Hatchet I & II

I needed to watch another slasher film that would leave a less awful taste in my mouth after Halloween's remakes, so here we go!

Hatchet starts off as any movie should. With Freddy Kreuger as a harpoon wielding redneck hunting for gators with his son before they both get killed in an over the top gorey fashion.
You see, Hatchet is kind of like the comedy equivalent to Rob Zombie's Halloween. Sure it's over the top, but it's portrayed in an exaggerated and completely unrealistic way, and in a tongue-in-cheek comedic way reminscent of Feast.
The film quickly cuts to a credit sequence made up entirely of bare breasts and Marilyn Manson. That's such an odd sentence. Basically, it's Mardi Gras, and nothing says Mardi Gras like a song about fans not giving a shit about the lyrics or meaning of a song, only happy that they get a song to sing along to and bob their head with. ...actually, that really works well with the theme of this movie. Hatchet is pretty much a huge, exaggerated caricature of modern slasher films that also appeals to the same people that really love modern slasher films.
We get our cast, which is still largely a bunch of slasher film stereotypes. We've got The Normal Guy who is our hero, played by that nerdy guy from Avatar and Dodgeball. He's got Black Friend, they've got a Stoner Friend that we quickly lose. There's Two Sluts, The Asshole, we've got two Old People that I swear were in Office Space.
The film's also full of cameos. I mean within the first ten minutes we get both Robert Englund and Tony Todd, it's like Urban Legends all over again. Maybe I should do the UL movies next...
Englund and Todd are two actors I wish I could see more of in actually good movies. Same goes for Dourif and McDowell back from the Halloween films. I mean, I heard McDowell's in the new Silent Hill film (before you ask, I thought the film was alright as a special effects film, subpar in every other respect) but that doesn't really say anything positive about the new movie. I mean on the plus side, he's in it, so I'll like his scenes. On the negative, he's in it, and he's almost never in anything that doesn't suck.
In the first 15 minutes we already get two major horror cameos, plenty of gore, at least 25 pairs of breasts, vomiting, and girl-on-girl kissing. I think this is the kind of movie Rob Zombie would do if he was put on meds, and wasn't trying to be the grindhouse answer to Quentin Tarantino.
The plot's pretty simple: Two dimensional 20-somethings (and two old people) go on a haunted tour and hear the legend of something that turns out to not be a legend, and kills them one by one. Of course, this isn't the kind of movie you watch for plot.
I do have something of a complaint already: They do kinda hit you over the head with the fact that it's a parody film early on. I guess I can get why, it's often hard to tell if a bad movie is genuinely bad or if it's a parody of bad films. Doesn't help that many directors claim that their film was a parody only -after- it bombs.
At one point I even considered that maybe Rob Zombie's Halloween films were just a parody, but I kinda doubt that. The few comedic moments were the typical "rednecks saying offensive things and dying" bits and various references (and the Weird Al Cameo), that and the fact that all of Rob Zombie's movies are exactly the same fucking way.
Also, unlike Halloween, I've already laughed several times watching this. The old couple (especially the Jumping to Conclusions guy from Office Space) and the tour leader just steal this movie.
Sometimes I think the horror genre is still a bit sexist and racist. I mean most horror films depend at least on the former. We always need the random tit shots, we still see a lot of bimbos and sluts... When we do have a female protagonist these days they tend to be either completely unlikable (Drag Me To Hell comes to mind), or at best we get a Whedonesque "sexy scrawny chick kicks the ass of some big hulking masculine thing" like in the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre (or we get the Resident Evil series, which has less to do with the video games and more to do with Milla Jovovich acting like Neo). We need a new Ripley. Ripley was badass, likable, and looked like she could make you her bitch. I'd recommend this new Ripley-type character be played by Michelle Rodriguez, just because she's like fucking Vasquez from Aliens defictionalized. I'd also honestly love to see people turn away from the need for constant sex appeal. Hell, I remember seeing a horror movie poster, maybe a reader could point me towards it, a couple years back that was basically "Here's a chick's pantied ass, also she's looking into an evil mirror."
Sorry that I went off on that tangent, but this movie does -constantly- show off bare breasts, to the degree that it's irritating.
Also I want to address a common complaint about a certain horror trope. I hear people complain all the time that it's hard to find that many places where you don't have cellphone coverage, and how dumb it is that in horror films nobody ever has bars when they need them. I'm in the Bay Area of CA, and I use AT&t. I have to either walk outside for a bit, or go to one small corner of this house to make a call. Cellphone coverage is still pretty awful depending on where you are (even in some major cities. AT&T's about as useful as a walkie talkie in most of CA), despite what the maps in their commercials would make you think.
Moving along...
The backstory for the big killer of the movie is hilarious, and features Kane Hodder. If that name doesn't sound familiar to you, he's easily the biggest name in terms of horror movie stuntmen. He's also easily the best Jason actor, and a really awesome guy if you ever get the chance to meet him.
This movie almost makes me think of some sort of superviolent Scooby Doo film. It's hilarious, clichefilled, and uses several gags that Scooby uses. I pray to god the Harlem Globetrotters pop up in the sequel. Man now I'm craving the Harlem Globetrotters episodes of Scooby.
Seriously. The nerdy Avatar guy is Shaggy, token black guy is Scooby (he even clings to a tree branch in fear and rants about how scared he is and they have to talk him down), the badass chick with a gun is like if Freddy and Daphne merged into one.
The death scenes in this movie are hilarious. They're all over the top, unrealistic, and just funny as hell looking. One person gets their jaw pulled all the way back so that the back of their head is behind them, and they have an unnaturally long tongue swinging up above them. It's all very cartoonish, but very well done. It's the kind of thing Tom Savini would do, and that's easily the highest compliment I can give horror film gore effects, as Savini is the -king- of gore.
The film's ending is marvelous, and completely takes you off guard. I love it.
Altogether, this is a fantastic horror-comedy and I'd pretty highly recommend it.


