the groundhog day project

Before I even get started with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers , I gotta complain a bit about the DVD. A) If I just rented or bought Halloween 4 , you really don’t need to tell me all about the original Halloween before I watch it. Unless I just don’t understand Arabic Numerals, I’m guessing you realize this is a sequel and you got into this one—part 4—on purpose, so you don’t need an ad for the original. B) If I am about to watch part 4, why the hell are you showing me an ad for part 5? SPOILERS much? I mean, I might as well just skip this one because I know the girl in the clown costume lives (though I don’t know who she is just yet), I know that Dr. Loomis makes it through this one, and so does Michael. So, screw the rest of this cast, let’s just move on to the next one. Seriously, either I already know part 5 exists (and, I do, have seen it more than once) and so I don’t need an ad for it just like I don’t need an ad for the original, or I do not know that it exists, ...

"The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic topic in the world." - Edgar Allan Poe, "The Philosophy of Composition" To understand why we like horror, we have to understand a couple other things: 1) gothic horror led to modern horror, particularly the slasher film, and the slasher film led us to so-called torture porn and, 2) there's a thin line between horror and pornography (hence the nickname for that last subgenre there). After all, as Clover (1987) puts it, "horror and pornography are the only two genres specifically devoted to the arousal of bodily sensation. They exist solely to horrify and stimulate, not always respectively, and their ability to do so is the sole measure of their success" (p. 189). A good horror film is a scary horror film, generally speaking. And, a good porn film is an arousing porn film. The writing, the directing, the acting--these are secondary to the scare/arousal. Too on-the-nose? (Watching S...