My 2023 Halloween

I haven't done anything on Halloween for years, but this year was different. My neighborhood sucks, so I went to my sister's rich-people neighborhood and guess what? People were actually trick or treating! And they had decorations up! I haven't seen any of that festive behavior in a while, so it was a great place to be a creep. I dressed up as Michael Myers and simply walked around a few blocks, but it felt great. The anonymity is one thing, but the fact that it was perfectly acceptable and expected of me to be an asshole was great. I scared children, I hid in the bushes to watch people, and I breathed heavily. Basically, it was like any other day, except I was wearing a costume.

Marianne Hagan's character's age in H6: Curse of MM

This has always bugged me, but I guess I have never paid close enough attention to really figure it out. Tonight I.... um...well, it still doesn't quite seem right to me, but I got a little closer to being able to live with it.

Marianne Hagan played Kara Strode. She is supposed to be a college student with a little boy, but the little boy isn't really THAT little. He looks like he's about nine, to me, although they say he's supposed to be six.

So, this has always just seemed vaguely OFF, and wrong, to me. I don't know if I've ever sat down and googled my way through my questions, it just seemed messed up for a college student to have a son whom I thought was nine-ish. What is this, Yemen?!? Actually, in Yemen, I'm pretty sure young women don't go to college. But I digress.

Anyway. OK. So. The son Danny is supposed to be six, not nine. I disagree with their casting of a kid who looks as old as this kid does, but, whatever, I can live with it.

Tonight, watching this, and actually trying to pay close attention, I noticed that the asshole father in the Strode family clearly says that Kara had been away from home for FIVE YEARS before returning to live there again, with her son. Five years. OK, now we're getting somewhere. So, if she had just finished high school when she moved away, then she would be twenty-two. Of course, it is certainly very possible that she ran away from home when she was younger than seventeen. Happens all the time. But, let's just imagine that she was seventeen when she left home, and twenty-two when she returned. Maybe she is even a little older in the movie... suppose she has been home for a few months, long enough to turn twenty-three, and her father is just still being an asshole to her because he's an asshole, and that's what assholes do.

Anyway.... what the hell am I talking about... oh yeah, I wanted to mention Kara's friends at college. I guess that was never very clear to me. For one thing, Tim is supposed to be Kara's BROTHER. Younger brother, probably. And, the character Beth is supposed to be Tim's girlfriend. They are probably supposed to be regular, college-age people, in their late teens or early twenties. I can live with that. Sometimes when they are shown walking together with Kara, I'm like, wait, what? Kara, just seems too mature to be hanging out with these wild kids. But, whatever, OK.

I guess they are are all students at Haddonfield University. I guess it is supposed to be some kind of local community college, where people can get an associate's degree. Something like that. OK, I'm fine with that.

Anyway, I guess I am just venting here. There are just a few scenes where I just can't wrap my mind around the characters. I just don't buy it. I guess I must have a crush on Marianne Hagan..... She just seems way too poised, composed, thoughtful, mature, calm, maternal to her son, intelligent, etc to play a character with what must have been a pretty wild past, and to have such wild friends. She (Marianne Hagan) was about twenty-eight or twenty-nine when she played the character, which isn't THAT old, of course. But, she seems to have depth and maturity to her personality... it just feels wrong, to me, to see her calling Kim Darby "Mom," and living at home, and hanging out with the characters Tim and Beth, and so on.

Probably this will not make any sense at all, to some of you, but I can't be the only one who has had these thoughts. I just wanted to try to sort them out a little.

So. Yah. Had to share.

October Challenge 2023



It's that time of the year again. You all know the drill but for any newbies, here are the rules:

> At least 31 horror films must be watched during the month of October. 16 of these must be FTVs (first time viewings).
> You get 1 "point" per movie watched.
> Runtime is 45 minutes minimum.
> Kiddy-friendly "Halloween themed" movies will be permitted as long as there is some element of horror or spooky fun, i.e. A Nightmare Before Christmas, Goosebumps, The Addams Family, etc.
> If unsure on whether a movie is "horror" or not, please refer to the usual suspects: IMDb, Wiki, Letterboxd, etc.
> Documentaries and TV shows will not be accepted, however mockumentaries will be.
> The challenge will begin at 00:00 hours on October 1st in your time zone.

If there is anything I have missed, let me know over in the shoutbox. Use it for discussions too.

Previous year threads:

https://trashepics.com/post/9/160/
https://trashepics.com/post/9/218/
https://trashepics.com/post/142/130/
https://trashepics.com/post/30/34/
https://trashepics.com/post/30/38/
https://trashepics.com/post/30/53/

So make your spot and have fun!

