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© DSFC |
HALLOWEEN
6
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| MAKING NONSENSE OF NONSENSE | ||||||||||||
| by
pat "Halloween 6." Hoo, boy! There's a lot of debate amongst the fans. Good? Bad? Saved the series? Killed it? Hard to say. The movie had noble intentions. The series was becoming a mess, and 5 helped push it near the brink of absurdity with the Thorn, and the Man in Black, etc. Nobody knew what was going on and were losing interest fast. Part 6 was supposed to cure all of that. It started out with a decent script that tied it all together. Some of the weird stuff of late was tied back into elements from the novelizations, subplots were wrapped up, while some elements were wiped out all together. Throughout the script there was a respect for the series, even its weakest elements. The road to Hell and all. As usual, willing to embrace bad judgement, Moustapha Akaad let it get mangled. First was the rewrites. Every script gets tweaked along the way, but for some reason decent plot points and fairly interesting sequences were cut in favor of painfully generic characters and dialogue. John Strode was the atypical disbelieving father, blaming all of society's ills on "those damn kids." Then there's the DJ, broadcasting live from the Halloween festival, mocking the history of the town and the gravity of the score of people who'd died on that night. These people are typically introduced to be guaranteed kills. Every ham-fisted fatherly condescention or bad sex joke make you want these people to die. Horror isn't scary if what you want to happen happens. You aren't supposed to root for the bad guy. At the beginning, when a grown up Jamie is running for her life, it's much more intense. There Michael isn't a hero. He's the villain the movie needs. So the script was already hurt. Then the casting kicked in. The returning players were fine. They'd been cast before because of what they could do. Then there was the addition of Paul Rudd, the guy from "Clueless," as a grown up Tommy Doyle, now obsessed with Michael. He was damn good. Finally we add, well, everyone else. I'm not saying they collectively sucked ass. No. I'm typing it. They collectively sucked ass. When you characted can be labeled as "the typical ___" you've added nothing to the role. Even great dialogue, which they didn't have, can be seen as "the typical ___" if done wrong. This cast made me long for "the typical." At least. I've seen more convincing delivery in porno. Weren't there actors interested in being in a "Halloween" film? Anybody that was better? Seriously, these people were not good. They weren't campy Troma-style bad actors, they were just bad, distract from the already weakened movie, give a bad name to horror actors. Joe Chappelle. Dierctor Joe Chappelle. Nice visual style. A bit too bright and un-autumn like, but it's not like the rest of the series had...never mind. There were some nice angles, decent shots, and a fair use of a small budget. Actually, at one point, he crafted a pretty decent film. Then he went in, off script, filmed more (senseless) kills, some extra gore, an almost completely different endng, and a lot of alternate plot along the way. He thought it was better. Anyone who's seen the original Producer's Cut (as it's known in legend and tape trading circles) knows he's wrong. The Producer's cut ain't perfect by any stretch nosirree! It's just way better than what I paid $7 for. Worth tracking down. And if you send me $20, no I will not supply you with a copy. I'm too busy to be bootlegging, but I suggest going on eBay. They have everything. |
 MICHAEL TAKES A TRIP TO THE PLANETARIUM  GENERIMOM CALLS 555-911 FOR HELP  PLEASANCE IN HIS LAST ROLE  JOE CHAPPELLE STANDS OVER THE WORKPRINT  RUDD LEARNS THE TRUE MEANING OF HALLOWEEN |
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