Taking A Stab In The Dark

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Alternate Horribly Long Horrible Title: Highlander IIb: The Treat Or Trickening: There Can Be Only One Funsize Kit-Kat Per Costumed Child

Over the course of the Halloween week (All Hallows Week or Halloweek), I watched John Carptenter’s original Halloween at least thrice (if not fource). I realized I had never seen the first one all the way through, and decided to correct that error several times over in a very short time span apparently. Whatever channel I was watching skipped Halloween 2 and went straight for Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch. After seeing that this movie A) Did not feature Michael Myers, B) DID feature evil rubber masks that murder children with Celtic magic, and C) Shared most of its name with a Nic Cage film from the tail end of his “I owe millions in back taxes tour,” I decided to do a little research.

Dozens of minutes of Wiki’ing later and I learned that the Halloween franchise suffered greatly from its initial success (to this day Halloween is possibly the highest grossing independent film of all time), and never quite replicated the original’s universally positive reception or cultural impact. Also there was that killer rubber mask thing. Jamie Lee Curtis’s character was killed off, then brought back, but no one bothered to tie up all the loose ends surrounding her resurrection so Halloween’s 3-6 are now regarded as “mostly out of canon.” During those “lost years” Michael is given a backstory that involves an ancient Celtic cult and a blood sacrifice which is what leads Michael to turn evil, invincible and homicidal, yet never able to accelerate past a modest amble.

When I was nine years old, we watched Halloween 4 at a friend’s slumber party. It was my first foray into the series and I was incredibly confused as to why the killer shared a name with the star of Wayne’s World. Considering The Love Guru, I’m not sure which Michael Myers was the greater threat. I’d like to see Mike Myers as Michael Myers in Halloween IX: Some Folks Call It  A Shwing Blade.

COMMENTERS: Was it a mistake to actually try and make sense of a horror franchise’s plot continuity? Should I just enjoy the splatter, boobs and splattered boobs? Which long running horror franchise took the weirdest turn plot-wise? What were your favorite horror/slasher films as a kid, and do they hold up to scrutiny now?

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17 Comments

    • I would pay hard-earned credits to see this flick. Hell, I'd even set foot in a real theater for the first time in 10 years for it!

    • No. In Leprechaun 4, the Leprechaun goes to space. That is the weirdest. Much weirder than Leprechaun 5 (Leprechaun in da hood) or Leprechaun 5 2 (Leprechaun back to da hood).

  1. Gonna have to say the Friday the 13th franchise all the way up to Jason X. Jason begins as a being that you're not even sure is real throughout the first movie, becomes both real and one of the goriest figures in horror in all of the movies after, and finally gets frozen in a block of ice, is revived several years in the future and is turned into a murderous/practically immortal cyborg that flies down to Earth asteroid-style at the end of the movie, at which point, eveyone says FUCK IT and does a complete continuity reboot.

    Seriously. What the hellassballs?

    • esp if like me you know that Friday the 13th the series was intended to end with the final cursed item being a hockey mask as a back door way to tie it to the movies

  2. Contin-what-ity? I am not familiar with this word.
    I THOUGHT I knew this word, and then I watched the rest of the Jason movies. And the Freddy movies. And the Halloween movies. And the Star Wars prequels.

    The only movie series that TRIED to stick to continuity was Terminator, and we saw how that went.
    Continuity just isn't worth it if there's blood or 'splosions to be had.

  3. weirdest goes to Jason in space (I know it's been said, I just need to reiterate, the government should not spend public money on sending killers who are also ghosts and cyborgs for some reason to space)

    there's never been any point to keeping track of horror films, the most fun anyone can have with most horror films is pointing out and laughing at every hilariously awful plot twist. Just like with Tom Cruise's life!

  4. I'm surprised no one's mentioned Child's Play yet. Doll's having sex anyone?
    I guess it would make sense in Japan, though…

  5. Have you tried Rob Zombie's version of Halloween? It's pretty darn good – taking a lot of the best bits from the original John Carpenter movie, and then covering it in Robzombie Sauce before dopping it in the deep fryer. Tasty!

    • If you watch Zombie's, a big warning, only watch the first one. It's pretty decent, but the 2nd one is a steaming pile of crap. The entire movie is nothing but a teen girl screaming/yelling obscenities

  6. When I bought Halloween 2 (the sequel to the original movie) on DVD, the cashier told me to never watch any of the other movies in the series. I took his advice and from the things I've heard about them, it was darn good advice.

    The people saying Jason X is where the series went strange, no, it was the one before it, Jason Goes to Hell. Suddenly Jason is some kind of parasite that can move from body to body and can only be killed by a member of his own family? That trumps Space Jason.

  7. I love H3: Season of the Witch. It's a text-book example of a bad film, but it still manages to be ridiculously entertaining. If it wasn't linked to the Halloween series, it would probably be more of a cult classic, I think. The anthology series idea they had in mind would have been good if it weren't for the fact that the first two films starred Myers as the villain, and if the said masked psycho had not become synonymous with the series.

    Trying to make sense of horror series can be fun, but only if you do it to see how ridiculous they are. Never go into these things expecting serious, realistic answers. My favorite series in terms of bizarre plots are the Leprechaun films. They just seemed to get more and more bizarre, until, like Jason, he finally went to space. And then he went to "da hood" and smoked weed with gangsters.

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