in the bathroom (Annie, noooo-oohhh, I don't care anymore). Michael's back! And he's come to kill Laurie (probably)! Yay!
10:24pm - So, nurse Marion Whittington (whose car Michael stole in his escape from Smith's Grove in the first "Halloween"), once again played by Nancy Stephens, arrives home from work to find her house has been broken into. Frightened to enter on her own, she calls the cops and sends lil Joseph Gordon-Levitt (he's super famous now!), wielding a hockey stick, to go investigate. On his search, he finds an empty medical file labelled "Laurie Strode" (!!). Startled by a loud noise, he messes up the kitchen and after finding no one inside, blames the mess on the absent intruder. Naughty.
10:26pm - Marion, feeling safe, enters but is startled when she discovers the back door mysteriously open. She runs next door and finds -- oh no -- lil Joseph Gordon-Levitt with the blade of an ice skate jammed in his face (lil Joseph Gordon-Levitt, noooo!). Michael appears and struggles with Marion. As she yells for the cops who have just arrived outside, Michael slits her throat with a kitchen knife. As the cops find Marion's body, Michael drives off into the night with Laurie's medical files. A terrific opening scene.
10:33pm - Dr. Loomis' speech about Michael's incarceration from the first "Halloween" is heard over the opening titles. This is not, however, Donald Pleasence's voice; it's sound-alike Tom Kane.
10:35pm - Laurie's back! Which means Jamie Lee Curtis is back! Yay! And she's having nightmares about Michael coming for her. And she's the headmistress of a boarding school. And her teenage son John is played by Josh Hartnett in his film debut.
10:41pm - A mother and daughter pull up their car outside a gas station to go tinkle. But uh oh, isn't that the car Michael stole parked right outside? Michael's seen passing by the cubicles, the little girl screams, the mother runs to her aid, but oh! It was just a spider. Outside, Michael steals their car and drives off into the distance. He's a-comin'!
10:55pm - Reaching Laurie's new town of Hillcrest, Michael follows her to her swanky, gated home. Laurie reprimands security guard Ronny (LL Cool J!), who has an interesting passion for writing erotica, for letting John out when she specifically told him to make sure John stayed inside (it's Halloween, and Laurie's still nervous around this time of the year). Michael drives off.
11:03pm - And here's a cameo from the legendary Janet Leigh, aka Jamie Lee Curtis' mother, aka Marion Crane in "Psycho." Her character's name is Norma (as in Norma Bates), she complains about the showers being blocked (nudge nudge) and she drives away in the same car model she drove in "Psycho," which, by the way, also has the same license plate: NFB 418, NFB being Norman F. Bates' initials. Now that is just awesome.
11:05pm - That night, a car pulls up outside Laurie's home. Ronny opens the gate to find... no one inside the car! How strange.
11:10pm - "Scream 2"'s playing on t'telly! Fun fact: at the request of Dimension Films, "Scream" screenwriter Kevin Williamson wrote a treatment for "Halloween H20" that was a heavy basis on the final film. However, the WGA deemed that Williamson did not deserve writing credit on the screenplay and as such he is only credited as an executive producer.
11:15pm - Laurie reveals to her boyfriend, fellow teacher Will, played by Adam Arkin, her true identity, much to his shock. Meanwhile, John and his friends, skipping a school trip, have a secret Halloween party in the deserted school.
11:19pm - John's friend Charlie, played by Adam Han-Byrd (young Robin Williams in Jumanji!), is found dead in the dumbwaiter with a corkscrew in his neck. Ouch! Other friend Sarah, played by Jodi Lynn O'Keefe, is then stabbed repeatedly after her leg is hideously broken on the dumbwaiter. John and his friend Molly, played by Michelle Williams, go to investigate the noise, find the bodies and understandably freak the fuck out.
11:25pm - John and Molly run outside, flee from the pursuing Michael and run through the front door of John's house. Laurie, letting them in, then comes face to face with Michael for the first time in 20 years, through the glass of the door. It's a happy family reunion!
11:30pm - So, Laurie's entered badass mode now. Ordering John and Molly to hide in a room and barricade the door, she takes out her gun and goes on the hunt for Michael.
11:32pm - Will takes Laurie's gun, shoots at Michael and then realises it's Ronny wearing Michael's mask (Ronny, noooo!). The real Michael pops up and kills Will (Will, noooooo!). Laurie gets the kids and runs out of the house with them as Michael pursues, knife in hand.
