Jacob Kelly's Funeralopolis Vol. 1 Issue 5

In this weeks issue:

'The History of Halloween: Why Michael Myers will never die'

After 44 years, we're still talking about Michael. Halloween Ends has been marketed as his final blow out. This section seeks to explain why that is simply impossible. It's not happening! With a lot of love for the series, this part will go through each film. Maybe even a few detours along the way to talk about John Carpenter, Rob Zombie and David Gordon Green. Halloween junkies, this is not to be missed.

'This Generations Greatest Gross-Out Artist'

Since, there's been lots of shit talking, Kelly gets to the truth of what really happened at the Halloween party. VHS '99 is also reviewed as this weeks streaming movie.

Happens When a Lovecraft Fan has a Mid Life Crisis?'

You ever wondered what happens when a Lovecraft lover turns maniacal? It ain't pretty. A look at fallen soldier Stuart Gordon through his familiar origins, charming cheese and late career madness. King of the Ants is the first time watch of the week.

Seen Footage: How Ghostwatch Pranked

an Entire Nation'

As part of the TV watch of the week, we return to BBC's Halloween special and finest prank Ghostwatch, looking at how it managed to fool so many people. Both prank culture and the found footage genre will be examined. Reasons are given for why the trend went stale and how to revive this style of filmmaking. Also, as part of the gonzo movement, why we need to persevere with it.

'London Calling to the Underworld'

It's time to observe what Gonzo porn looks like in the UK and the menace behind it. Ben Dover's London Calling is this weeks X rated feature. Who is this Ben Dover? What are his quirks that separate him from his US counterparts? All will be answered.

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The History of Halloween:

Why Michael Myers will never die

Out of all the slasher villains to ever grace us with their presence across multiple movies, Michael Myers has the most justification for sticking around. The basis of this argument is not on quality but if it was, I'm sure he'd win that too. No, what we're talking about here is far more sinister. Since his first appearance back in 1978, this butcher knife wielding maniac has represented the evil lurking in society we refuse to confront. We cannot run from it. We cannot hide from it. For children, he waits in cupboards and under beds. For adults, he stalks minds, infiltrates televisions and can be seen looking straight back at you through your neighbour's eyes. There was a reason John Carpenter let his psychopathic antagonist live in the originals spine chilling ending. Johnny boy came to the conclusion Michael Myers was the 'bogeyman', all our fears personified and fully realised, thus he could never die. 44 years and 12 movies later the bogeyman has become a box office giant and supposedly takes his final breath in Halloween Ends. But is this really the end or will he be back?

In the last issue, I mentioned how successful Halloween was financially in the aftermath, therefore this time I'll start this a little earlier. Back in 1968, Carpenter enrols at the university of Southern California. During his time there he makes another of his horror shorts, which he'd been doing since he was a nipper and first got his hands on an 8mm. An 8 minute belter, titled Captain Voyeur that was actually rediscovered in USC archives in 2011. If you want to check this out it's available on Youtube for free and I strongly suggest you do. What you will notice is that even with limited resources, Carpenter demonstrates he's got the fucking tools and has had the Hitchcockian ability for suspense from day one.

Being the true auteur that he is, JC was capable of directing, editing, writing and scoring. Consequently, this got him some additional work as the co writer, film editor and composer of The Resurrection of Bronco Billy. This earned him some credibility and attention as it went to win an academy award for Best Live Action Short. Assume that early success in being involved in such a project went to his head because he then drops out of film school to make his first feature with Dan O'Bannon.

For those who don't know and probably should know, Dan O'Bannon was the screenwriter of Alien. It would be lazy to simply call it ' Jaws in space'. There were plenty of movies that would follow marketing themselves as that and I'm sure had it been originally bought by Roger Corman (as was intended) that is how the film would have turned out (sorry Roger, my king). Alien is remembered for two reasons. Firstly, being one of cinemas greatest art direction achievements by incorporating H R Geiger's designs. This was O'Bannon's idea and the very reason it was deemed too high budget for Roger Corman. Also, it had a director who studied Art at university in Ridley Scott and most likely because of that was willing to sacrifice pacing and use the sets to tell the story visually. So much of the history of the Xenomorph is shown and implied rather than clumsily told through dull exposition, causing the films discussions on creationism and evolution to reward on multiple viewings the closer you look.

Ok, so the other reason the film has cemented its place in history is due to it being one of the first films to really consider class structures in space. It poses the question of how would blue collar manual workers operate on board ships coasting across the galaxy. Whilst the Jaws comparison is unfair because it devalues the movie, I will take that unlike other 'Jaws in space' movies, this one carries across Jaws's themes such as being a subtle critique of capitalism rather than just being another monster movie in space. Whereas, Star Trek was cluelessly unaware of its own form of space imperialism and colonialism, Alien hit the issues head on. Somehow, I'm still a huge Star Trek fan, despite its message of space being the "final frontier" and that people attempting to "boldly go where no man has gone before" hitting like the US hasn't learnt a single lesson from the massacring of the Native Americans and are still pushing that Manifest Destiny bullshit. Luckily, Star Trek is so adorably ignorant and juvenile it's hard to hate.

Anyway, Alien distinguished itself from the herd by drawing a line between the motives of big businesses and workers. Star Trek hides behind pride and duty to country but Alien accepts the truth that really it is just exploitation. The latter even has hierarchies on the ship with my boys Brett and Parker teaming up and constantly moaning to their superiors Ripley and Dallas. Making this essentially Kevin Smith's Clerks in space. While I'm on the subject do Ripley and Dallas casually fuck in Alien? Also why is casually fucking in space such uncommon territory? Too against bourgeois values that Halloween was incorrectly positioned as protecting? Surely that should be everything in a movie with a limited number of humans living in a compact space billions and billions of miles away from Earth's citizens. Claire Denis's High Life from 2018 remains the authority on the subject. Can we get more erotic thrillers in space please?

Quite the detour there, my apologies, Alien is too good not to get side tracked by. My reason for mentioning is because Dan O'Bannon's collaboration with John Carpenter, Dark Star, back in 1974 is viewed as a trial run for examining capitalism in space. Nowhere near as successful though because it gets lost in hippieish nonsense and overly long preposterous set pieces. Some are genuinely interesting like when it turns 2001: A Space Odyssey in to a stoner comedy and an astronaut has to crack out Descartes's Cartesian Doubt on a new self aware bomb to stop from exploding itself in compliance with its orders. As funny as that sounds, some of this irks me with its blatant marijuana indulgence. Usually, I approved of drug influenced filmmaking but this isn't the kind I particularly like.

That's just me though, Dark Star has gone down as a renowned counter culture work of art. Double bill it with Tobe Hooper's debut Eggshells. Insufferable as the pair can be at times, they are classics of the hippie movement in film. It is crazy to think that even before the two directors moved on to making their notorious slashers their work was so connected. Maybe not so shocking when you think all they did was just continue with these themes and filter them through horror. Carpenter having the better career of the two as he more moved towards the left.

Unfortunate as it is that two insanely talented individuals like Carpenter and O'Bannon fell out massively and did not work together again, I'm in the unpopular camp of thinking it is for the best. Not like it was Spielberg and Hooper on Poltergeist, which turned out well. Think of it like Vince Clarke leaving Depeche Mode to form Yazoo. Might have been heart breaking for those dirty rotten synth loving nuts at the time but ultimately it led to bangers like 'Situation' and 'Don't Go' from the poppier oriented Yazoo and even though it may have taken a bit longer Martin Gore finally mastered his song writing and formed the darker true Depeche Mode sound with Black Celebration. In this scenario, I'd go with John Carpenter being Vince Clarke and Dan O'Bannon being Depeche Mode. That can be fought over but the reality is that although they may have a few similarities in substance and beliefs their style and approach differed too greatly. Fundamentally, that was always the problem for me on Dark Star, too much of a clash but I can fully understand those who are supporters.

Another great tragedy that turned out for the best was the dying of the western. Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch being seen as the violent US swansong to the genre in 1968. Since Carpenter had wanted to make westerns from the minute he picked up a camera, embracing their decline and realising that they were no longer popular must have really hurt. Being the genius that he is, he didn't cave in but chose to channel his love for the western through horror and sci fi. If you ask me, this always results in the most amazing work creatively. This is how we progress and go in to the new. Exactly, what Carpenter did with Assault on Precinct 13, which is basically a mixture of The Alamo and Night of the Living Dead. In Carpenter's hands the modern last stand movie becomes a battle between cops and zombies. Yes, the criminals go that way with bloody rituals, creepy slow movement and lack of dialogue.

Forgetting a shoddy opening scene, the majority of Assault on Precinct 13 proves to be a pretty professional and a step away from his student film origins of Dark Star. In 1976, let it be known that was when Carpenter first flexed his muscles on the synthesiser giving us his earliest iconic and ground breaking score. Those initial 'Dun D D Duns' still get my cinematic cock hard. Doesn't matter whether it's your first or last time hearing it, that shit will make you stand to attention as a new era of cool is ushered in. Electro enthusiasts familiar with I F's Invaders Smoking Grass need to fucking realise on that very same titled Fucking Consumer is a dancefloor version of Carpenter's theme. Alright DJ's, that banger is called Assault on Radical Radio, now go out and God damn use it cause I want to bust some moves to the Carpenter and I ain't talking that adult contemporary baroque shit, you get me fellas?

On a more humorous note (not that the last paragraph was particularly serious) Assault on Precinct 13 gave us a recurring problem of Carpenter's output emanating from the low budgets, I refer to the time flaws. In Assault, a father and a criminal chase each other around town for potentially a good few hours in high speed pursuit. Some of these scenes take place in daylight and others at night, begging the question of how this went unnoticed by the locals. Look, I know cops are pulling out and abandoning ship but surely a civilian would have called it in to a different station or been re directed? They must really believe in 'Omerta' in South Central Los Angeles. I'll buy it, if anything it adds to that Predator 2 look at the place through a horror lens.

In Halloween, something similar happens with Michael Myers not being faxed the rulebook of shadowing vehicles by staying a few cars back. To be clear, my knowledge of this does not come from excessive stalking but one too many spy movies. As for Michael Myers, he would never make it into the CIA but maybe they would overlook this on the account of his inability to die. A pretty useful tool come to think of it. Surprised actually that the CIA have never been interesting in a man like Michael. I'm not messing about, telling fibs or nothing but in Jason X, they hire David Cronenberg to fully study Jason Vorhees body and healing powers for use as a weapon.

Back to the scene in question with Halloween, the only person dumber than Michael though is Laurie and her mate who don’t even notice they're being tailed by the same car right behind them for hours with the change of sky colour. However, I can somewhat understand it though cause you can really lose yourself driving along with Blue Oyster Cult's 'Don't Fear the Reaper' blaring on the speakers. No care for those around you. Straight up vibing

When asked for the coolest and most badass film of all time, Assault on precinct 13 wins this no contest. The action keeps on coming and the synths hit hard. Presenting the precinct as being closed down is a touch of genius as it allows it to be a modern version of that small town western where criminals can outnumber the cops, a situation less likely in today's times when back is always nearby. Also, what's up with the title? Swear it's not even called Precinct 13 in the movie if you notice closely it's called something else. Oh well, who cares?

Even has the buddy cop formula with Austin Stoker and Darwin Joston teaming up. Once again it has that western feel in the way it tackles the law. As the film progresses, the cop and audience are invited to revise their thoughts on the outlaw and in the process come to respect him. Another film which blurs the lines of law man and law breaker, showcasing Carpenter's modern awareness of societal issues. He always does manage to weave his political messages in to the films without slowing down the action, making him arguably cinemas most economic director. So much of his political content becomes overlooked in the fun of it. The Thing had its anti cold war analogy in that the crisis could have been averted in the opening scene had the US and foreign camp communicated, Escape from New York was a post Watergate thriller in disguise and They Live could have only come from the mind of a man sick of Reagan's Economic Recovery Tax Act and the funding cut to anti poverty programmes.

Halloween then is something of an anomaly but only because it is misunderstood. Critics saw it as a championing of conservative puritan values in that the killer attacks promiscuous teenagers. As though Michael Myer's is sent to do God's bidding and promote celibacy and consummation as opposed to fornication. That old chestnut of 'You have sex in a horror movie you die' that Scream took the piss out of comes from Halloween. Odd though because it is against what Carpenter's career was all about and he denied on many occasions that was what he was going for. Considering Carpenter's political leanings, I'd say Halloween should be regarded as an unconscious critique of society's straight laced attitude and dedication to punishing innocent teens only wanting to explore their bodies, pleasure and outdated taboos.

Keeping up the Tobe Hooper comparison, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist both challenged traditional family and conservative values. In TCM, in a kind of sitcom satirising style it presents America's weirdest family. Poltergeist might have been tightly controlled by Spielberg but Hooper sneaks in one scene that would never feature in a Spielberg movie. That scene of the Mum and Dad smoking joints in bed and the father stoned out his mind and baffled reading a Reagan biography could well be the best moment in the film.

No point in believing the foolish critics that write about Halloween being a conservative movie, these same morons thought Assault on precinct 13 was a bad movie when it came out. Yes, as hard as it is to believe, Assault was released to terrible reviews from the US critics. It wasn't until British critics picked up on it that it began to be respected as it should have. Amongst the originally divided reviews was the notoriety of the scene where the kid shot when collecting an ice cream. Always found it hilarious to be honest. Time has not changed me. I will close off Assault by saying RIP Austin Stoker who recently died (so raise your next beer to that man) and the remake is not great but absolutely fine (Jean Francois Richet is too good a director to do too bad a job).

Assault brought acclaim but did not serve as the film to launch the GOAT. Hiring Jamie Lee Curtis proved to be the final piece of the puzzle for Halloween in 1978. This may have been her film debut but this young actress already had a buzz about her name. It is no secret she is the daughter of Janet Leigh, the star of Psycho. Curtis embodied the ghosts of her mother and built her own legacy in the process becoming the modern Scream Queen. And truthfully it is a title that no one has claimed from her since. I thought Florence Pugh was going to become the next one or at least the Crying Queen with that already iconic constantly weeping face in Midsommer but her careers gone utterly wank working in the MCU and with a fraudster like Olivia Wilde. Get back to horror bird! We love you over here.

Naturally, her presence in Halloween invited Hitchcock comparisons and with Carpenter's direction it was fully earned. Genuinely, some of the places he puts the camera in that movie is insane for his lack of experience. The close up of the hand smashing the window pre Terminator. The imposing POV shot inside the cupboard. The two shot with Jamie Lee in the foreground and Michael in the background rising from the floor like WWE legend The Undertaker. Chills down the spine.

As with Hellraiser, the original is undoubtedly the best. Easy to see why when it is the only one to be directed by John Carpenter. There is something about that man. You take your seat. You dip in to your personally selected cinematic scran. You take a sip of your beverage of choice. The lights go down. On the screen, it reads 'Directed by John Carpenter' and that first synthesiser note hits you. It's enough to send a man into hysteria with the rush of giddie excitement. Everyone has their view of what cinema is but in the words of Bong Joon Ho, "That to me is cinema".

Nostalgically, Halloween is a horror classic for the way it captures the experience of how you probably first saw it and were exposed to the genre. It encapsulates that naughty feeling of watching something slightly inappropriate and too old for you. The parents are out of town and the cool babysitter has arrived. Exactly the reason I be getting these cravings for a pizza and a coke. Not even a beer, a fucking coke.

