If you are in a situation where needing to barricade your door to prevent your parent’s entry is a regular occurrence, it is probably time to involve child protective services. You don’t need to give details of your situation to strangers on the internet, but I would highly encourage you to go to a trusted friend or family member’s home and contact the authorities.

I was also distracted by how much Christopher Lambert looks like Thomas Jane (The Punisher, Deep Blue Sea) in this. They are nearly identical, apart from the tips of their noses, and it’s weird. I love seeing actor doppelgangers like that, especially when they play similar roles like these two guys frequently do.

If it weren’t clear enough why I identify so strongly with Claude already, the lyrics to Manchester repeat: “Claude Hooper Bukowski Finds that it’s groovy To hide in a movie Pretends he’s Fellini And Antonioni And also his countryman Roman Polanski All rolled into one One Claude Hooper Bukowski”

I love Every Frame a Painting, I’ll definitely give that a watch, thanks!

The only one without Michael Myers in it is your favorite? I don’t hate 3, but I don’t understand the appeal either.

Well, mine doesn’t, so there you go, I guess. You’ll never see me review a film highly just because it is already well regarded, and I try to make a good case for the ratings that I give. That said, no movie is for everyone, and that tends to be particularly true when it comes to horror.

I’m happy to have it in my collection for completeness’ sake, but yeah, it does not leave you feeling good about yourself afterwards (or at any point during, really). The closest thing I can compare the experience to is Requiem For a Dream, which I love, but very rarely re-watch because of just how gross and bad it makes me feel. Requiem is by far the superior film though, and actually worth an occasional revisit.

I’ve been giving this some thought (far more than it actually merits, but that’s what I’m here for) and I realized that I don’t know how Michael knows that Laurie is his sister. She was two years old when he killed Judith, so there’s no way he recognized her (discounting a supernatural connection, which would be a totally valid explanation in this series) at 17. In the intervening time, he clearly learned some things about the world (like how to drive, and what Samhain means) but I think it would be very strange if Dr. Loomis were telling him anything about his family, at least after the first few years of their relationship, given the way that Loomis talks about Michael. So he should have no idea that his parents are dead, or that Laurie was adopted by another family in Haddonfield. In fact, we don’t know for sure that Laurie is even the same name he knew her by. She was adopted at four, but I can imagine the adoptive parents changing her name to try and shield her a bit from the notoriety of her birth family.

So, Michael shows up at his childhood home, ready to finish the job he started fifteen years earlier, but finds it empty, something he probably never even considered. Then, a girl about the same age as his remaining sister would be, who another person calls Laurie within his hearing (assuming this is actually her birth name here), just happens to turn up on the house’s doorstep? I think he decided in that moment that Laurie was his sister, and that he was going to kill her, completely absent any hard evidence to back that conclusion up. He happened to be right, but that’s probably down to Fate or some bullshit, not any actual knowledge that Michael possessed. From there, the only other people he kills in the first movie are canoodling teenagers, which is what (apparently) set him off in the first place, and he uses them to make a shrine to Judith, which makes me think their murders were really just auxiliary crimes, subordinant to his true goal of offing Laurie and making her the centerpiece of his Idol.

In any case, I no longer know whether this plot element makes any sense at all, but I’m pretty sure I need to just move on to the one without Michael, to wipe my brain clean and smooth again.

It’s a shame they don’t use this song in the film. Most likely due to how much this one leans into the 1980’s techno-thriller tropes, using such an iconic 60’s song might have clashed with that theme, although I’m sure a good director could do it in a way that worked.

I’m watching them all before the 31st. I am prepared for the high-water mark to be behind me at this point. I remember enjoying H20, but I saw it so long ago that that impression means nothing. I’ve heard good things about the most recent reboot trilogy, but I’ll have to make it through Rob Zombie-land before I get there.