Tag Archives: Halloween

Sequel Showdown: 2s, Twos, and IIs

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Sequels.

There are lots of them, but what are the best ones? Let’s play ’em off against one another until there’s an ultimate victor. To save on needless speculating, only films where more than one sequel was made (or is scheduled) can buy in…

Where better to start, the crowded Part 2, Episode II, Return of blah mini-verse.

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1981-1987

Friday the 13th Part 2; Halloween II; Psycho II; A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2;
Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II

Well, what to pick? To nobody’s surprise, Friday the 13th Part 2 gets my vote as the best first sequel out of this bunch. Second place goes to Psycho II. Last would be The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

EDIT: Having checked, I rated TCM2 half-a-star higher than Hello Mary Lou.

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1987-1993

Slumber Party Massacre II; Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2; Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers; Child’s Play 2; Maniac Cop 2;
Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice

Easy choice from the ‘lost years’ of the late 80s into the early 90s; Sleepaway Camp II is clearly the best film; the worst is Slumber Party Massacre II.

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1997-2003

Scream 2; I Still  Know What You Did Last Summer; Urban Legends: Final Cut; Camp Blood 2; Jeepers Creepers II; Bloody Murder 2: Closing Camp

Hollywood’s magic money fingers touched the genre in the second half of the 90s and budgets and aspirations were cranked. Scream 2 wins this round, with silver going to UL2 and last place obviously landing on the steaming crap that is Camp Blood 2.

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2003-2010

Final Destination 2; Wrong Turn 2: Dead End; Boogeyman 2; Cold Prey II;
Hatchet II; Scarecrow Slayer

Cold Prey II dances into first place with ease, though Final Destination 2 was a kick-ass sequel in its own right. The remainders range from interesting to painful. I’ll leave it up to you to arrange the order of those.

The Finalists

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An odd cross-section of first-sequels, all with various advantages of their own:

  • Scream 2 is a truly incredible sequel, one that equals if not, in some ways, improves on the original. The writing is sharp, the suspects many, and it represents the zenith of the 90s slasher boom in a lot of ways.
  • Sleepaway II is the best of its series – funny, bloody, campy and at camp (always a plus in my book), and Renee Estevez is the final girl in it.
  • Cold Prey II is the best sequel I’ve ever seen in terms of carrying on the story, finding a way to resurrect the killer, and even bringing back cast members to play the cadavers of their former selves. It’s sensational.

However, Friday 2 is – and always has been – everything I want out of a slasher film. Fast, furious, a high body count that doesn’t go stupidly ballistic, and Amy Steel. It could only be improved by somebody digging out the cut footage, slamming it back in and, presto!, the best the genre has to offer is even better, and for that reason, the entirely predictable winner is…

*

What would your pickings be?

Next time, Part 3s!

Twists of fury: Halloween Resurrection

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In this feature, Vegan Voorhees examines those jaw-dropping revelations that the slasher film loves to bat our way from the blue, like a pushy parent tossing softballs at a kid who doesn’t want to learn baseball.

Today, let’s share in the absolute disbelief laid at our feet by the truly spectacular revelation at the beginning of Halloween: Resurrection, a.k.a. How Michael Got His Groove Head Back. As ever, SPOILERS ensue…

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Set Up: Laurie Strode (Dame Jamie Lee of Curtis) is holed up in an asylum after it turns out that, at the end of Halloween H20, she DIDN’T lop loon-brother Michael’s head off with an axe at all… He returns, kills her (!) and then sets about terminating a group of teenage ghost hunters participating in a webcast at the olde Myers house.

Twist:  You remember the end of H20 don’t you? Jamie Lee commandeers the meatwagon with Michael’s body in it, knowing full well he won’t actually be dead. He ain’t. There’s a struggle, a crash, and Michael is pinned long enough for Laurie to take an axe and off with his head! No. This is what Resurrection tells us REALLY happened…

It wasn’t Michael. Michael attacked a paramedic, crushed his larynx so he couldn’t speak, and put the mask and boiler suit on him so he could hot-foot it outta there. JLC decapped the wrong dude!

Problems with this revelation:

  • Where the hell to begin? Why didn’t Michael just kill the paramedic, thus giving himself more time to escape before medical examiners found out it wasn’t him?
  • Why would the paramedic move and act EXACTLY like Michael?
  • Why wouldn’t he take the mask off?
  • Busta Rhymes!? No no no no no.

Likely explanation: Desperation. Sheer, greedy, corporate desperation. H20 did much better than predicted and Miramax couldn’t just leave it be with its perfect round-trip-ticket ending could they? They just had to meddle, coming up with the worst resurrection idea since a dog pissed on Freddy Krueger’s grave!

A pitiful twist if ever there was and then followed up by the death of the genre’s most iconic final girl. I’m surprised JLC agreed to take part at all.

However, the rest of Resurrection isn’t half bad – aside from Busta Rhymes of course – providing a workman-like slasher flick trip through to its pointless ending, which was cock-blocked by Rob Zombie’s remake, which just rebooted the whole franchise, making the whole project even more redundant than it already was.

Title Recall: The Big Three

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In a purely geek way, it’s interesting to observe the evolution of the title cards over the ‘big three’ slasher movie franchises as they desperately tried to remain relevant over time… Remakes n’ shit have NOT been included. We need them not.

