Halloween Marathon: Halloween 6 The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

I had a research error when I first bought this series and watched this one before the 4th one and had to double back to watch that one to get that review up. Stupid, yes I know…but doesn’t really change how I actually felt about it.  It was really to get some of the story. Lets check it out, shall we? 

Director: Joe Chappelle

Cast: Donald Pleasance, Paul Rudd, Marianne Hagan, Mitch Ryan, Devin Gardner

Six years ago, Michael Myers terrorized the town of Haddonfield, Illinois. He and his niece, Jamie Lloyd, have disappeared. Jamie was kidnapped by a bunch of evil druids who protect Michael Myers. And now, six years later, Jamie has escaped after giving birth to Michael’s child. She runs to Haddonfield to get Dr. Loomis to help her again. Meanwhile, the family that adopted Laurie Strode is living in the Myers house and are being stalked by Myers. It’s the curse of Thorn that Michael is possessed by that makes him kill his family. And it’s up to Tommy Doyle, the boy from Halloween, and Dr. Loomis, to stop them all.- IMDB

**Let me just say sorry that I have to keep copying summaries from IMDB.  I already have a lot of Halloween marathon posts backed up because of overtime at work.  I literally have no time to do anything else.  I still really hope that time would slow down.  I’m going to try my absolute best to get in another review sometime today.  Worst comes to worst, I’ll extend it to November 1st 🙂 Now lets get to the actual review! **

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers isn’t all that bad as a horror movie.  I found it was more mystery than anything.  Sure, he runs around slashing people to get to Jamie’s baby but its pretty predictable.  After so many, is it so hard to figure out his next move and well, that he just will never die.  When I first watched this before the 4th, I felt it was better, although it does try to pull everything together.  There were parts that was kind of fun.  I can tell you though, one thing that didn’t work for me was some of the annoying characters, and it was quite nice to see them get killed off by Michael.  Mean, yes but my patience has been especially low…

Is there really a lot of story here? Maybe more than the rest in the series in my opinion.  It wasn’t a perfect story with so many illogical things. For example, no one sees a blood trail in a public bus station or hears a crying newborn in the bathroom.  Maybe no one needs to pee before a long bus ride.  What can I say, who knows what people do, maybe back in the days, everyone’s bladder works a million times better than now? However, I did appreciate that it tried to bring back older characters when they grew up.  This is where I’ll start looking at the actors.  For once, I know an actor in this! Paul Rudd! I was trying to figure out who he was the whole time.  He plays Tommy Doyle and he was rather likeable.  I just don’t know why he felt the absolute need to stop Michael and felt it was his mission, so he was in all means a hero.  

 

About now, I’m starting to feel extremely horrible for the character of Dr. Loomis.  He always gets caught up in these things and we all learn one of the reasons why in this one.  The doctor even retired from all this to get away and just live life, but he always has to get involved even with a cane.  He is the connection of all the Halloweens (except the third) and it gives it a lot to like and some flow from the previous installment.  

 

Overall, The Curse of Michael Myers is alright at best.  I didn’t hate it except for some annoying characters but they exit relatively quick.  I liked that I know Paul Rudd, who probably was a nobody back then but at least I know who he is.  It works hard to connect the stories and build up on what its all about.  If you did start watching the series, you won’t hate watching this one to follow up the previous one.  🙂

I still have to watch Halloween H2O in my busy schedule.  I don’t have the absolute last one (Resurrection?) and I won’t have time to watch it, so I’m going to postpone it.  Suffice to say, my work schedule is putting everything off a bit but I’ll aim to get everything (Halloween-related) up by Friday. 

Halloween Marathon: Halloween 2 (1981)

On Sunday, right after Halloween ended, we popped in the Halloween 2! Maybe thats how we’ll do the main feature but at least its a good continuity, right? With that said, you really shouldn’t read this if you haven’t seen the first one,k? This won’t spoil the second one but will spoil the first 😉 Let’s check it out!

