The Classics File 3: The one Hollywood wants to unmovie

 

 

Title: Gone With The Wind

What Year?: 1939

Classification: Mashup

Rating: Disqualified!

 

With this review, I am at the end of the last lineup I had planned for my No Good Very Bad Movies feature. That brought me to the reason I did this at all, a movie that I have meant to take on for a very long time. It’s a film that has itself gone through a complicated arc, from a blockbuster to unquestioned classic to a problematic “product of its time” to an artifact the mainstream would rather bury in the memory sandbox. I for one have been looking forward to giving it what it deserves. I speak, of course, of Gone With The Wind, and oh dear Logos (which is an actual name of God in the actual Bible), this damn thing is 233 minutes??!!

Our story begins with a text crawl and a lovely montage praising the Antebellum South, minus the slave auctions, whippings and rampant poverty. We then meet seemingly the most hopelessly degenerate specimen of an impressive bunch of hypocrites, inbreds and general-purpose idiots, a tart named Scarlett O’Hara whose ambitions begin and end with marrying a guy named Ashley who has clearly declared his intent to marry another woman. Meanwhile, the inconvenient Civil War starts, occasionally distracting from her antics as she goes through a marriage to a promptly killed soldier and a series of encounters with a smuggler named Rhett Butler. With the help of her servant Mammy, Scarlett keeps control of her family plantation, while Rhett inexplicably works away at her resistance. Soon enough, the pair are married with a kid, but tragedy strikes. It all comes down to a choice between the man she wanted and the man she got- and 83-year-old spoiler, they both throw her overboard!

Gone With The Wind was a 1939 drama/ historical romance from MGM, based on the 1936 novel of the same name by Margaret Mitchell. The film was produced by David O. Selznick, known for RKO’s King Kong, who reportedly acquired the rights to the novel a month after its publication. The eventual film was directed by Victor Fleming from a script by Sydney Howard. Clark Gable and Vivian Lee were cast as Rhett and Scarlett, when the former was 40 and the latter was 26. Other cast included Leslie Howard (see Petrified Forest) as Ashley, Olivia De Havilland as Melanie, and Hattie McDaniel as Mammy. A score was composed by Max Steiner, returning from Kong. The film was an immediate success, earning a box office estimated at over $390 million against a $3.85M budget. McDaniel won an Oscar for Supporting Actress, the first Academy Award given to an African-American. Gable continued to act until his death in 1960, prior to the release of his final film The Misfits. Leigh became otherwise best known for stage and screen appearances with her spouse Laurence Olivier. Mitchell died in a traffic fatality in 1949, without publishing another major work of fiction. She became posthumously known as a collector and proponent of erotica. The film remains available on digital platforms including HBO Max.

For my experiences, what I feel a need to comment on is the Disqualified category, which I created for this feature specifically for films I would not or could not watch in full. It might sound like this means a film so bad I literally quit, but that’s really not how these things work. For me, actually bailing on a movie is usually an early and potentially respectful decision (see The Plague Dogs). The ones to figure in this feature have been the ones I knew I was not going to get through, and even then, I have usually gotten through far more than I expected. With this movie in particular, there was simply no way I was even going to try to watch the whole thing in one go. I settled for watching it in two parts on consecutive days, with the intention of liberal fast-forwards. In the end, I probably only shaved a few minutes off its mindboggling running time. My final verdict is that it only belongs here because it’s the only feature where I have given myself the right parameters to comment.

Moving forward, I went into this with some fairly distinct memories of watching it on VHS, and many more of seeing it referenced and parodied. What has kept me vaguely and morbidly fascinated is that its reputation is completely belied by any recounting in cold blood. If the “point” of this story was to show that Rhett and Scarlett were not just evil racists but immoral, contemptible, irredeemable, completely horrible yet utterly banal human beings, there isn’t a single story point that would change. What is even more baffling is that for all the glowing revisionism of the text crawls, the Confederacy is put in an even less favorable light. It’s genuinely moving to see the devastation of war, which makes the later first act far more engaging than anything before or sense. But to the truly neutral eye, it remains quite clear from the film’s own accounts that virtually all responsibility lies on the slave owners, specifically portrayed to be as stupid and absent-mindedly cruel as the Abolitionists could have imagined. One more rant this sets off, it is also clear on impartial analysis that the plight of the poor white conscripts who made up the bulk of the Confederate Army was even more immaterial to the Lost Cause mythology than that of the slaves.

With that out of the way, I have more than enough to proceed just on how intolerable I find Scarlett/ Leigh in particular. This is a chicken/ egg paradox that vexes me enough that I really couldn’t claim to give this film a proper rating if I had intended to. The character as written feels permanently arrested as a spoiled 15-year-old, repeatedly proven unwilling and unable to learn from any of her adversities. As the hours pass, the clearly capable Leigh somehow transforms this creature into something even more transcendently uncharismatic and unlikeable than she was before. To give just one example, when she is weeping at becoming a widow, Leigh’s delivery seems to emphasize that she really is in all likelihood more upset by “wearing black” than anything else. Where Gable gives enough depth to wish his character a better fate and a better cause, his counterpart seems to dig for ways to make the viewer want her to die. And I know it’s a subjective judgment, but I find Leigh to be one of the most unaccountably irritating screen presences I have encountered, to the point that I’m sure I used at least half my allotted skip time when I got tired of her voice. To give some frame of reference, I find her worse than the rich girls we were supposed to hate in Heathers (which I regularly considered for this feature). Indeed, the one character/ actor combination I can think of that I could compare is Ken Marshall in Krull, and I actually like that one.

That leaves me with the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that’s quite early. Right after Scarlett receives news of secession, we find Rhett and Ashley among a gathering of Southern gentlemen enthusiastically declaring their prowess. When Ashley proves less than enthusiastic, the rest appeal to Rhett. He matter-of-factly points out that the Union has more weapons, factories and ships than the Confederacy ever will. He finishes by commenting, “All we’ve got is cotton, slaves… and arrogance.” Of course, the gentlemen are outraged, without offering any comment to foreshadow that these were indeed the foremost among many reasons the South foreseeably would not and could not win the war. As commendable as it would seem, this is the part that leaves me actually angry. The Lost Cause fairy tale was not just biased historiography but toxic nonsense that did real and ongoing harm, and the people who willingly cast Noble Johnson in King Kong should have known that better than anyone. I have said as long as I have been writing reviews that there is such a thing as immorally bad. In those terms, the only thing worse than propaganda for an evil cause is propaganda from those who don’t even believe in it.

