Category Random Thoughts or Observations

A Random Thought or Observation: The Omen Trilogy

Chadwick Saxelid Leave a comment

Who, or what, is responsible for most, if not all, of those beloved and grisly “accidental” deaths that occur throughout the trilogy?

The Omen (1976) [IMDB]

Yes. TRILOGY. As far as I am concerned Omen IV: The Awakening never, ever happened. It was just an unpleasant fever dream I had back in the 1990s. I also do not consider the two delightfully bonkers tie-in novels that were written by Gordon McGill (Omen IV: Armaggedon 2000 and Omen V: The Abomination, respectively) to be legitimate sequels for this very simple reason…

The Final Conflict (1981) [IMDB]

The Final Conflict ended with the Second Coming of Christ. That means GAME OVER! The Anti-Christ has been defeated and the Actual-Christ is doing his whole Thousand Year Reign on Earth thing. There might be more to it, depending on which variation of Christianity you may, or may not, believe, but I am just going to stick to the basic fact that Christ returns. He’s walking around Earth, doing his whole salvation thing.

Yet the Second Coming of Christ is never, ever mentioned in Omen IV: The Awakening, or in either Omen IV: Armaggedon 2000 or Omen V: The Abomination, which means it did not happen and that means…

Wait a minute, I am digressing. I do tend to overthink this stuff, don’t I?

Yet that digression does get me back to my original random thought or observation concerning all those bombastic and horrific accidents that might make, as John McCarty put it in his seminal book Splatter Movies, “one [begin] to wonder if Damien’s protectors aren’t trying to call attention to him rather than keep his identity a secret.” [Splatter Movies: Breaking the Last Taboo of the Screen, John McCarty, Page 108.]

Now, to borrow [steal] something George Carlin said, I have this moron thing I do, it’s called thinking.

If the coming of the Anti-Christ is one of several elaborate set-ups for Christ’s inevitable return, why are so many people trying to stop and/or destroy Damien? Doing so just screws up God’s Divine Plan. If you believe, then discovering that there is an actual flesh and blood Anti-Christ walking the Earth would be a good thing. That means Christ is on his way. Stopping, or killing, Damien stops that, because the Anti-Christ is supposed to set the stage for Christ’s return. No Anti-Christ, no Christ.

So, in my oddball way of thinking this through, killing Damien would only delay the End Times. Because, if you are a believer in this kind of thing, this is fated to happen no matter what you do. Satan might happy with a delay. God, on the other hand, would not.

Which is why I kind of suspect that God just might be responsible for some these deaths. “He” just might be doing some old-fashioned smiting from the heavens, shouting in a thunderous voice, “STOP FUCKING UP MY DIVINE PLAN YOU DISBELIEVING INGRATES!”

Just a random thought…

A Random Thought or Observation: The Thing (1982)

Chadwick Saxelid Leave a comment

At the one hour, four minute, and fifty second mark of John Carpenter’s The Thing Fuchs (Joel Polis) shares an unsettling idea with Macready (Kurt Russell):

“If a small particle of this Thing is enough to take over an entire organism, then everyone should prepare their own meals. And I suggest we only eat out of cans.”

Oof. That is a terrifying thought and, if correct, then everyone at the end of The Thing might have been transforming into a Thing.

How or why could that be? Because, during the blood test scene, Windows (Thomas Waites) is shown using the same scalpel to cut fingers and draw blood. A scalpel that he does not bother sterilizing between cuts. At one points he even “cleans” the scalpel by wiping it off on his pants. HIS PANTS!

If what Fuchs posited to Macready is true and all it could take for someone to be transformed into a Thing is exposure to a single cell, then a lot of the blood Windows drew was contaminated and, if given a little more time, more than a single sample would have jumped when poked with that heated wire.

Just a thought…

A Random Thought or Observation: Halloween II (1981) and Profondo Rosso (1975)

Chadwick Saxelid Leave a comment

While procrastinating on a critique project I keep toying with I began cogitating on a passage from Carol J. Clover’s seminal book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film that angered, frustrated, and offended me.

Clover wrote: “The pair of murders at the therapy pool in Halloween II illustrates the standard iconography. We see the orderly in two shots: the first at close range in the control room, just before the stabbing, and the second as he is being stabbed, through the vapors in a medium long shot; the orderly never even sees his assailant. The nurse’s death, on the other hand, is shot entirely in medium close-up. The camera studies her face as it registers first her unwitting complicity (as the killer strokes her neck and shoulders from behind), then apprehension, and then, as she faces him, terror; we see the knife plunge into her repeatedly, hear her cries, and watch her blood fill the pool.” [Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, by Carol J. Clover, Page 35]

What angered, frustrated, and offended me was how Clover gave a detailed description of something that does not happen in the actual film. While the generalities regarding camera placement and framing are correct, there is no stabbing or bloodshed.

