MANIA, or THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS. (1960) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

MANIA, or FLESH AND THE FIENDS. (1960) DIRECTED AND WRITTEN BY JOHN GILLING. BASED ON TRUE EVENTS. STARRING PETER CUSHING, DONALD PLEASENCE, GEORGE ROSE, JUNE LAVERICK, BILLIE WHITELAW, MELVYN HAYES, DERMOT WALSH, JOHN CAIRNEY AND GEORGE WOODBRIDGE.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I absolutely love this dark little gem of a film, from the Golden Age of British Horror, which most people agree was 1959-1966. Peter Cushing gives an immaculately controlled and polished performance as Dr. Robert Knox, a sort of Dr. Frankenstein character but located in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1828.

He’s a renowned anatomist who lectures young college lads who want to be doctors, and he does everything he can to advance the cause of modern medicine. Doctors and medical students are only legally permitted to dissect corpses who were either suicides, or criminals, in life and have been cut down from the gallows after death or released from a hospital mortuary.

But Knox is not scrupulous about where his cadavers-for-dissection-and-learning have come from. In the interests of medicine, he’ll take them anywhere he can get them. In the film, he gets them from William Burke and William Hare, two horrible grave-robbers or ‘resurrection men,’ men who steal the corpses from their very graves and flog them to doctors for at least five guineas apiece.

When demand for the corpses exceed the legal supply, that’s when Burke and Hare get the idea of resorting to murder most foul in order to keep Dr. Knox in the stiffs he so desperately craves. That’s also when the stakes are considerably raised for Dr. Knox.

If it’s clear as day that a man has been murdered without benefit of law when he arrives in corpse form at Dr. Knox’s dissecting rooms and the said doctor turns a blind eye, pays for it and says ta very much, that makes Dr. Knox an accessory to murder. And they were very tough on crimes like murder in those days…  

Burke is a grotty, grotesque and greedy little man, well suited to murder, and his end on the scaffold in the film rather eerily overshadows the real life death suffered by the actor George Rose in May of 1988. Hare is superbly portrayed by Donald Pleasence, who’s probably best known for playing Dr. Loomis in John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN movies. But Dr. Loomis ain’t never been this messed-up…

Pleasence gives an excellent performance, truly one of his best, even though this film doesn’t seem to be terribly well known. His obsequious behaviour to Dr. Knox and his betters would make your hair curl, and the manic little dance he performs while his colleague murders someone? That would send a shiver up your spine, portraying sheer manic insanity the way it does. Or a mania, if you will. See what I did there…?

The other stand-out performances in the film come from, firstly, George ‘Hammer Horror’ Woodbridge as a fellow medic and member of the Medical Council, no less. He is outraged at Dr. Knox’s disregard for the disrepute into which he’s knowingly bringing their honourable profession, by associating with dirty grave-robbers like Burke and Hare.

Secondly, we have the beautiful Billie Whitelaw, known for her superb appearances in THE OMEN (1976) and THE KRAYS (1990), playing a feisty Scottish prostitute. Mary Patterson falls for one of Dr. Knox’s medical students, Chris Jackson, and Chris falls pretty heavily for her too.

But you can’t put an exotic bird like Mary Patterson in a cage, even a gilded one. Is the relationship between Mary and Chris doomed, as doomed as one of the doctor’s favoured ‘fresh’ and ‘juicy’ cadavers? Let’s hope it doesn’t end up on one of his slabs, or rolled in the brine…

I love Esma Cannon as poor old Aggie, the old dear murdered by the repulsive and immoral Burke and Hare. You might remember her as Hattie Jacques’ diminutive little helper, Flo Sims, in CARRY ON CABBY (1963), and in fact she appeared in several other CARRY ON movies as well, being the excellent comedy actress that she was.

Melvyn Hayes, famous for playing Gunner ‘Gloria’ Beaumont in sitcom, IT AIN’T HALF HOT, MUM, appears here as a mentally disabled boy known generally as Daft Jamie, who meets his end courtesy of our resident pair of ghouls, Burke and Hare. ‘Oh, get me out of this green hell, I’m going out of my mind…!’ Talk about Amateur Night in Dixie…

This film is exquisite. Immaculate acting, gorgeous dark and shadowy sets and terrific costumes. I don’t know why it’s not better known. A fantastic all-star horror cast as well, in Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, whom I beg leave to state is Mr. Cushing’s equal in performing his craft of acting to perfection, and the marvellously fiery Billie Whitelaw. Go out of your way to find it and watch it. It’s just sheer quality.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
 
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from POOLBEG BOOKS:
https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv

 

HALLOWEEN 6: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS. (1995) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

HALLOWEEN 6: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS. (1995) BASED ON CHARACTERS CREATED BY JOHN CARPENTER AND DEBRA HILL. DIRECTED BY JOE CHAPPELLE.
STARRING GEORGE P. WILBUR, J.C. BRANDY, PAUL RUDD, MARIANNE HAGAN, MITCH RYAN AND DONALD PLEASENCE.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘He hears the voice, you know. Just like the other little boy who lived in that house.’

