Halloween Movies's topics - tribe.net

Silent Hill Movie Contest

2006-03-23T20:08:53Z

HI,

Got a bunch of prizes such as T-Shirts, Silent Hill Newspapers, Posters and some passes for the Seattle area. You can be anywhere in the country of course to get the other prizes. Anyway, thought I would share with the readers here click the link below for info, and it is free.

http://sknr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=282&Itemid=30

posted in Halloween Movies - 0 replies

Charles Band P.R. Tour.

2005-09-21T22:04:03Z

Have an interview up at http://www.sknr.net

He talks about his tour, future Full Moon Releases and past history.

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official Fansite for "Land of the Dead"

2005-06-23T23:48:23Z

<A href="http://zombiearmy.fanpimp.com/zombiearmy/index.html?fuseaction=tools.invlink&u=zombieboysf&linkID=5">Zombie Army - Official Fansite for Land of the Dead</A>

posted in Halloween Movies - 1 reply

Dawn of the Dead Free preview

2004-11-23T19:20:16Z

Hello,

I am doing a promo with the Pay Per View Company. Please go to

http://www.sknr.net and you can watch the first 10 minutes of the film free online simply click the banner.

posted in Halloween Movies - 0 replies

Chiller Dillers

2004-10-15T16:10:47Z

Do you remember the Chiller Diller horror and bad films alike that were played Saturday afternoons on KTVU form the late 70's-early 80's???

posted in Halloween Movies - 1 reply

Stuart Gordon Interview

2004-10-13T23:06:32Z

In Preparation for his upcoming appearance at Screamfest, (www.screamfestla.com) Legendary writer/director Stuart Gordon was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for SKNR.NET and I wanted to thank him and the good people at Screamfest for arranging the interview.

GVK: How did you become involved in Screamfest and what is your function at this year’s event?

SG: I am making my first appearance and I am really looking forward to it. I am going to be screening Re-Animator and I am excited about the whole event.

GVK: what drew you to horror and what have been some of your biggest
Inspirations?

SG: Probably when I was younger and my parents forbad me to watch horror, which in response only made me want to watch it more. I remember the William Castle film “The Tingler” with the vibrating seats; it had me running for the lobby in no time once the seats started in.

GVK: The film Matinee was inspired by him and some of his publicity ideas wasn’t it?

SG: That is correct, he had the ambulance in front of theaters, the 3D effect that made the monsters seem to come off the screen, which was actually a skeleton on a pulley. He was a genius at marketing. He also came up with the idea for “Rosemary’s Baby” but he was persuaded to let Roman Polanski direct it but he did cameo in it.

GVK: Which modern horror directors are you inspired by?

SG: I really like David Cronenberg, his early film “They Came from Within” was amazing. It scares the Hell out of you, then you get the parking lot and you start to think about it, and how deep it is. “Dead Ringers” is also another of his that is very disturbing as the ending scared me.

GVK: You have created some enduring moments in the genre, and as such
What do you think of the current state of the Horror genre and where do you think it will head in the future?

SG: I think the genre is very strong at the moment, as we seem to have a Renaissance going. Zombies and plague related films seem to be very popular as this may reflect a sign of our times. People have a fear of infectious disease, and the decay of society and order as well as widespread catastrophes.

GVK: Which do you prefer writing or directing and why?

SG: I have always thought of myself as a Director first. I do like writing though as it is very cheap, it is simply pen to paper and in writing, anything is possible as the ideas and opportunities are countless.

GVK: What did you think of the most recent Re-Animator and what kept you from doing more films in the series?

SG: I have never been one who was very big on sequels, I believe I was committed to another project when the first sequel arose and could not do it. I thought the most recent one had some moments and I loved the fight scene with the rat, as it was very inspired.

GVK: Between Horror and Sci Fi if you had to select, which would you say is your true passion?

SG: I like both as I find them hard to separate. H.P. Lovecraft always
based much of his work on science and that helps draw the audience in as there is a basis in fact.

GVK: What are you currently working on and what drew you to the project?

SG: One idea I am kicking around is “House of Re-animator”. It is a political satire that should certain people be back in office, then I would do it. I hope I do not have to go ahead with it, but if I do, it would be about V.P. Cheney passing from a heart attack and since he basically runs everything, Dr. West is called in to bring him back. I would only go on with this in the event of re-election as otherwise it would be old news.
Another project I am looking at is a project with Jack Ketchum called “Ladys Night” it is about a toxic spill that happens in Manhattan. It only affects woman but turns them into killing machines and it is a mix of real time, mayhem, and carnage.