Unfortunately, Halloween's sequel from 1981 sees him relegated to the side lines with a writing and score credit. Relegated being the wrong word, more so that he wanted no part to do with it and thought the story was done but if they were making it anyway he may as well get his pay check and push it in the right direction. Rick Rosenthal took over this one and in all fairness carved a respectable and solid slasher. Strong kills and a raw style as though a Friday the 13th sequel. Mainly remembered as the one set in the hospital with Laurie unconscious for half the movie so Michael can take out the stupid hospital staff. It is incredible that these people were doctors. Efficient and gnarly follow up but does little to advance the story. Expansion is the opposite of what this is going for though, instead opting for confinement with the location. The question on this film's lips appears to be how can we trap this story for a 90 minute window to deliver the goods?

I believe it was this one which first revealed that Michael and Laurie were related. This has always been a contentious issue amongst the fans because it sacrifices the unexplainable psychic nature of their relationship. Becomes too obvious and ruins that eternal mysterious question of why does Michael Myers keep hunting this one woman. David Gordon Green must be against the sister connection because in his recent trilogy, this element is wiped entirely.

For something so potentially pointless as Halloween 2, the hospital location has been referred back to in a lot of the newer ones like Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 (2009) and Halloween Kills (2021). Don't give me that Zombie's is a remake so had include it somehow business. That film is nothing like it and still chose to keep a few scenes in the hospital. Above all, my own fascination with Halloween 2 (1981) lies in how dreamy it feels. As it keeps so strictly to one location it smells of death. To me that hospital is purgatory in way, as we never really leave it, Laurie sleeping for a great deal of the picture only adding to this. Everything is written as though avoiding progression of story and offering the series a 90 minute post life. A continuation of action over development. Purgatory.

When you take in to account the beatings these two titans took in the first film, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to make. Even if you can't buy the characters being in purgatory, in a surreal and meta sense that's where the series feels like it is because of its inability to progress story. It is back, not exactly alive and will disappear again in 90 minutes. Halloween in a dream state.

Ha ha ha, now we get to Halloween 3: Season of the Witch . I've been alive long enough to know how hated this film once was. Tommy Lee Wallace's 1982 contribution was once deemed one of the worst movies of all time. Fast forward to 2022 and that's all forgotten. In this day and age it is regarded as completely fine with some outsiders viewing it as the best. I'll go with the stance it may have the best script of the series. Carpenter's idea for Halloween 3 was that every year they could create a new monster and that would ensure variety and stop the series resorting to the same movie every time. What an idea that would have been! An entire universe could have been created. Imagine it, Carpenter's version of a Universal monsters cinematic universe. But oh no, you losers out there had to rip in to this fantastic movie and so we never got that. Such is the curse of the series that any time they try to break away from formula, everyone kicks off and doesn't appreciate it for about 20 years, so they resort to the same old shit time and time again.

Coming clean, I have no idea how anyone could hate Halloween 3. In terms of pure style, it could well be Carpenter's finest work on the synthesisers and Tom Atkins is on fire as the badass investigating the murder. It takes that Beverly Hills Cop 3 Disney satire and blends it with The Wicker Man. Becomes this early '80s Reagan/Thatcher era seasonal sacrificial ritual as a corporate entities plot to secretly control the world. A very tongue in cheek critique of consumerism and capitalism. Has to be one of the funniest commentaries on the event of Halloween and its meaningless excuse to mass market and mass produce goods for the most vulnerable: the children.

If it wasn't for Darcy the Mail Girl's continual wind ups and pushing Joe Bob Briggs to the edge of his sanity with her #Showhalloween3 campaign aiming to have it screened on The Last Drive in, Halloween 3 would still not be as liked as it is now. Scary to think of the influence those two are having right now on horror in the internet era. Soon as they screen a movie, it grows massively in popularity and in some cases is critically re evaluated with its score increasing on Letterboxd. It's getting to the point where if you miss a week you don't even need to ask what was shown you can just tell because some previously reasonably obscure horror you've been trying to get hold for months is suddenly readily available on multiple streaming services and overnight has turned in to a classic.

Not to even exaggerate but there should be whole books dedicated to these two. After all, we're in the streaming age and these two have fully embraced that. If Jesse V. Johnson and Scott Adkins are to be lauded for taking advantage of actions switch from 90s straight to video to finding a home in streaming, then Darcy and Joe Bob deserve the same for horror. The pair found a way to revive the profession of the host. A role in which one curates a series of films and discusses them to an audience. A tradition going back all the way to Vampira in the '50s. That was all going to disappear. You have to remember that Joe Bob had been dormant for years in the early days of the internet. Fella was even writing science books under his real name. Game over. Drive ins got killed off massively, so then television became the hosts saviour but when numbers dropped due to on demand and the internet these guys were fucked again.

Luckily, Joe Bob's protegee Darcy was a lot younger and able to handle all the social media side because in reality that man couldn't have handled the switch alone. Not just the new technology but the politics of the new generation who might not have got his satire. Afterwards, though the guest slots and close relationship with Shudder, other classic hosts such as Elvira and Svengali have managed to make their triumphant return. You really can't underestimate the work Darcy has done for horror. My demands are simple: #Showhalloween3 on The Last Drive in. Or whatever she wants for that matter. She's earned it.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, which has been screened on The Last Drive in, is not just our slasher icon coming home. No, this is the new and improved Michael Myers. Wondering what that means exactly? Well for some reason he morphs in to Tom Cruise on this one. People seem to forget this but running alongside horror sequels in the '80s was the golden age of action movies and all those sequels. The two are genuinely more linked than you'd expect. Before I became such a horror advocate, I was hooked on good old American action. The likes of Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall and Robocop were personal favourites. if you go back and watch them, tons of horror in there. Have you seen that part in Robocop when they repeatedly blast away at the cop? Love that me. ACAB and all that, certainly one of the most insane and transgressive things to ever make it in to such a popular movie.

Those films were horror invading action, Halloween 4 is action invading horror. It can only be described as the result of hiring a director like Dwight H. Little, most known for Marked for Death (Starring Steven Seagal) and Murder at 1600 (starring Wesley Snipes). Therefore, we get such nonsense as Michael Myers cooly driving away from explosions and finding himself on top of trucks. Also Loomis is presented as some James Bond type. No more reading books for him, class is over, he's hunting down Michael down with a gun. Forget Laurie, this is where the series becomes the Loomis show. As a Donald Pleasance stan, I thoroughly approve of the move. Myers and Loomis come devoted to each other in an even gayer way then Riggs and Murtaugh. You heard me, it's buddy cop time!

By Halloween 5: Revenge of Michael Myers in 1989, Loomis is even more bat shit crazy than his counterpart. He will stop at nothing to get his man. Watch as he screams in the face of children about dead bodies, violently throws things and even use them as a bait. My man has well and truly lost it. Halloween 3's new monster rejected and they'd accidentally created another. What's that saying about the only one more insane than the patient is therapist? Fair play Donald P for somehow taking attention away from the event headliner. Apparently he was never not drunk on set during these two movies. More respect to him if so.

Oh no, it's 1995 and that means only one thing, time for the one I hate most, Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers. That fucking cunt Chapdog at it again. You may have remembered him from the last issue with the Hellraiser sequels. Joe Chappelle, infamous ruiner of my horror sequels. If I ever run in to this lousy hack, I'm going to demonstrate my invincible Toad style on him. Immensely strong and immune to nearly any weapon. Try defending against that you incompetent scoundrel. That'll teach you, you God Damn ratbag!

As you may have gathered, I do not think too highly of the boring mess that is part 6. about the only thing anyone remembers of this crock of shite is fresh faced young Paul Rudd before he came famous. He revives the character of Tommy Doyle and has some abilities as a computer hacker if I recall correctly. Imagine my shock, another 90s/early 2000s sequel attempting (and failing) to incorporate the internet. They all took their shot and they all missed the target. Much to the dismay of Captain Price.

Finally in 1998, they bring in an actually decent director with Steve Miner (Friday the 13th Part 2 & 3, House, Lake Placid and Warlock). A fucking pro. Hence why Halloween H20: 20 Years Later is an absolute banger. First off, Jamie Lee Curtis is back baby! And this features some of her best battles with her brother/lover/enemy depending on which you swing to. Curtis is hard here but not the hardest in the year. Not yet, that would come in Halloween (2018). However, you do start to get the impression that she knows the drill by this point. I mean you'd have to, wouldn't you? That big hunk of a man has been chasing you for 20 years. This ain't rookie season no more and this ain't this bitch's first rodeo. Fucking Michael Myers up is her bread and butter. And it's not like Mike takes it easy on her here. The bastards dodging knives like he's Neo in The Matrix. This film reeks of a Kevin Williamson post scream agenda and its indeed a sleek new package with ladies man Josh Hartnett at the forefront.

2002s Halloween: Resurrection is largely viewed as a real low point for the series but naturally... I fucking love it! Definitely the heaviest of the lot, I'm not pretending it's not. Infamously, turns the Myers House in to a Big Brother style game show with contestants tasked with surviving the night. A real what were they thinking moment. Not even Rick Rosenthal back in the director's chair could save this. Resurrection regularly occupies the bottom of series rankings lists but I must confess, I don't believe any movie which features Busta Rhymes bustin' a door down and giving the cheeky one liner, "Trick 'r Treat motherfucker!" And then proceeding to beat the living shit out of Michael Myers and electrocute his ball sack can be all that bad. That is the statement I'm going out with.

Not everyone shares this belief and that is why Resurrection single handedly destroyed the franchise for a good 5 years going against what the title suggests. A new era begins though in 2007 with metalhead Rob Zombie stepping in. Around the same time, Eli Roth was getting offers to take over Texas Chainsaw sequels. However, Tarantino warned him off getting lost in the studio system and to keep telling his own stories. It seems their contemporary Rob was unable to do the same. I wonder if he regrets this at all? Perhaps, at one moment in time that may have been the case but retrospective reviews of his films may soon or even have already changed his stance. Makes me happy that cause the guy did a wonderful job. That's the thing with this series, you can either play it safe, take a mild beating from the critics and fans but have it pass quickly. Or you can throw shit to the walls, see what sticks, take a ridiculous amount of abuse and waits for 20 years to be deemed great.

Rob Zombie's remake I have a lot of affection for mainly due to timing. When this was released in 2007, I must have been 10 or 11 years old and I can distinctly recall being truly horrified and appalled by it. It was the first time I'd been exposed to a movie a real snuff aesthetic. 100% this felt like something I should have not been watching at that age and that was part of the intrigue.

That's a feeling I've been chasing time and time again and one I've rarely re found. So I owe a lot to Mr Zombie for potentially being the one to get me on that pursuit of on the edge filmmaking, that really hits a nerve. Trust me this film is fucking gnarly. A measure for all studio horrors to reach. Compare it to any of them coming out today, this severely lacks that dull studio polish. An inspiration illustrating that you can work within the system if you're brave enough to maintain that edge and don't cave in to toning down the shock.

Everyone firmly agrees that Zombie's addition of the rugged and warn out mask was fantastic. Especially, after 4 and 5 became whiter and sillier losing that warped Captain Kirk look. Zombie's portrayed Michael as a tired survivor, refusing to give up his pursuit. Moreover, it comes this humorous comment on how tiresome the series had become and how long it had been going. It gives the mask greater power in its refusal to die and go away for good. Somehow it acknowledges all the previous films when its meant to be ignoring them as part of the rebooted package. Becomes very magical in that you have to accept the others do exist and Michael is immune to time and reality. The mask is a relic and like the spaceship in Event Horizon, who knows where it's been?

The contentious aspect of Zombie's remake lies in the expansion of Michael's childhood and the fact he gives evil a new name. There are many under the belief that the first act is overly long and clunky with the scenes shared between young Michael and Dr Loomis (now played by the sensational Malcolm McDowell). A move unforgivable by some slasher stans with it spoiling the pacing. This then leads in to another debated issue, was Zombie right to change the meaning of Michael Myers? Originally, Michael Myers represented an unseen evil always lurking that was his true power! Believing that side had been done to death, Zombie decided to put his own take on what he thought evil really was. Anyone who's seen at least one Rob Zombie movie knows his avocation of choice is Manson and serial killer folklore. Obvious to anyone who's seen 5 minutes of his repertoire. As a result, that's what Michael represents to him. Loomis then becomes like the media with even less morals than Michael, trying to capitalise on the situation for fame and succumbing to his dangerous obsession with the dark side of American history.

Due to that personal spin, the 2007 remake is one of my favourites of the series. A rare auteur vision and one that is bold enough to run with something. Whatever it sacrifices in pace, it more than makes up for in depth and character development. Michael's mother (played by none other than Rob's wife) killing herself watching 8mm footage of young Michael has got to be the most powerful and moving image out of all the Halloween movies. Often, Rob Zombie's films get laughed at and some extent its warranted, I just take them as guilty pleasures. However, it's The Devil's Rejects and Halloween that make Rob Zombie a strong contender for best US horror director of the 2000s. Understand that is not me saying he's a skilled director, he's actually a very clumsy director and that is his greatest strength.

I'm aware that may seem confusing and contradictory but allow me to explain. The reason his handling of America's dark history of serial killers is so irresistible and intriguing is because unlike other directors he lacks discipline on the subject matter. Where other directors have their own limits and boundaries, Zombie does not. He will go to the uncomfortable spots and whilst he's uncontrollably losing himself in the utter filth, he will accidentally find something genuinely profound to say, that others could not.

One should imagine him as the kind of guy who watched Taxi Driver once too often and became consumed by the idea that hero and villain can be too easy to pick. In Rob's mind if the audience can choose and label too quickly it's a sign of lazy filmmaking. Unfortunately he's not the graceful filmmaker Scorsese is but in his dodgy willingness to make you sympathetic towards his villains, every now and then he stumbles on to something great and more human than most directors. Halloween being a delightful example that really opens you up to the horrible homelife that created Michael Myers. A real study of nature versus nurture. Zombie wants to ask, could America have done more to help the young Michael? Did America create the monster?

It's well documented that carpenter and Zombie beefed for years over the changes made. On the one hand, I can admire Carpenter's point that Michael is stronger when being presented as the essence of evil over a particular view of evil. On the other hand, I'm of the opinion the first film said all there was to say about that. Every director who comes in should have their say on what they think evil is. That's what I'd try to do just make it mirror the times and try to engage with whatever people consider evil to be at that moment. Halloween becoming this investigation of evil over time. That would allow each to be massively different. What would basically happen is you'd have a similar concept to Halloween 3 with a new monster every film but it would be the same monster each time. You could keep Michael Myers each time but the perspective would alter. Same but different. Wouldn't that be cool?

This is why Zombie's remake is the best since the original for me because he was the only one who walked in and used the existing character and themes to say something personal to him. The only one of the bunch you can take out and go that's this directors film rather than just a Halloween movie. Auteur behaviour that. Give the silly metal man his credit where it's due.