I decided that Halloween this year would be for me a celebration of all things HALLOWEEN, as in John Carpenter’s ground-breaking 1978 horror movie that’s now one of the biggest movie franchises in the world. I don’t do anything by halves, me, so I threw myself into it whole-heartedly. Here’s what I’ve done so far…

So, I re-watched and re-reviewed HALLOWEENs 1, 2 & 3 (the controversial but excellent non-Michael-Myers one), and then 4 & 5, which go together. Then HALLOWEEN H20: TWENTY YEARS LATER and HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION, which throws Michael in at the deep end of the then blossoming reality television industry. Now, nearly two full decades later, I bet he’d still want to brutally bludgeon anyone he met who was involved in reality telly…!

I went to see HALLOWEEN KILLS in the cinema a couple of weeks ago and loved it, although I might have found it less confusing had I re-watched the film that came just before it, HALLOWEEN: 2018. When HALLOWEEN KILLS comes out on DVD, I’ll watch ‘em both together and they’ll make more sense, lol. Still, why do they even need to make sense? Michael shows up, kills a bunch of people, roll end credits, bada bing, bada boom…

The franchise is supposedly ending next Halloween with the heartbreakingly named HALLOWEEN ENDS. Will it really all end with this film? A lot of the original characters are old now, some even sadly deceased, like Donald Pleasence who was unforgettable as Dr. Samuel Loomis, Michael’s psychiatrist and possibly the only person in the whole of Illinois who knows and comprehends fully the depth of evil in Michael’s murder-blackened soul.

I read the pretty cool novelization of HALLOWEEN: 2018 then by the writer John Passarella. It has a gorgeous black cover with a broody pic of Michael’s mask on it. It’s a nifty little addition to my collection of HALLOWEEN stuff, which, admittedly, comprises mainly the film DVDs and my adorable pop figure of a tiny Michael in bloodied overalls holding a knife. Aw, bless him, he thinks he’s people…!

I did kind of a mad thing then. I wrote my first ever piece of HALLOWEEN fan fiction, based on the 1978 movie. It wasn’t a continuation of the murder story, however, but rather a naughty story in which the babysitters of Haddonfield get their come-uppance for being very bad at their babysitting jobs and being very wicked girls, generally; smoking weed, boozing it up, having sex with their boyfriends even though they’re still at school, being disrespectful to their elders and caring more for their social lives than they do about their studies or the kids they’re being paid to watch.

I was going to publish this delightful oeuvre on my blog but decided against it, as the general consensus amongst my online friends is that all fan fiction is, essentially, stealing, and I’ve no wish to be sued off the face of the earth for my little spanking story. Still, I really enjoyed writing it and I’d certainly continue it if there was any way to publish it safely and without massive repercussions from the angry Carpenter-Hill faction, haha.

Anyway, the final thing I did to honour this excellent film franchise was to go out and buy a physical copy of HALLOWEEN 6: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS, the only film in the canon I hadn’t seen. On first viewing, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and I was told that there’s a version of the film known as THE PRODUCERS’ CUT that would answer some of my questions, but I haven’t as yet been able to find this version.

However, I’ve watched HALLOWEEN 6 a few times now, and I think I’m ready to do justice to a review of it at last, or at least describe its events in some sort of cohesive order. Do you remember that, at the end of HALLOWEEN 5: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS, Michael and his niece, little Jamie Lloyd, are spirited away to safety during the explosion by a mysterious Man in Black? HALLOWEEN 6 picks up the story from there…

It’s a few years later, and the teenaged Jamie Lloyd, daughter of Laurie Strode, has just given birth to a baby- Michael’s baby?- in the midst of a weird cult, who want to take her baby away from her for some reason.

HALLOWEENs 4, 5 and 6 are part of what’s known as ‘the Thorn Trilogy,’ in which ancient runes and pre-destined ancient evils are blamed for Michael’s gnarly ways. There’s definitely an element of that in this film. Michael is supposed to be infected by an ancient Druidic curse known as ‘the curse of Thorn.’ People thus affected are inspired to murder their next of kin in gruesome fashion. Well, that’s what Mikey does all right…!