GVK: When might we see this one?

SG: That is hard to say, as it is still in the planning stages and we have not begun casting or filming on it yet, but it is being worked on.

GVK: What is your stance on Digital filming vs. standard filming?

SG: I like it and I am looking forward to working with it. I have not had the chance to yet but it is clearly the shape of the future and not only does it make FX easier, but it saves on the budget, as much less money is needed for it.

GVK: With all of the remakes such as “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, “Dawn of the Dead”, and “Day of the Dead” to name a few, has anyone approached you to remake “the Re-animator”?

SG: Not yet and I am surprised at that as I expect it to happen eventually. I do think though that the genre needs to create some new monsters and horror needs to have some new classics instead of constantly replaying the films and creatures of the past.

posted in Halloween Movies - 0 replies

Halloween (6): The Curse of Michael Meyers

2004-08-28T16:00:44Z

"Halloween (6): The Curse of Michael Meyers"

http://www.moria.co.nz/horror/halloween6.htm

USA. 1995.

Director - Joe Chappelle, Screenplay - Daniel Farrands, Producer - Paul Freeman, Photography - Billy Dickson, Additional Photography - Tom Calloway, Music - Alan Howarth, Halloween Theme - John Carpenter, Special Effects Supervisor - Larry Fioritto, Makeup Effects - Magical Media Industries Inc (Designer/Supervisor - John Buechler), Additional Makeup Effects - Image Animation (Supervisor - Gary J. Tunicliffe), Production Design - Bryan Ryman. Production Company - Nightfall Productions.

Cast:

Marianne Hagan (Kara Strode), Paul Stephen Rudd (Tommy Doyle), Donald Pleasence (Dr Sam Loomis), George P. Wilbur (The Shape/Michael Myers), J.C. Brandy (Jamie Lloyd), Kim Darby (Debra Strode), Bradford English (John Strode), Mitchell Ryan (Dr Terence Wynn), Devin Gardner (Danny Strode), Keith Bogart (Tim Strode), Mariah O’Brien (Beth), Janice Knickrehm (Mrs Blankenship)

Plot:

Michael Myers returns to Haddonfield on Halloween night where he stalks Laurie Strode's cousin Kara and her family who have moved into the old Myers house. Kara's nerdish neighbour Tommy Doyle discovers an abandoned baby and realizes that is the last surviving inheritor of the Myers name and that Michael is determined to kill it. As he tries to protect the baby, Tommy discovers that Michael Myers is the incarnation of an ancient druidic personification of evil and is being sought by a group of modern druidic cultists.

A strong case could be made that John Carpenter’s cult hit Halloween (1978) was a film that shaped the face of the modern horror film. With Halloween Carpenter set out with no real intent other than to craft a pure rollercoaster ride of jolts and shocks. Halloween’s appeal rested as much in Carpenter’s ability to streamline the horror film into a pure shock machine, as it was to take horror out of the shadows of Hammer Gothic and the melodramatic thriller contrivations of Psycho (1960) and its ilk and make it a wholly modern new form. The film’s influence can be felt through an enormous number of other films from Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and their various sequels and imitators, through to the obvious homages in Scream (1996) and sequels.

After the success of Halloween, Carpenter oversaw the obligatory Halloween II (1981) but then with Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) tried to use the Halloween name to kick off an original, unlinked anthology series. That was an idea that promptly went nowhere. Carpenter then sold out interest in the franchise and Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Meyers (1988) made a predictably sequelistic return to The Shape/Michael Myers saga. This was followed by Halloween 5 (1989). By the time of this, the fifth sequel to Halloween, a thorough sense of pointlessness hangs over the series. What stood Halloween above the mostly worthless run of slasher film imitators - the Friday the 13th films being a perfect example - was the seat-edge directorial grip with which it was crafted. Sadly what made Halloween work is a lesson that almost no slasher film succeeded in learning, with almost all substituting potpourris of gory despatches and a lineup of faceless teen victims over the creation of suspense and characters that one could give a damn about. And even more sadly this is a lesson that all of the Halloween sequels have even failed to learn from the source they owe their own name to.