Ok, so I know what you're thinking. Since I like the 2007 remake, I must be in the camp who thinks the follow up is this misunderstood masterpiece? I am not and nor have I ever been a fan of Halloween 2 (2009). Although, I can handle and defend Zombie's first ones deviations from the slasher movie, this one proves too much. Strays too far and for the benefit of what? Everything Halloween 2 says, Halloween 2007 said in a much tighter package. Yeah, I know it's odd that I can praise one for breaking from the mould and not the other. As I said, this ones too much and with too little benefit.

The sequel turns in to another Rob Zombie visual feast with sloppy writing. He's always been better at showing rather than telling. His attention to style the commendable part.

So like House of 1000 Corpses you tend to like it more on repeated watches once you forget the weaker writing and acknowledge the way it nails everything through style. On first watches you're too distracted by the messy plot. I remain convinced Tarantino ghost wrote some of The Devils Rejects. The writing on that one is too god for Rob's standard, I'm afraid. They were both in the Miramax family at the same time (pre Weinstein scandal of course) and Tarantino evidently knows the subject matter covering it in Natural Born Killers and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It's the way the set pieces work too, they have the Tarantino flavour. If my theory is true, they should just admit it and collaborate more often.

I feel no animosity towards Halloween 2 (2009) and would love to love it for how weird and beautiful it can be. Always up for hearing why people like it so much. Respect that Zombie went for something different but so little lands. He's got these Blade Runner like motifs with this white horse but what does it all mean? Where's he going with that? What tends to happen is that I'll read what people have said about it and think yeah but he did that in a much less boring way in the last film. Most of the bits I do enjoy in this entry are the slasher parts in the hospital and strip club, when he sticks to what he should be doing. This is not a take I like admitting to because I really want Zombie coming in and doing something wild and ambitious as he did here. That's what I'd prefer but still I don't like the movie.

Does have its moments though making it irritating that I have to score this near the bottom with Curse of Michael Myers. The whole concept, Michael in the off season, which is basically what this is, is hilarious. That's the kind of limitation every writer has on a seasonal exploitation film like this. Zombie's technique is more to explore Mike on his days off leading up to the next Halloween. I was convinced David Gordon Green's solution to the problem was going to be to actually make a trilogy set on the same night has that ever been done before? No idea why he abandoned this idea, I was intrigued how the final film would work time wise but he abandons this in the most hilarious manner. Maybe what we need is a Pulp Fiction style non chronological Halloween trilogy over one night.

Unfortunately, Zombie does very little with Michael's rest days or lieu days and it mainly amounts to Tyler Mane skulking around the countryside. Do have to mention Tyler Mane's performance as Michael in the Zombie flicks as being the only one to rival Nick Castle's. Based on the original Mane is better, assume this is due to him being very athletic even with his size, being a wrestler and all. His movements are amazing. Doesn't get enough credit. Both him, Derek Mears and Kane Hodder have managed to convey such emotion behind a mask, something most decent actors would struggle with. Their work is comparable with Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi, yet they don't get spoken about in the same vein.

Castle's take in the Gordon Green ones is even better than his one in the original. He stands unflinching and unmoving, responding to nothing it's so cold. Rarely in film do you see such an aged psychopath. When he's not wearing the mask, I approve of their lack of focus on the face, these scenes only illuminating his body more. An emotionless giant of a man, who reveals none of what he's thinking, reconfirming why the audience has been so hooked on this man's brain activity all these years.

Whereas, it was Zombie's camera man in his remake who seemed scared of what he filmed, this time it's the lighting guy. On the former it was all these erratic camera movements refusing to film anything for too long. This time the lighting guy seems to want out. I love how they shoot the scenes of Scout as Laure in that dingy bunker type place hiding out with her PTSD. Makes me think Zombie and his blood guy will attack a selected location, almost creating a murder scene. Then he just gets the poor rest of the crew to film this. These other dudes just want to do their 9 to 5 and go home to their families and here's Rob just subjecting them to the twisted corners of his mind. Love it.

David Gordon Green's entrance to the Halloween films came at just the right time for him and where his career was at.

I briefly mentioned in issue #3 that this guy was once the heir to Terrence Malick. Deservedly earned that title too with George Washington and Undertow. Yet to see All the Real Girls and Snow Angels but these are meant to be pretty solid in his original run. In 2008, he starts hanging round Danny McBride too much and you know what that means? Fucking doobies that's what. All day every day. Worked for them the first time with stoner comedy Pineapple Express. A film I now hate and not because it's bad. This would be because I had a bad experience last time I watched it, ok. Went seeing Aphex Twin down in Manchester one night back on 20/09/19 at The Warehouse Project. Remember the exact date because it's on YouTube, where I make an appearance several times looking rather mangled. I'd headed down alone because I bought tickets early thinking it doesn't matter if none of the fellas end up booking too cause Richard D. James doesn't do shows every week.

As always, the strategy when going at it alone is to get even more intoxicated. Might not even be strategy, could be cause you're talking to people less, so more sipping. Either way, you tend to end up absurdly drunk. Once the Twin wrapped up, Nina Kraviz rocked on up and I realised average DJ, mainly just great on the eyes, so I decided to scoot on out of there and wait for the first train. Missing reel for this segment. I suddenly wake up at Manchester Picadilly with no memory of getting there. Routine check of my pockets. Everything I came with: missing. What a fantastic effort. Some people just can't handle the Twin I guess. Went in to pure self hatred mode thinking, "you fucking amateur. This is why you come with people so that if you doze off you can get woken up you liability". I was convinced I'd been robbed (I hadn't, someone would later tag me in a post which featured all my things in Warehouse Projects Lost Property). You may be wondering where Pineapple Express comes in this story. In sheer frustration at believing I'd allowed myself to get robbed I became determined to stay awake and decided an easy film I'd seen many times would do the trick. Pineapple Express is that cool and popular film always readily available on the streaming. Fighting sleep and a wave of self hatred, I made my way through this movie. It is no longer funny to me. It is just pain.

After somehow carving a stoner classic, it goes to D Double G's head and so my man starts thinking he's Snoop Do Double G and ups his doobie count. That leads to his eventual downfall with Your Highness, which could well go down as the textbook definition of a good director totally losing the plot. He somewhat picks it back up with The Sitter, which is not good but it does feature Method Man, who is the coolest motherfucker to walk the earth. Thank fuck DGG realised at this point, it was time to put the spliff down and get back to work as being Malick's heir. Fully rate Prince Avalanche, probably need to rewatch Joe but don't think it was as good. Can't say I've seen Manglehorn or Our Brand is Crisis, so no comments there.

Stronger I refuse to watch. Look at that fucking poster and title. Honks of Oscar bait. Reeks of the shit. You know the drill, 'play a cripple, win an Oscar'. Disgusting. Hate those kinds of lazy physical performances. They're so obvious. The equivalent of getting down on your knees and begging for an Oscar. Not on my fucking watch. Odd one that Jake Gyllenhaal. Had that unstoppable run of form between Source Code and Nightcrawler. You knew he was going to be good before all that with Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain and his best performance to date, Zodiac. These days he's taken his foot off the gas. I don't mind him having a good time in something like Ambulance every now and then but he's taking increasingly less challenging roles lately. Needs to get back to his brand of playing unhinged freaks and not that quirky Marvelised unhinged freak.

Right that catches us up with DGG coming in to Halloween. He'd fucked up his stoner films and his more serious efforts had been found lacking. Halloween offered the opportunity to smartly combine his two different styles. A stonery arsty horror, it was his one shot at getting his career back on track and for the most part he pulled it off, getting some of the best reviews of any film with Halloween in its name.

Typically, Halloween films do not get good reviews on release. Critics will pretend the first was unanimously liked across the board, it wasn't. Any of the more respected ones have earned that over time. DGG's first one has got to be the warmest reception, any of them got on release. He may not have been brave or overly ambitious but most of us were left thinking we're on the right path for an opener. Sequels will hopefully be better but the foundations were there to build on.

Often empty but continuously economic is how I'd describe Halloween (2018). As a slasher it works perfectly fine. Some will say the generational grief is superficial, not sure I agree, that side really holds up on revisits. Obviously, there's Karen's trauma and view of the world which has been shaped by protection bordering on abuse. What really hits hard for me is Laurie's PTSD. They turn her in to a Sarah Connor badass figure but the most revealing scene is when she invades the family dinner. You go from laughing at Laurie as she begins downing the nearest glass of wine to really feeling bad for the woman in seconds. Visually some extremely strong depictions of grief, there's such dread it freaks me out. As though, this is not just Laurie reflecting on her troubled relationship with Michael but Jamie Lee Curtis reflecting on her troubled relationship with Laurie Strode. An inescapable haunting role that has been her whole life. Similar actually to Zombie's mask contribution but here the role itself becomes a relic connected to the full series despite being a reboot. By far Jamie Lee Curtis's best work as an actor that scene.

All those ideas are expressed visually without the need for dialogue aiding the economy. An aspect the critics always miss. That's how this film keeps the strong pacing. Show not tell.

Likewise with the manner the predator/prey theme is hammered home. Mirroring shots from the original and swapping them round such as Laurie standing outside the school, falling off a building and disappearing in the next shot. Of all the films, this one is the best for the Laurie/Michael relationship. Bizarrely, they got it right here and in the two follows up laughably wrong to the point of parody.

Honestly, Jamie Curtis plays 3 different characters across the trilogy. In the first film she's a disturbed woman pretending to be in control. Then for the second she removes the desolation and so the 'hard' 'badass' remains and looks pathetic and unbelievable. She forgets the first worked because the badass was a front or a character created on top of her character to mask the pain and create the illusion of control. In Halloween Kills, she buys in too much to the Sarah Connor character and you never see the weaknesses. It's bullshit. You lose so much of what made her so interesting in the first for fucking pantomime. Out of nowhere in the third she begins accidentally parodying sound nans who encourage grandkids to make the most out of life and all that nonsense as though she never had any traumas and fears of the big wide world to begin with.

This is strangely not a take supported by all Halloween fans but I adore Carpenter's reworked score for the 2018 film. I'm here for it. It sure does have a rougher industrial edge. You don't even want to know how many times I've listened to 'Michael Kills Again'. That's my jam! When that sleazy fucking exploitive journalist starts crawling under the cubicles is some mean and nasty business. Got to give it to Green, his trilogy has been adequately gnarly. Masterfully, he decides after the cubicle slaughter, this is the time for Michael to be reunited with his mask. Perfect. That's cinema! When my boy lays eyes on that mask of his, literal tingles down the spine. Maybe even some, I believe you call it, emotion.

After the slick and efficient Halloween (2018), all the critics turn on Mr Gordon Green. He is no longer their darling. Many would describe Halloween Kills as a return to the shallow sequels that stagnated the series.

Won't lie that got me a little excited and probably more than I should have because I happen to really like those 'shitty sequels'. So it wasn't the diss those guys thought it was. Not to this Halloween junkie anyway. Even if that was to be the case, before watching I assumed that although lacking in substance, it would still deliver as a solid slasher. DGG has showed us there's a few things in his repertoire that could never make his Halloween films dull or not come through on some basic level. In the first two of this trilogy, a real guilty pleasure of mine is those repeated shots going from toe to head. Our boy DGG, has a real habit of shooting Michael this way and then Carpenter's score begins blasting. Oh god these shots are so wickedly menacing they get me giddie every time on a level equivalent to the ascending texts that open Star Wars films. Juvenile I know but man that shit gets me every time. Don't care how good or bad the film is just happy to see that. Every time.

Alright so this is not something I've really seen anyone comment on but I don't think Halloween Kills is the hollow experience unworthy of your attention the critics have made it out to be. Note though that this is not necessarily me declaring it as good. It's a total mess but it is interesting and not because of anything intentional for that matter such as the pseudo intellectual commentary on mob justice. My intrigue in Halloween Kills lies in the fact it, I want to say achieves but more accurately accidentally achieves something I've never seen in any of the countless sequels to 80s slashers. Halloween Kills presents the experience of watching a series really eat itself right before your very eyes. Honestly cannot name another sequel in any series to do it in such bonkers fashion. By this what I mean is that you have this clearly intelligent director who's well aware of all the different avenues the other Halloween films have gone down and what could be considered a fresh experience. He has this brilliant idea of Haddonfield finding its voice and speaking up for itself. Therefore, we get the survivors thrown together like the Losers Club in IT

Tommy Doyle returns and everyone gets their chance to finally speak. Whereas, the 2018 film was about a family's grief, this culminates in a town's grief. DGG nobly attempts to address all these characters who have been ignored all these years and tie up far too many loose ends. He poses the serious and rather real question of what if a town had to deal with all these horrors repeatedly?

The gargantuan task proves to difficult and the scope too large even for a highly talented filmmaker like DGG. That's what grabs me about it, the failure. What he's attempted to do is mess with film logic and real logic and the results are just nuts. It would be the equivalent of a Godzilla movie trying to acknowledge the damage and devastation done to their cities every few years. The rebuilding process is just usually ignored isn't it. You could say the same about superhero movies with their world ending third acts. They're in a situation where they couldn't possibly explain it. We're too far lost in the cartoon world and suspension of disbelief. That's why they have no impact anymore because lives don't means shit. It's a world in which half the population can disappear at the click of a finger but at the same time return at the click of a finger. Stakes are gone.

In Halloween Kills, we end up with one of the wildest experiments in franchise filmmaking as it tries to escape cartoon world and return to some sort of real world with genuine human responses. Normally, with sequels a common technique is to sweep certain questions under the carpet that are too hard to handle in order to sustain the series. Some things just can't be done and with each other passing film comes even harder and we as an audience accept that to some degree as part of the movie logic. It's that familiar battle of we need an excuse for the film to return and so we need to accept some fundamental parts that don't justify its existence. It turns out the question of how has Michael affected Haddonfield is too real a question to answer and far too late but DGG goes in to it so head on that it becomes surreal. He's gone digging about where he shouldn't have in a series dirty secrets and Halloween Kills is the result of that.

Ultimately, it's what happens when a filmmaker comes up against the troubled mythology across a series and tries to get things back on track and make sense out of conflicted, misremembered and constantly changing legend. I fully believe that Halloween Kills could have only come from a smart filmmaker. Other filmmakers would avoid challenging legacy and detract attention from plot holes. That's where the dumb can find quick success in not rocking the entire foundations. They can be the safer pair of hands for a studio because they won't ask too many questions and even better let the audience ask too many questions. These sequels are always eating away at themselves in the way they have to adapt to survive. The job of the nuts and bolts safe pair of hands is to ensure that happens in the background so that it's only revealed a few films later and some other sucker takes the blame for that as the series collapses under film logic and real logic.

Halloween Kills is an even better failure than most failures because most of other sequels die when the questions become too apparent. Alternatively, Kills goes out tripping itself up trying to answer the questions. It's a different kind of death, a hero's death. One in which it takes out the garbage and becomes the garbage simultaneously. Recycling its own shit trapped in an endless loop (think The Human Centipede chains eating except circular). The delightful thing is you see this process occur on screen rather than just in your mind. Hence why the films history eats itself like never before.

To sum up the difference between this remake and Kills, I have always said that DGG's first is not exactly armed to the teeth, it has just one plan. One simple idea and it nails that beautifully. On the other hand, Halloween Kills is not exactly armed to the teeth. It has just one plan. One simple idea and it fails that beautifully. Genuinely, I struggle to decide which I prefer, the sturdy first or the shambolic second. Obviously, in the traditional sense it's got to be the first but I can't say I've ever seen anything like the second.

