Our review of the seventh Halloween movie, which sees the return of Jamie Lee Curtis to the franchise and…a whole lot of hot, young TV actors.
Our review of the seventh Halloween movie, which sees the return of Jamie Lee Curtis to the franchise and…a whole lot of hot, young TV actors.
Excellent review as always, sir, but I have one question:
“TV in the 90’s sucked”? What about Beast Wars, Reboot, Batman: The Animated Series and Daria? What about the slew of Nicktoon and Cartoon Network Catoons? What about Darkwing Duck?
Or did you just mean the “serious” and “adult-oriented” stuff from that era?
I’m sorry for the constant namedropping. As a man born during the 90’s (May 4th, 1990 to be exact) I find myself being defensive of the entertainment of my youth.
Primarily, I was thinking of the the prime time network “dramas” that began appearing in the mid-90s, aimed specifically at teenagers or “young adults” or whatever we were called back then, from when the Slasher movies of this age drew their casts. The assumption being I, as a member of their target demographic, should’ve instantly cared about a given character because their actor starred in a TV show. This assumption did more to alienate me from that wave of Slashers than their poor scripts or shitty direction. I despised most of those shows, and the image of American Youth they put forward, not recognizing their power as wish-fulfillment fantasies until they were already off the air, if ever.
So the answer is, “Neither, though I totally agree with examples you cite.” I’ll do my best to show some love for all those shows (save Nick and the CN’s output, which I didn’t have access to until almost the end of the decade) in the coming year. Call that my first New Year’s resolution. Though I think my love of Batman is fairly well documented at this point.
I love the horror movie reviews on this site and they’re my favorite part (I’ve been reading through virtually everything but I have an especial fondness for the Friday of the 13th and Nightmare reviews). This is where I consider the Halloween series to have ended and appreciate the glowing review you made. Sadly, given the comparisons made in this one, I doubt you’ll do any Scream reviews now. Which is a pity because they’re on my list of things I’d like you to review.
Thanks for doing all these! I’ve recommended your site to all my friends.
Believe me, my book on the Scream franchise (and the downfall of American Horror Stories in general, including the betrayal of the Slasher Renascence’s oceans of promise, and the possibility that ocean was just a mirage in the first place) has yet to be written, and it won’t be closed for some time. Especially not if rumors of Scream 5 pan out. Considering Halloween: Water‘s pedigree, comparisons were unavoidable.
And no, thank you for any recommendations you’ve passed on, or will pass on in the future. That’s pretty much my entire promotional scheme, right there.
The entire phenomena with the Scream franchise has been fascinating to watch. The first Scream film brought the horror genre back from the dead (and in 1995, it was well and truly dead) and many people forget just how bad things had become. The horror films of the early 90’s are absolutely wretched, being either watered down to make the pro-censorship administration of that era happy, or the just plain awful “let’s parody everything, only not make it funny” films that were being made. My greatest piece of evidence that the horror genre was dead in the early 90’s is the following. People actually thought that Full Moon horror films were good. I’m going to repeat that because it needs to be repeated. People actually thought that Full Moon horror films were good. I was one of those people. I couldn’t wait to see Puppet Master 17 when it came out.
Scream reminded people that horror could actually be well written and intelligent. Well, Scream and Joss Whedon. The Scream films were extremely popular and probably responsible for the Golden Age of horror films that we’ve experienced in the first decade of the 21st century. Sure, it’s been mostly remakes and torture porn, but better that than endless sequels to Leprechaun.
Now the heyday of Scream has passed and it’s become trendy for horror fans who grew up loving the series to bust on it. It’s become another one of those social phenoms that you’re just not cool unless you mock it. Personally, I’ll happily take a Scream 5,6, and 7 over anything that Jennifer Aniston or Will Smith put out.
I, for one, also look forward to David’s review of the Scream franchise (ditto Cabin) but the weird thing is I’m fairly sure the biggest irony of the Scream franchise is while the Buffy-esque quipping was good, the biggest reason I enjoyed 1 and 2 were the fact it was a simply well-done slasher film. I didn’t HATE the protagonists and I actually gave a shit whether they lived or died.
If more Slasher films did that, I think the genre never would have gone through its upheavals. Sadly, the most recent Scream was so self-referential, it was incestuous.
http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2013/01/scream-4-review.html