The baby boy ends up in the unlikely hands of a very young Paul Rudd, who plays Phoebe Buffay’s boyfriend Mike Hannigan in ‘90s hit sitcom, FRIENDS. Here, he plays Tommy Doyle, the little boy who was being baby-sitted (or is it baby-sat?) by Laurie Strode in the original 1978 movie. Tommy has grown up to be a very paranoid young man, but not without reason…

Instead of moving away from Haddonfield, Tommy has chosen to live in a boarding house right across the street from the old Myers’ place, no longer abandoned but inhabited now by relatives of Laurie’s, and they’re also known as the Strodes. Why are these new Strodes living in the old Myers’ place? I’m still not sure. It seems a bit confusing, but how-and-ever, on we go…

Tommy is convinced that Michael will come back to haunt Haddonfield this Halloween, which is, um, now. He also thinks that Michael will murder the baby, whom he’s named Stephen, in a ritual sacrifice as part of this curse of Thorn thing. Tommy is a smart kid. He’s spent years studying up on runes and Michael Myers and stuff, so I think we can trust him.

Without any difficulty whatsoever, Tommy persuades the beautiful Kara Strode, college student and single mother of Danny, to leave her home and come and live with him and the baby and his landlady across the street for safety reasons. Well, shure, why not? It’s not like she has anything better to do or anything…

While they’re all holed up across the street, Michael has fun despatching the remaining relatives of Laurie’s adopted family, the Strodes: abusive dad John, dumpy, frumpy mum Debra (John and Debra, geddit?), Kara’s brother Tim-Nice-But, Christ, is he dim!- and Tim’s sexy girlfriend, Beth.

At least Michael lets ‘em finish having sex before he gets all stabby. And he’s so neat and considerate, isn’t he, Michael? He always hangs his kills up, all nice and tidy, when he’s finished with ‘em, and sometimes he even provides his own hooks…

We’re not told, at least not in this cut, why Kara’s father actively detests her or who Danny’s father is, or why Kara left the bosom of her loving family for five years and came back with an unexplained son, so I don’t know whether these things are important or not. Maybe Kara’s back story isn’t important to the plot.

However, her young son Danny, who looks just like I imagine a six-year-old Eminem might look- spirited but kinda sad ‘cause he has problems at home- has been hearing the same voices in his head that Michael Myers heard in his head when he was a young ‘un, and we all know how that panned out, don’t we?

We get this nugget of information from Tommy’s landlady, Mrs. Blankenship, the woman who was baby-sitting little Michael Myers on the very night Michael picked up a carving knife and ‘stabbed his sister in the tits,’ as it’s irreverently referred to in HALLOWEEN KILLS.

Well, Mrs. B. clearly wasn’t doing her job too well, was she? She was probably nattering away nineteen-to-the-dozen on the party line with Irma or Myrna about Mabel, who hasn’t washed her front room curtains all year but who always has the time- and money- for the beauty parlour, if you can believe that, harrumph…!

Or maybe Mrs. B. was watching her stories and DAYS OF OUR LIVES or THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS or GENERAL HOSPITAL was just too gripping that evening, and she was getting all hot under the collar fantasising about having a middle-aged, silver-haired doctor pay her a house call and having horny old people sex with her…

She wouldn’t have gotten a pay-check from me, anyway, I’ll tell you that for nothing, come home and find my first-born child stabbed in the tits and the place in a shocking state, grumble, grumble. You just can’t get the staff these days…

Anyway, Tommy, Kara, Baby Steven and dear old Dr. Loomis, on his last ever Michael-Myers-tracking-down-and-killing-except-you-can’t-kill-the-unkillable jaunt, end up in the place where it all began, in Smith’s Grove grossly under-staffed Sanitarium in Warren County.

Michael is there, all ready to rock and roll, and so is the Man in Black in his true guise. I think he might also be the source of the ‘voices’ that Michael and little Danny have been hearing. The film is not too clear on this.

The Man in Black wants Michael to sacrifice Baby Steven to satisfy the prophecy of the cult of Thorn, but Tommy, Kara, Dr. Loomis and even little Danny are all standing in his way. The Man in Black is teamed with Michael, though. Who will win…?

And Happy Halloween to y’all, by the way. This is the absolute mostest I’ve ever celebrated a horror film franchise and I did it all for you guys. M’wah, m’wah, see you all again in November. If Michael doesn’t find us first…

 AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
 
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1781994234

HALLOWEEN 4 (1988) AND HALLOWEEN 5 (1989). A DOUBLE REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

HALLOWEEN 4 AND HALLOWEEN 5: A DOUBLE DOSE OF SLASHER-HORROR FILM REVIEWS BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS. (1988) BASED ON CHARACTERS CREATED BY JOHN CARPENTER AND DEBRA HILL.
DIRECTED BY DWIGHT H. LITTLE.
STARRING DONALD PLEASENCE, DANIELLE HARRIS, GEORGE P. WILBUR, BEAU STARR AND ELLIE CORNELL.