Here is the scene:

See? No stabbing or bloodshed. I do not know if this has ever been addressed or corrected, but it really soured my mood when I first read it, way back in the mid-90s. I wanted, hoped, and expected better attention to be paid to the text being cited and critiqued. Get your facts right. It’s important.

My perseverating on this scene led to me thinking about Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso. Why? Because I have a memory of reading an interview with John Carpenter, most likely in an issue of Fangoria magazine, wherein he described his film Halloween as being a homage of sorts to Argento. Much like Assault on Precinct 13 was his homage to Howard Hawks and George A. Romero.

In Profondo Rosso a woman (Giuliana Calandra) is brutally murdered by having her head forcibly submerged in scalding hot water.

Because she is still alive when dropped on the floor, and lives just long enough to leave a clue, the implication is that the pain and shock are what really kill her.

The unfortunate Karen (Pamela Susan Shoop) appears to be quite dead when Michael (Dick Warlock) lets her slack body drop to the floor. There is no need for clues to be left here.

But I was stuck by the similarity on display. Or maybe I was just reading a tad too much into Carpenter’s Argento comment.

Then again, Friday the 13th Part 2 was known to have replicated kill scenes from Mario Bava’s seminal 1971 proto-slasher A Bay of Blood [Ecologia del delitto]. Maybe Carpenter was doing the same with Profondo Rosso when he was writing Halloween II?

Despite my grousing about Halloween II being misquoted in the book, I do recommend Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. The chapter that compares and contrasts the feminist messaging in Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave (aka Day of the Woman) with the feminist messaging in Jonathan Kaplan’s The Accused was an interesting and thought-provoking read.

Some Random Thoughts or Observations: Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills (2021), and Halloween Ends (2022)

Chadwick Saxelid Leave a comment

Random thought or observation #1: Each film using the same title font as its corresponding entry helps to explain the trilogy’s weird and wonky story structure.

Halloween (1978)
Halloween (2018)

Halloween (2018) mirrors, references, and reinvents a great many elements from the first film for this back-to-the-basics reboot sequel.

A few examples: Michael escaping (yet again) while being transferred to another facility. The podcasters visit the grave of Judith Myers, just as Loomis did in the ’78 film. Allyson noticing that Laurie is watching her through a classroom window. Michael bumping into two trick-or-treaters also references when Lonnie runs into him at school in the first film.

Two things that made me smile: The reverse rotting of the jack o’ lantern in the title credits recreating the jack o’ lantern from the ’78 credits. The moment when Officer Hawkins (Will Patton) says to Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer), “You’re the new Loomis.”

Halloween II (1981)
Halloween Kills (2021)

I doubt that Halloween Kills being released on the 40th anniversary of Halloween II (shit, I am getting old) was planned, but it also helps draw parallels to how the trilogy’s narrative derails here.

Halloween Kills, just like Halloween II, begins right where the previous entry ended. Laurie is taken to the local hospital, while Michael continues his reign of terror in Haddonfield.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
Halloween Ends (2022)

I find it interesting that David Gordon Green and company dared to mirror and reimagine the structure of a Halloween movie without Michael Myers for the trilogy’s conclusion. It’s an odd and seemingly counter-intuitive choice, considering the way they ended Kills (more on that in a moment).

Yet it also makes a weird and almost perfect kind of sense, if you look at Halloween Ends as if it were trying to mirror and reinvent certain elements from Halloween III: Season of the Witch into something that could integrate with the Michael Myers v Laurie Strode mythos.

Which brings me to random thought or observation #2: It was the mask.

Halloween (2018)

The first hint, clue, or statement given that there is some strange power within the mask itself comes at the beginning of the first film. When the podcasters first meet Michael (James Jude Courtney), he is unresponsive. That is until one of the podcasters (Jefferson Hall) takes out the mask and holds it up. That not only gets Michael’s attention, it also agitates all the other inmates in the yard.

Another hint, clue, or statement occurs when Dr. Sartain, having stabbed Officer Hawkins in order to save Michael, becomes fixated on the mask. So much so that he takes it off of Michael and dons it himself, albeit briefly.

Halloween Kills (2021)

During the finale of Halloween Kills Karen (Judy Greer) lures Michael away from Allyson when she takes off his mask and taunts him with it. Does Michael actually whisper “Give it back” when this happens? Now that I know what to listen for, and where, I can hear it.

Next comes an epic and cathartic beatdown of Michael by an angry mob. Hindsight being 20/20, and my having nobody to give me artistic or editorial pushback on this matter, here is how I would “fix” the narrative misstep and stumble Halloween Kills makes with its ending.

