Old Halloween vs New Halloween...

[Gorn Captain]

I tried watching Rob Zombie's Halloween II yesterday.
I made to about 15 minutes before giving up.
It seems that this Michael gets his kicks out slow torture, and the death scenes last several minutes. They have no trouble showing a guy getting his throat cut (lasting over a minute as Meyers saws and saws away), but steer away from showing a dog getting killed. That would be too much...

I'm a big fan of Carpenter's Halloween. It's relentless, methodical, but never gratuitous. There's hardly any blood, and Michael's kills are very effective. There's just enough shock value, without shoving it down your throat.

Zombie also turned Dr. Loomis into an egotistical *******. So far for our hero. This is a long stretch from Donald Pleasence's gentle performance, and McDowell chews scenery like there's no tomorrow. I hope he got paid well...

Am I getting old?
I mean, I liked the Friday 13th remake, that was well done.
Or is the new type of "modern" slasher film really really boring in its "buckets of blood" attitude?

[enyawd72]

OLD HALLOWEEN! All the way!

[Starroid Raiders Dagon]

I like the old version of Halloween but I never found it scary or horrifying. Suspenseful, yes but not scary. I did like the Rob Zombie versions better as I did find them more horrifying, but I liked the small details as well like Michael' infatuation with masks, and how he gradually moved away from reality.

[Hedji]

The worst thing about Zombie's remake was demystifying Michael. Explaining his white trash origins removes the elemental nature of the "character". Carpenter suggested that he was a Force of Nature, referring to him more as "The Shape" rather than "Michael". This was not a man who was abused as a boy, rather he was the shape of evil in the form of a man. Way more chilling.

[Earth 2 Chris]

^Yep. Modern creators just can't seem to let an evil character just be EVIL. They have to explain everyone's motivations, and sometimes that's fine, but in this case it takes away from the creepy mystique.

Chris

[palitoy]

Love Zombie as a musician but his films have largely left me cold. I find the majority of what I've seen too over the top and often it feels like a Homage to something else.

The original Halloween is so wonderfully subtle, the remake just felt like any run of the mill slasher movie to me.

[Gorn Captain]

Remember when Carpenter's Michael killed a guy, and he just tilts his head a little, as if thinking "that's odd, he's not moving anymore".
To me, that was chilling enough. It makes Michael terrifying enough, this alien quality, the detachment.
I don't need to see him "carving up the roast" and stabbing his victims to a bloody pulp.

I liked Carpenter's concept of "pure evil", as if Michael was this dark hole that just destroyed what came near.
I also disliked Zombie's attempt to mystify Michael (with all the "white horse" crap). Seemed like he needed to justify the OTT carnage with some homemade psychology...

[Bruce Banner]

Carpenter's original is superior in every way, IMHO.

[MIB41]

Rob Zombie demonstrated the brilliance of Carpenter by doing everything that Carpenter didn't do. Instead of layering Myer's origins with irony like coming from a seemingly innocent and ordinary home, Zombie placed him in an abusive environment, which, in my opinion, was a dangerous message to profile such an iconic monster. The social context suggested Myers way of dealing with all of this violence around him, was to become even more violent to conquer it. Poor messaging for impressionable minds. From a plot structure standpoint, this also removed the story responsibilities for Loomis.

In Carpenter's original film, we saw a very innocent child perform an unspeakable act. And then years past while Myers was incarcerated. Loomis was the viewer's guide to the inner workings of Myers. It was his point of view that gave us the background, the paranoia, and the fear of what Myers, "could be". Loomis' character essentially laid the ground work for how we perceived Myers. In Zombie's version we're miles ahead of Loomis. And his rants about this inner evil do nothing to supplement the plot or enhance Myers because we saw Myer's origins and essentially see a child now in the body of a man acting out from that atmosphere he grew up in. Loomis' rationale is meaningless here and actually makes him seem more like a complete quack than a doctor who has clinical insight into something abnormal here. So Zombie's Loomis is a complete waste of a strong (and essential) character from the original. Then we have the gore factor.

Zombie seems to cater to excessive, almost twisted, forms of violence in his films. And he does so in a very brutal and mean spirited way. He's not interested in spooking people so much as shocking them with his graphic, in-your-face, kills. I also found his nudity scenes disturbing. Recasting Danielle Harris was a mistake to me. And showing her nude struck an uncomfortable note with me since those scenes show her having the same hair style as she had as a kid. And since she was not a very well endowed girl, it only registered that much louder. I just about left the theater at this point because the context of the shots almost painted her as that little girl again and I found that connotation disgusting.

So I find little redeeming value in this remake. Zombie really took all that was interesting and intriguing about the original and stomped it in the ground. Is it any wonder the franchise went back into hiatus after the sequel?

[Gorn Captain]

Yep, that pretty much sums up my views on the remakes.
Overkill...killing the franchise...

They seem to go out of their way to be different from Carpenter. Why don't they try to be as good as he is?

[Hedji]

^Enyawd, did you paint that witch? That is EXCELLENT! Now that's how you put a new spin on something old!

[LadyZod]

Enyawd... why don't I own a piece of your artwork? Dang, that's good.

[fallensaviour]

Well put,I really didn't care for the remakes at all and thought they were utter crap.
I like Zombie as a musician and actually enjoyed house of a thousand corpses and devils rejects.
These halloweens though just a waste of film and money.

[megoapesnut]

Don't even get me started. Zombie takes my favorite movie, which is a absolute CLASSIC GEM and DESTROYS it. He takes a classic and casts it with all of his dirty, greasy, straggly haired biker jerks who can't act their way out of a paper bag. Saying it sucked is doing it too much justice.

[megoapesnut]

The original Halloween is so wonderfully subtle

PERFECTLY stated. that's it in a nutshell.

the remake just felt like any run of the mill slasher movie to me.

That's giving it WAYYYY to much credit. I'll take any run of the mill slasher flick over his GARBAGE any day.