First and foremost, Tommy Doyle vs Michael Myers is pure box office. Every time Tommy D takes to the streets with that bat in his hands, I'm ready for a showdown. Name a more iconic duo than Tommy and old Huckleberry. This death match gets utterly ridiculous. Instead of representing abused vs abuser it descends in to a dumb borderline Kaiju fight. Can't say it doesn't entertain me though. Once more DGG's attempts to humanise Haddonfield only turns the townsfolk in to aliens from another planet as they continuously chant, "Evil dies tonight".

My appreciation again lies in its unfamiliarity and surreal results. Eventually, Halloween Kills morphs in to a dumbass trashterpiece of Frits Lang's M. Has DGG morphed in to Kevin Smith in his midnight movie era influenced heavily by narcotics? It all reminds me of Red State's climax when the sirens start blaring, we're threatened with the apocalypse and enter uncharted territory. The weed reaches its peak. These guys become conductors once their films transcend good and bad in that they can only be described as 'operatic'.

To round off Halloween Kills, there is one thing I cannot go on without mentioning. I have seen the Myers house turned in to some pretty strange things in my day. Namely a big brother house organised by Busta Rhymes but even still nothing could have prepared me for Big John and Little John. Either you know who these two gentlemen are or you do not. All I will say is that they are the two chiefs that I have loved the most from all the Halloween movies. Begs the question, when are we getting their prequel spin off sitcom?

Right, so where the fucking hell did Halloween Ends come from? The first two felt connected as part of a trilogy and then this third comes off resembling a reboot. DGG covers everything in the book of what not to do for a finale. Reminds me of the end of Twin Peaks Remember that night when Lynch spent the majority of the last episode refusing to tie it all up as the shows leads drive around fucking relentlessly and then leaves you with more questions than it started with on that insane cliffhanger?

Comparison doesn't quite work because what was so funny is how much of the penultimate episode went about solving the puzzles leaving you with some hope of finally figuring out just what the fuck Twin Peaks is really about. Kills answered many questions but left with you with a gigantic problem of how do you kill Michael Myers?

For a good year we pondered the question. Was DGG actually going to kill the unkillable? He left you thinking, "sounds impossible but maybe he's found a way to do it". Turns out he did not have an answer leading to the most unsatisfactory conclusion and yet somehow I still loved it. Godfather fans will recall Coppola returning to his Part 3 and titling it The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. A cut so brilliant it made me re evaluate the entire movie. There's so much good in it! The corruption of Catholicism and the church makes for a mighty story. Everything is a business in Coppola's eyes and no institution stays ethical.

When they make it to Sicily it's beautiful! Turns in to Richard Linklater's Before Midnight with this couple late on in their relationship trying to rekindle whilst talking bullshit and walking around gorgeous locations. Kate desiring to see the man before the monster and separate him from the generational troubles handed down to him by his country. A lot of that makes The Godfather trilogy feminist once you start delving deep in to the true meaning "this Sicilian thing" and the effect it has on the wives. I'm still waiting on someone like Sofia Coppola to do a mafia movie from the full perspective of the women in the families. On rewatches, it's their little interactions between each other that interest me. They have a kind of comradarie in their shared experiences.

In part 2, Connie even helps Kate against Michael's wishes to some extent. What goes on between these women when the men are in the offices? The Godfather movies merely suggest it but there's room for a movie there. Back to Part 3 specifically though, is Michael's confession the most powerful and hard hitting scene in cinema? I think so. Appeals to the Paul Schrader fan in me.

I mentioned that equally divided trilogy closer though because many argued over whether the title was right. Was it really a coda? I wonder what these very same people make of Halloween Ends if it was called The Halloween Coda, The Death of Michael Myers. Nope, instead it's simply called Halloween Ends which even before seeing the movie doesn't feel appropriate either and nothing more than a marketing strategy. One used countless times before and will be used countless times again. Most of these slasher villains can't be killed because of one obvious reason. The fucking money in it. They're protected by the profits but with Michael it's something deeper with that.

So how does DGG avoid the question of how to kill Michael Myers for the majority of the movie? Out of nowhere, he decides to do a remake of Christine. No warning, just goes in to it. Yes, the fucking head the ball forgets what John Carpenter movie he's supposed to be re imagining. Myers takes a real back seat in this one as though following on from concepts delved in to in The Season of the Witch and The Curse of Michael Myers. DGG going that route. Did the critics really get to his head on the first film in his trilogy when they called it too simple? Somehow his third film could be even more ambitious than the second and fails just as gracefully.

Whether you will like or loathe Halloween Ends depends solely on your feelings towards new comer Corey Cunningham. Even saying his name gives me the giggles. He has rattled some of the most ardent Halloween fans. going back to Twin Peaks, it's like Dale Cooper and Dougie Jones. All of a sudden, this imposter appears and you just have to roll with it. You see, me, I've caught Coreymania and I don’t think I'm the only one. Corey fever is sweeping the nation baby! He's an absolute loser but I love him. Those scenes of him going to gaffs with Michael and killing people together are adorable. Proper bring your son to work day vibes.

Another bizarre thing about Halloween Ends is that so much of it is this beautiful hangout rom com. Swirling synthesisers as Corey and his new girlfriend Allyson ride in to the night on their motorbike and rendezvous on rooftops romantically discussing leaving this town for good. Can I make a third Twin Peaks comparison? Am I allowed to do that? Is this Laura and that geek James Hurley in Fire Walk With Me?

Probably not. Anyway, I am so down bad for Allyson in this movie like never before in the trilogy. Somehow she's even more appealing now her ex is dead and if weirdos like Corey Cunningham can sliver in the DMs maybe anyone can. The goal has never been so open. Allyson take me to your Dead Kennedy's parties, I want to dance to 'Halloween'! There's even a bit where they ride about on the motorbike at night to Boy Harsher's 'Burn it Down'. Wasn't I saying only in the last issue, we need more Boy Harsher in horror?! Later Michael goes on a killing spree to The Cramps 'I Was a Teenage Werewolf'. A scene which I adore for two reasons. Firstly, it proved DGG can stray from the slasher and get weird but then when he needs to snap right back in to slasher mode, he's got the tools and can do it like THAT. More importantly, because Darcy the Mail Girl has a cameo in this scene. In the words of Pearl/Maxine, she's a "fuckin' star!"

Characters wise, what on earth is going on with Laurie in Halloween Ends? Who has she become? I get Michael's become weak with age. Absolutely pathetic swine spends his life in an asylum, breaks out and can't last five minutes. Fucking fraud. Throughout this trilogy, they've touched on the that psychic connection between the two characters but I don't know what Laurie is meant to be here. Is she weaker or stronger than ever? Doesn't even seem plausible. Spends her life in fear, hiding and training. Then that paranoia just disappears? No visible scars? Halloween Ends becomes this 80s rom com of girl living with a relative one summer trying to reconnect with the world after a family tragedy. Normally, at their aunties and uncles but in this case granny Laurie. Allyson seems more affected by the tragedies they've succumbed to. Laurie dangerously pushes her in to getting over pain and invites her to explore the world. A far cry from the woman who turned her house in a giant trap and dedicated her life to fighting. Watch as they attempt to function like a regular family making meals together. Totally unbelievable but watchably surreal.

6. Halloween Ends (2022) 7. Halloween 2 (1981) 8. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) 9. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) 10. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) 11. Halloween Resurrection (20002) 12. Halloween 2 (2009)

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

And the solution to all their problems is to shove Michael in a giant meat grinder? Why did no one else think of that? Plus in the end it looks like old age really killed Michael. The myths of the bogeyman are bullshit. Who knew that if you just wait it out, he'll die eventually. Behave. Have to say, the ceremonial drive with Michael Myes body on the roof of the car blew my fucking head off. Eerily shot similar to the OJ Simpson Broncho chase with the eyes of the nation on this one event. Only a dude like DGG would attempt such a thing. That's why I praise the stupidity. If nothing else its creative stupidity.

Fuck, just remembered, I shit you not, during the entire movie Laurie is writing her memoirs. Another laughably bad decision. What is this Nan tales? Agony Aunt? Scouse Ma? Thankfully, they choose to end it on a slightly better image. Laurie and Sheriff Hawkins in one of their romantic moments. Sorry those always get to me. When they chat about that Bloody Ben Traimer in Halloween Kills. Amuses me that we've never seen this guy in action. He's been with us since 1978 as Laurie's off screen crush but we've never laid eyes on him. Destined to be in the next surely. Oh wait, just googled this fucker, he was in Halloween 2 (181). That's finished me. Will have to revisit that one. Need to see this beast in the flesh. The real haunting figure of the series.

Halloween Ends finishes in the best/worst manner. None of it is remotely believable in being the end of Michael Myers. We're talking minimal satisfaction and convincement in his demise. But none of that matters though because Laurie and Sheriff Hawkins are happy. That's what we really come to see! Then they throw up the title card, 'Halloween Ends' and drop the unofficial theme song, 'Don't Fear the Reaper'. Yeah something ended alright but I'm not quite sure bloody what. I'd had me 2 bottles of wine over the course of the movie in Rambo reviewing mode. Maybe I was too drunk to care about how bad a finale wrap up closer it all was because I came out flying and singing, "Don't fear the reaper la la la la!". No kidding I was like that viral video of the fight in the takeaway, all the critics and Halloween fans scrapping each other and I was just like the dude eating the kebab. On Cloud 9, I felt like a man dancing on the ashes of a burning fire without a care in the world. You could tell me it was a mess by all means but you couldn't tell me I didn't enjoy it.

DGG did everything he shouldn't have and still I think I loved it. Was all too humorous and entertaining to hate sorry. Worked more as a 80s romance or melodrama than a slasher. Should have titled it 'Two Girls Find Love in Haddonfield'. Genuinely, this has more in common with George Washington, Undertow and Prince Avalanche than being a sequel to Halloween. In that sense, it's nearly incredible in almost being the only one since Zombie's remake to have a director come in and make it their movie with their own recognisable style. Will the future be kind to Halloween Ends?

Kinder maybe. No doubt someone else will come in for a trilogy and opinion will change and people will start saying David Gordon Green saved Halloween like they're now doing with Rob Zombie's. I don't know. It's happened before and it'll happen again. Not that I think it’s a misunderstood masterpiece or any of the sequels are for that matter. I can't even say whether my love for Halloween Ends is purely an ironic love or not. I'm just a dude who had a good time at the movies. Who's to say whether it's good or bad. For me these DGG misses are much better than most director's hits.

As for that burning question of whether Michael will be back? Of course he will. They put the son of a bitch in a meat grinder but he'll pop back up like "Call an ambulance...but not for me!". Unless we find a way to confront the evil in our society and wipe it out for good, then Michael Myers will appear forevermore and haunt our screens for decades to come. He'll be back. He'll be back lads. Don't fear the reaper la la la la la!

Oh the VHS movies, how as horror fans we are at their mercy. They promise the best new talent in the genre and do they deliver on this? Yes and no. To put it simply, the format is that of an anthology so as you expect, you see some of the best and worst coming from a bunch of young dudes trying to leave a mark. Most tend to be awful but you have to remember the budgets on these things and that it is just a bunch of mates having a laugh at the end of the day. Normally, though there is at least one standout and a few years later that director blows up and comes hot shit. So there's real appeal in discovering new artists as they emerge and following their careers. That one stroke of brilliance makes the terrible ones worth it.

I'm guilty of forgetting that every time, so believe me if you spend a good half hour screaming at your TV, "is this the best they can fucking do?" You're not alone. Best way to view these is like when you go checkout some local talent down at your regular spot. A few fucking awful bands don't tend to put a downer on your night do they? You just get a few beers down you, maybe chuckle to yourself and wait for the good act to appear. It's about the overall experience, hanging out with the fellas, sinking a few beers and checking out who's got the tools. Keeps you sharp. Good art shouldn't just be spoon fed to you every time, otherwise you'll forget what it is. Sometimes you have to actually do some work.

Looking back at VHS 1 from 2012 in a kind of where are they now way, there's only two segments I really remember. Adam Wingard's overarching story is the strongest with a group of robbers breaking in to a house and getting more than they bargained for when they discover some dodgy videotapes. We watch what they watch. Fantastic set up and use of technology. These filmmakers make no secret of their love of Amicus anthologies (not to be confused with Hammer Horror, The House That Dripped Blood is my personal favourite). These young guys though are essentially making a modern version of those in a new style with updated technology.

This Generations Greatest GrossOut Artist

Many would have known Wingard was talented from his proper 80s throwback home invasion horror You're Next Following VHS he made his best to date, The Guest. Another home invasion movie this time actually borrowing from Theorem and combining it with Rambo and Jason Bourne. The man's forever got my support for that movie alone. Even has Deutsche Amerikanische Freundschaft on the soundtrack as the killer menacingly walks across the high school dancefloor to Alles ist Gut not something you see every day! Unfortunately, he lost a bit of credibility going down a step on his next two with Blair Witch and Death Note. Fully deserves the shit it gets does the latter. His Blair Witch sequel isn't as bad as its made out to be. Of course, he commits a great cinematic sin of showing the witch but the way it uses the woods itself and expands on the mythology is overlooked.

I'm sure we can all agree though he's back in everyone's good books with Godzilla Vs Kong . For that he turned the Kaiju movie in to a colourful Giallo with numerous buddy cop and action movie references. Regardless of your thoughts that was a full on blockbuster with a sequel on the way as well a Face Off follow up in production there's no denying this guy's made it. Personally, I'm a huge fan based on the fact he clearly loves his action just as much as his horror. Keep up the good work, son.

The other standout of the first VHS is David Bruckner who creatively sticks a camera in some horny teen boys glasses and does this piss take on frat boy culture and perverted dodgy attitudes. Talk about a literal male gaze. Very gonzo too. Bruckner's name you may recognise from the last issue as the director of The Night House and the most recent Hellraiser. Whether he's talented or not remains to be seen but evidently he's made it and has been successful since his offering to the VHS series.

Other notable names attached to the project were Joe Swanberg, Matt Bettinelli Olpin, Tyler Gillet and Ti West. Swanberg is part of that mumblecore crowd with Greta Gerwig and Mark Duplass. Odd how those two circles overlap like they do. Whilst quite firmly established in that mumblecore scene, Swanberg is yet to have a horror breakout like his buddy Duplass on the Creep series. Bettinelli Olpin and Gillet ridiculously overrated fraudsters in my opinion but they have somehow managed to make it big with Scream and Ready or Not. Both of which are bang average. On the other hand, Ti West is setting himself up as the best American director of horror right now, which is remarkable because I can't remember his segment in this at all. You may know him from his double attack this year of X and Pearl. Fans of those? Well then I recommend you go back and check out The House of the Devil and The Sacrament All the other directors on VHS, I have no clue who they are. They've even had a second chance so to speak with another well known anthology movie Southbound and still not got anywhere. Maybe it's just not meant to be lads.

WHS 2 has just the one amazing segment and it's that good it makes up for everything. I refer to the one directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Evans. Martial arts enthusiasts will know these guys for making arguably the two finest fight movies of the last 20 years with The Raid and The Night Comes for Us Everyone knows The Raid but if you don't know The Night Comes for Us, do yourself a favour! These two directors were incredible, effectively stealing attention from Thailand's Muay Thai movies of the 2000s (Ong Bak, The Protector) and initiating interest in Indonesia's Pencak Silat. As Prachya Pinkaew made Tony Jaa a star, these two gave us Iko Uwais. For their joint VHS 2 segment, they beautifully mapped out locations and demonstrated excellent handheld camerawork.

