I want to be frank about something, and you can be whomever you choose to be.  John Carpenter made a pretty solid little movie when he cranked out Halloween.  However, I do not consider it to be his best movie.  That honor is shared by The Thing, Escape from New York ,Big Trouble in Little China  and They Live.  I keep hoping he'll make another great genre  film, but I understand that maybe time has passed him by.  After all, it seems like people just want him to keep rehashing the details on a very well made slasher film.  Yes, Carpenter made a superior film in a pretty sketchy sub-genre.  The fact that it has acheived such recognition as a great movie is really amazing.  However, it is also insidious because his boogeyman, Michael Meyers, has become an ICON of HORRRRORRRRRRR.  He adorns t-shirts and there are action figures of this killer.  He is bandied about along with Pinhead, jason Voorhees, and Leatherface as the avatar of TRUE HORROR by people whose senese of true horror has been nueterd by too many Hot Pockets and too much  Mountain Dew.  There are films in all of the above mentioned characters series that I really like , if not out right love, but I also recognize that they constructs of what one person thought was the face of terror or more to the point what a guy who wanted to make money thought was horror.  After all, buckets of moolah are the reasons these characters lived beyond one film.  The increasingly bizarre machinations that are used with each sequel to bring back a killer wh0 was  clearly dead at he end of the previous installment have become just as much a part of the filmic lore as the deeds of these manaics.  Michael is the knife wielding Lazarus of the day though.

Michael was one of the first of the unkilalble killers and I have no doubt that in October of 1978, more than a few patrons of the moving pictures quickened their pace as autumn leaves twirled and the calendar inched closer to the night He came home.  In fact, I'm jealous of people who saw it before the hype, and before its plot became the holy text that spawned hundreds of syncophantic copycats.  However, I grew up knowing the rules of slasher films and expecting only the worst from films with the title Halloweeen in the title.  The series should have stayed at one or the powers that be should have followed Carpenter's idea to make the Halloween series an anthology film series that offered up a different Hallowwen-centerd horror tale every year.  That would have been fantastic, but it never came to pass. Instead, Michael became a Druid hobgoblin with a GPS that knew where to find Laurie Strode and anyone hwo might possibly be related to him.  When Michael faced Busta Thymes, I thought that it couldn't get any more desperate.  I suppose like Snoop Dog he could have become a mmeber of Master P's then popular No Limit Soldiers, but that would have been entertaining in some way. Instead, he teamed up with Rob Zombie.

I have nothing, but respect for a certain type of filmmaker who truly loves the genre he works in and finds a way t omake it new.  HOwever, Zombie isn't that guy.  He is a self-professed horror fan who seems to miss the fu nthat is inherent in horror movies.  He has now directed three films that wear their Grindhouse -influences on their sleeves, but unlike the true Grindhouse films of youre, they miss the special ingredient that cause many people to regard those morally questionable, and cash strapped films as pictures worth remmebering, and even revisiting.  That ingredient is fun.  Sleazy as some of them were , at least they were fun.

In the case of Rob Zombie's Halloween, Zombie seems to be dead set on proving that he is edgy and that a movie of this type should really have something to say about the human condition and naked girls.  Well, I say, "To hell with you, sir." 

Let's start with the set up. Michale's family is an unintentional comic goldmine of the most shallow and obnoxious cliches regarding members of the white trash tribe.  The Great William Forsythe is a bastard step-daddy who is reduced to screaming lines at the beautiful Sheri Moon -Zombie.  Everyone screams.  The baby cries.  Stuff is broken.  Spousal abuse is threatened. Micheal kills a small animal.  This is literally the scope of the first twenty minutes or so.  The familial scenes and the pshychological insight is fine if it leads us anywhere.  It doesn't.  Michael Meyers has issues, you say?  I say prove it Mr. Zombie, I say prove it by spending half the movie illustrating what Msssr. Carpenter did in ten minutes.  Hey, let's have a sad scene of Michale, who has already killed a classmate, sitting on a curb with his Halloween candy as his maw strips.  That'll prove to me that Michale is a sad little boy who just wants his Maw's love, and doesn't want to kill. However, you just showed him beating a kid to death with a tree limb.  Hey, use the light touch here, kid. Play "Love Hurts" as Maw Meyers does her stripper thing.

You know what?  To hell with you.  To hell with yo uand everyone else who claims they love the aesthetic of 70's horror.  You love the hard edge. Mr. Zombie?  Then, why is you Michael despite being huge and powerful such a non-threat.  He shares scenes with an kills characters played by Danny Trejo and Ken Foree, and , you know what,  they would both mop the floor with him.  Also, you made Dr. Loomis into a pompous glory hound.  That's not the true unhinged Loomis.  That's a stale cliche.  In fact, I know you would defend yourself, and others would as well, by saying that you were making your version.  How about this? Create your own damn killer ,and make an original movie.  For all of your flourishes, this was nothing but a cash grab.  There isn't one bit of heart in the whole thing, and, ultimately, that's why this falls flat.  if you know the steps to a dance, but you don't perform  it with heart, it's an empty exercise.  That is exactly what this film is an empty, soulless exercise.