Now for Hatchet II!

...which takes place immediately after 1 apparently!
Right of the bat this film is just as hilarious as the first film, if not moreso. I laughed my ass off at the scene where someone goes through the footage Shapiro shot with his camcorder.
We get some obvious cliche thrown in where the lead female and sole survivor of the first film has a meaningful name. You know that whenever someone pauses after someone else reveals their name, that it means they're the Chosen One or something. It's kinda irritating, and although they always wait until later to reveal it, it's almost always obvious what the reveal is going to be.
Anyway, she goes to talk to Tony Todd from the first film to find out this big family secret involving her dad and Victor Crowley, and I brace for cliches. Instead, I get some more hilarity, and an Evil Dead homage. Thanks, movie.
Kane Hodder has a gigantic neck. I just needed to get that out. It's more like his head is directly connected to his body, just stretched upwards. Also during all of this we get one of the most hilarious stock screams ever. That one that's like "Uhwaaah, uhwaaah, waaaah!" It's like my third favorite stock scream, after Howie Long scream and Wilhelm scream.
The female lead from the first film is kind of irritating here. She slips in and out of a thick southern accent that keeps alternating between various southern accents, also for some reason she's stuck in this sort of quizzical expression with one eyebrow perpetually raised. One could argue this is caused by the small cut on her face, but it just looks odd. Like she's constantly questioning everything.
By the 35 minute mark we get our plot: Rev. Zombie (Tony Todd) offers a reward of $500 to go out and retrieve his boat and kill Victor Crowley, while at the same time the lead woman from the last film has to uncover more about Victor Crowley because... because. Much like the first film, it's more or less an excuse plot to get a bunch of comedic characters out in harm's way for some creative deaths. This time we've got a bunch of rednecks and biker types though. Also Lloyd Kaufman's got a quick cameo. Yeah. Lloyd fucking Kaufman, of Troma. The man behind Toxic Avenger, Nuke 'Em High, etc. We also get a quick reference to Leslie Vernon and Jason Voorhees, god I love this movie already. This feels like a bunch of b-grade horror geeks just got together and made a tribute to slasher films, and it's just great.
Continuing the Scooby trend of the first film, the large mob ends up splitting into pairs, to make it easier for Victor to kill them. This is actually lampshaded, complete with a character outright comparing it to Scooby Doo.
The film's a bit slower with its kills than the first film. It's 53 minutes into it and so far only one death. ...and boy the second I point this out, Crowley goes on his rampage. ...Wilhelm scream! Oh god. We're 2/3 away from the holy trinity of stock screams.
The deaths in this film are even more insane and over the top than before, all done in an exaggeratedly cartoonish manner. We get axe-to-the-vagina people getting chainsawed in the crotch until their balls drop off, one guy gets curb stomped... it's just hilarious.
The film's pretty damn good too. It's not quite as awesome as the first to me, as it's a bit too wacky at times, but it's still quite hilarious and a must-watch to anyone that liked the first film.

There's a third film in planning right now, I'm curious how it'll work out. We'll see in 2012!

Scariest Non-Horror Games From My Childhood

I used to be something of a big gamer. I guess I still am, but my dislike towards most FPSes and most multiplayer games has led to me sticking more and more to indie games and older games lately.
Digging through old games, I realize something. Video game devs were dicks back then. Not to say they aren't dicks now, they were just dickish in a different way back then: They wanted to give kids nightmares. I don't see this as much anymore, outside of some new games like Minecraft (the ambient noises will fucking scare you), and Epic Mickey (its creator actually explicitly stated his intent to frighten kids in an interview with GameInformer. This man is a hero.)
Keep in mind, these are explicitly ten things that scared -me- as a -kid-. They don't precisely bother anymore, merely things that as a kid were nothing but the purest nightmare fuel, and as such this is purely subjective.

#10 : Sinistar





















Sinistar was something of an oddity when it first came out. You start the game thinking it's just sort of an Asteroids clone, which it is. Don't get me wrong, it's more fun than Asteroids, and certainly better looking, but it is basically Asteroids+. And then... this happens.



A giant, roaring thing comes out, screams at you, taunts you as a player, and quite possibly destroys the living crap out of you.
Sinistar is tough, Sinistar is a dick, and holy crap will that roar scare you.
It's like if suddenly a xenomorph dropped out of one of the ships in Space Invaders and started screeching at the screen while ripping apart your ship.



That and there's just something about a video game monster taunting the -player- and not the player character.
That's part of why I find Ghasts terrifying in Minecraft. They don't attack your character, no. They attack the screen. That fireball is aimed at the -screen-. I love fourth wall breaking horror.

#9 : Starfox SNES

Starfox NES is a fun game, albeit a pretty trippy one.
The graphics haven't aged well at all and can make the game pretty hard to play. On a recent playthrough I found myself even feeling confusion as to what was a powerup and what was an enemy.
First off, there's Andross. He's only mildly creepy/unnerving, but I feel like he deserves mention.



I don't know what it is. Maybe it's that he starts off as a flat surface that turns into a really screwed up looking mask thing and starts vomiting polygons at you. Even in the N64 sequel/reboot, Andross is honestly the creepiest thing there, except there he's either a flying brain or a flying robot skull.




But that's not what made this game scare me as a kid. No, the horrors this game unleashed were far less sensical.
Y'know how Starfox 64 had that sort of hidden level that was a warp point between worlds?



Well, SNES Starfox had its own, only far, far trippier. I mean sure, that's pretty weird itself, and feels out of place in SF64, but it could be far worse.
My dear readers, feast your eyes upon "Out Of This Dimension."



