Halloween (2007) - SYFY edit

 Sort of similar to a few years ago when I watched an AMC edit of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), I decided to throw on a SYFY repeat of Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007) tonight after recording an evening showing. I watched some of it off SYFY last night. It's just not a film I feel anything towards, honestly. Just rather an empty calories kind of overall experience. It's too long, too dreary, too dark, the camera shakes and placements often frenzied and histrionic (and off-kilter) to excess for a particular "raw" effect, and Zombie just had to give all his crew small parts.. The SYFY edit uses, obviously, the escape involving Easterbrook, Towles, and Moseley as security guards he annihilates during a botched transfer. Excised is the Lew Temple rape in Michael's hospital room. This viewing, without the profanity and nudity, absent [some of the more excessively] descriptive sexual language, and carefully avoiding prolonged gore (Forsythe's slit throat isn't as gushing), but still showing the blood all over the place, this edit excludes the Zombie tropes that his beloved diehards embrace with whole heart. Klebe as Lynda and Harris as Annie are spared the shown tits on television. I was reminded of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" when Annie, with her tops off, naked torso, pulled back into the house she was previously babysitting by Michael as the door closes hard, the camera at a distance and quiet for added intensity. The Myers house, properly in decay and rot, serves as a decrepit husk with walls and floor and ceilings, barely held together, easily mangled and structurally unsound, perfect for Michael to savage as much as those who were near him at the hospital, or Foree's Big Joe Grizzly (bitch!) at a car wash, or Laurie's adoptive parents (Dee Wallace and Pat Skipper) and friends, or his own sister, mother's boyfriend, and sister's boyfriend. There was plenty of footage shot by Zombie including Roebuck as strip club, Rabbit in Red, owner, Sid Haig as the cemetery caretaker with plenty of ornery attitude, Cliff Howard and Udo Kier as embarrassed hospital directors at Smith Grove unable to have a successful transfer of Michael, Richard Lynch as a frustrated principal tired of calling young Michael's mom (Sherri Moon) to school, and McDowell as the psychiatrist incapable of helping Michael despite years of trying, opting instead to cash in on his psychopathic patient's notoriety. I think Taylor-Compton, Klebe, and Harris try hard but unlike Debra Hill helping Carpenter script the young women in the 1978 film, Rob Zombie doesn't quite comfortably fashion dialogue for the suburban Haddonfield teens that feels natural. His natural dialogue is the chaotic Myers house of the 70s where domestic turmoil, including shouting matches, hurled dishes from a table, and profane bickering, is given special treatment. I don't say this doesn't exist. It does. But unlike the past, where it can be jarring and abrasive, even causing me anxiety because a dysfunctional household write large can be a bit much, I was just apathetic this go-around. For me, even Dourif as Sheriff Brackett, in this edit, though always bringing his very level best, felt reduced by the material given him. This felt like it had a lot cut but it could be because the rape scene went on longer. And bits in this version felt shedded. Doesn't matter. It's over and done.