the groundhog day project

...and I like the gore. But, I will get to that. First, the promised list, films released between Halloween and Halloween II that fit the "slasher" bill (even if they were likely not called that at the time; more likely, they were marketed as "splatter" films or "thrillers" depending on the intended audience. The films are: Driller Killer , Savage Weekend , Tourist Trap , The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher -- (How have I 1) never heard of this one, because that title is so amazingly evocative and on-the-nose as to a brilliant piece of art regardless of the film itself (and, it is worth noting, Friday the 13th was marketed based on the title alone, before a script had even been written), and 2) never seen it? Hell, too many of the movies on this list I have not seen. Also, since I am interrupting, a few of the films on this list push the definition of "slasher" a bit, but I was trying to be as complete as I could. And, I...

Yesterday was an exercise, a deliberate exercise, in reevaluating Michael Myers. And, it was really fun. Not entirely serious, but also not entirely tongue-in-cheek. In fact, I think my urge to even write such things is indicative of my tendency to embrace the bad guy, in film, and in life. My favorite subject as a history major was sixties radicals, and I even had one of my lengthy pieces on the domestic terrorist group Weatherman published (and I still have the urge to write more about them sometimes). I've got like two whole shelves of books related to that organization and other violent dissidents and radicals. And more titles on my Amazon wishlist. Speaking of--and I will connect these things in a better way as I go--my Amazon wishlist, I only just now moved to the top of my list Richard Nowell's Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle . It surprises me that I have not gotten around to buying it by now; maybe because Google Books will allows quite lon...

I decided last night, after innumerable viewings of Halloween II over the course of the past 36 years, that Laurie does not shoot Michael in the eyes. I mean, yeah, he's purely and simply evil, and he's got some Cult of the Thorn pseudo-immortality going on, but as soon as Michael was back for The Return of Michael Myers in '88, it was either suspend my disbelief over eyes healing, accept that it takes 7 years for eyes to grow back when you've got cult of the thorn magic in you (even though the specifics of the Cult of the Thorn were still a couple movies off)... Or, the obvious option, which didn't occur to me until last night. 1) Laurie does not shoot Michael in the eyes. She shoots him, sure. But, she is not that good (or lucky) with a gun. 2) Michael, being all supernatural evil and serving the (incorrectly identified) Celtic Lord of the Dead Samhain, cries blood. It's not just an interesting visual, blood coming down like tears. It's tears. Michael i...

When I wrote about Halloween II before , I referred to my younger self, standing around watching the scene in which Loomis tells Sheriff Brackett that he shot Michael 6 times being filmed as "a wee little, impressionable child." Today, when someone on Facebook asked people to post an image of a fictional character that impacted their life, I posted an image of Michael Myers, atop the stairs at the Doyle house in the original Halloween . I wrote about my impressionable self and then I talked about Michael's psychosexual fury (Clover 1987 1992). The slasher film is explicitly tied to visible acts of sex. The kind of thing my mother would try (and usually fail) to cover my eyes for. Not the kills, which were more gory than the original. (I actually only just now learned that the decision to add more gore than the original was Carpenter's decision, not director Rick Rosenthal's. Carpenter supposedly even directed some scenes to make them bloodier. Since the orig...

As I start writing today's entry, I'm not sure if I'm going to watch Ice Castles one more time. I've got a 48-hour rental, so I could watch it a third time, really boil down what it taught me when I was a kid, but it's mostly going to be something simple and cheesy... like It taught me about perseverance and love and the importance of having people around you . Obvious crap like that. One thing it didn't teach me was that being blind is fine because you can get right back up and... skate. Again. I don't skate. Not only was that never my calling, I rarely roller skated, and often did it wrong, and have only ice skated like twice ever. But, that's beside the point. My calling when I was young (not as young as where I still am with this deconstruction thing. Older, able to have dreams about what I wanted to do with my life.) was writing, then filmmaking. I could write without my sight, I suppose. But, filmmaking... And, more importantly, filmwatching--thi...

Nathan Steinmetz (2016), writing for Bloody Disgusting , breaks down the original Halloween simply: Halloween , the original Halloween , isn't about a lineage of evil, or psychic kids, or Druid cults, or live streamed haunted houses or even Busta Rhymes. Halloween is about Michael Myers and, perhaps most importantly, the concepts of fear and responsibility. It's about The Boogeyman. A specter of judgment and fear designed to scare children into behaving and punish those who don't. I think I can get behind that. Like the horror film version of Bentham's panopticon. Kids, don't go out at night and get up to no good things like smoking pot and having premarital sex, or a mindless killer just might find you, strangle you, slit your throat, or pin you to a kitchen cabinet with a knife, then leave you as part of a tableau of warning ... I've got so many different articles and blog entries, even a couple books on Google Books, open on my phone, plus a binder o...

Taken out of the greater context to come--the slasher film as a thing-- Halloween is almost deceptively simple. Michael is given no motivation but for that Loomis puts upon him. I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding... even the most rudimentary sense, of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child with his blank, pale, emotionless face and the blackest eyes. The devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil. And... I watched him for fifteen years, sitting in a room, staring at the wall, not seeing the wall, looking past the wall, looking at this night, inhumanly patient, waiting for some secret, silent alarm to trigger him off. Death has come to your little town, Sheriff. And, of course, after Laurie calls Michael the boog...

For a Christmas movie, Gremlins starts with some seriously shady goings on. With the voiceover from the Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton)--which I had totally forgotten was a thing--it's like some film noir detective story, except with a whole lot of red thrown into the color scheme. Then he pulls out his "bathroom buddy" invention and things get silly. Then the Mogwai shows up, with some adorable singing, and we drift into some white privilege territory with Rand thinking he can just automatically buy anything he wants to buy just... because. Kidding. I mean, yeah, I'm totally right about that, and it may mean that the entire Gremlins incident may just be a warning about what happens when we do not check our privilege. But, I was specifically looking to not get into politics or social commentary today... Which, when I think about it now, is pretty stupid. As I have argued many times about movies in this blog, every movie can tell us a lot about the time and place where...

In my Oral Communication class, there's this bit in the book about how we use narratives to communicate. It's not that important to the overall curriculum, isn't on the final, but it makes for a fun lesson for the class. I ask for a story that everyone knows. We usually end up with a few fairy tale kind of stories-- Cinderella , Snow White , Little Red Riding Hood ... the latter works the best. With a little guided interrogation, I get my class as a whole to figure out together what sort of metaphors might be in the story. Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves is a great elaboration on what eight classes have now come up with. Short version: it's all about sex and what a proper girl should do. Long version... well, read on. Movie starts with Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) asleep, supposedly with a stomach ache, and it seems like an occasion is coming--she's got a new dress hanging in her room and her older sister has just arrived. (I think it's her sister's ...

I didn't write about the ending to Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed the other day mostly because I just did not care for the film, and I think I posted what can best be termed a non-entry about that film before I'd even gotten to the very end. And, maybe that is a good thing because I might have had a rant in me about how the sequel did far worse than just diminish Brigitte as a character and neglect pretty much all of the metaphor and meaning vital to the original; additionally, by shutting Brigitte up in the basement, leaving her to be a werewolf trapped by Ghost (who apparently fantasizes about using her against her enemies), Brigitte becomes victim to not only the infection from her sister, not only to the attack from the new werewolf or the men at the rehab facility, but also to Ghost and to the filmmakers and the film itself. What should have been, and could have been a continuation of a story that embraced femininity even as it tackled the difficulties of adolescence for fem...