There are occassional moments were director Joe Chappelle seems on the verge of rediscovering some of the style that Carpenter infused the original with - the there again/gone again pop-up tricks and the spooky peripheral shots with The Shape appearing on the edge of the camera frame or behind people’s shoulders. But these occasional moments are ruined by pointlessly gory payoffs that show the film has no real focus above the conveyor belt line of splattery novelty deaths served up in the average Friday the 13th sequel. The exercise is disappointingly hollow.

The film is further shot in by a plot that throws in an absurd spin that turns Michael Myers into some druidic avatar of evil incarnate. The explanation for this is murky and sounds just as silly when offered up on screen as it does in description here. Even more ill-explained are a series of subplots that reveal several of the cast members as belonging to some type of baby-snatching druidic cult that wants Michael Myers and the last surviving Myers baby. (Why, is never made clear). You could almost argue that the film might be trying to establish some type of grand attempt to thematically unite itself up with the druidic witchcraft plot of the unconnected Halloween III. But in truth the film is shabbily, indifferently plotted and a disgracefully poor blackening of the eminent name of its original that it bears.

This was the first film of Joe Chappelle who has since shaped up to a genre director of some promise. He next went onto the excellent Dean R. Koontz adaptation Phantoms (1998) and then Vlad the Impaler/Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula (2000) about the historical tyrant who lent horror the name Dracula.

The subsequent Halloween films are: Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1999) and Halloween: Resurrection (2002).

posted in Halloween Movies - 4 replies

Ideas for the next Halloween Movie

2004-08-27T04:53:34Z

Okay, so on a bunch of fan pages I've seen online, "Halloween Resurrection" didn't fare very well. In some ways I agree. I would like to see Josh Hartnett (John) from "Halloween: H20" again. In the next movie, Michael Meyers could come after Josh Hartnett. Since Jamie Lee Curtis's character Laurie Strode died at the beginning of the Resurrection movie in 2002, the next movie would need to delve into the funeral for his mother and how he is going to cope with that. I can see the plot take place in two different settings: (1) a city like San Francisco or Los Angeles (since that is close to where he was living in Halloween H20, or (2) he goes back to Haddonfield for family reasons or some kind of financial matter related to the death of his mother. I really like Josh Hartnett, and I think if he's willing, he could make the Halloween movie series come alive again, and maybe even make sense out of Halloween movies 3-6. Halloween H2O and Resurrection didn't even mention the events that took place in movies 3-6, despite the fact that important characters such as Tommy Doyles and Jamie Strode were featured in those movies. Maybe Josh Hartnett's character John finds out about Jamie Strode and decides to go back to Haddonfield because of that. There are a lot of angles we could go with the John character.

posted in Halloween Movies - 10 replies

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Meyers

2004-08-12T06:18:06Z

"Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Meyers"

http://www.moria.co.nz/horror/halloween5.htm

USA. 1989.

Director - Dominique Othenin-Girard, Screenplay - Othenin-Girard, Shem Bitterman & Michael Jacobi, Producer - Ramsey Thomas, Photography - Robert Draper, Music - Alan Howarth, Special Effects Supervisor - Greg Landerer, Makeup Effects - K.N.B. EFX Group (Supervisors - Howard Berger, Robert Kurtzman & Greg Nicotero), Production Design - Brenton Swift. Production Company - Magnum Pictures Inc/Trancas International.

Cast:
Danielle Harris (Jamie Lloyd), Donald Pleasence (Dr Sam Loomis), Donald L. Starks (Michael Meyers), Wendy Kaplan (Tina Williams), Ellie Cornell (Rachel Carruthers), Tamara Glynn (Samantha), Jeffrey Landman (Billy), Beau Starr (Sheriff Meeker), Frank Como (Deputy Nick), David Ursin (Deputy Tom), Jonathan Chapin (Mike), Matthew Walker (Spitz), Troy Evans (Deputy Charlie)

Plot: Michael Meyers survives being shot by the sheriff’s department and recovers. One year later. Jamie Lloyd has been placed in a psychiatric institution after killing her adopted mother. She begins to have empathic flashes as Michael returns on Halloween night and stalks and kills her stepsister Rachel and Rachel’s friends. The crazed Dr Loomis goes out on a limb, trying to use Jamie as bait to draw Michael to a trap at the old Meyers house.

This was the fifth of the films that began with John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). Carpenter disliked the idea of generating endless slasher sequels and attempted to take the series in different directions with Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), but this was not a success. Subsequently Carpenter sold his interest in the series out to his executive producer Moustapha Akkad. Akkad then teamed up with Trancas International to continue the Michael Meyers exploits with Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Meyers (1988). And Halloween 5, sometimes subtitled The Revenge of Michael Meyers, is a direct sequel to Halloween IV, both in terms of continuity and in retaining several of the cast members.