Seriously, what the fuck?
Where to begin? There's the weird wavey effect everything has, the moon-faces in the background, there's a giant slot machine enemy, and then you fight... the credits? What the hell?
I got stuck in this level as a kid, couldn't figure out how to get out, or how I even got here. I worried I'd broken the game somehow or something.

#8 : Sim Ant

I love sim games, I really do. Hell, Sims 2 and Sim City 4 are still easily two of my favorite PC games ever. Sim Ant... I had trouble playing.
No, it wasn't that the gameplay was bad. It was a fun game. It wasn't that I didn't own it, I certainly did.
No, the real reason should be obvious to anyone that has both played the game and read my Jaws review.





This.
To an arachnaphobe, SimAnt becomes a fucking survival horror game. Sadly, I can find very little on this game. I remember there being a special closeup of the spider once it kilsl you, and this being the scariest thing ever. I keep finding people talking about it, but no pictures. Sadly, I no longer have my copy. Wonder if it'd even run on Win7 64bit.
There's also the giant lawnmower, which comes out of nowhere, is super fast, and has almost no warning beyond a brief second where you can hear the whirring before it kills you.

#7 : Ecco the Dolphin

How could a game about a cute dolphin be scary? I don't blame you for asking that. That means you never touched this game, or at least never beat it.
For the most part, it's a really cute game. The music is fantastic, the graphics are really pretty, and it's overall an awesome game.
Well, this awesome game suddenly goes to hell when, after leaping up above the water a few times, fucking ALIENS ABDUCT YOU. Out of nowhere. Not cute aliens, not friendly aliens. Horrible, creepy aliens.
The last level alone is... I'll let the video explain it.



Yeah. Wow. You wouldn't think a game like Ecco the Dolphin would have a boss like -that-.
Seriously. It's just so damn out of the blue, and completely unexpected.
The entire series is based around out-of-nowhere nightmare fuel now, and it's all the more awesome for it.





#6 : Earthbound

Speaking of creepy bosses...
Earthbound takes the cake for scariest endboss ever. Seriously. I'd imagine most of you probably knew it'd be popping up in this list due to how well known this creepy thing -is-.



Seriously, what the crap?
Earthbound's hardly a normal game, but it's far from creepy. For the most part it's just a super surreal game full of odd pop culture references and the like.
There's all sorts of explanations as to what the hell is going on there, some even claiming that it's a form of abortion. Honestly, even without explanation (and maybe -because- of the lack of explanation), this is just screwed up.
If you didn't think it could get creepier, have some Ronald!



#5 : Ski Free

Oh hey, it's a game that comes with Windows! Nothing could be wrong with it!
I'm skiing! Weee! This game is fun!
Hey, there aren't any other skiiers, I wonder what my goal i-What the hell is that!?
OH MY GOD!

Seriously. What the fuck, Ski Free?



You can't escape the yeti, either. Keep going, and a second yeti comes out as well. At best, you can just delay the inevitable.
-That- is the true purpose of this game. This is like a survival horror game in disguise.



#4 : Pokemon (RBY)

I fucking loved Pokemon as a kid. I was big on the first gen games, I loved the anime, I played the TCG. I even went to Pokemon TCG tourneys. ...But even I have to admit Pokemon was chock full of nightmare fuel.

First off, we've got a few of the Pokemon. Drowzee feasts on dreams, Hypno leads children away like some scary looking Pied Piper, you've got the ghosts...







And then you've got Lavender Town. It's got this creepy, slow, depressing music, and on top of that the town is home to a huge haunted Pokemon crypt. This entire segment also inspired Pokemon Black. Not the latest entry in the cashcow franchise, but a hacked ROM inspired by Pokemon creepypasta.



Just listen to that music. Seriously. You can see why it inspires such things.

The biggest bit of nostalgic nightmare fuel in this game though, to me, is the dreaded glitch Pokemon Missingno.
Imagine you're an 8 year old kid playing pokemon, and you run into that thing. It's a sentient glitch that starts screwing up the text of your game, and you've heard that it can erase your saved data. That is horrifying.
Want that to be made worse? Pokemon Yellow. Nintendo tried to remove Missingno entirely, and Wikipedia claims they did (good luck putting Yellow Missingno in the Missingno article. "Notability over factuality.")

Yellow Missingno does everything normal Missingno was alleged to do, and more. Seriously, just look him up on youtube, you'll find all sorts of weird things it's capable of doing, ranging from creating a glitch city and then populating it with clones of your character.



Missingno is Pokemon's Colour out of Space.

#3 : Majora's Mask

Where do I begin?
Majora's Mask is easily one of the most screwed up N64 games, which is saying a lot since the Nintendo 64 was like a magnet for nightmare fuel.
There's a creepy swamp you have to go through, there's a house full of giant spiders, there's the ghibdos and redeads, there's the zombie hand coming out of the toilet...









There's that damn moon. If I had to pick a moment though, it'd be the UFOs. You see, for some reason, aliens attack the farm on one of the nights. This comes completely out of nowhere, doesn't feel like it fits into a Zelda game, and it's just creepy as hell.



Seriously, what the hell game?
To make matters worse, if you don't fight the aliens, this happens.



THEY LOBOTOMIZE THE LITTLE GIRL. SERIOUSLY.
What the hell, game!?

#2 : Super Mario 64

How could a Mario game be scary?



And that's just one thing. Seriously, this game was so screwed up as a kid. Besides the piano, we also get such memorable bits of nightmare fuel as the eel...



...The big Kamina fish that can eat you alive...



Seriously, what the crap? That last one made me jump as a kid, threw my controller in fear. I think I was maybe 7 or 8 years old.