HALLOWEEN 5: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS. (1989) BASED ON CHARACTERS CREATED BY JOHN CARPENTER AND DEBRA HILL.
DIRECTED BY DOMINIQUE OTHENIN-GIRARD.
STARRING DONALD PLEASENCE, DANIELLE HARRIS, ELLIE CORNELL, BEAU STARR, WENDY KAPLAN, TAMARA GLYNN, MATTHEW WALKER AND DON SHANKS.

Ooooooh, I do love a nice bit of HALLOWEEN at Halloween, or in fact on any night of the year. Pure undiluted slasher-horror cinema was surely born in the ‘Seventies and ‘Eighties, with marvellous franchises like this one and FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET kicking and screaming their way into our world through the tight but surprisingly accommodating birth canal of VHS and Beta-Max, lol.

I’ve chosen to review these two films together because HALLOWEEN 5 is a direct continuation of its predecessor. You might remember that the superb horror series took a break from the silent but deadly serial murderer Michael Myers in HALLOWEEN 3 (an excellent horror film in its own right if you can stop bemoaning the absence of Mikey for five f***ing minutes…!), but Michael is back with a bang in instalments 4 and 5 and, trust me, he’s literally never been deadlier…

Michael escapes from state custody while he’s en route to another sanatorium and, as usual, where does he make a beeline for? Why, Haddonfield, Illinois, of course, the place where, in 1963 when he was only six years old, he brutally murdered his older sister Judith by ‘stabbing her in the tits,’ which is how they refer to it in the latest film in the franchise, HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021).

It’s also a mere ten years since he slaughtered a bunch of people, namely innocent babysitters and horny teens just trying to ‘get some,’ in that same unfortunate hometown of his, and created a role for himself (in perpetuity, mind you) as that town’s very own boogeyman.

As in: ‘If’n y’all don’t eat yo’ vegetables, Michael Myers gonna git y’all and carve y’all up into little pieces…!’ Or words to that effect, anyway. A killer who wears a white mask, never speaks a single solitary word but possesses the strength to kill other grown men with his bare hands in a variety of colourful and unusual ways is surely a mighty effective boogeyman and enough of a horror to scare manners into the brattiest of bratty kids, you must admit.

Anyway, this time Michael’s off to Haddonfield to kill his niece Jamie Lloyd, beautifully played by Danielle Harris. She’s the daughter of Michael’s (apparently) deceased sister Laurie Strode, aka the wonderful Jamie Lee Curtis from HALLOWEENs 1 and 2, making her Mikey’s niece.

And why does he want to kill his adorably sweet and pretty little niece? Well, for no reason other than that she’s family, and Michael always seems to make a point of murdering his kith-and-kin. Silly Michael.

He just can’t seem to work out the connection between having a family and being happy. Still, if he could, he wouldn’t be our stabby boy, would he, the murderous little dickens…? Aw, bless his expressionless white mask and natty boiler suit. He’s our boy for sure.

There are certain things standing between the impassive-faced Michael and his murderous goal, though. In HALLOWEEN 4, the pretty blonde Rachel Carruthers is Jamie’s doting new step-sister and she ain’t gonna let no non-talking, knife-wielding serial killer hurt her precious little sis.

Well, not unless that serial killer kills Rachel, that is, which would appear to be his aim, but Rachel and Jamie have the protection of the town sheriff and his slutty daughter Kelly, whose pert backside the sheriff should surely have paddled when he so nearly caught her making out with Rachel’s faithless boyfriend Brady. If ever a young lady needed a good spanking, the practically pantsless blonde bombshell Kelly Meeker surely fits that bill…!

In HALLOWEEN 5, which by the way ends with a wicked twist, as does the fourth film, Jamie is protected by Rachel’s best friend Tina, a super-annoying young lady who actually shares a car journey with the masked serial killer without knowing it.

He’s wearing a really freaky borrowed Halloween mask and looks utterly terrifying, but Tina just starts laying into him straightaway about ‘his’ (she thinks he’s her boyfriend Mike, aka ‘the Fonz…!’) supposed shortcomings as a significant other.