11:37pm - Laurie, John and Molly get in the car and drive up to the shut gate. Opening the gate, Laurie tells the kids to go without her while she stays behind to kill Michael. Oh hellz yeah, girl! You a certified badass!
11:40pm - Entering the house with an axe in hand, Laurie plays a game of "hiding under the table" with Michael, throws a flag at him, throws knives at him and boots him off a railing. Going down to his unconscious body, she's about to stab him when... Ronny, alive, jumps in and stops her, telling her Michael is dead. Damn it, Ronny!
11:55pm - As the coroners put Michael's body in the back of their van, Laurie takes out her gun (wat), points it at the coroners (wat!) and steals the van (WAT!). Driving to a hillside, Laurie tumbles the van down a hill and finds Michael pinned against a tree. Michael reaches his hand out, Laurie reaches hers out and then -- WHAM! -- slices his head off with her axe. End credits.
[insert "we got a badass over here" meme here] This is undoubtedly the best of the sequels: it's fresh, it's smart, it's fun, it's self-referential, it has that terrific opening scene and of course it has Jamie Lee Curtis back as the series' greatest heroine, the strong, endearing Laurie Strode. It's not perfect, with the slasher stuff a little generic (we are 7 movies in, after all) and the supporting cast not particularly strong, but for a love letter to the franchise it is pretty damn awesome. I give "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later"...
...7/10. So, it's not technically Halloween anymore (it's actually November now, holy hell), but I'm pressing on with this marathon, even if it means I have to watch this piece of crap:
12:25am - And it's all downhill from there. Fun fact: Jamie Lee Curtis agreed to be in the film only to make certain that her character wouldn't appear in another sequel. Funny, 'cos there weren't any sequels after this: this movie's so bad they had to reboot the whole franchise.
12:30am - So, the story is, a bunch of college kids have been picked to enter the old Myers house to take part in a Halloween horror show broadcast live on the internet (wow! Ain't technology just amazing?). Cameras are laid out around the house, where the teens (also wearing head-cams) will spend the night being scared, splitting up and searching for clues as they investigate the mystery of Michael Myers. Zoinks! Like, I sure do hope that creepy creeper Michael Myers doesn't show up, Scoob.
12:32am - Oh look, Busta Rhymes!
12:33am - Oh look, Tyra Banks!
12:34am - Oh look, Kevin from "American Pie"!
12:40am - The camera watches Tyra Banks' ass as she dances. Classy. I'm sure John Carpenter would have done the same.
12:41am - Ah, a "Peeping Tom" homage (Michael shoving a tripod leg through a cameraman's throat, as seen from the tripod's POV) while generic hip hop plays in the background. Michael Powell would be proud.
12:45am - The six teens have entered the old, dusty Myers house. "Let the danger-tainment begin," says Busta Rhymes before blowing an airhorn. In spite of its name, danger-tainment is surprisingly boring.
12:50am - Whoa! That dude in the Vincent Vega costume, played by Ryan Merriman, is playing with one of those super advanced computer thingies. This movie's so hip and down with the kids, yo. Named Myles, he watches the broadcast at a Halloween party.
12:57am - Who would watch this show? Seriously? I mean, aside from the dude in the Vincent Vega costume. The camerawork's crappy, the teens are uninteresting, nothing is happening and this is just insanely boring. The internet show too.
12:58am - Kevin from "American Pie" is killed, Michael bursting through a mirror and plunging a knife through his head (Kevin from "American Pie," nooooo!).
1:01am - Two teens have decided to screw in the basement of the Myers house (apparently forgetting their every move is being broadcast on the internet). I think Michael might have a word or two about that.
1:09am - Two different teens are now smoking from a bong (with their head-cams still on, idiots). It's like these people have never seen a "Halloween" movie before.
1:10am - Busta Rhymes enters the house dressed as Michael to scare the teens while the real Michael, unbeknownst to Mr. Rhymes, walks behind him. Believing the real Michael to be the dead cameraman, Busta Rhymes shouts at Michael, who then walks away. Uhh, Michael, couldn't you have killed Mr. Rhymes just then? Michael?
1:13am - Donna, played by Daisy McCrackin, discovers a secret tunnel behind a wall. Inside the tunnel, Michael chases after her and impales her on the sharp piece of a metal gate. Meanwhile, partygoers watching the live feed with Myles cheer and hoot, believing Donna's death to be fake. Social commentary? Nahhh.