On top of that, there's all the Mario death animations. Ever wanted to see Mario realistically drown?



What were they thinking? And then there's that Bowser laugh as Mario lays there, dead. It's just... -what-.

After all that, you may be wondering what I'd put as #1. #1, to me, has to be a game that is so full of nightmare fuel, yet somehow not a horror game, that I'm not even sure how to write about what all is horrifying about it. That game...

#1 : Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time

This game is nightmare fuel unleaded from start to finish.
You go inside of the mouth of a giant tree, you fight giant spiders inside of him, you get face-raped by zombies, giant hands come out of nowhere and grab you...
Even the music in this game is horrifying.



That's just the forest temple, which is full of ghosts, the killer hands, and spiders. It's also got some weird non-euclidean elements, including a weird twisting hallway that sort of distorts reality.



Shadow Temple. Full of zombies, spiders, invisible bottomless pits, giant scythes that can instantly kill you, a huge ghost ship, and the corpses of everyone that has failed to survive it before you.

The scariest thing though, to me? Dead Hands.



What the crap, Nintendo? That... thing. Seriously. That is, easily, one of the scariest things I've ever seen in a video game. I don't just mean in a non-horror game. This thing scares me more than anything in Silent Hill and Resident Evil.

I'm almost hesitant to play it on 3DS just because of that thing. I can see it now, me tossing my 3DS in fear when that thing comes out. Just... no.

Roger Ebert Can't Stay Awake During Movies

"This is one of those Identikit movies, assembled out of familiar parts from other, better movies. It begins at the end of "Halloween II," when the monster was burned up in the hospital parking lot, but it's not still another retread of the invincible monster. In fact, the monster is forgotten, except for a lab technician who spends the whole movie sifting through his ashes." - Roger Ebert, in his review for Halloween 3.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19821031/REVIEWS/41006007

Roger Ebert is a moron.
Halloween 3 isn't connected to Halloween 2 beyond them sharing a name, the holiday, and Halloween being shown on a TV in a bar explicitly referred to as an upcoming MOVIE.
The man that sets fire to himself isn't Michael Myers. He plays a big role in the plot, he's referred to multiple times. We see him. He sets fire TO HIMSELF. Michael Myers, on the other hand, DIED IN AN EXPLOSION in 2. There's a difference between "dying in an explosion" and "setting fire to yourself on screen."

"He wants to sell millions of Halloween masks to the nation's kiddies and then brainwash them to put them on at the same time, whereupon laser beams at the base of the neck will fry the tykes."

Correct. In that one scene has a woman being shot in the mouth with a laser from some button thing that got planted on the lead woman, and the masks turn kids heads into snakes and insects. That's... kinda close? I mean both involve people dying, so there's that.

"A young girl named Kirsty has been placed in a hospital after a night in which she was tortured by the flayed corpses of her parents, who were under the supervision of the demons of hell." - Roger Ebert, on Hellraiser 2.
He's a bit closer to at least grasping the movie in his review for Hellraiser 2, but still has several misfiring braincells. Remember that it's Kirsty's mother and Frank, not her father. Also that the cenobites don't side with (or supervise) either of those two. Her father's just a poor schmuck that accidentally lets Frank loose, and gets killed offscreen.

"Kirsty!" we hear. And "Tiffany!" And "Kirsty!!!" and "Tiffany!!!" And "Kirstiyyyyyyy!!!!!" And "Tiffanyyyyyyy!!!!!" I'm afraid this is another one of those movies that violates the First Rule of Repetition of Names, which states that when the same names are repeated in a movie more than four times a minute for more than three minutes in a row, the audience breaks out into sarcastic laughter, and some of the ruder members are likely to start shouting "Kirsty!" and "Tiffany!" at the screen."
This one doesn't sound like bullshit until you've seen the film and realize it's merely an exaggeration of a scene towards the end. It's also more "Tiffany!" than anything. It's not even to the extreme of that scene where Marion gets captured in Raiders and repeatedly shouts "Indie!", Tiffany's name is shouted maybe 3 times in that scene. -Maybe-.


Sorry for the short article. Wasn't my intent to even write one today, I just stumbled upon a bunch of Ebert's horror film reviews and had to share some the idiocy before my brain exploded.
I used to mock Siskel for liking Carnosaur, and although I'm still not sure how, at least I've yet to see anything -that- dumb from any of his old reviews.

The Top 10 Most Nightmare Enducing Music Videos

I listen to a lot of music, readers. My music library on my laptop alone is at 64gigs right now. Due to this, I've managed to run across some truly disturbing stuff. I'm taking a bit of a break from movie reviews, so thought I'd work on some lists in the mean time, and what better way to start than with the very inspiration I'm using to write in the first place: Music.
So, let's start with the top ten most disturbing, scary, and down right nightmare enducing music videos I've ever seen!

#10 : "Mein Teil" - Rammstein



Rammstein's certainly no stranger to disturbing visuals, but this video truly takes the cake.
Thin, zombie like guy having an epileptic fit while foaming at the mouth, Flake doing ballet, twins beating the crap out of each other, a man eating an angel as she goes down on him... this is easily one of the more disturbing videos Rammstein's ever done.
The song itself is also quite disturbing. The lyrics are all about cannibalism, and take inspiration from the case of Armin Meiwes, a man who put an ad online a few years back looking for someone to kill and eat. Proving that you truly -can- find anything on the internet, someone agreed to this, came to his house, and ate parts of himself with Armin. I'm not making any of that up.
If you want more nightmare fuel from Rammstein, just try putting most of their songs through google translate, wherein you'll realize that all this time you've been listening to lyrics involving shoving barbed wire up someone's urethra, walling someone alive, parent-on-child rape, and necrophilia.
I think the kicker for me in this video is just the shots of Till Lindemann singing towards the camera, and with that mouthgear. Till's a very frightening man, and I don't want to imagine him going feral.