Rather than having Michael jump up and kill the mob after the beatdown, I would have him cull the mob during the beatdown. Until Brackett (Charles Cyphers) guns down Michael and Tommy (Anthony Michael Hall) beats his prone body into jelly. Exhausted and triumphant, Bracket and Tommy look around at the dead and wounded, here is where I would put Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) pontificating to Hawkins about Michael transcending and feeding off of fear, gaining power from it, and what not.

Brackett and Tommy turn to look down at Michael’s beaten and broken body, but Michael is gone…

Start Halloween Theme, have a montage of all the places Michael has been throughout the film, then close on a shot of Karen and Allyson on the porch of the old Myers place. Roll credits.

Halloween Ends (2022)

If Kills had ended with Michael simply vanishing, Halloween Ends and its focus on the maligned Corey (Rohan Campbell) might have been better received. Because it would help “explain” Michael’s weakened state. Why he is where he is and, a big bone of contention within fandom, why it seems so easy for Corey to beat him up and take away his mask.

David Gordon Green did share he had planned on ending with a scene with Silver Shamrock manufacturing the mask, but opted not to do it. This illustrates that the idea of there being some kind of power in the mask itself was knocking around his head.

And Halloween Ends does close with a shot of that mask in Laurie’s office. Make of that what you will.

While Halloween Ends contains the seeds of some interesting ideas. Evil as a contagion that can be transferred from person to person. Haddonfield’s collective guilt, fear, and rage helping to create a new version of Michael to replace the old one. It’s too bad that David Gordon Green and company did not have the ability to really dig in and explore and exploit those concepts for full effect. So it goes.

A Random Thought or Observation: Zombi 2 (1979)

Chadwick Saxelid Leave a comment

Forty-four minutes into Zombie [which is how I will be referring to Zombi 2 from now on] something… interesting happens.

No, it is not when a zombie fights a shark. That happens thirty-six minutes in. Nor is it when a gigantic wooden splinter pierces the right eyeball of poor Mrs. Menard (Olga Karlatos). That iconic moment happens two excruciating minutes after what it is that I am about to focus on.

No, this is something that occurs during Mrs. Menard’s struggle to close a door against a zombie trying to enter the room.

I took notice of it because, on the fuzzy, washed out, pan and scan print released by Wizard Home Video, the scene was interrupted by a bar of white light that grew brighter and brighter on what looked like a grey-black smudge. What the hell was that all about?

Well, when I got a letterboxed release of the film, I would learn that white smudge was a shaft of light creeping across the bathroom wall as the zombie forced the door open. A nice stylistic flourish by director Lucio Fulci that I noted and then forgot about.

Until I started doing research on Liminal Space. What it is. What it means. How it is used in Horror Cinema. This research led to my becoming fascinated by the concept of Liminality. The ambiguity or disorientation that can occur during a transition, be it figurative (i.e. in an observable rite of passage, where the term originated) or literal.

Ever hear of the Doorway Effect? If you have ever gone from one room to another, in order to complete a task or get something, and forget whatever it was you were going into that room for? Well, that’s it. That amnesia, that confusion, that ambiguity or disorientation, is liminality resulting from a transition. You exiting one room and entering another.

But just what, exactly, does all that have to do with poor Mrs. Menard struggling to close that bathroom door?

I don’t know. Not yet. There is a lot more research I have to do before I feel comfortable enough to write something truly in depth about it.

My research begins where the concept of Liminality itself was first introduced and explored, in Arnold Van Gennep’s seminal 1908 work The Rites of Passage.

On page 20 of The Rites of Passage, Van Gennep made this observation, “The door is the boundary between the foreign and domestic world in the case of an ordinary dwelling, between the profane and scared in the case of a temple. Therefore to cross the threshold is to unite oneself with a new world.”

Which brings me back to both the Doorway Effect and to Mrs. Menard. She is framed by liminal spaces (windows and doorways) throughout this famous sequence and she is torturously dragged through a liminal space (the doorframe), violently exiting one state (alive) and entering another (death and zombie chow).

There is something there. I just need to figure out what the hell it is.

Any thoughts on this blather and pontification?

[Images “borrowed” from Chilling Scenes of Dreadful Villainy]

A Random Thought or Observation: Halloween (1978)

Chadwick Saxelid Leave a comment

Why is Michael Myers so obsessed with Laurie Strode?

When Michael kills Judith, what is she doing? She is sitting at her vanity, brushing her hair while drifting between singing or humming a song.

How does Laurie get Michael’s attention? She walks up to the front door and places a key under the mat. But how does she keep Michael’s attention? While walking away, Laurie sings to herself.

That was it. That was all it took. Simple. Arbitrary.

So it goes…