In closing, I find I come back to Ingagi, an actually censored film that by any standard deserved it. I have deemed it unnecessary to comment that this film has grown controversial enough to draw arguments over censorship. In reality, the strongest efforts of the film’s detractors aren’t remotely comparable to the general unmovie-ing of Ingagi, yet I find a common denominator in the implicit embarrassment of the “mainstream” media, first and foremost at the simple fact that they were successful. To me, taking on this film wasn’t about its politics or its history. It’s about calling the powers that have always been to account for every bloated blockbuster that has been promoted, praised and then conveniently forgotten by seemingly everyone but me. You can forget your mistakes, or pretend you have, but I won’t. With that, I can say that this feature has brought me closure. Who’s next?

Fiction: The Space Guys adventure, Part 7!

 I was debating whether to post at all this week, I decided I could fill out an off week, which means more of the Space Guys. Here's the chapter I've really had the most fun with, featuring alternate history pop culture. Again, I have a table of contents at the end.

Jason and Alek were smiling and laughing as they returned to his cabin. Jax looked up from a card game with Sarip. His eyes locked on a box Jason was carrying. “What’s this?” he asked.

“I just met with Dad at Deimos base,” Jason said. “He and the folks put together a box of our things. The captain cleared it.”

Jason had grown accustomed enough not to shudder as Moxon approached. “Actually, he sent me to inspect the contents,” he said. “It’s regulations. Strictly a formality, of course.”

Jason set it down and opened it. Right on top were 3 small stuffed toys, a Sparky the Space Squirrel doll, based on an earlier and more stylized version of the character, a weedy birdlike creature known as Tweel the Martian and a well-loved gorilla. His eyes flicked to Moxon, half-expecting him to destroy Sparky on sight. In fact, his lip merely curled in amusement. Beneath that was a mesh bag of what looked like tin soldiers; in fact, it was a circus set, with the clowns, acrobats and animals made from sheet steel. The rest was records, both audio and video, and a collection of microform books. Alek picked up Tweel. “Ooh, I love Tweel,” she said. “I read all the Weinbaum stories.”

She looked through the movies. “Sparky the Space Squirrel on Venus, Sparky On The Moons Of Jupiter… I’m sure we have these in the ship library,” she said. She furrowed her eyebrows at a set. “King Kong, Son of Kong, The Return of Kong, Kong Unchained, Queen Kong, Wrath of Kong… You have the whole set?”

“Everybody loves Kong,” Jax said. He was looking through the audio records. “Okay, we got Spike Jones, Duke Ellington, Elvis Presley… whatever happened to him?”

Alek had reached the books. Each one was a cardboard folio that held a sheaf of strips printed with pages the size of small postage stamps, meant to be loaded in a hand-held magnifier which someone had included three of. The outsides of the folios bore vivid and colorful artwork. The one in her hand showed a tracked vehicle the size of a light naval craft, built around an equally enormous cannon. The text read, Last Stand of the Landcruisers by Martin Caidin. “History?” she said. She picked up another. It showed a man with a broad-brimmed hat facing a bat-faced, hunchbacked ghoul in what might have been either a crypt or a sewer. The title read, Solomon Kane In The Catacombs, by L. Sprague De Campe. She set it down and picked up another. It showed a bare-chested barbarian fighting what looked like a carnivorous stegosaurus. Its title read, The Adventures of Conan by Robert E. Howard. A smaller caption read, “From the creator of Solomon Kane.”

“The stories are not as good as Conan, but I like Kane better,” she said. She picked through more of the books. One showed a biplane in a dogfight with a dragon. The title read, Dragons Over Verdun by Leigh Brackett. Another showed soldiers firing desperately from the ruins of a factory. It bore the title Last Stand At Leningrad and the byline Cyril Kornbluth.  A third showed another barbarian staring into a magic mirror at a city of graceful spires. The text declared, The Wizard of Otherworld by Philip K. Dick. “All this fantasy,” she said after looking through several more titles. “Is this what they read on Mars?”

Jason shrugged. “We all have our tastes, same as everybody,” he said. “But yeah, we usually go for fantasy over the space stories. It’s about people living with nature, not technology.” He held up a single book with a picture of a rocket descending on a village of tentacled aliens. “This is just kids’ stuff.”

“Hey, it’s what got us where we are,” Jax said. He indignantly took away the book. “Hey, show her your trick.”

Alek looked at Jason. “What is trick?” she said.

Jason gave a defensive shrug. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “It’s just… I can read the cards without the magnifier.”

Alek looked at one of the strips from the Solomon Kane folio. The print was just large enough for a keen eye to see it as separate words and characters rather than lines and blocks. “Show me,” she said.

“Fine,” Jason said. He held up the strip. “`Solomon Kane was a Puritan at heart. But his heart could not contain his lust to wander, nor the rage that drove him to avenge the evils he had witnessed…’”

He gave the card back to Alek. She loaded it into a viewer, which was compact enough to hold up by a small handle like an opera glass. “You read it right,” she said. She looked at Jax. “Can you do it? Can other Martians do it?”

This time, Jax squirmed defensively. “Maybe,” he said. “I know other people who can. Most of them can’t get through more than a few words. I’ve seen Jason read two pages. They all say the real problem is staying focused…”

Alek shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought a human could do it,” she said succinctly.

“Let me see,” Moxon said. “Hand me the Landcruiser book.” Alek gave it to him. “`The Landkreuzer 1500 was the largest land vehicle ever used in combat. It might never have existed if not for its gun, an 800mm cannon intended to demolish the fortifications of France…” He gave his usual smile. “See? No big deal.”

There was an awkward silence. Jason finally broke it with another question. “What do people really like, back on Gaia?” he asked. “What do they watch, read, whatever?”

Alek pondered. “I don’t go to many movies,” she said. “And I mostly read scientific papers, or old books like these.” She held up the Conan folio.

Moxon spoke up. “I go to lots of movies,” he said. “I see them in all kinds of places, too. So, fantasy’s popular, you know, stories about Hercules and King Arthur and Kane. The real money is in war movies, leastways on the studio side. They’re usually about the Second Great War, what a lot of people will call the Last War. A lot of them have been coming out of the Federation They get big budgets, the big stars will line up to appear in them, and enough people will come out to see them to earn their money back. It’s really the same as fantasy movies, just with more prestige. They all give people heroes, adventures, battles, and other places and times, so nobody worries about the here and now.”