#9 : "Technologic" - Daft Punk



That fucking robot baby. I don't know if it's the eyes, the robo-skeletal structure, the teeth, or what, but that fucking scares me. Seriously.
The song itself is awesome and catchy, and not frightening at all, so it's odd to see this video wherein a skinless Chucky appears to be commanding or preaching to the Daft Punk duo. I've at least heard that's one of the Chucky's, it certainly looks like it facially.
Well. I for one welcome our new robotic demon baby overlords. I'd prefer if the evil robots stuck to hot women like they did in Battlestar Galactica, but I guess that enslaving us via fear works just as well.

#8 : "Kids" - MGMT



Okay. What the fuck.
We start off in this video just seeing a bunch of horrific stuff from the point of view of a newborn baby, and it just proceeds to get worse from there.
The monsters in this video are like if Sid & Marty Krofft teamed up with Clive Barker to make some sort of kid-friendly plane of Hell, and we get to see them in full because these demon-spawned muppets plague our world even in daylight.
The video then decides "Fuck your brain" and becomes this fucked up LSD induced, Adult Swim-esque animated fantasy that I can't even begin to wrap my brain around.
Even Gibby Haynes and Flea would probably tell MGMT that they need to lay off the drugs a bit after this one, as I feel high just watching the animated segment


#7 : "Parabola" - Tool



Honestly I don't know where to begin with this one. We've got the frail, metallic skeleton thing with the realistic gums and teeth, we've got the guy with eye tentacles...
I'd say the creepiest part of this is the first half with the fat, flat faced businessmen. They're so damn disturbing looking, especially the eyes. Then we get them flying around vomiting this thick, gooey black substance and it's just all kinds of screwed up. That right there is what put this above the normal levels of fucked up Tool videos are known for.

#6 : "Rock DJ" - Robbie Williams



Many of you were probably wondering why that was on the list, or even so far ahead on the list. I mean, it's Robbie Williams, the "Millenium" guy. It's a pop song, the video seems normal, if not kind of sexy. Where's the horror? Then that ending happens.
Seriously. What the hell? Robbie Williams suddenly enters Hellraiser territory and decides to rip off his own skin and parts of his muscle. This is just so out of the blue and detailed that it's disturbing as hell, like if Justin Timberlake suddenly bit the heads off one of his backup dancers, or if Alanis Morisette suddenly gouged out her eyes out of spite for Uncle Joey from Full House.
Robbie Williams, my hat is off to you. You're like those K-Fee commercials that start off with soothing, calming scenery, and then throw a screaming zombie at us.

#5 : "Come To Daddy" - Aphex Twin



I love Aphex Twin, not just for the music, but because the man knows nightmare fuel. "Windowlicker" and "Rubbery Johnny" get thrown around a lot, but I personally think this is the ultimate scary vid from him.
This has it all. Kids with his creepy-ugly mug on all of them, a deformed humanoid thing that goes after an old lady, creepy shit on a staticy old TV, and sampling from a creepy line from Hellraiser, the titular "Come to daddy!", uttered by Frank. All that combined with the constant screaming "I will eat your soul!" make for an awesome video that I can't be without on Halloween nights.

#4 : "Tourniquet" - Marilyn Manson



Manson's nightmare fuel to a lot of people, but this is the only time he's ever disturbed me. Just that horrific... thing Manson creates in this video, and the way it moves around.
That thing is the face of my nightmares. I think uncanny valley things bother me more than anything else sometimes. I can look at a lot of new robots in Japan and just get creeped out by these things that are 98% human in one area, but there's just enough wrong that it's terrifying to look at.

#3 : The Entire "Broken" Movie - Nine Inch Nails (WARNING: NSFW. Very disturbing video.)



It might be cheating to add the entire movie, but I just can't pick one moment from another. Broken is one non-stop nightmare enducing film made up of music videos for the songs off the album of the same name.
Just to name a few things we get: Someone wrapped up in what looks like garbage bags or tight latex with piping leading from their mouth to a flushing toilet, genital mutilation, beheading, an old man trapped eating his food whilst everything is covered in flies, and several scenes of torture and bodily mutilation.
Trent Reznor actually didn't want the film itself to get out, but was leaked to the masses by Butthole Surfers frontman Gibby Haynes. Reznor himself seems to be easing up on his dislike for the video though, as he uploaded it to a few torrent sites a few years back as a Christmas gift to fans.

#2 : "Bleed" - Meshuggah



Although the music may not be something many of my readers will find good, or even tolerable, one can't deny the video is disturbing as hell.
Not only do we have that dog monster, and the protagonist of the video being transformed into it, but... what the fuck -is- that thing at the end? He scares the living crap out of me, whatever he is. He's also on the cover of the album this song is from, albeit creepier looking there than in this video.

#1 : "Cradle to Enslave" - Cradle of Filth (NSFW)



And the king of them all, the often-hard-to-find uncensored Cradle to Enslave video from Cradle of Filth.
The visual references to Hellraiser, the deformed babies, that thing at the end, the giant monster... hell, take your pick. The music video shifts from thing to thing so fast you're bound to find -something- that creeps you out or disturbs you on some level.

That's it for now, thanks for readin'. Don't forget to comment, I could really use the constructive criticism, otherwise I'll never get better.

Halloween Reboots, Retcons, and Remakes!