Although, I can barely recall their segments, VHS 2 has a couple of other big directors involved. Eduardo Sanchez, Mr found footage, the filmmaker behind The Blair Witch Project. Also, Jason Eisener, a low budget big boy with bangers like Treevenge and Hobo with a Shotgun. May not have delivered on the big occasion but both are recognisable names.

After two well received films by the horror community, it all seems to fall apart with 2014's VHS: Viral. Not an entry, I've seen but it is meant to have nearly tanked the series for good. Unexpected because it still has a few decent directors involved. Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson's Spring is actually the second to last horror film to receive the full Kelly 5 Stars™ . Obviously, the last one being Na Hong Jin's The Wailing back in 2016. The Spring guys are high concept Lovecraftian dudes with a Linklater heart, surely they didn't contribute a bad short? Guess I'm gonna have to find out for myself aren't I! Nacho Vigalando is also listed as providing a segment, the director who made the well reviewed Colossal. Is VHS: Viral really as bad as they all say? Did these fellas all have an off day? I'll come back to this when I have the answers.

Luckily, last year Shudder took a chance and managed to revive the series with VHS '94. This time the overarching story is at its most impressive since the first with REC/Saw 2 vibes. Yep a SWAT team is busting in! Unfortunately, whoever's shot it isn't very good with a camera in their hands but it is saved by the Greg Anderson score. Sunn 0))) motherfucker! Bonus points for this. Don't get me wrong, I was a synth maniac in my youth but it's time we brought in more metal. And I'm not talking about Alice Cooper or fucking Kiss. Ok, it's worked in the past but there's been so many different forms of metal come in since the '90s, which are suitable and ready to be put with horrors most disturbing images. Yet, we're not using them. Why do we keep resorting to cheap John Carpenter rip off synths and cheesy 70s metal? When are we going to usher in the Electric Wizards? The Sunn 0)))'s? The Mayhems? The Bathorys? The Deaths? The Darkthrones? The Acid Baths? That hilariously trashy Mortician grindcore shit. Many will know that even better than me but its out there. All this shit is at a directors disposal and most of it was influenced by horror movies to begin with. It's time the horror movie caught up with these developments. Give me the Mandy's, The Devil's Candy's, Deathgasm's, Bliss's and Gummo's. I'm ready!

Winner of the best segment on VHS '94 is from a completely unknown (to me) director Ryan Prows. Chloe Okuno is now massive after the distinctly average Watcher Tjahjanto puts in another solid shift with some Tetsuo style mayhem. Steven Kostanski rocks up too, who many will know from Psycho Goreman and The Void. Now, this guy is actually the most popular of a group of horror collaborators known as Astron 6. Surprising because he's a far from my own favourite of the group. He's more interested in effects and monsters, which sure he's pretty gifted at doing but it doesn't interest me. I'm an Adam Brooks purist. Those unfamiliar with Astron 6's mischief should make their way through their two features, The Editor and Father's Day. Whilst I do prefer The Editor for the Giallo influences, the opening of Father's Day will teach you all you need to know about these guys. Brooks, dressed as Snake Plissken, chases someone down, gets out of a car, cooly delivers the absurd punch line, "Happy Father's Day" before blowing someone away with a shotgun. Boom straight in to the title credits.

If you happen to get converted like myself, then you're in luck, there's about a million short films you can get off their website. Some are on YouTube but yes you get the opportunity to download them as MP4s and pretend it's the file sharing and storage days before all this streaming business came in to play. By far the cream of the crop on these shorts are H.I.Z. and You're Dead. Wack on the former for a Friday the 13th 30 minute parody. Then lash on the latter for perhaps one of the only films of the last 20 years you could genuinely could convince me was made in the grindhouses heyday. Some achievement. From the cheap look, to the morally reprehensible viewpoint, it is nasty sicko shit like Maniac

None of these directors names matter on VHS '94 because as I said Ryan Prows emerges as the king and walks off with the prize. His segment is a mixture of Four Lions and 28 Days later. So wish I directed this and it definitely deserves a feature at some point. It's about a bunch of right wingers gathered together at a training camp when a zombie infestation breaks out. Trust me it's hilarious as it mocks the stupidity of its subjects. Chris Morris level of satire.

Ok, so that brings us up to speed for VHS '99, yes another 90s set one playing it safe. Out of the three I've seen in the series, this is my least favourite. No overarching story this time just some cheap looking stock motion. Female director Maggie Levin kicks off the proceedings with the utterly abysmal 'Shredding', an expectedly unconvincing effort at depicting a riot grrrl band to solidify the series DIY status. It falls victim to the yank trend of making punks too cartoony and unbelievable. Just a bunch of people wearing costumes. It'll make you cry out for someone convincing like Fairuza Balk, who lived and breathed roles. Rather just dressing up and making edgy pathetic statements in to a camera. Only causes films like Green Room to be even more of a rarity with its sublime performance from the late Anton Yelchin. This director also goes for some Avant Garde psychedelic editing, which can only be described as shoddy filmmaking.

Johannes Roberts suicide bid is easily the biggest disappointment of the lot. He's a British fella with a few hits to his name, in particular the 47 Metres Down movies, which will be known to the shark stans. Haven't seen his Resident Evil movie from last year but I really have time for his sequel to The Strangers titled Prey at Night Once you get past it being a misguided sequel ignoring the originals slow brooding atmospheric scares and torture porn, you can appreciate it for what it is, one of the best slashers of the last few years. It's so lovably old school! My love for that flick, had me thinking Suicide Bid was a segment to look out for. Had I not been aware who it was directed by I would have said he's a total amateur. In this story a bunch of girls meet up and one of them has clearly seen Buried too much as she stupidly decides to spend a night in a coffin. Awfully shot and the scares are just laughable. Once again, I can't get past how the US shoots its demons. Give me the Japanese fuzzy lo fi methods every time.

Leave it to the phenomenal musician Flying Lotus to save this VHS sequel, providing the elite entry and winning horse. 'Ozzy's Dungeon' is Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow on acid. A twisted throwback to the kid shows I grew up on in the '90s and early 2000s like Gladiators and Raven. The beauty lies in how much time he dedicates to establishing his chosen aesthetic. At first, I was like wow so you've proved to me you know your source material and you can recreate its look, something most directors fail at. But could you take it that one step further and do something interesting with it? Yes, he absolutely can as an act of gory violence causes us to go in to torture porn and revenge mode.

Those who caught Fly Lo's Kuso back in 2017, you will be acquainted with the particular brand of gross movie he's been trying to construct. A move away from the cringe comedy Animal House. The movie which first blended it with frat houses and led to teensploitation like American Pie and EuroTrip. His package is a lot less commercial and strives for midnight movie acceptance. Raw, shocking and transgressive art which takes nods from John Waters's Pink Flamingos, as well as body horrors such as Society, Tetsuo and Freaked. Maybe even a dose Frank Henenlotter and Troma movies. Expect puss squirting, faecal matter and blood to burst across the screen in abundance. The piss and shit abject art separating them from the blood splatter films like Blood Feast and Evil Dead 2. Make no mistake they are utterly disgusting works but in this territory, the grosser the better.

Difficult to score some of these highly, due to their unpleasant and downright foul nature but with Kuso, despite being a bit hit and miss, Mr Lotus clearly has a few talents in this department. His competition is former Tromaville employee James Gunn. Comparing the two reveals how they are on completely different paths. Gunn is sneaking his antics in to popular superhero franchises such as Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad. I'm genuinely excited at the prospect of him taking over DC's output. Under his direction, it is as though we have a man on the inside, one of our own. A perverted maniac. He's an auteur finding success in the studio model and fair play to him. His unique humour still shines through on those increasingly bland superhero blockbusters. The fake leg gag in the first Guardians movie being a classic example of something unmistakably his snuck in the picture. Easily the best superhero director right now because he manages to make them his own.

Alternatively, Flying Lotus is bringing it back to the low budget roots with a more in your face, it is what it is, unavoidable style. His segment in VHS '99 refines his artistry even further and is a move towards being able to do something really special with it. Apparently, at the films premiere, it was this section that received the most laughs and stole the show. Deservedly so, it is the clear winner. Looking forward to what this guy has up his sleeve for us next. Hopefully, he continues to retain those jazzy wonky beats that make his images even freakier and truly individualistic.

Tyler Macintyre's 'The Gawkers' is the biggest surprise of VHS '99. Yet to see his Tragedy Girls but will have to seek it out after this. Was meant to be pretty well liked. He rehashes some of Bruckner's frat boy piss take. It lacks some of the wit with the technology but it eerily mirrors that scene in American Pie when they try to spy on the stunning Nadia. No game changer but very funny, especially just seeing the perverted dudes getting up to no good in a hangout way.

'To Hell and Back' causes VHS '99 to go out on a real low. A sequence directed by the Winter siblings, who's recent Deadstream was lauded by horror fans. Their participation in VHS '99 is an incoherent version of Dante's Inferno demonstrating the worst of found footage when people run around screaming without any trace of a script or idea. Truthfully, I don't rate Deadstream too highly either but I can see why people were calling that the Evil Dead 2 of the found footage genre. Doesn't quite reach its full gonzo potential but it's one man showmanship is admirable and the influencer culture satire proved funnier and more effective than Spree. No idea, what they were going for on 'To Hell and Back' and it brings very little too the table.

Unlike previous entries, the bad definitely outweighs the good on this year's VHS movie. Yet I ask that you forget this in a way because my support of the series has not faltered. Even acknowledging this as mostly a misfire doesn't change the fact these remain an effective way of locating new talent. This time allowing us to see more of Flying Lotus's developing style. It's pure grassroots that you can't ever lose touch with. Hence why I don't care how many sequels to VHS or ABC's of Death they make. I don't care how many dreadful segments I have to sit through. Keep them coming!

Not long after those credits I get a call from Long Tall Sally asking if I was still going this Halloween party. let her know I'd make it but I would be leaving early as I had my outdoor cinema job the next day up in Castleton. As any reader knows, when you say those words it never actually happens. In fact, you're better off just not saying those words. Regardless, the idea was to have a few drinks and get back early, so with that in mind when that Friday came I set of with those intentions. On the way, I get a text from Bonehead Bill asking if I was out tonight. "Absolutely not", I replied and continued on to my destination.

As I head on up to the gaff, an unfortunate sorry son of a bitch is throwing up in to a neighbour's bin and so I know I must be in the right place. The guilty party looks up at me awkwardly, possibly mistaking me for a neighbour. I flash him a quick toothy smile and thumbs up then proceed to enter the establishment to await what further horrors are in store for me this evening. Our hotel porter over here resumes the technicolour yawn. Oh, what fine hospitality.

Upon entering the abode, it dawns on me these guests are young and I don't have a clue who any of them are. Jesus, was I now that older guy floating round at the university house parties. Is the mid 20's too old for that shit or is this still socially acceptable? What's the cut off for that? To avoid that whirlwind of bottomless thoughts, I decided it was time to look for Long Tall Sally immediately.

This proved to be a difficult task. I was suddenly assaulted by a sea of pirates. Everywhere the eyes gazed there were picaroons dressed from head to foot in stripy loose fitting shirts, spotted bandanas, fake beards, neatly tied sashes and armed with children's cutlasses. What could have provoked such a unified landslide costume choice? There was not a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie was there? I would have known cause somewhere Mark Kermode would have been rattled and me and my boy Balthazar Marie would have been in the cinema doing lines off chairs with our cocks out singing, "Shiver my timbers, shiver my soul" whilst trying to follow the unnecessarily convoluted plot. Yes, me and Balthazar are huge pirate fans.

One time I recall being at this gathering. Not too many of us, an intimate thing. Suddenly, we run out of the Bolivian Marching Powder but we're all having a good time and want to continue. The tradesperson is being typically unreliable and so the host suggests switching to ketamine. That was the only thing there and available. Now I don't know how you feel about the special K but I hate it. It is a stupid drug that makes people do stupid things. The last time I'd messed with that shit I was walking home like Tom Cruise runs. So generally I try to avoid it... but as I said we were having a good time and didn't want the night to be over so quickly. Well I finally made it back to mine on the Sunday. My chest was wheezier than that penguin from Toy Story. My voice was completely gone from talking pirate. My joints ached from all hands on deck. What had happened during those Hallucinatory hours? I checked my Last.FM for some indication of where the evening had gone musically. There was something that stood out instantly. One song had been played repeatedly. Between the hours of 7.29AM and 9.20AM, 'He's a Pirate' from the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack was played non stop, no less than 32 times. I can't even begin to imagine the idiocy of those 2 hours but I would guess it was something like in part 3 when Captain Jack is trapped in Davey Jones's locker. Did we really turn a living room in to the Black Pearl? I return to my original statement that Ketamine is a stupid drug that makes people do stupid things.

Even my own son, The Impossible Kid opted to go for the pirate outfit this year. First he spoke about going as a "pumpkin" but then he changed his mind to a "skeleton". Had to be like "Hey Weng Weng. You can't do that surely. You went as a skeleton last year". Cheekily he replies, "Yeah that's cause I have noBODY to go with". The kids a joker. Could see there was no talking him out of his skeletal inclinations and said, "Funny huh? Anyway, you do you. Keep it real, son" before leaving out the door. Spontaneously on the big night, my man rocks up in full pirate gear. They say the town was recoiling in fear because a 3 foot Captain Barbossa was knocking on doors trick or treating.

Back to the Halloween party of 2022, I was still looking for Long Tall Sally. Decided to ask one of the pirates if they'd seen her. The wanker pulls out a compass from his pocket and says, "I don't know sport, my north hasn't been working as of late". His friends laugh along with him as he smiles mocking me. Maintaining firm eye contact, I sarcastically laughed straight back at him. The room fell silent and I continued my search elsewhere. These guys couldn't help me. They were not normal costumed party goers. These were Davey Jones's Dead Men. Had I stayed any longer in there they'd have sentenced me to three life times of hard labour aboard The Flying Dutchman. Was I ever going to find LTS?

Finally, I found LTS and I soon wished I hadn't, you see the seasoned hellion was wearing black gloves, a white shirt under a black apron and to top it off stood menacingly with a needle in her hand. "No. No. No" I say before attempting to make an exit. She walks on over and asks, "are you ready for this?" "Absolutely not", I quickly throw back at her. Without listening to me she slowly pulls out a piece of wire from her pocket and stretches it just inches away from my eyeballs. Was I scared? I was terrified. She seemed to be getting off on her own sick insanity and Jacob Kelly torture fantasies. Remind me never to fall out with that woman. Some women know only pain.

"You had to do it, did you? You had to come as the bird from Audition. The scariest woman of them all", I said. The response I got from this was so disturbing I'm not even going to write it. Just know it was along the lines of all men deserving to suffer and that it was the time of woman. Yes, I was given a lecture on man hating and how we were all going to get it. Normally, I'd have replied with something silly to wind her up like in the words of James Brown, 'It's a Man's, Man's World'. Yet, standing there all imposing with a big fuck off needle in her hands, something told me that it wasn't such a good idea. Now was not the time to be stirring angry feminists. As we danced, she kept tapping down on the top of the needle, as though reminding everyone any time she could use it. I couldn't help but notice a crazed look in her eye. This woman was mad no doubt about it.

