Delinquent Monkey Toes

If I were starting a rock band right this instant, that is what I would call us.

Five minutes from now, better judgment might assert itself. But for this very moment in Time, that's what our name would be.

Okay, so if I'm drinking Parrot Bay Mojitos, that should be exactly like drinking Mojitos on a tropical beach, right? I plop down my $8 for the brand name, and I get the very same experience, right?

If so, it's not quite as exotic as I would have expected.

But after a couple more Mojitos it will be. I just haven't had enough to really soak the experience in. ;P

I'm watching Halloween: The Extended Cut. (This cut combines Carpenter's original theatrical release with the additional scenes he shot (during the production of Halloween II, which he produced) to be included in the for-TV version of the film, which ran a little short with the nudity and graphic violence edited out. I like it because it adds a bit more to the story and characters. Nothing that was missing, per se, but I like the sort of "fullness" of it.)

After that, I plan to watch the original 1981 Halloween II. At work, we've been promoting the hell out of Zombie's sequel to his 2007 remake. The adds for the new one make me want to rewatch the original.

I don't know quite what to make of Rob Zombie as a filmmaker... House of 1000 Corpses was just plain boring. It looked kind of cool, but it wasn't scary or compelling or anything.

I mean, you listen to Zombie's music, and it's horror-pop genius, right? And you watch his videos, and you think :This guy has no limits to his talent!!!"

Then you watch his directorial debut...

Then he follows that up with The Devil's Rejects... You watch the trailer, and it LOOKS like a REAL Horror film! But then you read a couple of reviews -- which I just-about-never do, unless I'm just really not sure whether I want to see a flick (like, for instance, the writer/director really burned me with his last picture) -- and half the reviews love the movie and half hate it.

The people who loved it seemed to be turned on by a torture-porn element of the ending. Just ultra-violent filmmaking that shocked these paid-to-watch-movies bums and woke them up. These cats get to watch every movie that comes out, and they're bored of movie-going. It's a JOB to them! So what they have to say about the film-going experience simply bears NO relation to our experience in that we have to scrimp and save to see a movie that catches our attention, and they're dying to see the movies we would never pay money for!

So even the other half of the reviewers -- the ones that said the film looked great but had no heart or soul or story -- can't be trusted. because everyone knows that you look "smarter" putting someone else's hard work down than you do venerating it. Somehow (and I still haven't found the logic in this) if you praise a thing, you're naive, but if you insult it then you're some sort of expert.

Blah.

So then Zombie takes on Halloween.

I honestly really liked the remake! Zombie clearly has his visual style under control. The film looks like it was probably shot in the '70s, but it has all the sort of visual flair of a Rob Zombie music video. (That's not a slight, it's actual praise.) AND, Zombie did an amazing job with the script.

I saw 2 different versions of the film, too. I couldn't afford to see it at the theater, so I watched an online version (apparently a work print) with the bummer ending. Then when the unrated version came out on DVD, I bought it and watched the non-bummer ending. (From the promos I've seen of the second movie, it would have, necessarily, been MUCH different had Zombie kept the bummer ending!)

I'm not one of these old farts who can't stand to see my childhood favorites remade. In fact, I usually love the remakes just as much, if not -- heresy of heresies -- more. Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead is a much scarier experience than Romero's original. (Though, sometimes, I'm just in the mood to watch the original. Couldn't tell you why, but sometimes I am.)

That being said...

Rob Zombie's Halloween, as skillfully crafted as it is, doesn't have the same feel as John Carpenter's. It's a different animal. And I think it may be that the two artists enjoy different things about the Horror genre.

Carpenter clearly grew up with H. P. Lovecraft, and enjoys the unseen horror of a universe too old and too vast for human imagination to comfortably encompass. You can clearly see the physical manifestation of this unseen horror in the on-screen horror, but the dialogue gives you glimpses of the root causes. In Carpenter's Halloween there is an eternal evil that has crept into the body of Michael Myers and consumed his soul.

There's a spirituality there.

A dark, disturbing spirituality, yeah, but a spirituality.

I get the impression that Zombie grew up enjoying the mere shock value of the Horror genre. The soulless physicality of it.

I've got a friend who is a movie makeup artist, specializing in special makeup effects. (He would remind you that he makes people pretty, too, and he does! But what people are more fascinated by -- myself included, I'm afraid -- is the gore affects he is capable of pulling off. Anyway, he can gleefully sift through a gallery of traumatic wounds, actual pictures of actual human bodies torn and ripped apart. And make jokes as he does it.

I'm not judging here, but I can't do that. To me, I don't see a mere physical apparatus distorted in interesting pa terns, but I feel wounds that must cause excruciating pain. My friend has to, like a doctor, remove himself from such sentimentality to do his job as well as he does.

But there are others who unsympathetically enjoy other people's pain for shock or amusement. They watch Whacked Out Sports and the nightly news, savoring the humiliation and brutal pain of others, making no connection between the plight of the poor souls on TV and their own past pains and humiliations.

And I can't escape this feeling that, perhaps, Zombie falls into this camp. His chronicle of Michael Myers' life seems to simply exploit the "Look how fucked-up this is!" aspect of the development of a serial killer. He took Michael Myers out of the realm of modern-day fable and placed him firmly in the realm of almost a tragic hero. "Isn't it awful that this poor kid had all these bad things happen to him that lead him to do these even more horrible things? Wow life sucks, huh?"

