Crabman Ponders Rob Zombie's Remake Of HALLOWEEN

I swore to myself I wasn’t going to do this but after watching Rob Zombie’s remake of HALLOWEEN last week I feel I have to say a few things about it but you’ll have to excuse me if this post is neither informative or funny. Any regular readers will know of my total disgust towards POINTLESS FUCKING REMAKES. The past few years have seen remakes of THE OMEN, THE HILLS HAVE EYES and THE FOG, to name but a few and quite frankly 99.99% of them have been fucking lazy abortions of the originals. I have said before that I have no problem whatsoever with remaking films that didn’t work the first time around but to keep rehashing well loved classics is not only pointless but fucking irritating.

John Carpenter’s original 1978 HALLOWEEN was a film I grew up with and loved and I still watch it at least twice a year, once always on Halloween night. Have done for years. Carpenter crafted a lean, atmospheric and shit-your-pants scary film from a budget that these days wouldn’t even pay for Chris Tucker’s brain medicine. Michael Myers was quite possibly the scariest motherfucker I had ever seen on film when I was a kid and he still is. In Carpenter’s original. It is and will probably always be one of my favourite horror films of all time. Its PERFECT. There has been six sequels (not including HALLOWEEN III) and never before has the law of diminishing returns ever been so aptly applied. The franchise reached a true low in HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION when Busta Rhymes roundhouse kicks Myers in the head. What. The. Fuck? To be honest, apart form HALLOWEEN II, I had pretty much given up on the whole franchise but I still have the perfect original to cherish. I remember saying to a few mates last year that there are some films that Hollywood wouldn’t dare remake. THE EXORCIST, JAWS and ,of course, HALLOWEEN. So, imagine my complete fucking exasperation when it was announced that the always savvy Weinstein brothers had brought Rob Zombie on board to “re-imagine” Carpenter’s flawless original.

Now, I’ll start of by saying that I have only seen the WORKPRINT that was leaked online last week which was Zombie’s original vision that was shown to test audiences earlier in the year. The theatrical version, released in America last Friday has had some alterations to it demanded by the studio and from what I've read the WORKPRINT is superior. Unbelievably so. That's yet another major clusterfuck from the Weinsteins. Fat cunts.

The first 30 minutes deals with the ten year old Michael Myers played by "creepy looking" newcomer Daeg Faerch. He's shown to have a “shit life”. His mother is a stripper. His mother’s boyfriend is an alcoholic bully. His sister is a slag. He gets bullied at school. The Myers house is the only shit-hole in the entire neighbourhood. He has no friends and, oh yeah, he kills his pet rats with a knife. It really is the stupidest, most ill-advised opening to a film I have seen in a long time. I’m guessing that Zombie was attempting to explain why Michael Myers becomes the monster he does but in reality all he has done is just miss the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT. Michael Myers gave me nightmares as a kid for a very good reason. He WAS the boogeyman. Pure evil. Unstoppable and relentless, any explanation as to why he kills would just make him less scary. What we don’t understand, we fear. Zombie fucked up. Good start.



The film moves forward to Michael being transferred to a “secure” sanatorium after he brutally kills his mother’s boyfriend, his sister and her boyfriend. He can’t remember committing the murders and doesn’t understand why he has been locked up. Step forward Malcolm Mcdowell playing the part of Dr Sam Loomis so memorably played by Donald Pleasence in the original. First of all, I like Malcolm Mcdowell and I did think that he was quite an inspired piece of casting for this remake but he’s fucking terrible in this film. I place the blame squarely at Rob Zombie for this. The dialogue he has to work with is awful and to be honest, Zombie can’t direct actors. He can’t direct at all actually. Loomis spends a good few years trying to get through to Michael after he kills a nurse with a fork that he had handy and becomes a mute. Instead of talking, Michael makes and wears a series of masks to convey his mood. Loomis gives up, turns into a fucking bell-end and writes a book all about Myers. UTTER WANK!

15 YEARS LATER

Michael is now a seven foot monster of a man and still, understandably, locked up. Late one night, two stereotypical redneck arseholes that work the nightshift decide to rape one of the female inmates. In Myers cell. With him in it. Because, of course, if I was wanting to rape a mentally disturbed woman in the dead of night, where better to do it than in a seven foot tall, homicidal maniac's cell all the while taunting said homicidal maniac and LEAVING THE DOOR OPEN! He escapes. Obviously. This “secure” unit is nothing of the fucking sort. He wanders outside with one of his masks on and trots off down the road. Zombie, you are trying MY FUCKING PATIENCE.

From here on in, Zombie just let’s Michael loose on the town of Haddonfield killing pretty much everyone he can find but there is zero tension. It’s not scary and quite frankly, for a film pretending to be HALLOWEEN, it’s a fucking disgrace. In the original, Myers loomed out of shadows, appeared from nowhere but all the time remaining omnipresent. Wherever you hid, the creepy cunt would just appear. SCARY. Zombie has Myers just wander form house to house for no other reason than to show another gratuitous tit shot or slicing of a throat. Any fans of the original will remember a complete lack of blood. I haven’t got a problem with gore. Or tits. Quite the opposite actually. But if you really must remake HALLOWEEN please make sure you do the following.

MAKE IT SCARY YOU STUPID CUNT. IT’S NOT FUCKING ROCKET SCIENCE.

I could go on and on about what’s wrong with this film but I won’t. Actually, I think I will.

• The beginning
  
• The script is awful
  
• The acting is atrocious. Even, as mentioned earlier, Malcolm Mcdowell.
  
• The teenage girls are all now one dimensional BRATZ rejects. You actually want them to die.
  
• The middle.
  
• Michael Myers looks like a fucking wanky grunge rock cunt.
  
• Zombie uses that fucking awful “shaky cam” effect. Yawn.
  
• Michael Myers is made out to be a sympathetic psycho killer. ???????????
  
• Zombie really needs to stop putting his stupid fucking wife in his films. She’s rubbish.
  
• The majority of the film makes no sense whatsoever.
  
• The end. Which really is unbelievably bad.

The only two things I like about this cunt of a remake was the music and Myers’ mask. Both of which were in the original film in the first place. So, WHAT WAS THE FUCKING POINT? I’m afraid I can’t answer that for you. Feel free to check out the WORKPRINT here and save yourself some cash when it eventually opens here in October. Be quick though, I have a feeling it won't be online for much longer. As I said before, the cut that's online is the BETTER VERSION which actually makes me wander just how unspeakably bad the theatrical cut is. Suffice to say, it is getting a fucking good kicking from the critics. Good.



Please, Hollywood, stop producing these POINTLESS FUCKING REMAKES. If Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN wasn’t bad enough, I still have the remake of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK to look forward to in 2009. Directed by Len Wiseman.

FUCK. ME. SIDEWAYS.