He leaned against a bulkhead. “If you ask me, though,” he continued, “the biggest thing is horror movies. A lot of it has been coming out of Edo and Indo-Malaya. The fans call it `real horror’. The critics call it tenement pornography. You Martians probably wouldn’t go for it.  One of the last ones I saw was about a gangster. He goes around beating up people, making ladies of the night give him the goods for free, but he loves his girl. Then another gangster kills her. So he goes to a witch, then she gives him a medallion that lets him turn into a leopard, or leastways, a cross between a leopard and a man. He uses it to start murdering the other guy’s gang, except when he finally gets to the boss, it turns out he has his own amulet that turns him into a tiger. They fight, he kills the boss but he gets hurt and dies. So yeah, not your thing.”

“I see that one,” Alek said. “It was called Man-Cat. They make two more.”

Moxon just laughed. “So maybe I haven’t been seeing as many movies as I used to,” he said. With that, he moved to excuse himself.

“Wait,” Jax said. “Do you know what really happened, in the Last War?”

Moxon looked back, with just a hint of a smile. “It was really before my time,” he said. “It’s all in the books, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jax said. He remained silent as Moxon left.

“Funny,” Alek said. “How do you do that trick reading the cards? And how do he do it too?”

Jason looked at Jax, who shook his head. “We all have our talents,” he said. Then they were all silent for a while.

 

The day of the launch quickly approached. The only thing that caught them off guard was the announcement of a wedding, which proved to be between two of the engineering crew. There was a ceremony and an informal reception in the captain’s cabin. Alek and Jason came slightly late. The Malays weren’t there, nor to his relief was Moxon, but Jax and Dr. Cahill were sitting with Harrison at the captain’s table, and Raeder was on the couch leading three Edonians in an ale house song. Alek hung from his arm as they entered. “There they are,” Alek said. She pointed to a pair in the kitchen area.

8 out of the 12 engineering crew was there, and it was evident that Alek knew most of them. The newly married couple were Anne Baxter and David Carlson. Their peers included one other married couple, an Edonian man named Yukio and a Shen woman named Chyou, and a woman from the Federation named Natasha. The rest, present or not, were all men, mostly well over 30. Alek pointed out the nominal chief, a short man named Potts, and the youngest of them, an American named Donald Johnson, a student of a super genius who had perfected fusion, at the moment trying to talk to Anastasia. Fortunately, she stayed on the opposite side of the passage from Alek.

When Alek introduced Jason to the pair, he casually asked if they had known each other before the mission. Anne had immediately laughed. “No, we met when we got here,” she said. “We did a shift together in the reactor room, we got to talking, then we decided to get engaged. It just made sense.”

“It’s an 8-hour shift,” David added. “The way it really works is, one of us is in the reactor room in a radiation suit, one of us is on the other side of the door, and two more are on the other side monitoring the output to the fusion vessel. That’s really because of how heavy our gear is. After four hours, we’re supposed to take it off.”

“So you talked to each other through a door?” Jason said.

“Yeah,” Anne said. She pressed against her groom. “It was very romantic. We completely connected.”

“Like Pyramus and Thisbe,” Alek said with a bemused glance at Jason.

By then, Johnson had come over. Jason asked the question, “So just one person controls the power to the whole ship?”

The engineers all laughed at that. “Oh, no, the reactor systems are completely automated,” David said. "It’s a fission-fusion system, so it’s really two reactors. We only service the fission component. All we can do is turn it off.”

“Even that’s not really how it sounds,” Donald said. "The set up is, we have a bank of instruments and a few controls in the reactor room, plus a sort of peephole to inspect the reaction chamber directly. We aren’t even supposed to use it unless the reactor is shut down. The controls are two buttons, one set in the reactor room and a redundant pair in the outer chamber. One executes an emergency shutdown. The other continues operations. If three hours go by without someone pushing the second button, the shutdown is executed automatically.”

Jason pondered that for a moment. “So it’s a dead man switch, right?” he said. That drew stern silence from the engineers. “And you’re just canaries in a coal mine, aren’t you?”

“Well, you can look at it like that,” David said. “I say, if we can go at any time, live life to the fullest. Seize the day!” He gave his bride a long, passionate kiss.

As they left, Jason turned to Alek. “What do you think?” he said. “Do you want to get married? Soon, I mean?”

She was silent for a moment. “No,” she said. “I have told you, I am an enlightened woman. Rushing to get married would make me look ashamed of having a man. Besides, we need to do it right. First, you propose; I know we have understanding, but it is not the same. Then we marry. So, maybe… 6 months?”

“I can live with that,” Jason said.

Alek put an arm around his waist. “Of course, we are making love…”

Table of contents

Part 1. The demo!

Part 2. The villain!

Part 3. The world-building!

Part 4. The romance!

Part 5. The killer robot!

Part 6: The shuttle ride!

The Franchise File 3: The one that was the most hated sequel

 

 

Title: Ghostbusters 2

What Year?: 1989

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, I’ve been finishing up the last few loose ends from Halloween, and the present lineup has been right at the top. What crosses my mind was that sequels have always been where I diverge from the crowd. Sure, I trash actually bad sequels as avidly as anyone else, though very few have been anywhere the bottom for the kind of movies I deal with. The flip side is that there are a great many polarizing or entirely unpopular sequels that I regard favorably even compared to the original films. In my reviews, I have definitely focused on the sequels where I’m willing to argue. For this lineup in particular, I decided to take my time to come up with one that really needed my kind of treatment. That brought me to a case that I have long regarded as perhaps the most unaccountably hated of them all. I present Ghostbusters 2, quite possibly the most despised sequel I actually like.

Our story begins with a reintroduction to the heroes of the last film, now split up by bankruptcy and legal troubles. Peter Venckman is a basic cable host, Egon is doing conventional if sadistic psychological research, Ray and Winston are reliving the glory days at kids’ birthday parties, and Dana is a newly single mother by a guy who has come and gone off-screen. But something is brewing under the city, a pink slime that seems to feed on anger, strife and misery. It’s all just a harbinger of the emergence of Vigo, the ghost of a tyrant residing in a painting at the museum where Dana works. With help from her unrequited would-be love interest, the evil spirit prepares for his return, with Dana’s son Oscar as his vessel. It’s up to the Ghostbusters to save the day again- but they will have to beat a court order first!