The film came from Swiss director Dominique Othenin-Girard who briefly dallied with the horror genre after making the muddled disturbed twin film After Darkness (1985) and who would go onto the likes of the succubus film Night Angel/Deliver Us from Evil (1990) and Omen IV: The Awakening (1991). As Othenin-Girard’s work elsewhere has demonstrated, his style is rather crude. The film here comes with lots of clumsy red herring jumps - a pursuing figure only turning out to be a handyman, various jumps with people wearing Halloween masks popping up, and a dumb scene where a guy puts on a Michael Meyers mask and scares his girlfriend by pretending to be stabbing her. There’s also a scene copied direct from Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) with a couple being pitchforked during the act of having sex. It’s a scene that brings out the crude puritanical morality that underlay Halloween (of teenagers being punished for having sex) with a much nastier undertow. And there are other scenes like where Ellie Cornell is followed around the house in various states of undress - T-shirt and panties, taking a shower, changing into her clothes, running about in a towel - where clearly Othenin-Girard’s camera is taking the place of the stalking Michael Meyers and it is unsure whether we are meant to be voyeuristically ogling the partially clad Cornell or being concerned for her life. On the positive side Othenin-Girard actually engages in much more of the eerie peripheral suspense that Carpenter did in the original than Dwight H. Little managed to in the preceding sequel. The tactics are certainly hackneyed, although there is one excellent sequence with Danielle Harris hanging on by her fingertips down a ventilation shaft as Michael stabs through the metal with a knife that more than favourably compares to Carpenter’s work in the original.

Donald Pleasence is back as Loomis again but this time the character has gone from verging on a crackpot to someone who has more than clearly completely lost his marbles. How such a patently lunatic character can manage to still retain his license to practice psychology and has not been disbarred from the profession is one of the film’s major credibility gaps. The script here shows Loomis in a much more morally ambiguous light than any of the other films, with he actually placing Jamie’s life in danger in order to draw Michael out. The script certainly tries to throw some new things into the stew. In a touch that may well have been borrowed from Carpenter’s clairvoyance thriller The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), Jamie has a psychic link to Michael’s mind and Loomis makes the interesting suggestion that she has the ability to ease Michael’s pain, even offer him redemption. But this is an intriguing idea that is never explored any further. Although there is a fine scene where the two confront one another in the attic and Michael allows her to lift his mask and touch his face - something we are never allowed to see - whereupon she gives the enigmatic surprise exclamation “You’re just like me.” But the film is really only interested in slasher tactics and this potentially interesting exploration of the redemption of Michael’s soul is thrown by the wayside. The most frustrating thing about the film though is the ending. Throughout we are introduced to a mystery character identified only by a series of shots focused on their snazzy boots who at the end appears responsible for Michael’s quite possibly supernatural rescue from the jail cell. Quite who this character is is never explained - possibly this was something that was intended for a further sequel. Alas Trancas abandoned all interest in making any further Halloween films after this and the next entry, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), was continued by a different company who clearly had no interest in clearing these matters up.

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Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Meyers

2004-08-12T06:16:41Z

Some interesting things to know about Halloween 4... from this web link, http://www.moria.co.nz/horror/halloween4.htm

"Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Meyers"

USA. 1988.
Director - Dwight H. Little, Screenplay - Allan B. McElroy, Producer - Paul Freeman, Photography - Peter Lyons Collister, Music - Alan Howarth, Special Effects - Larry Fiorritto, Makeup Effects - Mechanical Makeup Imageries (Supervisors - John Buechler & Ken Horn). Production Company - Trancas International.
Cast:
Donald Pleasence (Dr Sam Loomis), Ellie Cornell (Rachel Carruthers), Danielle Harris (Jamie Lloyd), George Wilbur (Michael Meyers), Michael Pataki (Sheriff Ben Meeker), Sasha Jenson (Brady), Kathleen Kinmont (Kelly Meeker)

Plot: Michael Meyers makes an escape while being transferred to another facility in an ambulance. He overhears the nurses mention that his only surviving next of kin is Laurie Strode’s seven year-old daughter back in Haddonfield. This is young Jamie Lloyd who has been fostered out to the Carruthers family. As Halloween night comes, Michael returns, stalking Jamie who has been left in the care of her teenage foster sister Rachel. But Rachel is more caught up in a fight with her boyfriend than in caring about Jamie. Pursuing Michael is Dr Loomis who rouses up a posse of rednecks to take on Michael after he slaughters the town’s entire police force.