Halloween is for the children: The Impossible Kid goes full Captain Barbossa

Eventually, she asks, "just what the hell have you come as anyway?". Told her unless she was acquainted with 1910s French serials she probably shouldn't ask any further questions. LTS took this as an excuse for hostility and came at me with that big needle of hers. I was chased round the room and may have damaged a few household items in my struggle. Sorry to the host if you are reading this. I probably cannot afford to pay for the damages but I assure you, I'm very friendly and owe you a stern handshake and a drink sometime.

Told LTS to, "back off or I will palm you, bitch. Palm to the nose. That's an instant kill. It worked for Nicolas Cage in Con Air, it can work for me!". Shamelessly, I threw a defenceless woman on crutches who's name I didn't know in to the kill zone to avoid a deadly attack from that big ass needle. Didn't even look back as I sprinted in to another room. Not today! Wasn't taking any chances. LTS had clearly gone mad with power. The costume had taken over her. Apologies to the woman on crutches that found herself to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and is now possibly dead.

Moving towards the kitchen, careful to avoid Davey Jones's Dead Men, I chuckled, noticing a lone man stood in the corner with his back to me. He was dressed in full cassock and sunglasses, unmistakably trying to be Jim Jones. The fella looked rather mysterious and even more out of place than I was at this university house party. Couldn't quite get a proper look at him because he was hunched over the sink. Something struck me as odd though. Wait a minute, I'd seen this behaviour before. This guy was robbing drinks. Out of respect for his whole act, I walked over with a smile on my face, ready to surprise this guy and say, "Love the outfit, pal". Before the words could leave my mouth, the man turned round and I realised I was staring straight in to the eyes of Bonehead Bill.

"Fuck off, what are you doing here, lad?", I asked him politely. "was about to say the same", he replies. Asked him if he was robbing beers. He confirms. "Pass one then", I said relieving the tension slightly. Casually, he hands me a cold one over and leans back against the sink. "So ... I thought you weren't doing anything for Halloween?", inquires Bonehead. "Mmm... last minute thing. Sally said come down", I managed to add quickly and unconvincingly, scratching the back of my head. "Yeah, Yeah", replies Bonehead knowingly, shaking his head. I try not to laugh and fire back, "what about you?" "I was in the neighbourhood", answers Bonehead casually. Thought about that for a moment and decided to move on. Made reference to his Reverend Jim Jones outfit and how we might need to have a word about this. Could be a little too outrageous going to gaffs dressed as the man who arguably slaughtered 909 people. 304 of which were children.

He informs me his original idea was to come as Willie Dynamite in full blackface. Says he had "the coat, the hat, everything. Wasn't quite lamb but close enough" "Without even touching on the obvious here, what has Willie Dynamite got to do with Halloween?", I asked puzzled. "Alright who you supposed to be, punk?", he follows up rapidly avoiding the question. Not too sure when he started calling people punk but I let him know I'd come as a "Vampire. The head vampire to be precise". For some reason Bonehead instantly rejects this saying, "Na. Na. What vampires wear turtle necks and a balaclava, I must have missed that Dracula movie". Set him straight on the subject informing him, "No. Not that kind of vampire. As in Les Vampires. The French 1915 silent serial". "Oh fuck off, Kelly", he retorts angrily. "What?", I added defensively.

Bonehead proceeds to go on a long winded one. Saying something like, "Kelly, I have put up with a lot of shit from you. First it was the 50s creature features. Then the French New Wave. And then came the porn. A lot of people gave up on that. But I stuck by you. From this obsession to that obsession. And now this. Silent films from like...300 years ago. Lad, they couldn't even speak then. This is all I can take, man. I've had it up to here. This is the final straw. When does it fucking end? Can't you just like be normal? Get a grip. Get a fucking grip, Kelly!". In a moment of madness, he launches his beer in to the floor and storms off outside. Davey Jones's Dead Men glance on over to see what the commotion is and I'm just giggling to myself.

How had this happened? I'd been insulted by Davey Jones's Dead Men, viciously attacked by the bird from Audition and Reverend Jim Jones had just given me his most damning sermon. Honestly, if I was going to survive this night, I was going to go down in the history books as the greatest final boy since that fella in Hostel. To up my chances, I decided I needed to get one of my three attackers back on my side. Since, I didn't want to see that needle again and Davey Jones's Dead men were fucking geeks, I felt my chances of survival lay in the hands of Bonehead Bill. As always, for better or worse, I was drawn to my partner in crime. Our paths inexplicably crossed for the time being. Fate kept placing us together and as Gerard Butler said in Law Abiding Citizen, "You can't fight fate"

Grabbed two more beers and headed on outside to make peace with my agitated accomplice. We sink a few cold ones and Bonehead hits me with his theory that Creedence Clearwater Revival are the best band of all time. Honestly, he brings this up whenever he's had a few to drink. It's neither something revelatory or new in his thinking. The worst part is every time, I have to get dragged up in it so I'm the real loser. Each time I explain, "Look chief. We've all got our favourite bands. Mine is Electric Wizard. Yours is clearly Creedence Clearwater Revival. But we both know the best of all time is The Beatles. Ok so maybe I'll allow Kraftwerk or Radiohead but it's definitely not Creedence".

Not taking no for an answer, Bonehead comes back with, "The Beatles? Ha! The Beatles aren't even the second best band of all time". "Who's that then?", I ask. You know who he came back with? Deep Purple. For fuck sake.

Around this time, we began noticing people climbing on the roof of the house. Apparently, the view from the top across the city is meant to be stunning. Being the view appreciators that we are, without a word of dialogue or second thought, we instinctively stood up and headed over to where they were climbing up. Took a bit of effort and I nearly slipped a couple of times but it was all worth it. No word of a lie that view was really something. We sat back and took it in with a few more drinks. Bonehead even pulled out a couple of cigars that he'd been saving.

Numerous people began piling up on that roof but it was fairly spacious. Bonehead Bill decides to hit me with a question, "Do you know who the greatest solo artist of all time is?". I sighed but since he did bring the cigars, I humoured him, replying, "Go on". "Roy Orbison", he declares. My response is not really an intelligible word but more a sound like "ooooooo" and I klink drinks with Bonehead Bill in approval.

After about our sixth round of singing, 'Pretty Woman', having exhausted 'In Dreams', 'You Got It' and 'I Drove All Night', we had another look out across the city. It was at this point, I noticed our disagreeable foes arriving, those Nope loving pseudo intellectuals. I turned to Bonehead and said, "Oh no, The Pseuds have arrived" "What? Speak English Kelly!", piped up Bonehead. "Those two who couldn't get enough of Jordan Peele's Nope", I explained. Upon hearing this, Bonehead stands up and walks over for a look. "They're chatting about that A24 film Men. That was shite that hahaha. No way they're calling it the next big development in elevated horror. More like the death of A24 with that kind of unintentional parody", I said. "Alex Garland's a fucking fraud who needs to be pulled from the director's chair before it's too late. Also anyone chatting about elevated horror is asking to get their asses kicked. Which one's their car?", replied Bonehead.

No sooner had I pointed this out, Bonehead Bill made his move off the roof and towards the car. Asked him what he was going to do as I followed after him and he kept repeating, "CSR" "What? Like CSI the TV Show?", I queried. He refused to explain what he had planned, leading me to step in front of him and stop the damn nutcase in his tracks. "Look, man. If we're about to do some shit, I'm not against it. Lord knows these fuckers deserve it. I just wanna know so I know if I need to move quickly after, ok?". Bonehead smiles and says, "CSR. Trust me". Then he proceeds closer to the parked vehicle, leaving me somewhere between frustrated and baffled at being kept in the dark on this one. I was about to say something about how we need to work on our team work but before I could, I look up and see Bonehead is standing on top of the Pseud's ride. He squats down over the open sun roof, pulls down his pants and drops a fresh turn in to the automobile. All I could think was sure Flying Lotus, you're pretty good but you've got a while to go until you become this generations greatest gross out artist. And in that moment, I realised what CSR meant. Chicago Sun Roof.

What Happens When a Lovecraft Fan has a Mid Life Crisis?

I don't think I'm alone in saying this but I really miss Stuart Gordon. The B movie legend has been dead two years and it's only now starting to hit. To many (and as much as I hate even myself until recently) this director is well known for his first two movies Re Animator and From Beyond. After The Thing and Possession, Re animator is probably the greatest cinematic undertaking in visualising the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Everybody praises it for absolutely nailing the aesthetic and tone. It was my first formal introduction to Jeffrey Combs and his mischievous and unorthodox Dr West. Too insane to be the good guy but too human to be the bad guy. His unpredictability, his rascality, it never fails to get me giddie. Hence why along with Snake Plissken, he ranks among my favourite movie characters of all time. Gordon's follow up From Beyond is another Lovecraftian endeavour with a similar cast except this time with greater sex appeal. So if you ever thought how does one go about competing with Re animator, Barbara Crampton and her sexy bondage gear have you covered here. A little kink never hurt anybody.

Unfortunately, for the average cinephile that's where it ends. When the truth is this guy had a lot more to offer and having now watched all of his movies, I can't say he ever made a bad one. I'm aware some fans grew a little impatient with him in the middle of his career due to some cheesier and lighter affairs but I have a lot of love for these. No one can deny though he was really on a roll with his last three films King of the Ants, Edmond and Stuck. Suddenly, lost in the midst of a midlife crisis, he grows more political and challenging when at that point in his life he could have been relaxing. What triggered this unforeseen means streak which brought about such hard hitting transgressive works of art? Most people get older and detach themselves from the world, what drew him in to the young man's game?

To illustrate the shock of these three final films, I'm going to have to go right through the gap between From Beyond and Stuck. Ok, so in 1987 his third movie, Dolls, is released. HP put back in the fridge, he moves over to something more commercial.

In context, I can understand why this may have rattled and alienated older fans at the time. Seen from the perspective of now though, this is a belter that aged well and is sure to be adored by my fellow Gremlins fans. Back when these kinds of attacking toy/doll movies were fun and silly. Before all these Blumhouse fuckers took them too literally and went for non stop scares. Without hesitation, I'll take the loopy manic Joe Dante method over trying to mature toy figure horror with jump scares any day. Also, Start Gordon regular, Stephen Lee could be the most wholesome man I've encountered since Sean Astin. They could be brothers these guys. Well more like father/son but they've got to be related somehow.

If you thought Dolls was too kiddified, wait til you hear what his next project was, a child safety video called Kid Safe. Been putting this off but I think in a few weeks I'm going to dedicate an entire section to a piece on public safety videos. Why the fuck are you going to do that Kelly? Well, firstly, cause these were jumped on and marketed as exploitation movies. An act which is fucked up because they featured real deaths from traffic accidents and were advertised in the same way as exploitation films focusing on the lurid content. They're basically snuff films that really question the nature of what can be considered educational. Way more disturbing than anything from the mockumentary Faces of Death that mostly pretended to be death footage and was too over the top to fool anyone. All this makes public safety videos interesting as a study on people's morbid fascination with death.

However, on closer inspection, the company that were behind these videos for children and teenagers, who had such close connections with the police force were pumping porn out the back door. Even captured some of the earliest footage of homosexual hook ups and then used it to imprison them all. Their connections went all the way up to none other than mysteriously missing and legally declared dead Teamsters ex president Jimmy Hoffa. I swear to God, it's a pandora's box that one. Consider that a little flavour of more to come.

To the best of my knowledge, Gordon's public safety film was not involved in that racket or produced by the same company. Seems far too innocent to be mixed up with that crowd. He takes the opportunity to turn it into an SOV (straight on video) horror film for the children. Joe Flaherty, whom you may recognise as the heckler who says, "You jackass!" in Happy Gilmore, plays a great vampire called Count Floyd. Also, our friend Stephen Lee from Dolls gives out some tips to a kid home alone on how to stay safe. Deeming this necessary educational material and I will be organising a viewing for my son. Protect the children.

Right, genuine question now, is Pacific Rim any good? You know the Guilermo Del Toro movie. Whilst much of the plot was ridiculously implausible and downright stupid, it does have its defenders who appreciate the dumb action b movie throwback of it. A rewatch could be in order. Reason why I mention it is because after Guilermo's movie was released, Stuart Gordon's 1989 movie Robot Jox was brought back in to the public consciousness and achieved cult status. Believe it actually resulted in the movie getting a Blu ray re release, which is cool. So thanks Guilermo. Many noted the similarities between the two films with monster machines. Gordon himself said it was like "DeJa'Vu" and that had there ever been a sequel he'd have gone the Pacific Rim route and it "would have been robots fighting aliens"

Exactly what separates the two is that Robot Jox is more of a competition or sport between humans. Becomes clear the script was originally meant to be more critical of US militarism and sports. If you can imagine a combination of Starship Troopers and Rollerball. Sadly, Gordon tones it right down and so it basically becomes a Kaiju version of Rocky and Top Gun. Disappointing that it dumbs it down but we're talking super cheese that goes well with a few beers. Those dirty bastards who listen to the Nine Inch Nails may recognise a sample from this on The Becoming. Rather sadistically, Trent Reznor uses the crowd screaming in pain after an accident occurs and they become crushed by a robot. Respect this from Trent though, has all the high art sci fi samples like THX 1138 and then this fucking thing. Respect that.

Openly, I'll admit to having a good time these last three projects but most people didn't at the time and our man was relegated to television for his next project. 1990's Daughter of Darkness is a TV movie about vampires in Romania. Not to be confused (as I did for ages) as a remake of the incredible 1971 lesbian vampire classic Daughters of Darkness. Gordon's vampire romp is widely considered his worst. Of course, it does have all the faults of a TV movie narratively speaking and Perkin's attempt at a Bela Lugosi accent slips consistently but I can't say I hated it. Gordon has a couple of delightfully hypnotic moments making the look and feel of it better than the immediate story. However, maybe I'm just really down bad for Sloane Peterson from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Need me an Italian baddie like Mia Sara. Do agree though with the consensus that Jeffrey Combs absence is truly felt. He would have torn up the floor with the coolest vampire you've ever seen.

1991's The Pit and the Pendulum should have been Gordon's critical comeback. A great decision to finally return to stronger literary influences to ground the work. This time replacing Lovecraft for Edgar Allen Poe. Both excellent in concept and execution but was deemed by critics to be an average addition to his catalogue. Generally, it's accepted that it is rougher and tougher than any Roger Corman adaptation but was often dismissed for not being as brutal and psychedelic as your Mark of the Devils, Witchfinder Generals and The Devils. Surprisingly, this didn't bother me because I still got heavily in the movie and the world it forged. Didn't need the violence on this occasion because you've got a solid cast tucking in to a great script. These guys know how to nail gothic atmosphere. In particular, Lance Henriksen taking it to 11 with his religious sermons. Richard Band does some of his finest work on the score. While I'm at it, respect to his brother Charles Band and Full Moon Entertainment for supporting my guy when he was supposedly down and keeping his career going.

