taking the michael.

Halloween (2007)
Dir: Rob Zombie.
Cast: Tyler Maine, Sir Malcolm McDowell, Dame Udo Kier, Sybil Danning, Danny Trejo, Sherri Moon Zombie, Brad Douriff, Scout Taylor-Compton, Danielle Harris, William Forsythe, Daeg Faerch, Richard Lynch and Lord Ken of Foree.

Haddonfield, Illinois, 31st October. Monster Mash is playing from an old radio in the Myer's kitchen. Nice but dim stripper mum (Zombie) is fixing breakfast whilst her wheelchair bound boyfriend Ronnie (Forsythe) shouts abuse at anyone who'll listen, between making lewd comments about his step-daughter Judith's arse that is. 

Long haired and pretty lipped Michael (Faerch) is the main target of his bullying, what with his predilection for killing his pets and wearing a crappy clown mask it's no wonder really. His mum tho' is too busy making baby Laurie wear hats indoors to notice (which for a baby that size is actually very dangerous).

Mmmmm....bop.

It's worse for Michael at school tho', not only is his headmaster the 'B' movie bad man Richard Lynch, but the school bully appears to be collecting flyers of his mum from the strip joint and talking about her 'titties' a lot whilst slapping Mike round the head. 

When the Lynch man tries to break it up Mike shouts "Fuck off" at him and legs it......uh oh.....could his day get any worse?

"Mah wean's no mental big yin!"

Principal Lynch invites mum Myers into his office, you see he has some worrying news regarding her son. It would appear that little Michael has taken to mutilating cats, taking photo's whilst doing it and keeping their corpses in his locker (as you do). 

Mum says it must be a mistake but it's too late as the head has already called in eminent child shrink Dr. Sam Loomis (McDowell in a stick on beard, Peter Davison-esque wig and acting like he's still doing coke) to help Michael with his little 'problems'.

Unfortunately for all involved, whilst this cosy chat is going on Michael is in the woods bludgeoning the school bully to death with a lump of 4 by 2 to John Carpenters original Halloween theme before returning home to get ready for some trick or treating fun.

Mum returns home to confront Michael about his 'hobby' but as soon as he tells her "I never done it, it was a bad boy done it and run away. I only said I'd done it but I never did". She says OK and heads off to work at the local strip joint, leaving dirty Judith and her arse splitting shorts to look after Mike whilst he's out asking for candy.

Sheri Moon Zombie:
eat a pie for fucks sake.

Mishearing her mum's request as "Leave Michael outside whilst you shag your greasy boyfriend" Judith proceeds to have 'the sex' with the aforementioned greaser (who bizarrely wants to 'do it' whilst wearing an exact copy of Michael Myers' mask from the original movie - post modern or what?) whilst Michael amuses himself by duct taping his drunk step dad to his wheelchair before beating him to death with a baseball bat.

Not content with just the two murders today, he then proceeds to stick a big knife in the boyfriend before attempting to touch up his sister (whilst cunningly disguised in a mask) then stab her too before chasing her around the house like wee Jimmy Krankie on crack.

"Ahm no climbing that
fookin' beanstalk again!"

Mum returns home from a hard nights gyrating to find her blood soaked son sitting on the doorstep cradling his baby sister and shouting "I've not murdered our family....it was a bad boy what done it..." and so on.

Laugh now!

Wee Michael (who has taken to wearing a variety of home made paper mache masks making him look like one of Slipknot) is soon locked up in the (surprisingly deserted) Smith's Grove Sanatorium under Loomis' supervision where he spends the next fifteen years denying he did anything (in between making masks and stabbing nurses with forks obviously) whilst Loomis looks on with a trouble expression.

Indicating this passage of time with Michael getting taller (and his hair going from blond to black and now being played by Tyler 'SaberTooth' Mayne ) whilst Loomis' hair gets shorter, the good Doctor decides that he should stop seeing Mike for various reasons (the main one being that he's not spoken for five years) and leaves but in a strange quirk of fate, this is the very night that the hospital decides to hire two pissed, redneck guards to work night duty. 

You can see where this is going can't you?

The pair decide to molest a female patient in front of Michael (in a totally gratuitous and offensive rape scene) then beat him with a stick and smash his masks when he doesn't respond. 

Of course the mask smashing sets him off so he kills the bad men and stomps out of the hospital towards Haddonfield in search of teenage babysitter and all round nice girl Laurie Strode (Taylor-Compton), a girl with whom Myers shares a special bond, stopping only to kill horror legend Ken Foree along the way.

McDowell hears Donald Pleasance
spinning in his grave.

And this is where the movie goes from so bad but (kinda) watchable for the cameo's to becoming a big incoherent mess....we've just spent the last fifty odd minutes learning about Michael's back ground and oh so terrible upbringing in arse numbing detail, but that leaves only another forty five minutes to actually tell the films main story; that of Myers' brutal rampage around his old home town that fateful Halloween night.

So how does Mr. Zombie get around this problem? Scarily by literally re-staging entire scenes from the original verbatim:

Laurie drops a key off at the old Myers house, watched by a scared Tommy?....Check!

Laurie, Annie and Lynda are chatting away during lunch break when Laurie sees Michael from the window?.....Check!

Laurie having to babysit Lindsay as well as Tommy so Annie can fool around with Paul?....check!

Michael killing Annie whilst wearing a sheet and Paul's specs?....Check!

Remember...piracy is a crime!

Zombie might have well of just stopped his movie and put the original on at this point rather than embarrass himself (and us) with almost xeroxed scenes and conversations from the original, just delivered in a less convincing way. 

It's like watching a bad fan production of Halloween where the director thinks that because everyone is named after characters we know and love that'll we'll care for them as much as we did the originals. 

Add to this the frightening amount of cult star cameos in the movie and it becomes more like a journey thru' a sad fan boys mind than a proper film (I will admit tho' it did feel it had been cast out of my subconscious at some points), and whilst it's good to see such luminaries as Ken Foree, Malcolm McDowell, Udo Kier, Sybil Danning, Danny Trejo, Brad Douriff and Richard Lynch together on the big screen in one movie, it's just a pity most of them have nothing to do but deliver a line then walk off.

Did Zombie (and Dimension Films) have such little faith in the project that they felt they had to fill it with so many crowd pleasing cameos just to entice the hardcore horror movie fans in?

Trick or treat?: definitely trick.

I'll freely admit that I've no idea if the last twenty minutes or so improved any, cos frankly I was so bored and embarrassed that I had to turn the thing off, which is a shame really, as Zombies first foray into film, House of 1000 Corpses is a genuinely great movie and came as such a surprise with it's no holds barred tribute to the 70's stalk n' slash genre that we all expected great things from him. 

His second feature The Devil's Rejects admittedly had some great moments, but the directors reliance on ill judged sexual violence and shots of his wifes arse began to creep to the fore, much the same as they do in Halloween.

If I was in this shit
I'd hide my face too.

To counter critics before the movie even began production, Zombie promised a terrifying look into the psyche of a killer in his version of Halloween, pity all he's delivered are the warmed up offcuts of a genre classic to be spoon fed to an apathetic teen audience that doesn't know any better but to go "Rob Zombie rocks dude!".
Which is a shame really.

Just stick to the original, I beg you.