the groundhog day project

I'm torn, on this final day with Halloween II ; I wanted to do some Christ-Figuring but I cannot decide if I want to do a serious sort of figuring focused on Loomis or a semi-serious one focused on Laurie, or a probably not serious at all one focused on Michael. The vital question, because I think we know what I got from a movie like this back when I was five years old, is can I manage all three. And, in the process make an even bigger farce of the Kozlovic-Black Scale of Christ-Figuring. Note, in case you are new: the scale is scored out of 25, but there are more than 25 items. 1 tangible and 2 central are easy here, but Michael and Loomis take the lead over Laurie with 3 outsider and Michael takes the lead with 4 divinely sourced (though I could make the argument for Loomis having that point, too). Michael: 4, Loomis: 3, Laurie: 2. No one gets the point for 4.5 miraculous birth but Laurie gets the point for 5 alter ego . I'm tempted to give that point to Michael as...

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...

Consider another angle. Maybe Michael isn't Laurie's id . Rather, Laurie is Michael's super-ego. Michael wasn't waiting for the opportunity to kill again. He could have done that at any time. He was waiting to be judged for having killed. This is why he follows Tommy first. He can feel a connection with Tommy. Tommy is just like him, a little boy full of imagination and potential. And, Laurie looks after Tommy. Like Judith didn't look after Michael all those years ago. This means Laurie's repression is even more important to the story than already suggested. She isn't free of Michael's violence (up to a point--and that point matters) because she doesn't have sex and do drugs (Notably, Michael probably has no idea Laurie was smoking in Annie's car. He's following them, but that doesn't mean he can see what's going on inside.) but because being that pure, virginal girl, she can pass judgment on him. He wants approval. He wants disa...

Halloween is only tangentially connected to the classic urban legend about the babysitter and the man upstairs. But common elements to them both are important in the film. This is before the final girl was more defined, keep in mind. Laurie's status as babysitter was less a hallmark to separate her from her friends--remember, Annie is also a babysitter, and Lynda is definitely familiar with Wallace house (though she may have just come by while Annie or Laurie was babysitting before)--but to normalize her. These are everyday, regular teenage girls. They call one another, they call their boyfriends, they call boys for on one another's behalf. Regarding that urban legend about the babysitter, Folklorist Sue Samuelson, who examined hundreds of unpublished "Man Upstairs" stories filed in American folklore archives, concluded that the telephone is the most important and emotionally-loaded item in the plot: the assailant is harassing his victim through the device that is ...

I have never actually seen the released version of Halloween: Resurrection ; saw it at a test screening. Watching it on Netflix tonight. But, really, I’m barely inclined to talk about the movie itself... Don’t get me wrong. I will still do that. But, with only another day of slasher films left, I feel like I need to try to summarize this month in addition to talking about today’s movie and tomorrow’s ( Freddy vs. Jason ). First, a couple complaints—and I had to pause the movie to rant about both of these things out loud; it’s still paused. 1. Michael Myers, as he exists in this film is not a serial killer. The nurse at the psychiatric hospital just called him one. A serial killer does not show up in a small town and kill a whole bunch of people (14 in one night back in 1978) then disappear for 20 years. A serial killer does not show up 20 years later to kill 6 more people. Keep in mind, this movie is a sequel to H20 , which ignores Return , Revenge and Curse . Now, Clover (1992)...

Not right, getting that hockey mask in the first two minutes of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later . If someone shows up with knives on his fingers... (Sidenote: Director Steve Miner also directed Friday the 13th Part 2 and III —the one that introduced that hockey mask—and was an associate producer on the original Friday the 13th .) This movie is an interesting animal. It deliberately ignores 4 and 5 and [6]. Ignores III as well, but who doesn’t? Then—and I admit I don’t really know cars—the car Michael’s driving looks a bit like the one he stole from that other Michael in 5 . Personally, I have a problem with the Laurie setup. At first I liked the numerous prescriptions in the medicine cabinet, except if this were Laurie Strode (and not just Jamie Lee Curtis) returning here, Laurie seems to me like the kind of girl who could get past what happened 20 years ago. I mean, she’d never totally get past it, but she was a girl who knew how to relax—with marijuana, with pumpkin carving, ...

I have seen parts of Halloween [6]: The Curse of Michael Myers many, many times. I worked in a movie theater when this thing was out. (I must interrupt this introduction to point out the lazy screenwriting and/or direction in having the doctor call her “Jamie Lloyd” when telling her to push. We’ll figure out who she is soon enough.) I saw parts of this movie—especially the beginning and ending—a few times a day when I was working, which was a few days a week. (Not two minutes later, call her Jamie again, you know, just in case the audience doesn’t get it. It might actually play better if we have to figure this crap out for ourselves.) I believe I said before that Halloween 4 , 5 and [6] work together pretty well. The thorn setup, while certainly not what the audience wanted , makes retrospective sense. Michael tensed up a the beginning of 4 when his niece (which we can assume he didn’t know about previously) was mentioned... more on the cult stuff as it comes up in this film. ...

Allow me to quote myself from like three days ago: ...If I just rented or bought Halloween [5] , 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. At least they didn’t include a trailer for 6 . Anyway, on to Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers . The opening for this film is odd. I get that Michael survived all those bullets—there’s obviously something super- or inhuman about him at this point. But, then he finds some old dude and... CUT TO one year later? Now, if they had planned ahead for the whole thorn cult thing already—I mean, they do have the tattoo, so I guess it was being setup already. If I had more than one day for this movie, I’d look into some behind-the-scenes stuff that I probably knew once upon a time, but I’ve just got today. Let’s assume the thorn t...

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, ...

Today was not as long as yesterday. Haven't watched today's movie yet, either. It's Friday the 13th: A New Beginning . (By the way, the stuff I would have included had I not become eminently susceptible to attack from Freddy Krueger (assuming I was in Springwood, Ohio, not Lake Oswego, Oregon)--I will throw some of that into this blog tomorrow, when I watch A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge . I kinda wish I'd at least had a dream about Freddy Krueger since I was starting to fall asleep before the movie ended last night. But no, instead I manage a couple sentences with a couple typos, a sad little excuse for a blog entry.) I wanted to talk about genre since, with A Nightmare on Elm Street last night, I got into the second third of this "month" of slasher films. Nowell (2011) provides an elaborate description of what makes a slasher film a slasher film. First, I rather like Nowell's definition for what genre is: At its core, film ge...