It’s actually really surprising that Michael doesn’t twist her curly, fluffy little head right off her shoulders for bitching at him non-stop about nothing. Dressed like Cyndi Lauper in the ‘GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN’ music video, she’s bubbly, full of life and chat and as irritating as a rash in your private area, but her heart’s in the right place. As long as Michael doesn’t get his gigantic, organ-crushing paws on it, that is…

(I was re-watching this film recently with my adult daughter, and, after watching this scene between Michael and Tina, in which Tina nags him into stopping the car at a store so that she can buy cigarettes, my daughter turns to me and says thoughtfully: ‘So, Michael is just as susceptible as ordinary men to being nagged to death by women…!’

Darling Dr. Loomis is in both films too, with the lovely cuddly old Donald Pleasence reprising his role as Michael’s psychiatrist from the earlier movies, possibly the one man who realises the full extent of Michael’s terrible capability for doing harm to people.

All burned in the face and hands from a previous confrontation with the Silent One, Dr. Loomis bends over backwards to try to save the folks of Haddonfield, and in particular little Jamie, from another deadly encounter with Michael.

Of course, he meets with the usual resistance, scepticism and even incompetence along the way but, once the body count starts climbing, people suddenly all start singing from the same hymn-sheet.

By this time, however, Dr. Loomis has pretty much nearly lost his mind after all the years of Michael-induced terror, and he starts to forget that little Jamie is just a child, instead bullying her into helping him to find and manipulate the serial killer.

The poor doc’s fairly well battered and exhausted, and his lovely old trademark ‘COLUMBO-‘ style overcoat in shocking need of dry-cleaning, by the time the story rolls to a close in the very place where it began, the old Myers place which has gone to rack and ruin in a few short years. The town obviously didn’t take the best care of its very own murder-house…

The violence is extreme and frequent in both films and the character of Michael Myers has great craic killing people in ever-more gruesome and grisly ways. Both these movies are terrific fun and I wouldn’t consider them inferior to the earlier ones at all, although it would have been nice if Jamie Lee Curtis had been in them too, then we would have had a full complement of HALLOWEEN past pupils, as it were. Still, we have Michael and dear old Gloomy Loomy, and that’s good enough for me.

I’ll just end by boasting (I mean casually remarking) that I saw John Carpenter and his band perform his famous movie soundtracks live in Dublin’s Vicar Street in October of 2017, I think it was. He was one sexy mutha, all dressed in black with his silver hair tied back in a ponytail, and when he played the theme tune to HALLOWEEN, the whole place went wild. Best night of my life so far. Long live HALLOWEEN, John Carpenter and Michael Myers, a magnificent triple threat by anyone’s standards.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

HALLOWEEN. (1978) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

HALLOWEEN. (1978) DIRECTED BY JOHN CARPENTER. PRODUCED BY DEBRA HILL. SCREENPLAY BY JOHN CARPENTER AND DEBRA HILL. MUSIC BY JOHN CARPENTER. CINEMATOGRAPHY BY DEAN CUNDEY.
STARRING JAMIE LEE CURTIS, NANCY LOOMIS, PJ SOLES, CHARLES CYPHERS AND DONALD PLEASENCE.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Death has come to your little town, Sheriff.’

‘No man did that.’
‘He’s not a man.’

This is the big one, the film that kicked off one of the most successful franchises in movie history. It tells the story of serial killer Michael Myers, who in this film stylishly and effortlessly joins fellow horror movie icons- some already in existence, some yet to come- Freddie Kreuger, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, Jigsaw and Co. in the ‘Horror Movie Villain Hall Of Fame.’ (I don’t know if such a thing actually exists, by the way. I’m just speaking metaphorically, lol.)

Michael Myers brutally murders his somewhat slutty older sister Judith when he’s still in short pants. He gets banged up in a mental hospital for his trouble. There he stays for fifteen long years. Then, one dark spooky night, he escapes, much to the disgust and horror of his head-shrink, Dr. Loomis, brilliantly played by Donald Pleasence.

Dr. Loomis knows the score, you see. He might be the only character in the film who does. ‘I met this six-year-old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes; the devil’s eyes … I realized what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply … evil.’
 
As Dr. Loomis says himself in the film, he spends the first seven years of Michael’s incarceration trying to get through to him, then the next eight attempting to see to it that the boy never gets out of captivity. Michael is pure evil, you see, without logic, reason or remorse. And you can’t kill pure evil, remember that…

Michael makes his way back to the fictional town of Haddonfield, Ohio, where the abandoned old Myers house has fallen into creepy disrepair. He focuses his attention on schoolgirl Laurie Strode, who spends her free time babysitting local kids and hanging out with her boy-crazy friends, Annie and Linda.

Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of Janet Leigh of PSYCHO fame, is fantastic as Laurie, the character that made her famous. As she goes about her lawful business with her gorgeous long blondey-brown hair swinging free and a pile of schoolbooks under her arm to indicate to us the studiousness of her nature, she gets the feeling that she’s being watched. She’s right to feel that way, dead right.

She is being watched, by a tall, well-built male wearing a dark-blue boilersuit. Oh, and he also wears a terrifying-looking white mask… Nothing to be worried about there, so…! You’ll see so many iconic scenes of Michael in this stalking part of the film.

Michael standing behind the bushes, with half of him squarely in shot on the street and the other half behind the bush. Michael standing amidst the billowing white sheets in the back garden. Michael watching Laurie from across the street as she sits in class, but when she looks back, of course he’s gone, leaving poor Laurie wondering if she’s imagining things…   

Halloween arrives and Laurie is babysitting the neighbours’ sproglet again. Across the street, the confident, curly-haired Annie Brackett is babysitting too, only she’s not a very good babysitter because she palms her little charge off on Laurie so that she can go and pick up her boyfriend Paul and bring him back to her employers’ empty house to have sex. What a little hussy, eh?

Nancy Loomis as Annie, the weed-smoking daughter of Haddonfield’s sheriff, is just fantastic. She carries a whole portion of the film all by herself as she potters about, chatting away loudly to herself, in the house of the little girl she’s babysitting for, Lindsey Wallace.

The whole time she’s there, taking her kit off after she spills food on herself and so on, she’s being watched by a fascinated Michael. Although she feels a little uneasy at times without knowing why, especially in the darkened laundry room which is down the back of the Wallaces’ garden, the first she hears of any possible threat or danger is when Michael Myers strangles her to death in a chillingly realistic scene.

In Annie’s absence, hers and Laurie’s other friend, Lynda, a flirty, sexy blonde cheerleader, brings her bloke Bob into the Wallaces’ empty house and they immediately rush upstairs to engage in sexual shenanigans. Hmmm, the teens of Haddonfield are clearly over-sexed. Maybe there’s something in the water.

Well, Michael Myers is not called the scourge of the Haddonfield Babysitters’ Club for nothing! I made that bit up, by the way, I mean, no-one actually calls him that besides me, but they should do because he seems determined to put a stop to their fun, their dope-smoking, beer-swilling sexual antics, in the only way he knows how… That’s right, folks, killing!

Anyway, after all the sex, Bob goes downstairs in the darkened house to pick up a couple of post-coital beers and gets himself impaled on Michael Myers’ stabby little friend, his huge trademark knife. My favourite scene in the whole movie is the one that comes next.

Annie is sitting up in bed topless, waiting impatiently for her boyfriend to bring her her beer. Well, well. Slutty and bone-idle. I see. Her boyfriend comes to the bedroom door and stands there motionless, not speaking, draped from head to foot in a white sheet. Or is it her boyfriend…? Well, the figure is wearing Bob’s glasses so it must be Bob, right…? I love that the film has a bit of a naughty, cheeky sense of humour as is illustrated clearly here.

Meanwhile, Laurie is doing her nut waiting for her friend Annie to get in touch about picking up the nipper she’s meant to be minding. Eventually, she tires of waiting, pops across the street to the Wallaces’ house where Annie is supposed to be babysitting Lindsey and discovers some things she’ll see in her nightmares for the rest of her life.

The street is empty. No parents, no neighbours are around to help her. Things go from bad to worse for poor Laurie as she is then chased through the Doyles’ darkened house by the knife-wielding masked man. It’s her turn to be killed now, apparently, and Michael has saved her till last. At one stage, she’s even cornered in a closet while Michael Myers stabs his way through the wood.

She is helped in timely fashion by the overcoated Dr. Loomis, who’s been wandering around Haddonfield all night looking for his escaped mental patient. The good doctor shoots the maniac, sending him flying through an upstairs window and into the garden below. He should be dead after all that, right? Wrong. Dr. Loomis turns his back on the ‘boogeyman’ for a minute and he disappears, leaving the way beautifully clear for a sequel or three…

Laurie: That was the boogeyman.

Dr. Loomis: As a matter of fact, it was…

There’s just so much to love about this ground-breaking film, the ‘Daddy,’ if you will, of the slasher movies. The superbly memorable musical score by John Carpenter. The way that Haddonfield looks so pretty, all decked out in rustic browns and oranges for Halloween. The sheer annoying shrillness and over-confidence of Annie that nearly makes us want to root for the slasher.

The scene in the graveyard with the uprooted headstone… ‘He came home…’ The spot-on performances of Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis. Last but not least, Michael Myers himself. His trademark boilersuit, knife and mask ensemble. The way his chalk-white masked face can suddenly materialise out of the shadows and make you jump.