By the end of the 1980s the horror genre had slipped into tiresome repetition. The Roman numerals piling up behind titles began to reach double figures, while even forgotten films like Food of the Gods (1976), Alligator (1990), Xtro (1982) and Witchcraft (1988) were sequelized, sometimes multiply so. Irrespective of the fact that some of the sequels were occasionally decent items, it does represent a scarcity of originality. And even when originality did arrive, it seemed not so much a breath of fresh air as an injection in the arm to keep the grind mill still turning. And it’s no real surprise that Halloween IV is just another corpse on the growing pile that only makes the memories of the originals seem even better.

John Carpenter’s original Halloween (1978) had been a defining horror classic that gave birth to the tide of slasher films throughout the 1980s. Carpenter sold the rights to Dino de Laurentiis and oversaw one generally disappointing sequel, Halloween II (1981). Carpenter certainly saw beyond the mill of copycat sequels that the Friday the 13th series was generating and with the next film, Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1988), attempted to use the Halloween as an umbrella title for a series of original films. Alas Halloween III was not a success and de Laurentiis then sold off the rights. The rights then passed over to Moustapha Akkad, executive producer on all the films, who has presided over so far a total of four further sequels (see below for other titles). In collaboration with Trancas International, Akkad did the commercially unimaginative thing and returned the series to the exploits of Michael Myers (whom one might notice hereafter gains an additional ‘e’ in his surname that he did not have in the original film).

One had hopes for Halloween IV - it follows up the film that started off the whole Jason/Freddy/babysitter/summercamp slasher cycle and it has had a whole decade to learn from the abysmal imitators. But all it has done instead is wielded the dross into unimaginative imitation. Sequences are stolen from other films - the gas station scene and the climactic killing of the Shape comes from The Hitcher (1986), there’s the plot of the group trapped in the house with the power off from Alone in the Dark (1982), while the gory killings seem patterned more after the crude butchery of the Friday the 13th series than any of Carpenter’s eerie suspense. Even the film’s best moment - the twist ending - has been borrowed directly from opening scene of the original Halloween. In every other respect it is the same formula that fuelled dozens of other slasher films - the same plot of teens being stalked, the nasty underlying fuck-and-die morality (there’s an almost laughably scene which underlines the crude Freudian morality of the slasher film where slut Kathleen Kinmont gets impaled through the chest with a very phallic-looking shotgun). It all makes for sad comparison - in the original Carpenter evinced a creepy paranoia, he played games with the audience and popped the boogie man up where you least expected, and then some of his images were so weird they really blew the mind. When Little tries to get intense he just ends in blowing up everything in sight. Someone like Carpenter could really have made something out of a plot involving Loomis raising an unruly army of rednecks to hunt Michael and a town filled with people wearing lookalike Halloween masks all identical to the killer. Carpenter’s eerie ‘da-dink-dink’ score from the original is reused at every opportunity and rapidly loses its effect. Donald Pleasence is back but totally overacts the Loomis part.

Director Dwight H. Little later went onto direct mostly action films such as Marked for Death (1990), Rapid Fire (1992) and most successfully the Wesley Snipes thriller Murder at 1600 (1997) and Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home (1995). His only other venture into genre material was the slasher remake of The Phantom of the Opera (1989)

The other Halloween sequels are:- Halloween II (1981), Halloween 5 (1989), Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meyers (1995), Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998) and Halloween: Resurrection (2002).

posted in Halloween Movies - 0 replies

Josh Hartnett

2004-08-02T17:45:06Z

So, there's a new movie coming out soon that stars Josh Hartnett. I saw it in a preview before "I, Robot" yesterday, and I can't remember what it's called. Does anyone else know? However, it showed Josh Hartnett in NYC of all places, and he had a buddy (similar to my description of him as a successful business man or attorney). He had a suit and tie on and was walking down a street in Manhattan. At first I thought it was a preview for the next Halloween movie, but it ended up being a movie about some woman who becomes obsessed with him, stalks him, etc. Sounds like this movie is a perfect practice for his next Halloween movie, wouldn't you say? If only the news could be channelled to the right people and Josh Hartnett was given an offer. Hmmm.... Anyone have any hollywood connections?

posted in Halloween Movies - 2 replies