Rob Zombie's Halloween -- Essay Series Conclusion

I really enjoy writing in a more free-flowing essay series form on films as a contrast to the typical regular review, and I finish up on Rob Zombie's Halloween with this "In Conclusion" post.

As Zombie did for Ken Foree, Sid Haig gets his cameo as the undertaker showing Loomis the gravesite of Michael’s sister. As expected, Haig if full of curse words, and Zombie adds the cool touch of a decimated fox plastered on a stick crucifix. There were plenty of character actors’ cameos that either barely made or were left on the cutting room floor during his “final cut” released on home video/streaming. Haig and Foree were fortunate enough to make it. As was Micky Dolenz, featured as a gun store owner offering a few hand gun choices for Loomis’ perusal.

One scene I think is really cool has “queen of Sheba” watching The Thing from Another World as behind her is Michael observing. It is right when we see James Arness’s “vegetable alien monster” in full towering form. I just think it is a nice segue from the movie on the telly to Michael, another monster, lurking among potential casualties. Watch the Skies turns to Watch out for what lurks in your own neighborhood. During this particular part of the film, Zombie seems to follow Carpenter’s method of having Michael resemble more of the Shape than the human psychopath so dwelt on in the first chapter, with how the killer appears and disappears at will. We see him in frame and gone whenever it is convenient for him to be around or not. That’s what really endeared me to Carpenter’s film to begin with. Providing Michael with a type of mythos--a symbolic representation/manifestation of Evil Incarnate--always appealed to me.. Sure, Zombie’s Michael certainly is imbued with that quality of lurking evil, and often enraged Beast Unleashed when the killing starts. I just like Michael’s treatment as a force of quiet evil that could be anywhere and emerge when you least expect it.

As far as attempting to homage classic scenes, Zombie decides to just play the great “Loomis describes Michael as a child to Sheriff Brackett” scene as a basic conversation scene. There’s no way to even attempt to duplicate the original so why even try? Pleasence’s haunting voice and face so perfectly reflect how scared Loomis is of Michael, understanding what “lies behind Michael’s eyes”, and in the house, with the music, it is simply a lost cause to try and match or add a different approach to it. Zombie gets it out of the way.

Zombie toys with the structure of the original a little. Lynda and her beau are killed first, while Annie and Paul are dealt with a little later. That undercurrent of sexual sadism is an element not seen in Carpenter’s film. It is more than a little apparent that Annie is not only sliced up but sexually abused also. The scene where a shirt and braless Annie tries to flee out the door of her house, is pulled by her hair right before an escape, and soon left in a bloody and mutilated state; this leaves quite a bad taste. Michael even madly grunts as he stabs Paul and tosses him out of the way while Annie screams. What really accents this whole sequence and gives it a disturbing, unsettling feeling is watching a struggling Annie, without shirt and bloody nose, crawling on the floor, trying desperately to break away from the maniac in the house (and staring down at her), and being pulled towards a room, out of our sight. So we’re left having to insinuate what Michael does to her. I care not to dwell on that. Annie in Carpenter’s film got off easy to taking a hand to the throat before the knife slice to the jugular. The idea that Annie survives this barely, truly externally and internally scarred, only to get even more brutally in the sequel is quite something...I thought, with her seemingly knocking on death’s door, that Annie wouldn’t make it out of the film still breathing. Her fate in the sequel, however, is horrifying. I really like Danielle Harris. I loved her casting, believing Zombie paid homage to fans of the series; not only that, Harris is willing to go the distance in this film. She’s even better in the sequel (easily outshining the wailing, whining Scout Taylor-Compton). Kudos to her for really selling the horror…this made Michael truly a monster if Dee Wallace’s neck-snapping didn’t already.

This girl can really belt out a scream!

Zombie’s Michael Myers doesn’t fuck around. After Laurie calls the police once she finds Annie a bloody pile on the floor, Michael goes right for her. Michael breaks through doors with brute force, and because he is in the menacing form of Tyler Mane, it isn’t as farfetched. This part of the film gets on my nerves because Zombie’s camera goes epileptic. The frenzy is to represent the nightmare of the situation. Michael goes right through two police officers (no duh, right?), grabs Laurie, and takes her off to his lair. When Laurie limps as fast as she can from the house where Annie laid to the house she was babysitting, as Michael pursued not far behind, the camera was also jerking around. I can’t say this enough—I want to see what is going on onscreen. A blur on the screen just irritates me.

 

Scout has a really good moment, I think, when Laurie awakens from fainting to find her pal, Lynda, dead. Shocked and in disbelief, Laurie hopes her friend will wake up. It cements the tragedy that is Michael Myers’ murderous reign.

While the film has essentially two endings (in one of Zombie’s deleted end sequences, you see the traditional close where Loomis shoots Michael multiple times and he falls, with the doc and Laurie leaving the scene as the killer lies on his back with the camera lifting gradually upward, seeming to conclude that he has been vanquished), perhaps 2 hours for any slasher film is thirty minutes too long. I guess the point was to one-up Carpenter by allowing Laurie to just go through the ringer, the ante in terror and abuse exponentially higher. Laurie would require lots of nasty surgery in the sequel; not to mention, her personality and behavior are reduced to infantile, juvenile, ranting and raving hysteria. There’s plenty of structural destruction in Michael’s old house. I’d say Mike helped the renovators a bit by using a 2X4 to cause the roof of certain areas to be wooden rubble and his arms, shoulders, and legs are the equivalent of a wrecking ball before he’s through. The soundtrack does a swell job of establishing how Michael is a walking, hulking blunt force object. Laurie has Loomis’ gun. Zombie starts to turn Michael into something beyond a mere mortal man. No one can take that many bullets and such a deep knife stab (Laurie stabs him with the butcher knife, a police officer shoots him twice, and Loomis shoots him multiple times), while also putting Laurie through a window and falling off a ledge (while also withstanding a shot to the face at close range) without dying ultimately. That Michael returns as if so much abuse did little to hurt him also indicates that he isn’t just a regular man but has become something all together far more powerful. Zombie also doesn’t allow Loomis to get off without some punishment. He failed Michael and left him to rot, so it was only fair that the doc pay a little for the inability to “cure” him. Loomis in Carpenter’s film only faces grown up Michael at the very end and is able to unload a whole gun while watching the patient fall out of the balcony to the ground below. Zombie’s Michael nearly crushes Loomis’ head and bloodies his face. The sequel turns Loomis into a cretin, a far cry from the ranting doc Pleasence eventually becomes during the numerous sequels after Carpenter’s film. The house and pool are well used in this film and Laurie returning home is a novel bit of drama, fitting and bringing the whole film full circle. Brother and sister reunite where they eventually are separated. From a final bit of affection upon separation, this time Michael and Laurie’s “embrace” is a collision through a window and off a balcony. Zombie’s sequel would  take their familial link a bit in the supernatural direction.