The unhurried, calculated way in which he hunts down his prey, who can never seem to run as fast as he can walk. The way that you can kill him, or think you’ve killed him, but he won’t stay dead. He’s bloody brilliant. He’s my favourite of all the iconic horror movie baddies. I’m even a little sexually attracted to him, rightly or wrongly. He’s the strong silent type. I like that in a guy…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
 
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1781994234

HALLOWEEN. (2018) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

HALLOWEEN. (2018) BASED ON CHARACTERS CREATED BY JOHN CARPENTER AND DEBRA HILL. MUSIC BY JOHN CARPENTER, CODY CARPENTER AND DANIEL DAVIES. DIRECTED BY DAVID GORDON GREEN.

STARRING JAMIE LEE CURTIS, JAMES JUDE COURTNEY, NICK CASTLE (the original Michael Myers), JUDY GREER, TOBY HUSS, ANDI MATICHAK, WILL PATTON AND VIRGINIA GARDNER.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I bloody loved this brilliant fortieth anniversary edition of John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher horror classic. It’s got our beloved Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Janet PSYCHO Leigh, reprising her role as Laurie Strode, the woman terrorised by deranged serial killer Michael Myers one fateful Halloween night forty years ago when she was babysitting while studying for her exams.

Michael’s murderous nature has lost none of its sick inventiveness and tendency towards the most shocking violence. The theme tune we love is there, the music overall is great and we get to see the blocky orangey credits from the first film again.

Dear old Dr. Samuel Loomis, played by an over-coated Donald Pleasence in the original films, gets a couple of mentions and the respect and love the cast and crew show towards the original movies is all we could wish for and more as fans of the franchise.

There are a ton of lovely recognisable nods and tributes to the original franchise of movies in this film, which a friend aptly described as ‘a love letter to the original Halloween.’ Aw, isn’t that sweet?

Anyone who doesn’t love this movie and deem it ‘rackworthy,’ as Comic Book Guy from THE SIMPSONS might say, is a snobby nit-picker, there I’ve said it, lol. (Or maybe a nobby snit-picker, depending how well you’re able to get your tongue round the tongue-twister.)

So anyway, it’s been forty years since attractive brunette high school student Laurie Strode was pursued and attacked by Michael Myers for the first time. What’s she been up to all this time? I think it’s safe to say that she’s been living in fear ever since.

I don’t know what she’s been doing for a living but she’s turned her isolated woodside home into a fortress that she hopes is Michael Myers-proof, just in case he ever decides to come back. Which you know he will.

And the place hasn’t yet been built that’s one hundred percent Michael Myers-proof, as our dear old Laurie should know by now. Still, I totally understand that she’s got to at least try, in order to make herself feel better and even safe. If Laurie Strode can ever feel totally safe again after what Michael put her through, which I doubt.

Her house has a locked high gate where you have to state your business into an intercom and be buzzed in by Laurie herself. The woods around her house serve as an eerie mannequins’ graveyard for all the tailors’ dummies she’s personally murdered over the years during her target practice. I don’t really see Michael ever being killed by a bullet from a gun, though, do you?

Laurie’s become something of a crack shot by now and she keeps a veritable arsenal of weapons in her basement. The basement is accessible only by activating a switch that moves the kitchen island to one side and reveals a staircase leading downwards into what Laurie’s grown-up daughter Karen calls her ‘childhood.’ This basement is Laurie’s ‘panic room.’ It’s filled with enough guns and food supplies and other sundries to satisfy even the strictest, most panicky survivalist.

It’s good to be prepared, but it doesn’t look like poor Laurie has had much of a life since Michael Myers came into it and blighted it. Has anyone been helping her with her obvious PTSD?

Unfortunately, her obsession with what happened forty years ago has cost her two marriages and her relationship with her daughter. This last I wouldn’t shed any tears about because the daughter Karen is a whingy bitch.

I wanted to slap her upside the head and yell at her to show some respect to her mother and have some sympathy with Laurie’s plight. ‘How dare you be so rude to Jamie Lee Curtis, you bitch?’

But Karen is a proper Moaning Minnie who was removed from Laurie’s care when she was a child because of the way that Laurie’s fears had taken over both their lives. I would have washed my hands of her and gone back to concentrating properly on living in fear, lol.

Karen herself has a daughter called Alysson now, a teenager for whose romantic future I tremble. There don’t seem to be any male people in her school who have any intention of growing up into what we used to recognise as men. I’ll say no more in case I’m accused of some new and horrible kind of discrimination but seriously, what’s happened to all the men in the world of cinema…?

