Halloween v. Halloween

Last night Diesel, Johnathan Orion, and I settled ourselves into a freezing unfinished basement with a DVD player and a projector. Our sole purpose was to compare and contrast the original John Carpenter's Halloween to the more recent Rob Zombie Halloween. Out of respect we watched John Carpenter's first. I had never seen the original Halloween, having only recently had my eyes opened to the beauty that is the horror genre. The thing that surprised me about this flick was how slow building it was. At the beginning the nurse gets kinda fucked up a little, but not killed. After that it's a slow burn until Michael starts doing his grizzly business. And you know what?, I kinda liked that, while not as visceral an experience as most modern horror flicks the slow progression of events and the "cat and mouse" game was just creepy enough to let the situation sink in to the viewers mind. The open ending which has become clichè in this genre was shockingly original at the time the movie was made. Jamie Lee Curtis was the only character that I didn't hate immediately. Her two friends and their boyfriends were the reason God created serial killers.

Rob Zombie's Halloween was the next to be projected across the wall of Johnathan Orion's basement. It started with... wait let me explain something first, I swear. I swear a lot. I don't mind swearing in movies, songs, radio programs, churches, children's programming or any other venue. That being said, they cussed too much in this damn movie. Every other word was on George Carlin's list. The swearing was so over the top that it kind of became the star of the movie for the first several minutes. Michael's step-father vomits profanity toward him and his mother, and talks about how hot his step-daughter's ass is. But after a while the language toned down. One of the first big differences that I noticed between this film and the original was that the Laurie character (played by Jamie Lee Curtis in the original) was now as annoying and slaughter worthy as the rest of the characters. Oh and Michael was fucking HUGE in this one.. like 8 feet tall. This flick focused more on what made Michael the way he was, instead of the things he did. It ends at the same point that the original movie did, but it starts much earlier in Michael's life. It cites that his abusive home life and violent predisposition turned the sweet little boy into a monster. This wasn't touched on in the original Halloween at all, and I liked it better that way. I'm a weirdo, but I always find myself cheering for the killer in these movies anyway, so why are you trying to make me feel sorry for him? I inferred from the fact that he wears a Halloween mask and carries a big fucking knife which he habitually uses on copulating teenagers that he probably wasn't the most well adjusted of human beings, you don't need to drive the point home by showing me every gnarled branch on his dysfunctional family tree. This flick was much more violent and "in your face" with the gore than the original, which made it more fun to watch. and there were a few twists made on the original that were nice to see. For example, when the dork that just finished banging Laurie's slutty friend #2 comes back into the bedroom wearing a sheet with his glasses on over it, it shows Michael killing him and donning the sheet before killing her. Overall this movie was okay, but it suffered from too many endings. And there was a pretty week tie-in between Laurie crying at the end of the movie and her crying in her crib as a baby.

Overall, you have to respect the original Halloween, it was a well done psychological horror movie. The remake was adequate as a horror movie, but can't really stand up to it's predecessor.