Halloween H20, thankfully, is a reboot of sorts. It completely ignores all but the first two movies. Which is good, because fuck those movies.
I think I'm now dumber for having sat through 4-6 in a row.
Even the fact that this movie is technically called Halloween Water is less dumb than anything 4-6 threw at me. "COME ALIVE!" "It won't work, it's metal!" "WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!?"
The film also starts us off with that Mr Sandman song. I missed that song. The pre-credits scene is nice, feels more along the lines of the first two in terms of atmosphere. I'm feeling relaxed already, this film totally can't be as bad as the last four.
We also get a credits sequence that isn't a non-sequitor linked only by the fact that it's Halloween themed! It's basically a bunch of Dr. Loomis soundclips about Michael Myers, combined with newspaper clippings and drawings of Myers. Sadly Dr. Loomis himself isn't in this movie, as he'd passed away between films. Sad, the man was an awesome actor and easily the best thing about 4-6.
The film post-credits starts us off with a flashback-nightmare from... Laurie Strode! She's back! And still terrified of Michael, 20 years later. We also get a really neat fakeout scare moment where Michael follows a woman and her kid into a bathroom... but instead of killing them, he takes their keys and steals their car. Very nice work, move. You're really making me feel better after the shitfest that was your predecessors.
Jamie's much older, her hair's much shorter, and she's now less womanly than she was before, but she's still awesome. she's successful, and works with kids, makes sense, she was an awesome babysitter. ...then we get some black cop guy reading off what sounds like a bad porn script to his wife over the phone. He behaves, well, ...alright, please movie, don't make him the Token Black Guy that has to act a certain way and then get killed early on. Please. He also talks to two douchebaggy teens... Now I'm worried.
I like that Laurie is visibly traumatized from her experience with Michael. As I've said before, I hate how people in horror films tend to have no memory at all. They can witness friends, family, loved ones being murdered viciously, and be perfectly fine moments later, or at least by the time of the next movie. Laurie? No. She was bad at the end of Halloween 1, she got worse in Halloween 2, and by the time of H20 she was so traumatized by Michael she had a nervous breakdown and took to breaking into peoples kitchens to convert them to Activia.
...And now we're focusing on the douchebag teens again. Oiy. One looks kinda like Ashton Kutcher's durpy brother Dingus Kutcher, and the other looks kinda like the mascot for MAD Magazine. It turns out the first one is Laurie's son, and they have some drama, because apparently Laurie's fear of Michael is tearing the family apart.
We cut to some girl who practically has Victim written all over her face. She's about 20, in a school girl uniform, blonde hair, attractive, alone, and too dumb to live. She gets a Halloween themed map to some location beneath the building, and decides to follow it. Thankfully for her, it's yet another false scare, as it turns out she's the girlfriend of Laurie's son. This movie is -really- fucking overusing false scares now.
Michael drives across wherever to get to Laurie, reaching the college she works at and begins stalking the security guard I was talking about earlier. Is he really going to die this early, movie? We don't know! The film cuts to Laurie getting off work late, walking the campus, when she sees Michael walking towards her. She closes her eyes and opens them to find... it's not a dream! But then it is? He's gone. ...God damn it movie, you and your fake scares. This film's like the horror equivalent of a cocktease. But then the guy she was talking to sees Myers briefly, so... maybe he was there?
We also get our Horny Teenage Girls That Want To Party, watching Scream on their TV. Apt, because so far this film reminds me more of a Scream sequel, or even Urban Legends 1 & 2, than Halloween. Teenagers are getting ready for some big Halloween party. Gee, this is totally unexpected. I hope the horny durpy college age teenagers will be alright! Surely they're just going to drink soda, save their bodies for marriage, and then live the rest of their lives peacefully?
Scene buts back to Laurie and her husband. I'll admit that it's nice having an older main character in a horror film. I'm used to 18-24 year olds played by people that are 28-34, whereas Laurie is probably 40 something and JLC is probably 40 something. Fuck your shit, Dawson's Creek. They have a talk about what happend in Haddonfield 20 years ago, she reveals that she was the survivor that, and has been hiding her identity since she came to California.
Laurie gets worried, goes to check her phone, and... it's dead! She goes to check another phone, it's also dead! Her son isn't home, so oh god let's panic! Also the security guard isn't dead!
One of the teenagers, a brunette girl who I guess is Laurie's son's girlfriend's roommate wanders around, we get another false scare with her boyfriend... jesus christ movie, stop. Stop with the fucking false scares. Fucking stop it now. How many? How many, movie? This might as well be called "Oh my god it's a cat!" the movie. Having repeated jump moments and "or is it?" moments isn't original, it's not creepy, it's not scary. Fucking stop it, now.
Her boyfriend's a complete moron who drops a bottle opener (booze, and teenagers! In a horror movie! Shock!) down a garbage disposal, he's not sure if it's on or not, and reaches down for it. We get another false scare. ...and then he turns around and it's Michael. At this point I almost expect it to somehow be a dream, just like every fucking false scare in this movie. But no, he's dead, and Michael begins stalking his girlfriend about, moving at a snail's pace. He manages to cut her leg a bit before she takes a ride up a dumbbell. She gets out, and... she somehow gets her leg stuck on her boyfriend? Somehow? I don't know. Myers cuts the rope for the dumbbell, causing it to slam shut on her foot, nearly cutting it off. So she's left to crawl about on the floor, so slowly that Michael is able to get up maybe 3 flights of stairs to get to her and kill her. At least now we've lost 50% of the dumb teen cast, or less if the MAD magazine mascot shows back up. Also she bleeds orange soda. Seriously, I haven't seen blood look this orange in a movie that wasn't made in the 60s.
The two remaining dumb teens stumble upon Myers, who does an almost adorable head tilt. Seriously, it's almost cute. That's how hard it is to take Michael seriously anymore. I just want ruffle his hair, give him a cookie, and send him on his way. He stabs Laurie's son, but Laurie's son apparently has balls of steel, as this barely causes him any trouble. They run into Laurie and her boyfriend/husband I'm not sure which, and now the four are stuck running away from the boogeyman.
Laurie's lover then shoots the security guard to death, thinking he's Michael. Well, he survived longer than two of the teens, at least. ...then Michael comes out and kills Laurie's lover. This film's being really quick now about killing. We had like an hour of false scares, and now we're getting killings in pairs. ...Laurie just hit Michael with a fire extinguisher, and it made a donk sound.
I think I know part of why Michael looks silly to me now. His hair's really messy looking, and the mask looks wrong. It doesn't look like Michael. Laurie stays behind at the college to stop Myers, sending the two teens off so that her son can get medical treatment. Do we get to see Jamie Lee Curtis go kung fu on Michael Myers? Please movie, tell me yes. It'd be silly, but it'd still be so much better than everything else I've seen in this movie.
Sadly, no. We get her running around, using an axe, throwing kitchen knives at Myers... I don't really feel any suspense here, honestly. I just can't. I really, really don't care anymore what happens to these two characters. He could kill Laurie, Laurie could kill him, they could kill each other, they could stop fighting and hug... I just don't care. Since the bulk of this movie has just been a slow, dull crapfest with a bunch of cat scares thrown in, I really don't feel connected to anyone in this movie. I can't even root for Michael, he barely did anything until now.
Laurie manages to take down Myers, and is about to further-kill-him when... uhh. The security guard comes back to life and stops her. He doesn't seem that emotionally startled at all, and is back to being his annoying self from earlier. Fuck you, movie. Fuck. You.
Laurie then does something unexpected. She... steals Michael's body in a van, forcing the cops to do it at gunpoint. That's... alright that's at least something surprising, movie. Thank you. This was smart, as it turns out Michael's still alive, and moving around in his bodybag. She stops the van superfast, causing Michael to fly through the windshield, but she's... completely fine. Physics. He stands back up, and she drives the van into him, causing him to latch onto the front. She then does the sensible thing and rolls her car down hill, which at least... doesn't harm her, but pins him to a tree. Jamie cuts off his head, and... the Halloween theme music starts, as the credits roll. End.
Seriously, screw this movie. The first hour was dull and uneventful save for the overuse of false scares and cat-scares, and the final 20 minutes are basically like watching a bad slasher movie on fast forward. The last few films at least had entertainment value, the only positive thing I can say about this movie was that it had Jamie Lee Curtis. This film has no right ignoring Halloween 4-6. It's like if Hellraiser: Deaders retconned the events of Hellraiser 3-5. At least those Hellraisers had some fucking entertainment value. Screw H20, it's about as scary as it's namesake.