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Charles Cyphers

Picking up at the last scene of Halloween, the police are rounding up the bodies and cleaning up after the mess that Michael Myers has made.  Laurie is being sent to the hospital to be treated for her injuries.  Dr. Loomis continues to try to search for Myers as he went missing even after being shot and falling from the second floor in the previous movie.  His chase leads him to learn a little more about Michael and perhaps the reason as to why he is after Laurie.  Michael ends up slashing his way through Haddonsfield all the way to the hospital where he continues his pursuit of Laurie and taking down whoever stands in his way.

I’m not exactly sure what to say about Halloween II. Honestly, I found it irritating for a good bit.  It was kind of slow and predictable.  On top of that, the characters themselves were just plain stupid and made dumb choices.  After so many things going on, Michael Myers is still invincible and close to immortal because he just never dies.  Its not that I hated this one.  The concept of it was decent, but the execution was a tad on the iffy side.  It was an engaging as the first one is what I’m trying to say.

The cast pretty much stays the same with the focus on Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie and it gets a lot better when she gets moving.  That was mostly at the end, unless the dragged on. I wasn’t really looking at the clock so I don’t know.  Dr. Loomis, still played with Donald Pleasance was also a welcoming face.  He is really good in this role and frankly, I think he’s my favorite character in this one.  As for the other side characters that each have about 5 minutes on screen total or something, they aren’t really worth my time.  They make stupid decisions and for the most part, I was not alive in 1970s but I never though an hospital would be empty at night…thats just me. That part didn’t make much sense to me.

Aside from all the flaws, was it a terrible movie? I don’t think so.  Sure, it was a bit slow and pointless at times but it did give a sense of continuation and tried to give the audience some answers as to why this was happening.  Although, there isn’t really any explanation even after we know the “secret”.  Its definitely a huge drop from the first one.  Its not really scary and not as engaging.  Its really straight out a slasher flick where all that really happens is people getting stalked and killed in different sorts of ways.  By the way, I really need to know how Michael learns all these things (drive a car, use hospital equipment, etc) when he’s been locked up since he was a kid.

What did you think of this sequel? Did you like this more than I did? Do you think its a worthy sequel?

Halloween Marathon: Halloween (1978)

Finally, the main feature of my whole marathon began this weekend! On Sunday, my boyfriend and I sat down and popped in the first Halloween.  I’ve never seen this before, just the Rob Zombie remake.  I liked that one quite a bit and decided that this year, I’d do a marathon to catch up with all this Michael Myers and maybe next year, I’ll go for the Friday the 13th series ;).  Lets check it out!

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Tony Moran, P.J. Soles, Nancy Kyes, Charles Cypher, Kyle Richards

Michael Myers murdered his sister on Halloween when he was a young boy and afterwards was institutionalized at a mental hospital.  After many years, he manages to escape as a grown man on Halloween and heads back to Haddonsfield.  Once there, he starts stalking a young girl, Laurie and her friends on Halloween.  At night, when she babysits, he lurks around the neighborhood and starts killing anyone that is in his way as he gets closer to her. At the same time, his doctor, Dr. Loomis chases after him and tries to track him down and stop him before he goes out of control.

Halloween is pretty much a classic at this point.  Everyone knows enough about it that I probably didn’t even need to give a synopsis. But hey, maybe you’re like me and extremely late to the party 😉 I know I’m late with lots of these. Regardless, I did initiate with the remake so I was slightly more familiar with the story, however this one does pace itself in a different way and portray a bit different also.  I found its pace a bit slow but one that works well because before I knew it, by the final few scares, I was yelling at the characters.  As predictable as some scenes were, they also had the background music and would make it more intense.

Michael Myers is definitely a creepy villain.  We don’t know what he looks like and the mask is bone-chilling and scary.  Especially since its white, in the dark spaces, sometimes thats all we see.  Then he lurks in the shadows and many times, its hard to know where he will pop out or exactly when, how he will attack.  He defines the unknown factor as there are so many mysteries that make us wonder why he’s hunting down Laurie, even why he would kill his own sister when he was just a boy. Questions and unknown and scary masks, especially kids in clown costumes, all very scary stuff in my book.

Do I really need to recommend this? Just go see it if you haven’t and if you have, well, I’m sure you’d love to see it again, especially for Halloween 😉

How many of you actually watch Halloween on Halloween day? Whats your go-to Halloween movie?