Alysson has a better relationship with her grandmother Laurie than Karen has with her mother. Alysson also seems to be more tolerant of Laurie’s PTSD than Karen, and more inclined to believe her grandmother when she tries to explain that Michael Myers will always constitute a threat to the Strode family as long as he’s alive somewhere.

This is good because right now, we’re on a full-on red warning as Michael, a big strong burly man now in his early sixties and with his beloved old mask firmly in place, has escaped from the bus conveying him from one insane asylum to another.

Slowly but inexorably, and leaving a terrible trail of savagery and murder behind him, he’s making his way home to the little town of Haddonfield where, when he was a mere tot of six years old, he suddenly stabbed his older sister Judith to death with a massive kitchen knife one Halloween night.

And of course it was on another Halloween night in Haddonfield that he murdered a slew of Laurie Strode’s incredibly slutty high school friends and tried to murder Laurie herself too. Laurie was a good studious girl who put studying ahead of sex. Was it a mere coincidence that she alone survived Michael’s rampage? Maybe, maybe not.

Either way, just like whenever horny teens try to have sex in the vicinity of Camp Crystal Lake, there will Jason Voorhees be to throw buckets of cold water on their ardour (‘Ardour, ardour, do it ardour!’), so will Michael Myers be on hand wherever the babysitters of Haddonfield are trying to get some. They should really set up a picket line, shouldn’t they?

Haddonfield is tricked out beautifully for Halloween, as it is every time we go back there. It really captures the feel of the original movie. Kids are going about trick-or-treating in full Halloween costume and there are pumpkins galore.

I love that people get slaughtered in this that you actually assumed were going to make it till the end of the movie (it really confounds your expectations and turns ’em on their head!), and I also loved it that Michael chose not to kill that crying baby. Michael Myers is a killer of stupid people, of annoying, disrespectful journalists and horny teens. He is no baby-killer.

It’s funny as well the way that you get so protective of Michael after all these years. Even though we know he’s a demented serial killer who kills people in dreadfully painful ways, he’s our beloved serial killer and we don’t want any harm to come to him or for anyone to be annoying him.

When that awful podcaster couple were harassing him in the exercise yard of the asylum in the beginning, I wanted to scream at them to leave him alone, he’s our Michael Myers and how bloody dared they pester him like that? Let’s just say that I didn’t shed too many tears over what later happened in that grubby little gas station bathroom…

If this turns out to be our last HALLOWEEN movie ever, I’d consider us to be well off. If there are ever any more sequels, especially ones with Jamie Lee Curtis in ’em, that’ll just be a lovely big bonus. There is a sequel to this one planned, so we’ll see.

HALLOWEEN (2018), whether you view it as a stand-alone movie or the first part of a two-part film series, is more than worthy of being added to this terrific franchise. I’ll fight anyone who says differently. What, fisticuffs? Yes, fisticuffs, lol.

Have fun, by the way, counting all the cute little nods to the original movie, there are at least ten of ’em. And remember this little fun fact the next time Michael Myers comes a-calling. No matter how fast you run, he can walk faster…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger, poet and book-and-movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens’ fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

FIFTY REALLY RANDOM HORROR FILM REVIEWS TO DIE FOR… BY SANDRA HARRIS.

A veritable lucky dip of horror movie reviews, covering everything from old favourites and iconic titles to obscure and forgotten horror films and cult classics. Do you dare dip YOUR hand into this mystery bag of evil, demonic possession and bone-chilling terror…? You do…? Then on your own head be it… MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based performance poet, novelist, film blogger, sex blogger and short story writer. She has given more than 200 performances of her comedy sex-and-relationship poems in different venues around Dublin, including The Irish Writers’ Centre, The International Bar, Toners’ Pub (Ireland’s Most Literary Pub), the Ha’penny Inn, Le Dernier Paradis at the Trinity Inn and The Strokestown Poetry Festival.

Her articles, short stories and poems have appeared in The Metro-Herald newspaper, Ireland’s Big Issues magazine, The Irish Daily Star, The Irish Daily Sun and The Boyne Berries literary journal. In August 2014, she won the ONE LOVELY BLOG award for her (lovely!) horror film review blog. She is addicted to buying books and has been known to bring home rain-washed tomes she finds on the street and give them a home.

She is the proud possessor of a pair of unfeasibly large bosoms. They have given her- and the people around her- infinite pleasure over the years. She adores the horror genre in all its forms and will swap you anything you like for Hammer Horror or JAWS memorabilia. She would also be a great person to chat to about the differences between the Director’s Cut and the Theatrical Cut of The Wicker Man. You can contact her at:

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor