Richard joins Ryan Doyle and Jay Michaels of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush for Booze and Reviews! Today he talks about the Death in the Afternoon, a drink that sprung from Ernest Hemingway’s legendary liver, the Death in the Afternoon, the new “Velvet Underground” documentary, the latest from Michael Myers “Halloween Kills” and the reason Andrew Lloyd Weber bought a comfort dog.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard and CTV NewsChannel morning show host Jennifer Burke chat up the weekend’s big releases including the relentless return of Michael Myers in “Halloween Kills,” the emotional family drama “Mass” and the rock ‘n’ roll documentary “The Velvet Underground.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Keeping track of the storylines of the various “Halloween” movies and their sequels can be a mind-bending experience. Forty-three years ago the original John Carpenter-directed movie established many of the rules of the slasher genre, and spawned a prolific franchise that so far has churned out an additional 11 movies detailing unstoppable masked killer Michael Myers’ penchant for killing good looking teenagers.
There have been reboots, returns, prequels and sequel to remakes. Laurie Strode, the original film’s heroine played by Jamie Lee Curtis, has faked her own death, gone into hiding, decapitated, shot and stabbed Myers and yet, a new movie, “Halloween Kills,” featuring Strode and Myers, hit theatres this weekend.
Director David Gordon Green gets around the labyrinthine comings-and-goings of the mad masked killer by simply ignoring the movies made between 1981 and 2009. His 2018 film, “Halloween,” is a direct sequel to the 1978 film of the same name.
Confused? No need to be.
All you really need to know is that after an extended flashback to 1978, it’s Halloween night in Haddonfield, Illinois, and the action picks up minutes after the 2018 sequel. Michael Myers, the “essence of evil,” is in the basement of a burning house, trapped there by Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). The nightmare should be over, but this a “Halloween” movie which means the nightmare will never be over. Myers manages to escape and, as he resumes his killing spree, Laurie, her family and some motivated townsfolk aim to end his reign of terror. “You and Allyson should not have to keep running,” Laurie tells Karen. “Evil dies tonight.”
The best horror movies are never about the monster or the killings. That’s the gooey, gory stuff that keeps us in our seats, ready to absorb the larger social messages woven into the script. “Halloween Kills” wants to make poignant, timely points about how anger divides us and fear keeps us apart, but, trouble is, “Halloween Kills” is not one of the better horror films.
Far from it.
It is brutal. Michael Myers is as unrelenting and remorseless as ever, maybe even more so. Green’s interesting POV shots of the victims coupled with nasty, squishy sound effects provide several memorable moments of gory glee that horror fans will enjoy. Slash, slash, squirt, squirt! Oh my! He’s got blood on his shirt!
The first half of the movie offers up rather inventive kills. It’s fun when Myers is onscreen, lumbering his way toward another victim. Unfortunately, it’s less fun when the vigilante mob endlessly chants “evil dies tonight.” We get it.
And everything else about the plot.
For such a simple story, they sure do waste time explaining the same points over and over. Add to that over baked dialogue—”Let him take my head,” Laurie sneers, “as I take his.”—and a too-long running time and you’ll be wishing it was already November 1.
Did you love “Halloween III: Season of the Witch”? Wipe it from your memory. What about “Halloween H20: 20 Years Later”? Fuhgeddaboudit. How about “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers” or any of the other masked killer films that came after John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher classic? They don’t exist. When you lay down money for a ticket to the new “Halloween” you are erasing four decades of slashing and dashing and seeing a direct follow-up to the original film.
Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode, the resourceful babysitter who, forty years ago, bravely stood up to masked killer Michael Myers (Nick Castle). The intervening years have seen her raise her now estranged daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and live in a home fortified with booby-traps in case Myers should reappear. “He’s waited for this night,” she says. “I’ve waited for him.”
At the beginning of the film Myers—known as ‘The Shape’ in the first movie—is still paying the price for killing his teenage sister Judith and the subsequent slaughter of four others. Tucked away in Smith’s Grove Sanatorium he is silent, a man who hasn’t spoken since committing his first murder at the age of six.
When Aaron Korey (Jefferson Hall) and Dana Haines (Rhian Rees), two British true crime podcasters, try to pry and interview out of Myers they arrive just before the Bogeyman escapes on October 31, 2018, put on the famous mask and reboot his killing career with an eye toward the one victim who got away all those years ago.
The 1978 and 2018 movies share more than a title and a leading lady. They share structural DNA and frights galore. The 2018 film feels fresh, timely and like a throwback to the moody low-fi scares of the original slasher flicks.
Castle is as eerie as always but it is Curtis who steals the show. Strode is grown up, suffers from PTSD and by her own words is “a basket case.” What she is not is broken. “I prayed every night for him to escape,” she says, “so I could kill him.” The trauma of 40 years ago has hardened her but she’s a warrior and a survivor who uses the great personal price Myers extracted from her as fuel to keep going. It’s tremendous stuff and in the #MeToo era the kind of heroine reclaiming her power that should make audiences cheer.
“Halloween” is both a reboot and a bloody love letter to the director who started it all, John Carpenter.