Action afficionados may be familiar with Gordon's 1992 effort Fortress, starring the man with the weirdest accent on the planet, Christopher Lambert. They had the decency with Highlander to write it in to the plot and have it accounted for. Whenever, I see any of his other films, I just think, can we get to the bottom of that accent? Only way round it is to accept he really was Connor Macleod and Christopher Lambert was just the name of some actor he played during his time on earth. That is the only logical explanation. Fortress is a movie perfect for any Saturday morning action slot. It will cure any hangover. I'm especially partial to it as it combines the kind of futuristic dystopian prison movies I grew up with like Demolition Man and Face Off with Gordon's knowledge of body horror. So expect horror icons like Jeffrey Combs and Tom Towles to rock up. If I didn't make it clear enough, this is a very Jacob Kelly movie.

Here's a project that has no explanation as to how it came about, in 1994 Gordon directed the short film to be played before going on the Disneyland theme park Aliens ride. For the life of me, I couldn't tell you how or why he got this gig. Although, given the same sets as Cameron it's not that same level and is probably a taste of what it could have been like in Roger Corman's hands. Unfair though to really Gordon's capabilities on this as everyone is blatantly phoning it in and having a blast. Hilariously, Gordon hijacks Aliens and slots in his man Jeffrey Combs in a move comparable to Sam Raimi with Bruce Campbell on Marvel movies.

You may wonder how does one go about turning Aliens in to a ride. I'm fuming that either I never experienced this or was too young to appreciate it (unsure when they got rid of this ride) but they turned it into a giant bug hunt from the looks of this short film. You don't even want to know giddie the line, "We're going on the biggest bug hunt of all time" got me. Considering I'm under the impression that Michael Rosen's children's book 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' is the greatest piece of literature ever conceived, this big bug hunt was met with none other than great approval by myself. Aliens: Ride at the Speed of Fright is a fantastic film but as far as pre ride films go there's no beating the king of this genre, which is of course hands the Twister one, featuring Bill Paxton's stunning phoned in performance.

In 1995, Stuart Gordon gave us his biggest clue and only indicator as to how his last three features would be. Castle Freak is easily his best film since Re Animator and From Beyond. Interestingly, it marks his long awaited return back to Lovecraftian territory. Cue the big cheers from me and my Lovecraft boys. HP back on the plate. Except this time he isn't spraying the sauce neatly out the tube. This time he's going at a sachet with a rusty razor. Castle Freak resembles the kind of worn out VHS you might find at your Granddad's house and wonder, "what the fuck is that?". A '90s SOV release that is so raw you may even fail to recognise its Lovecraft elements. On this occasion, Gordon opts for a darker and grittier tone than his previous Lovecraft meddlings and I'm not joking but he turns this in to some '70s eurosleaze. From cheese to eurosleaze What a journey.

It's The Shining meets a certain horror film that was recently released and will be talked about in the next issue (in the words of Pusha T, 'If you know, you know'). Combs plays an alcoholic Dad who caused his own son's death due to dangerous driving. Crampton his wife, refusing to have sex with him whilst maintaining family stability. They inherit a castle in Italy and have to deal with a Castle Freak roaming the corridors at night causing havoc.

Unsure as to what a Castle Freak is? Have a look at your own ma for starters. We're talking ugly. A hideous monster that comes with the package. An unfortunate product of sexual relations that didn't quite go right. And they just didn't know what to do with him. Normally, he's chained in the basement but he has habit of breaking out. You gotta watch that. So stay on your guard. Gordon's film serves as cautionary tale to first of all be a good father but also if you do ever inherit a castle from a distant relative and that castle happens to have a Castle Freak, this is how you deal with the problem.

Going for an SOV release was always going to be a gamble. Meant a limited release but the move granted Gordon greater freedoms because Full Moon weren't aiming for a specific age rating. Therefore, allowing it to be gnarlier and include more nudity than some of his previous films. My favourite section is when Comb's characters falls off the wagon, picks up a prostitute from the local boozer and takes her back to the basement bar in his castle. Infidelity under the same roof as your wife but banking on the size of the castle to mask your insubordination. What a naughty boy! Apparently, Crampton (who is not adverse to nudity normally) was meant to have a few more revealing scenes but refused on the grounds that the castle was too cold. Any worries about the limited release were overcome when the film was met with great acclaim, winning the Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Independent/Low Budget horror film and went on to achieve cult status.

Despite the raw brilliance and gritty horror of Castle Freak, Gordon falls back on his cheesy action outings like Robot Jox and Fortress for his next film, Space Truckers. This is another situation like Dolls where I can see why this pissed people off at the time but taken away from that context it is the kind of campy fun movie you would have loved to see as a kid. Genuinely couldn't hate this movie if I tried. It continues a tradition of the low budget B movie rip off, so if you wanted to see this '90s Cormanesque version of The Fifth Element, the opportunity is here. I'm just glad the model survives in a '90s package.

Obviously, the plot and characters is a mess but there is an attempt to engage with O'Bannon's sense of class politics in space. I find it utterly charming in the way it takes working class trucker culture previously seen in films like Over the Top and Road Games and then applies it to the galaxy. Dennis Hopper's hot dog eating trucker becoming the hero of a Star Trekkian adventure. Absolutely charming. Debi Mazar looks very sexy too and due to overheating on the ship is regularly given an excuse to remove a few items of clothing. Lessons learnt from Castle Freak?

Charles Dance plays a human lawnmower having a few issues with his reproductive organs. Watching him awkwardly trying to rev up his engine (literally with a string, not a euphemism) was the weirdest equipment malfunction moment I've seen since Tarantino's melting member in Planet Terror. There is a strange relationship with sex in this movie as Gordon grapples with the limitations of the 12 certificate and leans in to the absurd. Commando and Mad Max's Vernon Wells appearing as a space pirate was the icing on the cake.

Only a fool would declare Space Truckers a masterpiece but I was won over by its redeeming qualities. Hollywood has a tendency to remake classics needlessly, purely to sell on an already established brand. Personally though, I think a genuine remake should come from weaker efforts and near masterpieces. Where most probably wouldn't, I see great potential in material like Space Truckers. Take that central character and really do something with it. Plenty of adventures he could be having in space, he's a great character. An everyday man who loves hot dogs being the hero, I've got time for it! Goes without saying that any remake would need to include Deep Purple's 'Space Truckin' as the theme song, a missed opportunity by Gordon, presumably for budgetary reasons.

Those looking for another Castle Freak, I can imagine nearly lost all hope when it was announced his next film in '98 would be a live action Disney film. After a lousy musical opening credits, I won't lie, I was seconds away from turning it off, hunting down every adult Disney loving freak and subjecting them to the acupuncture kung fu demonstrated by Wen Ting in The Clan of the White Lotus. These weirdos live to see another day though because this gets a whole lot better. The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit is light easy fun aiming to do for the Hispanic community what Cool Runnings did for Jamaicans. Just dudes having a good time, trying to pick up women looking suave. The titular suit allows these guys to realise their deepest desires, which was actually adorable. Becomes a social commentary in places and given the structure, it's clear how it was able to be adapted in to a popular play. This even has Gaff from Blade Runner, I maintain the belief that if he's happy, I'm happy. It's no El Mariachi but it's too much of a pleasant time to hate.

Finally in 2001, Gordon really tests my patience. Odd because Dagon is well regarded by his fans. To me though, now more than ever this seems like a director past his prime. A 'Game Over' in many ways with Castle Freak over half a decade previously and 15 years since Re Animator/From Beyond. All that prior success feels like lifetimes ago. Still scarred from the abysmal opening act that showcases some of the worst special effects committed to cinema. I was like, "Come on Stuart, what the fuck is going on?". Dude must have heard me cause once it abandons the shaky survivalist thriller and gets Lovecraft it picks up. Subpar but that kind of standard you can forgive in a late career stage. Glad just to have a filmmaker you adore still in the game.

Ezra Gooden with his nerdish looks is meant to be a stand in for Jeffrey Combs but he's not even fit to tie the King's damn laces! None of the same quirks or sense of mischief that made Dr West such an enduring character. Like the film itself, Gooden grows on you and somewhat tries and to redeem himself. Once he's setting fires, threatening to shank people, hot wiring cars and picking up honies, I was left thinking, "I might have misjudged you"

Only towards the end of act two does this movie illustrate what makes Gordon great. There's this flashback exposing the truth of what happened to the locals of this small town and Gordon comes in armed with that surreal atmosphere. There may have been 'pirates' and I may have been tempted to dial Balthazar Marie and just scream down the phone, "Shiver my timbers, Shiver my soul!". As soon as you embrace that spirit of the picture, it becomes a lot more enjoyable like Carpenter's The Fog. Unfortunately, more so than say Space Truckers, the tone seems at odds here. It's as though Gordon had changed too much and couldn't make a single one more of his earlier kiddified movies from years back. He's ended up putting one of the goriest face lifts you've ever seen in a movie that at first glance looks to be for the children. All I wanted after this was him to forget the cheese and camp (which I'd admired and forgiven on numerous previous occasions) and just explode with this grittier style he'd suggested back in '95 with Castle Freak. You know like tackling his first two movies with this new found anger, disillusionment and cynicism.

My prayers were answered with the first time watch of the week, King of the Ants. Stop what you're doing and check this shit out! Gordon loses his freaking mind and reinvents himself based on what was teased in Castle Freak. Exactly the explosion, I was waiting for. Rian Johnson's Brick is rightly regarded as one of the most creative low budget indie neo noirs of the 2000s, relocating the genre in to a high school setting. However, if you ever felt whilst Brick was admirably imaginative, the by product was at times that it came off too teeny, wait til you see King of the Ants. This is noir for dads going insane.

Opens as your typical noir following all the familiar beats of working class man in need of money and going to desperate lengths in the pursuit of wealth. Strap yourselves in because once this gets that out the system and deviates from the genre expectations, all bets are off and you've got a fucking movie on your hands. Where does this go? Straight in to '80s grindhouse exploitation sicko mode. Even borders on torture porn that was soon to really catch on post 9/11. In my day, I have witnessed a lot of beatings in crime and noir films but I cannot recall ever seeing one where the protagonist takes a beating and hallucinates seeing Lovecraftian monsters. If that shit has you intrigued, you know what to do, WATCH THE MOVIE.

Film noirs have a history of flawed, challenging and unpredictable characters from Sam Spade to Lou Bloom. However, not since Travis Bickle has one of these wackos kept me so on my toes morally speaking. Our protagonist, Sean Crawley is a borderline psychopath and in his chasing of the dollar, ends up killing a few innocent people who didn't deserve it along the way. Yet, against my very core, I had this undying respect for him and so still I rooted for the guy. So the story goes, another Baldwin brother (this time Daniel) hires our guy Crawley to kill someone for a fee. After the job is complete, a beefy henchmen named Duke Wayne (played by George Wendt) takes Crawley to the local zoo, informs him he's as insignificant as the ants, they won't be paying him and he needs to get the fuck out of town.

What would you do? I know what you'd do, you'd be checking Trainline for the next trip on out of here. I bet you wouldn't even pack a bag, you'd be straight on out with the clothes on your back wouldn't you, you little wimp. If that’s you, maybe you could learn something here, coward. My man Crawley just goes naaaaa and stays put. Worse than that, he asks around for his money. Game on.

Gordon teaches us that the moral of the story here is don't put the little guy down. Don't underestimate him. And above all absolutely do not take him to the zoo and tell him his spirit animal is an ant. That shit will go to his head. My man earns his title of King of the Ants, flipping the original disrespectful connotations on their head. You want to tell this guy he's a worker, then he's gonna work. HARD. The grind(house). Those dumb gangsters created a monster. The analogy is so strong here that I couldn't help but support this utter mad man through even his most depraved acts. What would Karl Marx make of all this? In that sense, I just couldn't abandon my guy Crawley. Couldn't say a bad word against him. You gotta root for the little guy. Always. Even if some of his revenge plot accidentally causes a few unfair deaths. The road to freedom isn't clean. Anyone who steps up to a bunch of rich bullying gangsters and wages a full on one man war like a mad man has my eternal respect. That's why we go the pictures. "He who dares, my son!". Qui Audet and all that. Rule number one: Don't take any shit. Anyone who steps up to my man, gets what they get. Anyone else, it's collateral damage. We'll go with the "greater good" as those fellas in Hot Fuzz love to say.

Many critics compared King of the Ants favourably with Korean and Japanese movies from Takashi Miike and Chan Wook Park. Reckon that just extends to the more insane arthouse directors around the world. Personally, I saw a lot of British directors Shane Meadows and Ben Wheatley in it. Mainly in the scenes where the gangster henchmen interact with each other and passed the time like daft boys mucking about. Reminded me of Dead Man's Shoes and Down Terrace. Half expected them to start cracking out Pot Noodles and cups of tea. Did I mention one of henchmen is played by Vernon Wells?

What struck me about King of the Ants was its bleak and cynical view of the world diving in to nihilism. The hero of the story is totally unhinged but that doesn't matter because an injustice was done to him and his status is generally lower than everyone else. So the understanding here is, who cares if he tries to even the scores a little? An everyone is dirty, so may as well roll up the sleeves and get your hands covered too belief. If everyone else is doing it, may as well do it yourself logic. You're a cog in the machine, a worker ant, they're expecting you to play along and adhere to your role like the millions of others, not to fight back or challenge the established order and that's why they don't see it coming. Time to become the king. What a fucking movie!

Brings me back to my original question, what caused this midlife crisis and sudden turn in to such a mean streak? Since I don't know enough about Gordon's personal life I can only guess two possibilities, which may be linked. Firstly, becoming a father and becoming fearful of the outside world he was bringing a child in to. My other theory would be along the same lines of how Roger Watkins horror classic Last House on Dead End Street could have only come from the mind of someone sick of shooting pornography. Did all those cheesy campy flicks Gordon had to make to sustain his career finally have an impact on him? If I had to sum up what's so cool about Gordon's final three films it's how he moves away from fantasy and in to the real. Important thing to be aware of is that he doesn't abandon fantasy, he just filters it through the real. Results in a mind blowing hybrid touching on the absurd.

In 2005, Gordon comes out with Edmond, the most disturbing film of his catalogue, as he simply refuses to take it easy with age. Starring William H. Macy in pure "My wife has an ass in her cock" mode. Blacks, women, anyone in his way is getting carved up by his knife after splitting up with his wife. Forget Warner Bros decline of the character study reflected in Joker, which is possibly the worst attempt at transgressive art I have ever witnessed. Edmond will shake you up well and truly, being brave on a level that hasn't been seen since Falling Down.

Mamet's script targets everyone including you, the audience. Our own racism and misogyny is addressed in its short run time and the existential detours are just hilarious. Following a mad night out on the town it ends in the most weirdly beautiful way as Edmond climbs in to bed with his cell mate after a discussion about the mysteries of the universe and simply says, "Good night".

Damn, this makes me sad, we reach Gordon's final feature film Stuck, a movie that is sure to go down well with anyone whoever liked Fargo or Bernie. A story which comes from a genuine newspaper headline and plays out in a documentary like recording of the events. Ride this one out, as a stupid white woman drives in to a homeless person, gets him stuck in the windshield and out of fear of getting in to trouble, drives home and keeps him trapped there in the garage. It's too real and believable to even be real and believable. Gave me a headache in contemplating the sheer stupidity on display. At one point, I kid you not, the protagonist, despite being fully to blame, attacks the captive homeless man and says "why are you doing this to me?". Gives me the shakes to think there are people this dumb and dangerous walking around.

