Halloween On Thanksgiving Eve

Going to see movies at a second-run theater has more than just cheapness as a positive aspect. While the rest of you are despairing about the lack of product leaking out of the luxurious sphincter of Hollywood due to the ongoing writers' strike, I'll be munching popcorn while I watch Good Luck Chuck (of course, I'll still be sobbing in the bitter darkness -- how could one *not* sob in the presence of Good Luck Chuck?).

Anyways, what the hell were my choices today at the lovely LaGrange?

The Jane Austen Book Club - Not my cup of tea, probably. I felt pretty crappy after I realized Waitress, a movie I had previously avoided at the LaGrange, was written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, a woman who was recently murdered in NYC. Still, that guilt wasn't enough to make me feel like seeing this movie tonight. I DO NOT LIKE CHICK MOVIES.

Superbad - I had checked the listings online, but I hadn't realized this was playing until I was waiting in line with a collection of high school age kids. I half-heartedly wanted to see this, but...

I was already pretty much set on seeing Rob Zombie's Halloween.



It was a dark, rainy and extremely crappy night as I walked into the LaGrange. There was actually a guy inside who took my ticket and tore it in half, a first for me there -- probably due to the fact that it was relatively crowded, being an unusual weeknight before Thanksgiving and all.

The crowd was apparently there for Superbad. Halloween was showing in Theater 4. This theater will henceforth be known as the Bob Seger Theater, for the amount of times I have heard "Night Moves" there waiting for a movie to start. It was for the most part empty. There were just a couple guys to the left of me and a large Latino family (with two small girls!) sitting several rows behind me.

This new version of Halloween ain't scary. It's different than the original version in that we spend a lot more time with Michael Myers as a boy. A lot more. A lot, lot more. It attempts to explain the roots of his evil. And you know what? Who gives a crap why he's evil. That's what was so great about the original. When Michael's parents come home to find him holding a bloody knife, it just defies a rational explanation why he would do such a thing, which is one of the reasons why it was scary.

So as we finally get to Myers as an adult, and he escapes a sanitarium to wreak havoc upon the small, imaginary town of Haddonfield, Illinois, I look at the time. Holy crap. They took like 45 minutes to set his crazy badass adult self in motion.

And the thing is, for the remainder of the film, Myers is just this relentless killing machine. I mean, the actor who plays him as an adult is literally seven feet tall. Whatever attempt to humanize Myers in the first part of the film is pretty much thrown away for the rest.

His unstoppable acts of violence actually made the movie kind of boring. Every scene where some character would come up against Myers I kept on hoping *someone* could hurt him, or get away, something. But he'd always just push his head through a wall, grab them and twist off their head like a carny killing a chicken.

Malcolm McDowell plays Dr. Loomis, previously played by the unfortunately now dead Donald Pleasance. There's a crapload of other cameos which I guess we are supposed to find amusing or interesting. Brad Dourif plays a sheriff with a complicated beard that was apparently sprayed with fake snow, Sid Haig has a small part, as does Dee Wallace, Ken Foree, etc. Sybil Danning plays a nurse who gets forked to death (yes, forked to death), but does not show any boobs. Repeat... Sybil Danning does not show her boobs.

None of the characters really registered on any kind of emotional level for me, even the chick playing the Jamie Lee Curtis part. There was a scene where she was hiding behind a wall as Myers was looking for her. She was keeping her hands on her mouth because she couldn't stop making noise. What the hell? You can't be quiet when a psychopath is looking for you? You actually have to put your hands over your mouth to prevent you from making involuntary "Oh my God" sounds? What, does she have Tourette syndrome or something?

So, the movie ends and I walk outside. Thank heavens it's not raining any more. It's goddamn snowing.