Ghostbusters 2 was a 1989 fantasy/ science fiction film by Columbia Pictures, produced as the first and only direct sequel to the 1984 film Ghostbusters. The film was directed by Ivan Reitman (see Heavy Metal), with Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson (Congo) returning as the Ghostbusters. Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis and Annie also reprised their roles as Dana Barrett, Louis Tully and Janine Melnitz respectively. Max Von Sydow (see Flash Gordon, Never Say Never Again) performed as the voice of Vigo, with Peter MacNicol of Dragonslayer appearing as his minion Janosz. The film was released in parallel with the fourth and fifth seasons of the animated series The Real Ghostbusters, which the live-action sequel diverged from on a number of points. Official merchandising included games for NES and Game Boy. The film was commercially successful, earning over $215 million against an estimated $30-40M budget, but was poorly received by critics and fans. Reitman reportedly refused to take part in further installments of the franchise based on problems with the production. The second film has received some reappraisal among modern critics. It was not directly referenced in the 2016 reboot. It remains available on digital platforms.

For my experiences, I covered this franchise in most depth when I wrote up the reissues of the Kenner toys. As with many things, I knew of the franchise without really experiencing it first-hand, though for once, I can definitely recall seeing the original film at a quite early date. For me, the real experience was the animated series, and to the extent I can recall having an opinion at the time, I greatly preferred the cartoon. Once the show and the toys trailed off, the franchise slipped from my consciousness until one afternoon in ca 1998 I can clearly recall, when I found both movies being aired back to back on network TV. It was a rediscovery of the first film and my first encounter with the present one, and where I found far more to appreciate in the original, I felt the sequel to be on its level if not better. Ever since, I have been baffled by the hate it gets… up to about the time I bought a copy.

Moving forward, my foremost reaction is the already running theme, what the Hell did people want, anyway? In terms of the franchise parameters, this doesn’t build on the original like the undisputed “best” sequels such as Dawn of the Dead, or reconceptualize as boldly as the likes of Predator 2. What it does do is put the characters in new situations without changing their nature, which is plenty in itself. From the outset, we find the Ghostbusters in the aftermath of fame, leaving some of them wiser and others just disillusioned. The further story arc that emerges is one of far more complex problems that require both new tactics and genuine character development. That, in turn, offers some surprisingly sophisticated social/ political commentary. The mood slime becomes a symptom and symbol of human problems that can’t be defeated with proton packs. The apathy and flat hostility the Ghostbusters meet as they try to rally the city leads to both the funniest and most poignant moments of the film. A quote from the mayor is up there as my favorite from either film and in line for the “one scene”, “Being miserable and treating each other like dirt is every New Yorker’s God-given right!”

On the con side, this certainly one of the clearest cases of a sequel that was forced to be “trendy” at the expense of both creativity and faithfulness to the original. A curious consequence is that many of its “meta” gags and references specifically fail to account for the continued popularity of the franchise and especially the number of kids like me who were getting into it through the show. (The He-Man reference is probably nothing more or less than an indicator of how old the script must have been…) The big chip on my shoulder is the music. The original had a balanced mix of old and new pop music and a traditional orchestral score by Elmer Bernstein (see… Robot Monster?). The score by pop composer Randy Edelman is not an improvement, to put it mildly. Then there are repeated intrusions of the still-young rap craze, which I have long held up as responsible for the worst music in the history of modern media. (I’ve heard 1920s alleged jazz that’s about as bad, but how many people hear that spontaneously?) This isn’t even “that” bad, given that someone apparently paid enough for actual rap/ hip hop artists instead of a pastiche of a studio suit’s impression of the genre, but it’s one more thing that makes the movie feel more dated now than it would have at the time of its release.

That still leaves the simple question, what could they have done better? This is one thing I am actually good at. The first thing I would say, covering a major area I didn’t get to above, is that the effects should stay as they are. There’s already some very good touches, especially the bathtub of slime, the spectral nanny and a zombified fur coat that missed the cut in the first film, that don’t slow things down. On the other hand, we could have done with a lot less of Janosz. (I have a whole other rant about the same guy declaring himself ashamed of being in Dragonslayer…) My most radical idea is quite simply to lose Vigo entirely. The first act already does fine with the focus on the mood slime, so it was completely feasible to keep it there. The “what if” that rises to my mind is to have the slime evolve into a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man analog, and make the Statue of Liberty sequence an actual kaiju fight. It might not have “worked”, but this is the kind of creativity that should have been in play if the minds behind the franchise had been given free reign.

That leaves the “one scene” very late, and my choice was settled in the first viewing. A few minutes in, Dana seeks out Egon, who has gotten back in at the university. He is observing a man and woman from behind one-way glass who are clearly unhappy. He matter-of-factly explains that they have been waiting over two hours for what they think is a marriage counselling appointment. We only get brief glimpses of the couple, but that’s enough to make it clear that they probably need real counselling and definitely don’t need any more stress. It’s a brief glimpse of domestic and institutional dysfunction that sets up the more mature themes of movie. As the conversation winds down, Egon comes to another room where a little girl is happily cuddling a puppy. There’s every sign of enjoyment as he says, “Now, take away the puppy…”

In closing, what I come back to is the nature of sequels. The real common denominator is that they are set up to fail at both ends. It’s well-established that the studio system rarely backs a sequel ambitious enough to improve even modestly on the original.  On the other hand, audiences rarely help; they will say they want a sequel that is “better”, but routinely complain when it is different enough to have a shot at it. The culminating irony is that, if you judge the sequel by the ones considered at least arguably “best” in their franchises, you get an astonishing column of successes: Empire Strikes Back, Wrath of Khan, Aliens and even the odd “threequel” like Day of the Dead and Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (see my Raiders review/rant). If it takes 5 or 10 Futureworlds to get one Dawn of the Dead, it’s a small price to pay. In that company, Ghostbusters should stand as an example of how to be good enough. That’s enough for me to give a respectful farewell to a quite good lineup. “Choose and perish!”

Movie Mania: Most heroicest movie tracks!!!

 I'm two days behind on blogging, and I'm trying to hold down my fiction post count, so here's something a bit different. I'm doing a rundown of the most heroic movie score tracks, at least from the eras and genres of films I usually cover. Here's my list in top 10 format, with a bit of handicapping to avoid overrepresentation of composers or franchises.