Subtly, the clever part of the story is how nobody acts sooner to save the homeless individual because of class status. For example, a Mexican family fear if they go to the police to report the incident, they will be deported. Our dumb blonde becomes mentally unstable as her nurse job becomes threatened. This thickos actually up for promotion. Yeah maybe if this is set in the same world as Halloween 2 (1981). Most baffling. Her partner wants no part of it and is nervous of being involved due to racial prejudices. All this together makes for some kind of farcical piece of theatre. A comedic tragedy.

All ears for finding out what triggered Gordon's abrupt taste for the real, I can only go off the developments of each individual film. A final possibility to explain his actions might have been the aftermath of 911 and Abu Ghraib. This ties up dates wise and would explain why the protagonists on the last three are hardly likeable and completely untrustworthy. Moreover, why they engage in such violent questionable acts such as torture and graphic murder. Although likely, this seems too easy to say and we must remember, Gordon has been interested in antiheroes since day one with Dr West. The simple fact is I just don't know where all that late ferocity came from. Made for some fucking good movies though.

If there's anything to take from this it's Re Animator and From Beyond are unquestionable classics. In horror and Lovecraft departments. Although, it would have been greater for his darker period to come sooner, his lighter movies in the meantime were always fun B movies. The Pit and the Pendulum is highly underrated. Once we did get the transformation in to a grittier filmmaker, we got some really great movies that deserve greater attention. I have selected King of the Ants as my favourite of this stage of his career and demand you watch it immediately. You need to see HP Lovecraft from the lens of the real. From this side, let's just say, it's quite something.

I've Seen Footage:

How Ghostwatch Pranked an

Entire Nation

On October 31st 1992, the BBC played its finest prank, airing 'Ghostwatch'. A special investigation in to the supernatural, which was suggested to be a live broadcast genuinely capturing the paranormal but was actually scripted and recorded previously. It aired just once in the UK, then never again. After that one night, the BBC received over 30,000 complaints, making it one of the most controversial TV shows in British history. The complaints were not in response to accidental Freudian slips or casual racism but perceived authenticity of the show in particular the host, Michael 'Parky' Parkinson's wild possession in the final moments. How I wished I was alive in '92 and tuned in to this insane event. We champion head blowers round here.

If you ask me, along with Peter Wakins's The War Game, Ghostwatch represents some of the most original, artistic, daring and thoroughly engaging uses of the medium of television. They are documents that address the potential of the art form and what can be achieved with television that can't be done with other mediums. Whereas, The War Game served as a nuclear attack hoax, Ghostwatch focuses as its name suggests on ghosts. Bizarrely, The War Game was banned before it even had chance to air and despite being made in 1966, it remained unseen on British television until 1985. Unfair because its anti cold war messages give it a great deal of weight. Convinced they should show that to all the pro nuclear weapon psychopaths. However, I can understand why they might have feared airing it as its replication of public safety videos is so perfect it could fool anyone.

Mick Jackson's Threads from 1984 was meant to have been inspired by The War Game too. Instead of public safety videos, Threads went for a more modern approach of modelling itself on soaps such as Coronation Street and Eastenders to present the 'real' of television. To cement this, it even features actors such as Reece Pinsdale, who would play Joe Mcyintyre in Coronation Street. Setting in Sheffield with real locations only freaks me out more, based on this being my current place of residence. Interestingly, many locals are as haunted by this fictional event as they are by some of the real horrific events that have taken place here. Both have become part of the city's legacy.

Prank culture extends beyond television and many cite Orson Welles's War of the Worlds radio broadcast on 30th October 1938 as being one of the first to use a live medium and reach a mass audience. In that case, it was the conversion of the H.G. Wells story in to news bulletins and regular weather updates of real locations scattered in between that were the examples of how the medium was experimented with to adhere to the principles of the 'real'.

So what was it that Ghostwatch did to convince so many people of its authenticity? Two things, the casting and the tone. Already mentioned Parky being involved but another instantly recognisable friendly face was Craig Charles, the Coronation Street star and Soul/Funk DJ. Believe there were many children's television show stars on board too, so even though it was shown dead on the watershed of 9PM, some parents let their kids watch it and the younglings were left traumatised. Sadly, one disabled teenager was so convinced by it, he attributed his family's faulty central heating systems sounds in the night to ghosts and took his own live 5 days after the airing.

Ghostwatch's other strength was in its dry delivery of the reporting and when it does veer in to the supernatural there is a lot of camp. That was the genius part and you may at first think that's surely a strategy that can't work but oddly it does. A strange lesson to learn there in how you go about replicating the real. Simply, being realistic doesn't always work. It has to be in context. You have to understand the modes of production and how both television and your particular show operate. The writers and actors of Ghostwatch display such a perfect knowledge of those modes. Audience confusion of real and fantasy, stems from the fact Ghostwatch, essentially never steps out of character. It behaves and acts exactly as it should from start to finish. There are some detractors, who regard Ghostwatch as silly, missing the point entirely. It is exactly because it is silly and the reasons I've given above that it works. The silliness is its greatest strength. It's so aware of the absurdity of BBC Television.

Not since Chris Morris's 'Paedophilia' episode of Brass Eye in 2001 can I pinpoint another prank in British television that has provoked and challenged so many viewers. Amuses me how he did that as a season 2 episode 1 and they just cancelled the rest of the series instantly. If it were me, I'd probably save something so outrageous for the season closer. That way if the network does not decide to renew you another season, everything you'd done so far would have been shown. The absolute balls on Chris Morris to throw that out as a season premiere. His style on this was literally pretending to be a news anchor and somehow he managed to get the celebrity cameos he did. Appearances on that show from the likes of Gary Lineker and Rolf Harris never fail to send the head for a wobble.

Put me in charge of the BBC and more of this shit would follow. My first act would be having Ghostwatch screened every Halloween as a rite of passage. Creative found footage and mockumentaries would be a large part of the menu. You have to remember, Ghostwatch came before the wave of found footage horror like Paranormal Activity that became immensely popular after YouTube, the affordability of hand held cameras and Bush's mass surveillance. Even before The Blair Witch Project (which was able to use the internet and go beyond the recorded image)and The Last Broadcast.

Adding to this, as I mentioned, the brilliance of Ghostwatch is in it respecting the rules and models of television. The Last Broadcast was ahead of its time and was overshadowed by Blair Witch. However, its near erasure from history can also be accredited to its failure to adhere to its own rules. It's a prisoner of its own making. I feel no sympathy for it. No idea, why it's defenders seem to forget the final act, where it abandons the found footage set up, thereby destroying its purpose and mystery. This is where I respect Ghostwatch massively in its integrity.

Being part of the gonzo movement, the found footage genre is always going to remain of interest. It should be cinema at its most interesting, chewing away at itself and its own possibilities. Even as horror fans it should remain important as so many of the best works in the genre have come from faux documentary aesthetics. All those late 60s and 70s classics like Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Last House on the Left being inspired by Vietnam news footage.

Unfortunately, we did get bombarded with these films. Couldn't tell you if the genres dead or still going. We've moved in to these A24 horrors mainly, which has produced some fine work over the years. However, it has started to get undeniably weird for weirds sake with little to say and no means of expansion. Let it be known though, if found footage is finished, I don't think it was because it was overdone, they were underexplored. Of course, in terms of volume, yes they were overdone but I'm convinced we haven't exhausted all its possibilities.

The amateurish aesthetics opened up the floor for both amateurs and studios to exploit and people should have foreseen and accepted that would happen. Losers without the tools would pump shit out like the Grave Encounters series (which does have some comedy in the way it's clearly influenced by Ghostwatch) and studios would use it to jump on audience demands, recreating the conditions of amateur filmmaking and saving money. Cloverfield being a great example of this. That's not a diss, I love that Yankee Godzilla flick with its post 9 11 analogy. Proved to be one of the better ones where the studios jumped in. Found footage even invaded non horror films like Chronicle (superheroes), End of Watch (action/police procedural) and Project X (teensploitation/comedy).

Unfortunately not everyone got the memo about sticking to the rules. Regardless, people should have foreseen and accepted all this would happen. Technology was always going to improve to the point of becoming more handheld and affordable so it was inevitable that saturation would occur.

For me, the issue lies in the fact, the genre became lazy. We became hooked on the fantasy of the real rather than the replication of the real. Essentially, as an audience we became lazy too because we started accepting too much as a new kind of film logic and in doing so, we stopped playing the game. I'm talking about actors names and characters names differing. End credits appearing. Added post production elements without explanation. All of which, results in zero justification for the footages existence. Fundamentally, filmmakers stopped asking the question, how did the audience receive the footage. Consequently, we went from what was found footage to what should be considered just handheld footage.

This genre works best when it's disciplined, playing with the modes of media and keeping its audience on their toes. Instead of playing with the medium and concepts, it just became an excuse for lower budgets and cutting corners. Once you start to accept broken rules, it's game over. Therefore, if we are to continue the game, my fellow Psycho Schradists we must return to projects like Ghostwatch and re learn the rules. Only then can we push this medium as far as it can go and maybe in the process create something truly new.

London

Calling to the Underworld

Come out the cupboard, you boys and girls! This week for our porn explorations, we ask ourselves what would British Gonzo look like? Well, the answer to that question lies in the work of Ben Dover, our very own national gonzo hero. Using his 1997 effort London Calling, we will observe this man's antics, what tricks he has up his sleeve and how they differ from his US counterparts. So strap in, pour yourself a beverage and let off some sexual steam. The XXX feature is about to begin.

First scene goes down, I'm not sure I like what I'm seeing and I half want out of this one. Where am I and how can I leave? It's as though Jay from The Inbetweeners has grown up a bit and has inevitably moved on to shooting porn with a couple of dedicated horny followers. In this opener, a young foreign woman has barely been in the country five minutes and Ben Dover and his troop have swarmed in on her already. Doesn't take them long to get out their cocks and masturbate in front of this female visitor. That room reeks of bad vibes. It's a sausage fest in there. Not that I'm against the whole multiple guys on one chick thing, I've seen some females turn the tables during that act and own it. Here though the female in question is clearly not the one in power for most of the intercourse. Only towards the end does she look like she's enjoying herself. Assume it's written that way but doesn't stop it feeling any less uncomfortable. A ritualistic hello and welcome to this country from Ben Dover and his merry horndogs. Disgusting. At least wait til she's seen St Paul's Cathedral first come on.

After a horrendous start, this Ben Dover character begins to grow on me in the same love/hate way you feel towards any kind of semi famous British icon. He fits in to that bracket of celebrity that could be advertised as appearing in your local clubs doing meet and greets and DJ sets. Your Phil Mitchell's, your Hodor's, your Beasts, your MC Devvo's. Those that turn up year on year out. To be specific I was getting strong Tim Westwood vibes. When he finally hits the road and kicks off his road trip in a shitty '90s banger of a car, causing mischief as he goes, vandalising street signs, I couldn't help but notice his charm win me over.

Adding to the Tim Westwood vibe, I googled this Ben Dover geezer, which revealed him to be born in 1956. Don't need to be a mathematician to work out that makes him 41 when he shot this. Forty One fucking years old. Somebody please tell me why on earth is he acting like a thirsty sixth former? Another case study for how time and age doesn't affect some people. Don't know what he behaves like now in 2022 but I assume this fucker hasn't changed at all. He's still got his pervert credentials. No chance he's handed his badge in yet. You can just tell. Is he the rare type we need to protect at all costs or someone in need of a visit from Charles Bronson's The Mechanic character? All I know is that Tim Westwood comparison was spot on. These two will be 'daggering yats' til the day they die. Time can't change them. They don't care how old are they are. They don't care if the publics watching. They are wet wrongens

By the second sex scene of London Calling, you have the style pretty much figured out. Thank God though, this follow up fuck plays out smoother than the first. This time, Dover and a friend pretend to be a "Eurosleaze" TV news crew interviewing Wimbledon fans. They lure a professional looking, sports addicted kitted out blonde baddie and take her to a nearby hotel to find out more about tennis. As you might have guessed, they're not all that interested in the boring sport of tennis and quickly advance this get together in to an orgy. Based on this, I'd have to say Ben Dover and his posse are definitely the type to fall in to the camp of people who would criticise David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest for its lengthy tennis sections. Nope, they wouldn't care for those at all. Despite my frustrations at the woman's tennis head band coming off during sex (pissed me off royally), it was undeniable that this scene is a massive improvement. Instead of obnoxiously uncomfortable, the tone switches to acceptably cheeky in very British fashion. Mr Dover will change the situation from innocent to mischief and repeatedly say, "I'm just being a little bit naughty".

Going in to auteur mode, if Buttman's subject of choice is the ass, then Ben Dover's stylistic signature is two cocks in a female's mouth. Honestly, that's his go to finishing move every time. A potentially very masculine 'dudes rule' image. Although, it improves inter male threesome politics, it's one that's never really going to be approved by hard line feminists. Still, I found this man's whole demeanour to be that of a juvenile infant hence why it was hard to be offended. Far too stupid and silly to be taking seriously. His view of the world is that of a young boy discovering sex for the first time. As a result, his form of cinema retains that adolescent mindset, which is hard not to be amused and won over by. The guys some 41 year old loser with the mind of a child. You'll find it pathetically puerile originally but in the end the youthful giddieness converts you in to a fan. I fought it off for as long as I could.

Other scenarios we have include mock interviews serving as auditions for forming a fictious pop girl band like Spice Girls. Die hard spicers will know instantly '97 was also the year Spice World was released. A film in which they say big Withnail Richard E. Grant was robbed of an Oscar. In the scene in question, the female looks like Mel B, so Scary Spice stans will be happy. Naturally, Ben Dover rocks up like, "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends" and makes this another male dominated event. This is what he does.

Music culture plays a big part in the background of London Calling. Whenever, Ben Dover and his boys are driving round in that shitty car of theirs, it comes across like Brian Welsh's Beats in which characters travel to secret locations for free parties. They unwind and twist their bodies rhythmically in to all sorts of crazy positions to tracks like Leftfield's 'Song of Life'. Except with these guys it's secret locations for sexual activities. The bodies moving rhythmically in crazy positions still applies. You know how much has been said about how in Master and Commander, the ship and all the events that place there are supposed to represent Albion? I'm gonna pretend that the shitty banger they drive in London Calling represents England in '90s and the death of the free parties scene in Easy Rider fashion.

Genuinely did love that whole hangout vibe to the movie and in true gonzo style it does have that first person feel. Is this our Dazed and Confused? An ode to day's gone by. The final sex sequence is an orgy at a gathering. Some absolutely insane accents on display here that sent my head for a spin. Usually why I tend to avoid any British things, takes me so out of it as it hits too close to home. The thing about Americans is they're like not real. They only exist in my television. What I couldn't deny though with these gang bangs though was that they had a real light and casual vibe about them. Made them seem as the direction all parties should take. Like it was the most normal thing in the world. I've been to many gaffs in my time and only one ever went this way. If this is how you party, give me a call, me and Juan Peterson will be straight round knocking at your door with a camera and a couple of mischievous smiles. The ice age is coming. The sun's zooming in!