Hey folks, it’s that wonderful time of the year again, and with it comes my annual 31 Days of Horror Marathon. Every year for the last 4 years or so I’ve watched a new Horror film for every day in the month of October, ranging from Horror Classics like the original HALLOWEEN to modern Foreign Horror flicks like SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE…

Ok, so I didn’t watch a Horror flick last night. I was tired and I went to bed. So sue me. Instead, I’m gonna talk about a very appropriately named flick I saw a few weeks back. I movie-hopped into Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN, figuring that I didn’t want to pay full price because I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be very good. Don’t get me wrong, I think Rob Zombie rocks. I was a little disappointed with HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES because I was expecting a far more insane and gory excursion, which it only came close to reaching at the very end with the reveal of Dr. Satan. But his follow-up, THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, was a gloriously gory and depraved piece of cinema that I dug. There are moments in that flick that reach the pure lunacy I’ve only been fortunate enough to see once before, in a little 70’s flick called THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (still my fav Horror flick of all time). But I hate remakes or “re-imaginings” as they like to call ‘em these days, so Rob Zombie taking on the HALLOWEEN mythos never really appealed to me. That said, I wanted to give it a chance and so I did one Saturday afternoon. All I can say is that I’m glad I didn’t spend any money on this waste of time. The genuine Horror aficionados reading this right now already know the Michael Myers back story, but for the sake of you posers I’ll go ahead and catch you up. Halloween night 1963, little six-year-old Mikey Myers stabs his sister to death with a kitchen knife and is sent to a mental institution where he’s put under the care of psychiatrist Sam Loomis. Fast forward a few years of psycho analysis later, and Dr. Loomis is convinced little Mikey is “purely and simply…EVIL”. Now watching a doped up killer slumped over in some corner probably wouldn’t be very interesting, so Mr. Myers manages to escape the sanitarium and goes back to his old neighborhood to slash up some more nubile girls, and a legend and subgenre (The Slasher flick as its affectionately referred to) was born. Now why would you want to remake that? I mean, how could you and still make it fresh and original without messing up what made it such a classic in the first place? Well Mr. Zombie’s solution to the problem was to include a first-half that examined the days leading up to little Myers’ killing spree, and the missing years between the time he gets institutionalized as a kid and escapes as an adult. Plus, he throws in a lot more kills, a jittery camera, and some artsy shots for good measure. I’m not sure if any of this sounds like a good idea to any of you, but the end result is a pretty derivative, unimaginative, boring, and ultimately needless “reimagining”.

The failure of this film for me boils down to a few simple reasons. First off, the redundancy of redoing the original HALLOWEEN cannot be ignored. If the film offered anything new to the HALLOWEEN mythos, then maybe I could see a reason to take on this endeavor. But really, giving me a back story on Michael Myers as a kid and chronicling his days in an asylum did nothing for me. This stuff was glossed over so quickly in the original for a reason, because it’s not interesting. And Dr. Loomis puts it bluntly and beautifully in the original, Myers is pure evil, no need to try and give me an explanation as to why he is the way he is. The rest of the movie follows the original pretty dang closely, right down to a scene where Michael pins one of his victims to a wall with his big ass knife and stares at the poor bastard as he bleeds out. And there lies the next problem. It was boring and unoriginal, because I’ve already seen all of this before. There’s no worse sin a Horror movie can commit than the deadly sin of boring your audience. As for all the extra killing — well maybe I’m just a desensitized sicko, but I was pretty unimpressed with the “kills” in this flick. Myers walks up to somebody all silent and scary-like, stabs ‘em a few times, and then he’s off to his next victim and does the same thing. There’s no imagination behind these kills, just some big oaf sticking people with a knife over and over again. Guess I’m just spoiled from all the wonderfully creative deaths featured in recent Horror outings like the FINAL DESTINATION flicks and GRINDHOUSE movies. With Rob Zombie behind the helm though, I was really hoping he might inject some of that outright craziness featured in his previous projects. But, alas, that is just not the case here. It’s done with a very by-the-numbers execution, and to me that just ain’t no good.

There are also a few other quibbles I have about the film, mainly to do with some of the acting and dialogue. First off, please don’t cast your wife Sherri Moon in any more roles where she attempts to play “normal”. It just doesn’t work. She rocks as some crazy sexy killer babe, but a mother struggling to deal with a psychopath killer of a son — no I just didn’t buy it. She only does a little better than Tyler Mane’s performance as a hulking-rampaging Michael Myers, and that’s probably cause we didn’t have to hear him growl out any lines like he did in X-MEN as Sabertooth. And what’s with the young actresses in this flick? Granted they’re saddled with having to act like idiots, getting naked every 2 minutes, and screaming their lungs out, but they don’t come anywhere near the girls from the original HALLOWEEN. Scout Taylor-Compton ain’t no Jamie Lee Curtis, and that definitely hurts the flick. Plus, the dialogue is so terribly inane, after a few minutes I was ready to kill the girls myself. Now so that I don’t sound like I’m completely raining poo-poo on Mr. Zombie’s parade, I will mention a couple of things I did like. Let’s start with Sheri Moon Zombie’s stripper scene — just kidding. Seriously though, Zombie always does a stellar job with the music in his flicks, and HALLOWEEN is no exception. Also, he’s smart enough to fill his movies with a bunch of fan favorite genre-centric actors, and this time folks like Malcolm McDowell (CLOCKWORK ORANGE), Ken Foree (DAWN OF THE DEAD), Brad Douriff (CHILD’S PLAY), Sid Haig (SPIDER BABY), Udo Kier (BLOOD FOR DRACULA), Dee Wallace (THE HOWLING), Clint Howard (ICE CREAM MAN), Danny Trejo (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN), and Bill Moseley (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2) all show up and given a few minutes of screentime. You definitely get some brownie points with a Horror fan like me when you do stuff like that.

So to put it bluntly, you’re better than this Rob and you know it. Stay away from the remakes and go back to your crazy Hillbilly Horror stuff. For the rest of you, I’d say check this out if you absolutely LOVE Rob Zombie and HAVE to see everything he puts his hands on. But if you want to see a good HALLOWEEN flick, I’d say just watch John Carpenter’s original Horror classic. Thanks for reading, and feel free as always to share your opinions, comments, and own suggestions for my 31 DAYS OF HORROR MARATHON below!

Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN
Scare-O-Meter: 5
Blood & Guts: 7
Bobert’s Overall Score: 5 – Not Recommended