From humble jack-o-lantern beginnings, Halloween kinda kept hold of its creepy off-yellow fontage for the most part, via the LED-laden electro of the non-slasher third instalment, to sleepy town in the shadow of gloom of the fourth, forgetting to put the suffix on the fifth, going all bold and brash for six, a bit fanciful in round seven and then curiously cheap looking in the much-maligned eighth…

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…And then the calendar flipped over to Friday. Friday… the 13th!

Like Halloween, the first two films feature almost indentical logos, the second exploding out of view to reveal the shiny metallic Part 2. They 3D-ified it next, then it was scrawled over Jason’s now-iconic hockey mask before the sub-title came smashing through; Part V revisited the original logo, dropped the instalment number and elected the ‘new style’ hockey mask that only lasted one film. Jason went all Bond for numero six; The New Blood returned to a basic red-on-black in the series’ by-then-standard fontage, repeated it with a New York backdrop for eight, then came the Jason-monikered films, flames-a-lickin’ for the first, floaty, DNA-stuff for the second.

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Last but by no means least – unless you’re talking body count – is Fredville.

The original film bears an almost childlike cartoony quality to it that was quicky shunned in the subsequent, and conversely less scary, sequels. Part 2, like it’s Friday counterpart, bore such a long title that it had to display it on two separate titles, again with the sheeny, metallic thing.

Elm‘s three and four, the closest pairing in the series, went for duplicated fontage, had dropped the unneccessary “part” and there you have it. The fifth, again strangely similar to Friday V, missed off the number and stuck the crayon suffix on a second card.

Finally, 1991’s “final” instalment goes down the bold factory-stamp avenue, not too dissimilar to The A-Team really…

Where is New Nightmare and Freddy vs. Jason? They will appear in later, more appropriate lists.

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Feast on scraps

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BREADCRUMBS

2.5 Stars  2011/15/87m

“We all live in a house of candy.”

Director/Writer: Mike Nichols / Writers: Samuel Freeman, Charles Black, Kohta Asakura & Anthony Masi / Cast: Marianne Hagan, Amy Crowdis, Dan Shaked, Mike Nichols, Darbi Worley, Douglas Nyback, Steve Carey, Alana Curry, Shira Weitz, Zoe Sloane, Jim Barnes, Kristina Klebe.

Body Count: 9

Dire-logue: “The map says go right.” / “Right is wrong. Left is right.”

A curious little endeavour featuring the talents of several genre buffs who worked on or starred in various Halloween-related ventures.

One of those strange experiences; BreadCrumbs starts out so well that I was thinking it could be the first 4-star slasher film I’ve seen since Mask Maker. That’s not to say early scenes (featuring Klebe of the Rob Zombie Halloween remake) will blow anybody away, but once the main crop of characters is introduced, they come with efficient and well-delivered dialogue, and – for once – seem like a nice bunch of folk who DON’T hate one another’s guts. A rarity in modern body count flicks.

Sadly, BreadCrumbs loses the trail just after the halfway point, once the horror begins.

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Before that, the group of porn film makers arrive at a pleasant enough chalet in the middle of the woods to, ahem, shoot. Among them, aging adult star Angie (Hagan, from Halloween 6), who is surfing a wave of regrettable decisions about her life and intends this to be her last feature. Her young co-star, Dominick, has a massive crush on her, eloquently outlined by the director’s missus, Jane: “Are you asking me how to fuck the woman you’ve had an erection for ever since I’ve known you?”

Coarse dialogue is fortunately not too overbearing in BreadCrumbs and the porno stuff is approached almost mechanically and like the any-other-job it most probably is for those around it 9 to 5.

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The residents are soon frequented by visits from oddball teenage siblings Henry and Patti, who seem content to run around playing childlike games, carrying dolls, or staring in windows. That is, until the violence begins…

Once people start dying, the wheels work loose on the vehicle and BreadCrumbs becomes little more than any other DVD kill-fest, highlighted only by ongoing questions surrounding the brother-sister threat (if indeed there is one) and comparing Hagan’s final girl performance to her likable turn as Kara Strode back in 1995.

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The murders are tame, largely off-camera and some are just hazarded – some people more or less vanish into the clutches of the killer and are never seen again. The lack of tension is damaging, especially as the characters worked so naturally in their early scenes. Now, when they turn on each other, stupid decisions are made where it didn’t look so likely before, and the usual “fuck you!” / “No! Fuck YOU!” interchanges ensue.

Eventually, Angie is the one to figure it out or, more accurately, get captured and be told what’s going on. It makes little sense, something about houses of candy, witches, delicacies and porn being the substitute for candy la la la. What mystery there was surrounding the siblings and who might be killing everyone is whittled down into an afterthought that makes a mockery of how well things were going at the start and an unintentional LOL moment where a boy stands yelling “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” as Angie runs away. One of those day-job-quit occasions.

And the opening scene (with Klebe) is never again referenced.

A real shame in many ways, but also hopeful that perhaps these guys will work with a higher budget and a more well thought out story sometime in the future that could deliver something really good. But I DID say that about Madhouse as well…

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