10. Action Pack/ "Peter Changes His Mind", Simon Haseley, Dawn of the Dead-  I covered this extensively in my Dawn/ Day of the Dead soundtrack post and video. A tough-as-nails SWAT trooper contemplates self-termination, decides to kill zombies instead. It gets made fun of, and I have joined in, but it's a textbook case of cheesy/ "bad" music that really works. What could be more life-affirming than plowing through the undead hordes to literal football music?

9. "Klendathu Drop," Basil Poledouris, Starship Troopers-  The space troopers invade a planet of Bugs, get slaughtered. It's great music with enough of an edge to fit the themes. And the cover is, ah, different...

8. "Futile Escape", James Horner, Aliens- I couldn't avoid this one. The Colonial Marines make a fighting retreat from the xenomorph swarm, get picked off one by one starting with Bill Paxton. It's not as popular as "Ripley's Rescue", but it ups the game for a sequence that ratchets up the tension as things go from bad to worse. Also proves Horner could compete with the best on the law of averages.

7. "The Asteroid Field", John Williams, The Empire Strikes Back- The Millennium Falcon runs from the Empire through a swarm of deadly space rocks. The best incidental music from the greatest science fiction film of all time by the most accomplished science fiction/ adventure composer, and we're still not even in the top 5...

6. Star Trek First Contact/ Main Theme, Jerry Goldsmith- A showdown with the Borg is introduced with a surprisingly subtle opening. The composer of the "Next Gen" theme returns with a theme that's truly noble. Oh yeah, I wrote this one up for my Revenant Review ebook that I'm still waiting for someone to buy.

5. Conan the Destroyer/ Main Theme, Basil Poledouris- The second movie featuring the most famous sword-and-sorcery hero opens with an epic opening theme. You can argue whether the movie is better than the first one (it is), but the soundtrack is among the very best from an underrated composer. And see the movie review and expanded soundtrack post...

4. "Ride of the Firemares," James Horner, Krull- A band of heroes race against time to the evil overlord's teleporting castle on magic horses. The effects aren't great, but the music is epic. See my soundtrack post while you're at it...

3. "Building the Crate", John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams, Chicken Run- Claymation chickens race to build an aircraft before their owner completes a machine to make them all into pot pies. It's a masterpiece of frenetic energy with real emotional weight. The moral in case you missed it, we're all the chickens.

2. Superman/ Main Theme, John Williams- The most epic theme from the master. Just because it's virtually impossible for the hero to lose doesn't mean he can't be awesome.

1. "Entr' Acte", Jerry Goldsmith, Patton- The high point of the soundtrack that convinced me that Goldsmith was as good as Williams. It's the essence of victory; what more is there to say?

And that's really all I wanted to do for this. Things like this are why I love movie music as much as I love movies. If anything, it may seem like I'm not being as eclectic as I usually am, but that's because the very best movies are the ones that tend to go above my radar. As an extra, here's an updated playlist covering most of this list plus a few surprises. While I'm at it, here's the one I'm proudest of (after the one that's literally one song), my Poledouris playlist. That's all for now, more to come.

The Classics File 2: The one with Humphrey Bogart

 

 

Title: Petrified Forest

What Year?: 1936

Classification: Prototype

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

 

As I write this, I am once again thinking about bringing my No Good Very Bad Movies feature to an end. For this lineup in particular, I have been proceeding slowly because I’ve really been working this out as I go. I really started with one particular film I have meant to get to last, and will still need a little more time to obtain and examine. For the actual opening, I got in Dracula, which I was satisfied to be deserving even sight unseen. That still left the middle opening, and the real problem was that “classics”, overrated or otherwise, aren’t really what I do. If there’s anything I don’t like to do, it’s talking about movies everyone else is already talking about, and the thing about “classics” is that even the haters are unlikely to say anything that hasn’t been said many times before. So I let several promising candidates slide while I waited to see if something different crossed my path. Sure enough, I got one that was truly the kind of film I would take on. I present Petrified Forest, the most classic film you may never have heard of.

Our story begins in a café in the deserts of the southwest, where nobody seems to live except colorful characters such as a would-be football hero and an old-timer who insists he was shot at by Billy the Kid. In the midst of it, the lovely waitress Gabrielle reads great books and dreams of a better life, notwithstanding the best efforts of the football player to woo her. Her hopes are rekindled by the arrival of Alan, a very British literati/ proto-Beatnik who wavers between wooing her and admitting his own dashed hopes. Unfortunately, another new arrival is Duke, a criminal whose gang takes the patrons and staff hostage. As the authorities close in, the prisoners try to bond with their captors. But Alan already has a plan to be a hero and make Gabrielle rich- even if he has to die doing it!

Petrified Forest was a 1936 drama by Warner Bros, directed by Archie Mayo. The film was based on a 1935 play of the same name by Robert E. Sherwood, previously adapted for Lux Radio Theatre. The movie starred the English actor Leslie Howard as Alan and Bette Davis as Gabrielle, with Humphrey Bogart in his first major role as the criminal Duke Mantee. Howard reportedly insisted on working with Bogart after they performed the same roles together in stage productions of the play. The film was successful enough to be credited with launching Bogart’s career, though it received mixed reviews from contemporary and later critics. Howard died in 1943 at age 50, in the midst of promoting the Allied cause in World War 2. Davis continued with a successful career that arguably peaked with the 1962 film Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? The film has remained available and generally known, notably being referenced and/ or parodied in media such as Merry Melodies/ Looney Tunes and The Carol Burnett Show. It is available for digital rental or purchase on multiple platforms.

For my experiences, my main frame of reference for this one is that I grew up on a fair diet of Bogart movies. My favorite was Treasure of the Sierra Madre, in hindsight a good candidate for the first “anti-Western”. I also saw at an early date the likes of Casa Blanca, The Maltese Falcon and Key Largo, I’m sure among others. (And I’ll give you one guess which one I really don’t like…) At any rate, I heard of the present film not long ago from a close friend who follows old-time radio. It interested me enough to land in my snail-Netflix rental queue, along with a certain other film I have plans for. I checked to see if anyone wanted to watch it with me, then watched it all on my own. I mostly just found it odd, all the more so for being largely unremarkable.