Rev. Jackson Sayer, in Halloween 4

I'm talking about the.... um... let's say three-quarters crazy old guy, who gives Dr. Loomis a ride, and a drink, helping him out on his way to Haddonfield in Halloween 4.

I wish they had done something more with that character, either in H4 or in a later sequel. We just get that little glimpse of him in H4, but it's so tantalizing. I wonder what his backstory was.

That could make a pretty decent graphic novel, probably, now that I'm thinking about this. Something about Rev. Sayer in his younger days, going up against some kind of Ancient Evil. He could be portrayed as a little crazy, or possiby just totally normal, in a pre-crazy period of his life.

I guess he could even potentially be a main protagonist in a franchise of his own, like Ash in ED, or Tommy Jarvis in the F13 franchise, with his own adventures battling evil. They could be set in the 1940s or 50s, when he was a younger man than he was in H4.

Well... just a thought. I dunno. Had to share.

There's Something Wrong with the Children (2023)

SPOILERS (here and there, I'm too tired to find them and black them all out, it's very late where I live).

I saw this the other day. It's not terrific, but I think they were probably attempting to do some interesting things with it. I am still trying to figure it out.

It's about two couples, one of which has kids, renting "cabins" at some kind of camping ground. The cabins are pretty freaking nice, by the way. At first I thought they were just in a home that belonged to one of the couples. Anyway, the couple with kids has a girl who is around ten, and a boy who is... eight or nine, I guess. The boy looks like another girl, soooo that's confusing.

The couples hang out and talk for the first part of the movie, and they drink a LOT. I am pretty sure there is some kind of commentary on society going on there, because they are just drinking CONSTANTLY. They would have been absolutely plastered if they really drank as much alcohol as they are shown drinking. They also toke up a little, if I recall correctly, and the man in one of the couples takes lithium for a manic-depressive disorder. Sooooooo, yah. Good times.

The conversations that they have seem to be written in order to make some kind of points about having children, and whether it is necessarily the best thing to do. They talk about various adventures that they could have without children, and so on.

At some point they go for a little hike in the woods. They find the remains of some kind of old building... not a REALLY old building, like a Mayan ruin, but something from... I don't know, maybe a hundred years ago. They explore the foundations of the building, and they find a deep, wide hole in the ground. The kids seem to be drawn to the hole, and they almost fall in. The call the hole "the shining place," or "the place that shines." It has kind of a greenish glow, off and on.

I am pretty sure the shining hole is supposed to be some kind of trap to attract unwary humans. The glow reminds me of the glow from a bug zapper they show at the campsite, which, of course, is meant to draw bugs to their death. That can't be a coincidence, they even do a slow zoom-in on the bug zapper. There is definitely something related to bugs going on, although I can't quite figure out what it is. When the children (very predictably) turn evil, as they eventually do, sometimes one of the main characters sees their shadows and the shadows are not the shadows of children. They are the shadows of some kind of humongous praying mantises. They didn't spend money on CGI to show actual giant praying mantises, they just show their shadows. Sooooooo, whatever that means.

I am really struggling to figure out what the hell this movie was shooting for. Either I am just being very dense, or they just completely blew it. Possibly both.

They seem to have borrowed ideas from Pet Sematary, just in the sense that the aerial view of the ruined old building in the woods evokes my memory of the aerial shots of the old Micmac burial ground in Pet Sematary. But, the way the children act when they get possessed by praying mantises, or whatever the hell possesses them, is not exactly the same as the way Gage acts in PS. They seem to get far more intelligent than normal children, and more dextrous and probably stronger.

What was the old building supposed to be, or supposed to have been, decades or centuries before the movie took place? I feel like that is probably the key, here. If I could figure that out, the whole movie might make more sense. It must have been either some kind of super-science outpost, communicating with bug-like aliens, or maybe some kind of structure related to magic of some kind, summoning up the ancient spirits of some kind of insect gods worshipped by early Native Americans. I don't know. Argh.

One thing that I thought the movie did pretty well was to show the confusion of one of the men, when he first witnesses the children falling to their deaths in the hole, and then very shortly afterwards sees them running around and playing back at the campsite. He is clearly as confused as I was by the entire movie, and he shows that confusion convincingly.

I was reminded a little of The Tommyknockers, now and then. Possibly just because of the green glow. Also, of course, because somehow the people in the movie unearth some kind of ancient, advanced Evil in the woods, and get possessed by it. As I said, I'm not sure if it is supposed to be aliens or malevolent intelligent insects, but whatever it is, it is definitely evil.