1:15am - Finding Busta Rhymes in the Michael costume and having discovered other "jump scare" traps, the teens realise the whole thing is a set up and are preparing to leave when Jen, played by Katee Sackhoff, is decapitated in front of everyone by the real Michael. Everybody freaks the fuck out.
1:20am - Watching the live feed, Miles guides Sara, played by Bianca Kajlich, away from Michael by messaging her online while Michael kills Jim, played by Luke Kirby, and Rudy, played by Sean Patrick Thomas, downstairs.
1:24am - Busta Rhymes, apparently a kung fu aficionado, just kung-fu kicked Michael Myers out of a two-storey window. I don't know how, but this movie exists.
1:25am - And Busta Rhymes is now dead, stabbed through the shoulder twice. Yay! Through the secret tunnel, Sara reaches the garage and finds Tyra Banks' body hanging from the ceiling (Tyra Banks, noooo!). Michael enters and Sara attacks him with a chainsaw before the garage catches fire.
1:29am - Oh for god's sake, Busta Rhymes is not dead. He just burst through the garage door and said, "Trick or treat, motherfucker." Once again, this movie exists.
1:33am - Busta Rhymes and Sara run out of the burning house as Michael, entangled in electrical wiring, burns inside. After an impassioned speech by Busta Rhymes about how Michael is a "killer shark in baggy-ass overalls," Michael's body is taken to the morgue, where his eyes, of course, burst open. End credits.
What else is there to say? Not just a massive comedown after the excellent, refreshing "Halloween H20," it's also an insultingly lousy, stupid and borderline snooze-inducing slasher movie that belongs nowhere but the bottom of a bargain bin. The opening Laurie/Michael showdown aside, it's a cheesy, thoughtless, braindead doozy and an embarrassment to the franchise. Busta Rhymes, man. BUSTA RHYMES. I give "Halloween: Resurrection"...
...2/10! And that right there is the end of the original "Halloween" franchise. Which means now it's time to delve into Rob Zombie's sick, twisted mind with his 2007 remake/reboot/re-imagining/really not that good "Halloween" (director's cut).
1:56am - "I heard they had to pump the cum from her stomach!" And getting classier!
2:00am - Malcolm McDowell's Dr. Loomis is lookin' groovy. Credit where credit's due: that's a great piece of casting right there. So, it's Halloween, and 10-year-old Michael Myers, played by the talented Daeg Faerch, has been taken to the headmaster's office after a fight in the school toilets. Michael's mother Deborah, played by Rob Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie, is called in to talk about his behaviour. From Michael's rucksack, Dr. Loomis takes out a dead cat and several photographs of other mutilated animals.
2:05am - Walking home from school, Michael viciously beats his bully, ex Spy Kid Daryl Sabara, to death with a heavy branch in the woods. Yeah, I hated "Spy Kids 3D" too, man.
2:13am - That night, while his mother is out at work, Michael slits the throat of his insanely abusive father (William Forsythe), bashes his sister Judith's boyfriend (Adam Weisman) to death with a baseball bat and stabs his sister (Hanna Hall) to death with a kitchen knife. There's much more blood, much more brutality and much more tears than in Carpenter's opening scene and yet the impact just isn't the same. Shows the power of simplicity.
2:20am - Danny Trejo! As the asylum's janitor! I love Danny Trejo!
2:23am - Michael is taken to Smith's Grove, where he is initially cooperative with psychologist Dr. Loomis but over time begins to shut down, focusing his attention on making paper mache masks. As his mother leaves after one of her weekly visits, Michael kills a nurse by stabbing her in the neck with a fork. Unable to cope, Michael's mother commits suicide.
2:33am - See, what I loved about Michael Myers in Carpenter's movie was his mystery. There was no explaining him: he just was. Here, Zombie's trying to explain him and rather ironically it takes away from the character. As Dr. Loomis said countless times throughout the original franchise, Michael's not a man: he's a thing. Zombie has turned him into a human being and now he's just another bog-standard psychopath, not the boogeyman we came to know.
2:35am - 15 years later, Dr. Loomis, wishing to move on with his life, gives up on Michael, now a towering, uncommunicative hulk.
2:38am - Eugh, here comes the completely pointless rape scene. Why do the two guards take the prisoner into Michael's cell to rape her anyway? What a weird thing to do. And who the hell employed these hillbilly sickos to look after mentally disturbed prisoners?
2:42am - Danny Trejo, nooooo!
2:45am - And Michael's escaped. And here the film turns into just another generic slasher movie, rendering the opening half utterly pointless.