Moving forward, the description that best fits this film is “mannered”, if not entirely stilted. The cast of characters are a little too developed to be called cliches, yet the things that differentiate them from “stock” are predictable in their own way. Gabrielle, by far the most likeable character, wants to get out in the wider world while clearly lacking any frame of reference for it. Her would-be boyfriend is obviously going nowhere, whether or not he knows it. Alan is simply a mess, which I will get back to. Most curiously, Bogart is strikingly uncomplicated. We don’t learn anything about his backstory except a possible weakness for women with no qualms about turning on him. As far as his on-screen behavior, he isn’t charismatic enough to work as a “Robin Hood” type, nor is he sadistic enough to indulge in evil for its own sake. Finally, we aren’t given any reason to think better of him by the end, beyond the fact that he makes his last stand in front of the diner rather than hiding behind the civilians. Ultimately, he is simply a stock villain who by all indications was never meant to be anything else, which would certainly have been making a statement at a time when outlaws were being elevated to folk heroes.

Beyond these considerations, the simple fact is that this is far more talk than action, albeit with very good dialogue. The fundamental “problem” is that out of all the characters, the focus falls on Alan and Gabrielle. By any realistic or reasonable appraisal, Alan has even fewer evident redeeming qualities than Duke, and the fact that he freely admits his faults and failings just exposes him as self-centered. His nominal romance with Gabrielle is farcically short even by Hollywood standards, which they both clearly know. Where I call foul is his emerging fixation on sacrificing himself for Gabrielle’s benefit, long after it is clear that neither of them are in danger apart from stray bullets. His eventual scheme is, at best, subjecting her to a traumatic experience for limited financial benefit, and at worst, a bid to place her psychologically in his debt indefinitely without making any commitment to take care of her. This is literally psychotic, and on top of that, it’s emotional blackmail. If he wasn’t bent on self-inflicted martyrdom, this could easily turn far, far uglier if the relationship went on for any length of time.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going to have to go from memory. Early on, Gabrielle is outside reading when the football hero arrives; that would be Dick Foran, a stage, film and TV actor who was also an accomplished singer. When she gets up, he follows her and goes for a kiss with no encouragement from her. It’s even more uncomfortable than might be expected in a more enlightened time. Still, the lady does talk to him, and he backs off enough to count as conceding to her wishes. As things continue, we get a sense of somewhat dysfunctional familiarity that I doubt I could describe even if I could find the clip. It’s a low-key example of good dialogue and character development for its own or any other time. I have to say I find it to be the most natural interaction in the entire film.

In closing, I come back to the simple question of what makes an “overrated” film. This film is the kind that approaches that description without quite getting there, for better or worse. Its fame is too modest to be called undeserved, while still clearly owing far more to the later fame of its stars than its own merits. Yet, it equally clearly remains watchable and generally entertaining, which is certainly more than can be said for many far younger films. Ultimately, it’s the kind of movie where praising it as a “great” movie would be more of a disservice than calling it a bad one, because it is that kind of hype that sets viewers up for disappointment. If it is instead approached as an interesting film, especially as an early sample of the stars involved, then it could easily prove a pleasant surprise. That is the kind of “classic” I can get behind.

Fiction: The Space Guys Adventure, Part 6!

I'm masochistically sticking to a regular schedule for this week. Here's the inevitable Space Guys installment, this time with a table of contents at the end. I also included a pic of the de-modified Moonship. By the way, it's pretty much certain that any tech specs I spelled out before are going to change.

All told, a month passed between Jason’s arrival on the Janus and the beginning of the voyage. When Alek did not demand his presence in her lab, he mostly spent time among the pilots, and she regularly came to join him. Usually, she would curl up in his lap and write or draw in her notebooks in silence while he touched her, usually stroking her hair or her legs. He had long since learned to continue what he was doing, no matter how the others stared. The one and only time he had stopped, she had gone on drawing a few moments before she said, “More, please.” Mercifully, no one had laughed, but several had excused themselves.

In the meantime, he and Jax did get to know the pilots. Their commander and instructor was an officer from the Federation named Yuri, officially one of the core crew. Of the pilots, four were from Mars besides Jax and himself. Of them, one was a moreno from the Union named Jackie, another was a woman of his acquaintance named Sandra, and the other two were a man and a woman from the Federation, the former named Vasily and the latter named Anastasia. Many assumed the sharp-tongued woman was involved with her male counterpart, though Jason suspected she favored old Yuri. For her part, she was scornful of him and the other Union pilots, except perhaps Jackie. “You are here because the ‘Mericans need a handsome farmboy for their propaganda,” she had told him at their first meeting. “I see your scores. You are not bad, but I had to beat a dozen who were better.” A couple days later, Alek had risen from her usual place and slapped her in the face without provocation, warning or any further comment, and she said little to Jason after that.

He got what he counted as his big break when he was chosen to fly the payloader Pegasus on a run to a base on Deimos. He had expected to make the flight with the charming Lieutenant Harrison, the most senior pilot and for all intents and purposes the chief of the pilots. His first surprise had come as he approached the airlock that joined the payloader to the fuselage of the Janus. The Federation officer Tanya standing there, along with an officer and eight troopers from the military contingent aboard the ship. They had been as reclusive as anyone could be in the long but confined space. Now, they wore breathers with masks that hid their faces. “What is this about?” he asked warily.

“I’m Lieutenant Heinzman,” the officer said. They had in fact met before. “This is Sgt. Lazarevic of the UN Airborne Crisis Response Corps… the stratotroopers.” One of the masked warriors nodded, silently but politely. “Your mission has been modified. You will be carrying these troops with you, as an exercise to familiarize them with the vessel and equipment. You are to provide any assistance requested, and not to interfere with their exercises. Any questions?” Jason shook his head.

Tanya took over. “These are troopers from the Federation and its outlying satellites,” she said. “They are all highly experienced, but most of them were reassigned from separate units. We needed to give them an opportunity to integrate with each other. So, Boat Ride protocol.” That got a nod and a hint of a smile from Jason. “Just fly straight, mostly. I’ll be coming along to handle things in back. The rest will fall into place.”

He boarded the craft, to emerge in the main cabin. It was in itself the size of a multipurpose aircraft, with a standard configuration that included up to 24 seats, space for two all-terrain rovers plus ample cargo, and sleeping quarters for 3. He knew that a much larger hold lay beneath it. He paused at the sight of Alek’s largest robot hooked up in one of the cargo bays. He shrugged it off and kept walking through the seating area, arrayed in the main as a narrow aisle with a line of single seats on the left and rows of two on the other. He descended a short stair to the cockpit and took the pilot’s seat. He took no notice of footsteps coming up a second stairway from the main hold, until a voice said, “Hey, Farm Boy.” He started in his chair as if jolted with a prod. Of course, it was Alek.

“Hi, Alek,” he said. “Are you, ah, helping with the cargo?”

“You could say that,” she said. She kissed him on the cheek. “I’m going to help you fly. Didn’t I tell you I’m a pilot?”

“Of course,” he said. She hadn’t, but he was long past being surprised. “I, ah, thought Harrison was going to be copilot.”

“He’s coming, of course,” Alek said. She had not yet sat down. “Just as communications officer. Darling man, isn’t he? Thing is, actually… You are my copilot. Won’t that be fun?” He rose, and she took the pilot’s chair.

The cockpit had three seats plus a communications station, which replicated another in the cabin. The canopy was huge yet elegant, making it very possible to look straight into space without seeing the instruments or the payloader itself. What no one seemed to have calculated was that most of the time, there was nothing to see in space but space. At the moment, the main thing he could see was a shuttle pod was moored to the nose of the payloader. He had to swivel his seat and twist his neck to see a sliver of Mars. By the time he confirmed that, Harrison had joined them. The Papuan Aisi took the comm station. Alek addressed him in Javanese as he entered. He looked at her with a frown. “Talk to me in English, please,” he said. “Even Javans don’t like speaking Javanese.”

Alek smiled and began going through the startup. “A quick delivery run will be nice, won’t it?” she said to Jason.

“What do you mean?” he said. “Phobos is the short run. This is Deimos; it’s a 6-hour run each way. Did you not see that?”

“Look, I want to be with you,” she said. “You want to spend time with me, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Jason answered. Somehow, he knew Aisi was rolling his eyes.

They reached Deimos 5 and a half hours later, a little ahead of schedule. More time went into matching speeds with the moon. By then, Jason and Alek were laughing as they talked. Harrison freely added to the conversation, and Aisi got in a word now and then. “You work well together,” the lieutenant said as they made their approach. “You don’t really know until you try. That’s the real reason they have non-fraternization policies. Couples can perform better together than anyone, but it can make things a lot worse as soon as they have trouble. There was a time early on when they let men and women fly in rotation. There was a man and a woman who made the 4-day run to Luna. They got married when they touched down. But when they got back to Gaia, they filed for divorce immediately. There was a story that he had a black eye. After that, they pulled women out of the line.”

“Why didn’t they keep the women and pull the men?” Alek mused.

“Who says they didn’t consider it?” Harrison said. “What it came down to was, there were more men than women.”

As they made their approach, Sergeant Lazarevic came to the cockpit. It turned out that the commander’s first name was Nadia. She had removed her mask, though the uniform still gave her figure an androgynous look. “Are we going to land on the moon?” she asked.

“There’s really no reason not to,” Jason said. “The gravity is so low, taking off again doesn’t use any less fuel than catching a package in orbit.”

“We would like to try a simulated suborbital launch,” the Sergeant said. “A shuttle pod with four troops will launch and descend to the surface. Lt. Harrison will pilot it. You would circle again and land at a spot they have secured. Can that be done safely?”

“In theory, yes,” Jason answered. “We’re still matching velocity. It’s not as fast as Phobos, but it’s still tricky. If something as big as Pegasus came down too hard on a moon as small as Deimos, the impact force could knock the moon right out of orbit. It’s the Pyramus and Thisbe problem.”

Jason was puzzled to see Alek look confused. “At the UN Academy, we use myths to explain astronautical problems,” Jason said. “Pyramus and Thisbe is the story about two lovers separated by a wall. It was in Shakespeare.” That got a nod from Alek. “So, there’s a man and w woman on either side of a wall, right? They can talk to each other through the wall, they can see each other where there’s a hole, but they can’t get through the wall. Only here, the wall isn’t a barrier, but differential velocities. The man and woman could be going the same speed, but still in opposite directions. They can circle each other at the same distance, they could get closer and closer, but they still can’t touch…”

“Because they would go splat,” Alek finished. “But maybe it is worth it, no?” She gave a very disconcerting laugh, then patted Jason’s hand. “You are romantic after all.”

Lazarevic strapped herself in an auxiliary seat and gave an order in Russian. A light showed that the air locks were sealed. The comm chatter recorded an assortment of howls, curses and groans as the shuttle launched. By the time they touched down, the Pegasus had circled the moon again. Harrison waved a pair of hand lamps to direct their flight path. They came down in a crater, a few hundred meters away from the cluster of life-support pods that was the base. There was a fearsome jolt and a long slide. The troopers came to meet them, driving a surface rover that looked like a bubble on tracks.

“The troopers will load the payload,” Harrison told them. “It will take a little while. In the meantime, you can visit the base.” He pointed in the direction of the base. It looked much like the Janus, except its pieces had clearly been cobbled together from sources of different ages and purposes. Jason looked at Alek.

“What is this?” he asked. “What is it, really?”

“It is a surprise,” she said innocently.

They made their way to the base. When they reached the air lock, the outer door cycled from inside. Jason took off his helmet as they waited for the inner door to open. He froze at the sight of the figure waiting on the other side. “Dad,” he said. The other man spread his arms wide as they embraced.

Part 1. The demo!

Part 2. The villain!

Part 3. The world-building!

Part 4. The romance!

Part 5. The killer robot!

The Horrible Horror Vault: The one that's the best horror reboot

 

 

Title: Halloween

What Year?: 2018

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, it’s the end of a week off, and I’ve been going through leftovers from Halloween. That happened to bring me back to something I had considered during my informal survey of the slasher genre. It’s one of the more recent entries in the long list of genre film remakes, which for once was both good and well-received at the time. It also happened to be quite possibly the one film that got me interested enough to look into slashers far enough to lay the groundwork for this feature. I present Halloween, 2018 edition, the horror reboot that people liked.

Our story begins with a couple reporters investigating the tale of Michael Myers and Laurie Stroud, 40 years after their fateful encounter. It turns out that Michael is back in the asylum (which really should have been closed around the time he was eclipsed by Jason and Freddy), still not saying a word, while Laurie has become a survivalist shut-in on the outs with her adult daughter. Right when she is trying to reach out to her only grandchild, Michael escapes during a transfer between facilities. His new doctor teams up with an old lawman who witnessed his first rampage for a manhunt as Michael ramps up his mayhem. But what he’s really after is a rematch with the woman who bested him, and Laurie has had 40 years to prepare. It all comes down to a showdown at her new place- if she can get her family together first!