So, um... two thumbs sideways, maybe a little up, maybe a little down...? I don't know.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2

Good God, why did anyone feel the need to make a sequel to a TV movie after all these years? Let alone the writer of the original? What's he trying to prove, except that lightning doesn't strike twice?

This one looks and feels DTV. They get the scarecrow costume right and they make sure to reference the original film's events to establish canon, but it was super boring. At least in the first one, you have the charming asshole Charles Durning to keep you entertained, but here? We got nothing. None of the characters are worthwhile, they use unnecessary bad CGI, and did I mention how boring it was?

At least this movie was less than 90 minutes. I don't think I could handle any more than that.

#Review

The Town that Dreaded Sundown 1976

Ah, the old 70s doc/slasher... once a rare collectors item unavailable on dvd for the longest time, thus a coveted title with a sort of biased popularity to it among us genre fans. Does it hold up, though?

From director Charles B. Pierce of Bog Creek fame, this guy seemed to like the documentary approach. I guess it works though. We skip all that boring exposition with a guy simply telling you the less interesting inbetween moments, and sometimes we see the law on his trail. Then we jump into some killer action, and this killer is pretty dope. Bag-headed and very Jason 2 esque, with some angst and zodiac vibes thrown in. He uses musical instruments as weapons, guns, knives, whatever. He stalks people in their cars, homes, wherever. He'll fuck with you a little before he kills you, because why not? I like his heavy breathing in the mask. Pretty effective, probably creepy as hell for the people who saw it back in the 70s.

And I got some vibes of Last House on the Left with the inept cop. Some real clown shit, like the clown cops in Halloween 5 sometimes. I guess it needed some comic relief for those wimps in the audience who couldn't handle those horror scenes.

I also like the part where he barges in the woman's home after shooting her husband dead through the window, then he shoots the woman in the face. She doesn't even die, and he shoots her again I think, and she still doesn't die. She crawls away and ends up surviving. That's some real Serpico shit, getting shot in the face and surviving.

Pretty good flick. I remember thinking the 2014 meta requel was okay, but I haven't seen it in about a decade. Maybe I'll give it a watch, but maybe I'll forget about it for another 10 years. We'll see...

#Review

An Important Matter For All Right-Thinking Americans to Ponder

In the hockey movie Miracle (2004), does the Kurt Russell character ever yell "Hey Sweden!" at the Swedes, at any point, when his team is playing against Sweden in the 1980 Olympics? If not.... damn, that was a hell of a missed opportunity. They totally could have come up with some excuse for him to say that.

What's Your Favorite Evil Corporation?

This topic happened to come up for me several times, over the last week or so. Actually, of course, it really comes up dozens if not hundreds of times every single day, if you are paying attention in real life.

Anyway, what is your favorite evil (fictional) corporation? Or law firm, it could be a law firm like Wolfram & Hart, from the Angel TV show. I'll make a little list to get started, starting with that.

Wolfram & Hart, from Angel
The RAMJAC Corporation, from Jailbird, by Kurt Vonnegut
Bromley Marks, from Daybreakers
The Umbrella Corporation, from Resident Evil
The Tyrell Corporation, from Blade Runner
The Wallace Corporation, from Blade Runner 2049
ZomCom, from Fido

You get the idea. What is one of your favorites? Please add new ones to my list. I guess I will pick the RAMJAC Corporation, for myself. I always liked that idea of a dotty old homeless lady who secretly owned nineteen percent of the United States.

The Strangers 2008

When this movie came out, everyone praised it as a Halloween-esque suspenseful home invasion movie. I saw it and I hated it. I've been known to come around to a movie after some space, so about 15 years later, I gave it another whirl, and it still sucks.

I'm not crazy about Liv Tyler to begin with. Something about her is awkward to me and I can't pinpoint it. The other lead Scott Speedman is an incredibly dull actor as well, so what does this movie have going for it besides a few well dressed villains?

Well, it has Glenn Howerton for some reason. He's the needy friend who doesn't mind his own business and causes our protagonists to make rash and stupid decisions.

What can I really say about this movie? It's a lot of ineffective tension and buildup to a lack of any real conclusion, and it tries to play upon that whole "based on a true story" angle with TCM opening narration, but it doesn't quite work. This movie is overrated.


Fortunately for everyone, the sequel is a LOT better. However, it seems to have wrapped up its killers in a nice little bowtie/bodybag, but wait a second... Renny Harlin just directed a new trilogy? WTF? Fingers crossed it copies part 2 more than part 1.

#Review