So how does Halloween 8 continue of Michael's been beheaded? Do we get some hilarious horror comedy where a headless Michael tries to kill Laurie? Let's find out!
Laurie's in a mental hospital at the start, and she's got her hair back. It's a shame, she actually looked better with short hair. I thought the same of Sigourney Weaver though, so maybe I just have a thing for women with short hair. Anyway her breakdown was deemed serious enough that she be hospitalized. I kinda doubt you'd get hospitalized like that for killing Myers.
But wait! It turns out that Myers switched places with a security guard. Y'know. So a security guard survived all that at the end. A security guard that never said anything, a security guard that survived getting hit by the car twice, survived getting thrown from the car. They say his larynx had been crushed, but that doesn't make him superhuman, and that doesn't keep him from taking his mask off. Fuck. Your. Shit. Movie. We're only a few minutes in and you're insulting my intelligence like this. Fuck you.
Turns out Laurie's been pretending to be insane so she can hide out in the insane asylum or something? They don't check to make sure she's taken her pills, as she's got a whole bag of 'em, and they all look like the kind of thing Dr. Mario uses to cure all my ills.
We get a fakeout scare again wherein some serial killer factoid machine dressed as Gacy scares a security guard. Michael Myers then kills one security guard, stuffs his head in a dryer, and kills the other security guard. Because cops and security guards only come solo or in pairs. Myers then slowly chases Laurie around the insane asylum. His mask looks... weird still, like he's got fuzzier hair in some shots, like they've got multiple Myers masks on hand and they're all a little bit different.
Anyway Laurie turns out to be Kevin McAllister from Home Alone, as she's built a special Michael-catching device. Michael stands in exactly the right spot to get snared and hung upside down. Fuck you, movie. Michael does a bit of a fake out, pretending to try to remove his mask. Laurie has a dumb moment and falls for it, allowing Michael to murder her. So... Jamie Lee Curtis is only in this movie about like 10 minutes, tops. Jamie Lee Curtis is the star of this movie as much as Bruce Campbell is the star of Congo, a film about people throwing things at him. Michael then gives the knife to the serial killer factoid guy in order to make people think he's responsible for the killings. He (the factoid guy) then gives us a quick summation of who Michael is, for those of us fortunate enough to not be watching all of these god damned movies in a row.
We cut to some college professor that looks kinda like if Dr. Loomis and Winchester from MASH had a kid, teaching his class about something involving fears. This confirms the audiences own fears: This film is about dumbass teenagers being killed by Michael. That's the fucking plot. That's the entire god damn plot. Micahel Myers kills dumbass teenagers. We get a bunch of scenes setting up our cast, revealing them to be the usual group of two-dimensional teenagers you've seen in every other crappy 90s slasher film about college students being killed left and right. We also get one non-college kid, a highschool student. ...who looks as old as the college students, but alright.
We also have Busta Rhymes, because I guess he needed the money. There's also Tyra Banks, who scares me. She's less scary here than she is now, but she still looks like she's had too much plastic surgery. Not to the inhuman level she's hit in recent times, but she's still approaching the uncanny valley. ...And we get a scene demonstrating someone's scream breaking a glass. Seriously, what is this, some Abbot and Costello horror comedy? What the fuck, movie?
I can already tell I'm going to hate Busta Rhymes so much. He's like every horror movie black stereotype rolled into one. I can only hope that means he'll be the first of them to die, because he's as irritating as Snails from Dungeons & Dragons: The Movie. He can't act, he's annoying as hell, and he's a walking stereotype. For the love of god movie kill him now.
We go back to our teenagers. The women are ditzy and slutty, save for one girl that sees visions of Michael, and is our designated hero I'm guessing, because she doesn't seem so horny she'd bang Judah Friedlander in a heartbeat. We also get a summation of what the film will be doing from now on. Our horny teens will be in the Myers house, each will have cameras, and they'll be watched like some retarded reality show.
Tyra Banks manages to avoid watching the cameras as she dances around making coffee with her eyes closed, and some guy gets murdered on camera by Michael Myers. In first person. She then manages to miss Michael dragging his body, as her head's tilted in a way that only her complete peripheral vision is facing the screen.
We then get more scenes of our dumbass teens interacting, all of them giving us reasons to dislike them. They're all idiots, they're all jerks. The only two that are tolerable are our hero, and... oh hey, there's another black guy. Let's hope that he avoids the cliche this film is no doubt going to use, and manages to survive longer than the rest. If they've gotta follow that cliche, please just.. kill Busta Rhymes. He's so fucking annoying.
We also get shots of the big high school party that's going on elsewhere, with that high school kid from earlier. The only adults in this film are Tyra Banks and Busta Rhymes, and if anything Tyra Banks might be the closest thing to someone being psychologically adult in this god forsaken movie since Laurie got killed.
Our highschool student hero, his friend, and two horny teens avoid the party so they can watch the Myers reality show on TV. Which is going about pretty boringly. It's like a more retarded version of the remake of House on Haunted Hill, the one that starred Captain Barbossa and Chris Kattan.
Anyway we get a bunch of scenes of Myers one by one killing the personality-less teens around the house, we get a gratuitous sex scene with a cute redhead chick that also gets killed. Also everyone watching this show thinks that it's just a scripted thing, except our high school hero.
Sex, drugs, booze... jesus christ this movie makes the teenagers so damn cliched I feel like I'm watching TVTropes The Movie or something. Eventually the remaining teens start finding corpses, and one of them gets murdered infront of the others by Michael. They finally realize that this isn't staged, -finally-. They split up and runaway, and they start receiving text messages from the highschoolers watching the show trying to guide them to safety.
Thankfully, after a few more deaths, Busta Rhymes dies. This is thus far one of the only positive things I can say about this film, beyond that it provides some entertainment value, unlike the last movie. This is at least a normal, run of the mill, cliche-as-fuck slasher film.
Eventually Michael gets electrocuted by the leading lady and the black student that managed to survive throughout the film. ...also somehow Busta Rhymes is alive again, god damn it.
Michael Myers gets brought to a morgue for an autopsy, and... he turns out to be still alive! Eyes open, movie ends.
Fuck this film.
On the positive side: This film is more entertaining than H20. It's got a lot to mock, there's a higher bodycount... it's not boring. It's still an awful film, but it's not as dull as H20.