Halloween was a 2018 film by Miramax, produced as both a direct sequel and franchise reboot to the 1978 film of the same name. It was at least the second remake/ reboot, following the 2007 film by Rob Zombie. The film was directed by David Gordon Green, from a script cowritten with Danny McBride and Jeff Bradley. Jamie Lee Curtis (see Terror Train, Everything Everywhere All At Once) returned as Laurie Strode, with Judy Greer and Andi Matchak as her daughter and granddaughter. The role of Michael Myers was given to James Jude Courtney. Nick Castle, the actor/ stuntman who played the villain in the original film, also briefly appeared in the role. John Carpenter (Dark Star, They Live, The Thing, etc) received credit for the film’s music. The movie was well-received by fans and critics. It received two sequels, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, in 2021 and 2022.

For my experiences, I already pretty well recounted my arc reviewing Halloween 3. (See also Sleepaway Camp while you're at it...) Up to 2018, I was aware of the franchise but had respectfully declined to look into it. When the reboot came out, I decided to watch it and the original film. The curious thing is, even with my usual world’s-worst-superpower memory, I can’t say for sure which I saw first. What I do remember with striking clarity is that there were several points where I recognized references to the original film (and for that matter the second one) while watching the reboot in the theater. That in itself is a striking testimony to the groundwork that those involved were building on. Whether or not you ever saw the first film, even whether or not you knew if you saw it, you knew of it. The foundation of the present film was that the filmmakers took that for granted and built it into a shared inside joke. The vaguely embarrassing part is that, as the quasi-parody of Twitch of the Death Nerve, the results compare startlingly well with its “straight” predecessors.

Moving forward, what is established from the opening scenes is a post-modern feel that was arguably there all along. The elemental strength of Carpenter’s original lay in a story that was theoretically cliched even then, in fact seemingly drawn from “urban legends” at least as it was from “proto-slasher” films up to that point. The present film builds on the secular implications with “meta” commentary on the media and the vastly changed “real-life” landscape; the horrors of Michael’s night out are now almost quaint, a point driven home early and explicitly in the kids’ dialogue. It’s debatable whether it is a matter of irony or merely conceding to trends that the body count is raised accordingly, resulting in more deaths by the time Michael gets his mask back than there were in the whole first film. Even then, there is an implicit contrast between his up-close methods and the randomized mayhem of more recent events. A good deal of further effort goes into making the slasher scenario relevant in the age of the internet and smart phones. There is indeed believability and tension in the many foul-ups and near-misses as Laurie and the authorities try to track both Michael and errant family members.

The real new ground is Laurie, simultaneously traumatized and hardened. It needs to be said that this isn’t that “unique”. Still, this is certainly a raw and believable take on the aftermath of trauma. Laurie was never a simple damsel in distress. By now, she has hardened herself to the point of becoming in some lights more of a cliché than she would have been if she had been written that way in the first place. The nuance lies in our glimpses of her everyday life. She jabs back at anyone who challenges the more obvious problems of her skewed worldview, and the story does not downplay that the doubters have a point. Yet, she still shows clear concern and moments of tenderness, especially with the granddaughter, and even a kind of maternal tone when addressing Michael. To me, it would have been more interesting to have her shown as a functional community activist, which is what I would consider the norm for the self-advocates I have met. As it is, there is a deeper mutual illogic. On one hand, barring certain lore that is downplayed if not quite rejected here, the idea that Michael would come after her again is just a wild guess. On the other, if it took almost 20 years for Michael to escape the first time, there’s no downside to living a normal life.

That brings me back around to Michael, and I have space to go a little longer. To me, slasher villains tend to be a weak link under ideal circumstances. As I have already repeatedly ranted, it was established with the giallo genre that the identity and motives of a killer were an interchangeable parts. In the Halloween series, I find that there is a tendency to acknowledge the conceit without quite freeing themselves from it. Michael is the perfect rejoinder to the fixation on the killer: He has no motive, no backstory that would change the story, and no perceptible human weaknesses, all because he is simply the vessel of a unspecified, potentially supernatural force of evil. The strange thing, which gets more frustrating when the franchise is considered as a whole, is that it has repeatedly been broadcast that he might be replaced, which would fit the implied philosophical and theological themes. In fact, of all the entries in the franchise (including the most recent), this is after Halloween 3 the one that comes closest to meaning it. When a certain character goes off the rails (someone recently pointed out to me I don’t do spoilers, but then I don’t really do much with movies that need them), we get a villain as intriguing as Michael. In the process, we get certain further questions about how Michael got loose in the first place. Ultimately, however, he’s only in the mix long enough to stop anyone from trying to dispatch the real star with some point-blank head trauma.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the opening. It starts with the reporters entering the asylum, and the surprising part is that there is no effort to make it look gloomy or authoritarian. It’s just a well-lit, clean, clinical environment. They’re met by the doctor, who gives much of the exposition as he talks about Michael’s treatment. Most intriguingly, he insists that Michael can talk (though he “should” still be stuck around age 6), but “chooses not to”. They finally get to the central courtyard, which is possibly the most intriguing environment in the film, open, bright and even fairly colorful thanks to a red-and-white checkerboard. Michael is waiting in a delineated center square, which nobody is trying to keep him in and the doctor warns the visitors not to enter. The guy reporter approaches right to the edge and gets out the iconic mask, now grayed and grungy with age. There’s just a hint of a reaction as he calls out to the villain, finally saying fatefully, “Say something, Michael.” The only further response comes from the other inmates as they become agitated. Their reactions and sounds are mixed, as those with the right experience would expect, some unnerving, some just as disconcertingly incongruous, particularly one who sings “Figaro”. It’s a very effective sequence, and perhaps the perfect illustration of the seductive and almost always false attraction of madness.

In closing, I come back to a question I have been working my way around: Is there a “best” slasher movie? I would honestly say, by any technical measure, this one is the winner hands down, if only because its budget and talent rise far above anything that was being made in the timeframe of the original. With the field narrowed down to “vintage” films, I would choose Halloween 2, which gets its own asterisk for being effectively the second half of the same story as the first film. Again, what lingers in my mind is what might have been if people had simply left well enough alone and let things end with Michael emphatically and canonically dead. As already noted, it wouldn’t have stopped the slasher juggernaut, but it would have kept the present franchise different from the rest. With that, I can call my project done and bid the genre a less-than-fond farewell for a while. Rest in pieces…