I mean, I guess this sounds a bit retarded coming from a guy who so enjoys the Horror genre. But I don't enjoy the mutilations and the graphic violence (even though I do appreciate the skill it takes to create the graphic violence, and the effect it can have on the story being told -- see Serenity for a masterful example of how Horror elements can add emotional impact and depth to a non-Horror story). I enjoy the Horror story because there's usually a spiritual depth hidden deep beneath the genre conventions.

Example: Saw (the first one, in particular) is an inspirational reminder for us to cherish what is right there in front of us. It's not torture-porn (and I hate it when film critics lump it in with the copycat crap that came after it), it's a warning. All the Dead movies are about LIVING, about waking up from our auto-pilot, middle-class stupor and noticing what's around us. (Plus, there's the Apocalyptic aspect to those films, and apocalyptic stories are always about rebuilding after the collapse, finding a new way of living after everyone else is dead.)

But Zombie's Halloween doesn't seem to be an exploration so much as exploitation. He read up on what serial killers are like growing up, then showed Myers doing/experiencing those same, textbook things. (I took Psychology in high school and I knew about abusive parents and torturing small animals. I didn't see anything particularly insightful, or even surprising, in Zombie's telling of Michael's youth.)

So now Zombie is making Laurie insane, too.

Yay.

Groovy.

What a visionary he is.

What an insightful glimpse into the human condition.

How much this wise, deep, sage-like man can teach us about how to live life well.

And Zombie assures us (thank God) that this movie will be very realistic and very violent.

Woo-hoo.

The real -- sorry, the original -- Laurie Strode was a sort of mythological proxy for the audience: She was (in all of Jamie Lee Curtis's turns as the character) a SURVIVOR. I mean, on a deep psychological level, that's why we watch Horror movies, right? The catharsis. We experience terror, and then we leave the theater having purged this low-level anxiety that hundreds of hours of news and commercials and infomercials and political rhetoric have created within us, free from fear and with a sense of being able to cope with whatever petty inconveniences might present themselves to us in the ordinary, everyday world.

The Boogey-man was defeated! WE walked away from the confrontation!

But from the advance press, it seems that Rob Zombie's estimation of the human spirit is that if enough bad stuff happens to us, we will snap like the fragile twigs we are and merely add to the horrors humanity sometimes faces.

If this is the case, he would be an excellent campaign manager for the Republican Party. Clearly, life is just too difficult for the everyman to manage, and we need Big Brother to tell us what to do and buy.

I'm getting a bit ridiculous, I realize.

But this speaks to my basic problem with Rob Zombie's filmmaking abilities: I don't trust him as a storyteller.

Rob Zombie recorded another album? I'M SO THERE!!!

Rob Zombie made another music video? LEMME SEE!!!

But when he makes a film -- particularly based on a franchise I already cherish -- I don't feel as confident.

It's the writing, more than anything else. Writing stories performs this kind of fundamental function in society. Yeah, yeah, a lofty sentiment from the film flunky wannabe writer. But for the reals! Stories have an invisible side that speaks to stuff deep within us, and works on subconscious levels we don't even know we have. And when jump in and start fumbling with our subconscious, uneasiness ensues.

I'm not talking anything as grandiose as civil unrest, here, or copycat murders or anything. Usually, the worst that happens is the hack film doesn't make as much money as the corporate number-crunchers anticipated. (The marketplace is kind of magical that way!)

But $8 bucks wasted is $8 bucks wasted, right?

Worse, 2 hours wasted is kind of a bummer.

And I TOTALLY realize that I'm completely geeking-out here. I laughed at the Trekkies who complained that this latest incarnation of Star Trek's Enterprise looked like a toothpaste add, and who bemoaned that J. J. Abrams was going to be the ruination of a long-lasting and noble franchise.

And most of them (not all of them; I know at least one who wasn't satisfied after having actually seen the movie) were proved utterly wrong.

And you know what? I sincerely hope I am proved wrong about Rob Zombie's sequel! It would give me the greatest pleasure to discover that Zombie has hidden depths previously unrevealed to us! AND, I will happily sing his praises and proclaim my wrong-ness, should Halloween II turn out to be a much better film than I'm anticipating!!! :D There are times when being wrong is a profound blessing! Like when you buy a bunch of stuff at Walmart, keeping a makeshift tally of what you're going to pay in your head as you go, and what you're charged is several dollars less than what you expected to pay!

I'm hoping that's how Zombie's sequel will turn out to be.

Because I adore the Halloween franchise, because I love that sort of dark alley of modern folklore it explores. If you're too hip for Grimm's Fairy Tales or formal education, it's okay to be a fan of Horror flicks, lol. But if a Horror film doesn't actually have anything useful to say, then you're really just watching people die.

And who wants to be that guy?

But don't get me wrong: I'm actually not complaining about what Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween is. My bellyaching and nay-saying is all about what I fear Halloween II might be. (Which is, I realize, a silly and fruitless enterprise, lol.) Both versions of Zombie's Halloween were really good! I mean, like, REALLY good! :D His unrated version of the remake sits... well... a few discs down from my Extended Cut of Carpenter's original on my Horror shelf, lol.

I guess I'm just "intellectualizing" about something that I really have no way -- at present -- of knowing ANYTHING about, lol.

I'm a Horror/Writer nerd and I've found me a soapbox to stand on, dammit!

Blah.

Okay, I should get back to watching Michael Myers terrorize the citizens of Haddonfield.

PEACE!!!

:D

P. S. You know what? Now that I've gone on and on about Zombie's Halloween, maybe I should rewatch it again and make sure I'm not just talking out of my ass...