2:47am - Michael goes to a rest stop and steals the clothes and truck of a groovy-looking truck driver, played by Ken Foree, sitting on the toilet reading a porno mag.
2:51am - It's new Laurie, Scout Taylor-Compton, much more of a prankster and a joker than Jamie Lee Curtis' virginal character.
2:53am - Fun fact: Danielle Harris, the actress who plays Annie, also played little Jamie in "The Return of Michael Myers" and "The Revenge of Michael Myers." Okay, that is pretty cool.
2:55am - Dr. Loomis learns of Michael's escape and heads for Haddonfield to stop him. Meanwhile, having reached Haddonfield, Michael stalks Laurie and Annie from afar.
3:00am - And it's Brad Dourif as Sheriff Brackett. Did you know he's the voice of Chucky in the "Child's Play" movies? Of course you did. Also, Sid Haig, aka Captain Spaulding in Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects," is the cemetery keeper.
3:06am - It's the horndogs again, played by Nick Mennell and Kristina Klebe! With full-body nudity this time round. Also, they're in the old Myers house this time rather than the Wallace house.
3:10am - Michael slays the horndogs, slays Laurie's parents, played by Pat Skipper and Dee Wallace, and then attacks Annie and boyfriend Paul, played by Max Van Ville, killing Paul but only injuring Annie.
3:20pm - "You're talking like we're dealing with the Antichrist!" says Sheriff Brackett. "Well maybe we are!" replies Dr. Loomis. See, that doesn't quite ring true here.
3:35pm - Discovering the body of Paul and a quivering, bloodied Annie, Laurie is chased into the Doyle house by Michael and hides in the bathroom with little Tommy, played by Skyler Gisondo, and little Lindsey, played by Jenny Gregg Stewart. After taking out a couple of cops, Michael bursts through the bathroom door and grabs Laurie.
3:40am - An interesting departure: Michael carries an unconscious Laurie to the attic of the old Myers house. As he shows her a photo of her as a baby, trying to show her that she is his little sister, she stabs him with his own knife and escapes before slipping and falling into an empty swimming pool. As Michael marches towards her, Dr. Loomis appears and fires at Michael, who falls, unconscious.
3:50pm - Laurie and Dr. Loomis go sit in Sheriff Brackett's police car. "Was that the boogeyman?" Laurie asks. "As a matter of fact, I think it was," Dr. Loomis replies. WHAM! Michael's hand comes crashing through the car window and grabs Laurie. Michael drags her kicking and screaming into the Myers house. Dr. Loomis follows and is attacked by Michael. Laurie runs off, hides and Zombie's just padding out the 2-hour runtime here, isn't he?
3:55pm - Eventually, Michael runs at Laurie, throwing both of them out of the window and onto the ground below. Laurie, on top of Michael, grabs her gun, aims it at Michael's head, pulls the trigger multiple times until she finally reaches a live round and lets out a blood-curdling scream. End credits.
I appreciate what Zombie was trying to do here in examining Michael's childhood and psyche, but this was just a misguided project: it reduces Michael to nothing more than a super-strong nutjob and honestly, there's not much to the film outside of relentless gore and high production values. A decent stab, but the knife is blunt. I give Rob Zombie's "Halloween"...
...4/10! Now onto... sigh... Rob Zombie's "Halloween II" (director's cut).
4:20am - Laurie, covered in blood and in a state of shock, is treated at Haddonfield Hospital while Michael's body is taken away by paramedics. After the ambulance crashes into a cow on the road (!), Michael -- you'll never guess -- escapes from the ambulance and kills the one remaining paramedic. At the end of the road, he sees a most peculiar sight: his dead mother Deborah in a glowing white gown standing next to a white horse. Weird, right?
4:30am - Octavia Spencer!
4:32am - Well, Octavia Spencer didn't last very long.
4:35am - So, this whole opening's basically a condensed version of the original "Halloween II," with Laurie fleeing from Michael when he comes for her at the hospital. Except, as it turns out, this is all a dream, and Laurie's actually fine. *Shyamalan voice* What a tweest!
4:45am - Well, I say she's okay: it's two years later and she's still haunted by that night, suffering night terrors, undergoing therapy and having to take medication to calm her nerves. She now lives with Sheriff Brackett and his daughter Annie. She's also turned into a hardcore goth rocker, just like, oh I dunno, Rob Zombie.
4:53am - And in a bizarre change of character, Dr. Loomis is now a complete sell-out douchebag and a massive drama queen throwing hissy fits over promotional photos and cups of PG Tips on his book tour. What the fuck? Malcolm McDowell's performance in this is particularly laughable, his character barely recognisable from that of the previous film.
5:00am - Here comes Michael the hobo, with his big bushy beard, wandering through a field. A vision of his angelic mother tells him to kill for her. And so he does, slaughtering a bunch of hillbillies who attack him.
5:10am - Looks like Michael and Laurie have some sort of telepathic connection, like Michael and Jamie in "Revenge of Michael Myers." E.g. Michael eats some dead dog (gross!), causing Laurie to feel sick and puke into the toilet. Which is very odd, considering Zombie stated he aimed for this to be more "realistic" than its predecessor and yet, out of nowhere, he's throwing telepathic abilities at us. Yes, very realistic.
5:20am - Laurie's going nuts. Suffering horrifying nightmares and visions of killing Annie, she's out of her meds and is resorting to drink to calm herself. It ain't workin' -- she's a goddamn wreck. And, I might add, very difficult to root for: not to sound cruel but Laurie does literally nothing in this film but whine and sob and moan, and we are given pretty much no reason to care about her other than the fact that she's the protagonist. She's a far cry from Curtis' Laurie, who's endearing in her fight for survival.
5:25am - Hobo Michael arrives at a sleazy strip joint for some T&A. Also, some totally pointless, grisly slaughtering. Oh goody. This whole scene's particularly pointless, serving no purpose other than serving up some nasty gore and padding out the runtime.
5:35am - Oops. Thanks to a lil peak inside Dr. Loomis' new book, Laurie's found out about her and Michael's blood relation. Now she's sobbing in her car. Good god, Laurie, lighten up! You're *such* a misery guts.
5:42am - Dr. Loomis is on stage with Weird Al Yankovic. What the fuck?
5:46am - Fun fact: this is a terrible movie.
5:50am - Okay, actual fun fact: Zombie originally stated he would never do a sequel to "Halloween." That is, until the studio decided to make "Halloween II," at which point Zombie signed on because he didn't want someone to ruin his vision. I for one think he's done a pretty good job of that himself.
5:53am - Oh god, they're showing the Dr. Loomis / Weird Al Yankovic interview again. MAKE IT STOP.
6:00am - Laurie returns home from a rave to discover Annie butchered in the bathroom (Annie, noooo-oohhh, I don't care anymore). Michael's back! And he's come to kill Laurie (probably)! Yay!
6:10am - Fleeing from Michael, Laurie ends up in a car crash and is carried to a nearby shack by Michael. The vision of the angelic Deborah Myers talks to her, asking her to repeat the words, "I love you, mommy." (I'm gonna be honest, I have no idea what the fuck is going on here) She does, and as she does, police surround the shack while a police chopper hovers overhead. Meanwhile, while fretting about his disastrous Weird Al Yankovic interview, Dr. Loomis learns of this on the TV news and comes to help.
6:15am - Dr. Loomis arrives on the scene and enters the shack, where he finds Michael and a delusional Laurie, who believes she is being restrained by a younger Michael. Michael throws Dr. Loomis through the wall of the shack, screams "Die!" (seriously), stabs him and is shot dead by the cops. Laurie exits the shack, picks up Michael's machete and is about to stab Dr. Loomis' body when the police open fire on her. She drops, dead (?).
6:20am - Laurie sits in a blinding white asylum, looks up at the camera and smiles. In the corridor in front of her, Deborah Myers and the white horse walk towards her as a cover of Love Hurts plays. Is this the afterlife? Or is Laurie alive, locked up in an asylum? You know what? I really don't care.
Okay, I'll admit I do have some respect for Zombie trying to take the franchise in a strange new direction with the white horse and the visions of Deborah Myers, but really, this is just a pompous, incoherent, overlong mess. It's overly grim, painful to sit through and awfully, hilariously pretentious. And at two flippin' hours, it's suuuuuch a gooooddaaaamn draaaaag. But hey, you know what? At least Busta Rhymes isn't in it. I give Rob Zombie's "Halloween II"...
...3/10.
Right. So. That's it. That's the "Halloween" live-blog done. Phew. That took longer than expected (lots of real-life distractions, grrr). But I had fun. Yep. I'm exhausted. And now I must go to bed. So, goodnight! And happy Halloween! Or happy Day-After-Halloween...
P.S. Apologies for the sweaty, cock-eyed pictures of me. Leave your complaints in the email address on the right.