That was it for that continuity, now onto Rob Zombie's!

First off I wanna go ahead and say this. As a musician, I fucking love Zombie. I've got every White Zombie and Rob Zombie album on my laptop, I listen to them all the time. However, just because someone's an awesome musician doesn't mean they're a good director. I hated House of 1,000 Corpses, which just felt random and poorly handled, like a music video without music. I also hated Devils' Rejects for similar reasons.
His animated movie is also pretty awful. It's so god damn immature that it feels like a 5 year old wrote it. It makes Dumb & Dumber look like Royal Tenenbaums, it makes American Pie look like fucking Lost in Translation. It's nothing but sex and fart jokes, with gratuitous animated nudity. Ren & Stimpy wasn't even that immature.
Still, I digress. Let's start up Rob Zombie's Halloween and Halloween 2. And may god have mercy on my soul.

The film looks promising at least. I love Malcolm McDowell, I love Brad Dourif, and both of them are in this movie. Horror fans will remember Malcolm McDowell as Alex from Clockwork Orange, and Brad Dourif as the voice of Chucky from the Child's Play movies.
The film starts off in flashback, seeking to explain the origin of Michael before we even see him as a killer. I don't mean in the way the first film did, I mean a lengthy growing up kind of thing. I hate this so much. It kills a lot of the mystery, and it just lame. Also we're treated to some of Rob Zombie's... political affiliations slipping in. Rob Zombie's a die-hard PETA guy, and it shows. We even get a reference to eggs being "chicken abortions", and plenty of scenes of Michael killing animals, because that's what evil people do. This'll be hard for anyone to watch that has issues seeing animals being mistreated in movies. Michael comes from a stereotypical redneck family that cusses a lot and makes a lot of crude sexual references. Y'know, like the Fireflys from Zombie's other two live action films. Creativity!
We get to see Michael get picked on by the most assholish of bullies, see him hurt animals, and see him generally act like an angst ridden little kid. Fuck this movie already. This is already the worst thing to happen to this franchise. You see, it turns out Michael's mom is a slutty stripper, played by Rob Zombie's wife, aka that crazy chick who was the youngest of the Fireflys. Aside from Dr. Loomis, this part of the film can be described as "assholes yelling at assholes being assholes." This is just -frustrating- to watch.
After showing Michael's mom some pictures of the animals he's murdered, and a dead cat he keeps in a bag, his mom reacts with disbelief, because Michael totally loves animals. Michael overhears this, takes his clown mask, and runs out of the school, then tracking down one of the bullies from earlier and beating him to death.
I've never hated so many characters this much before. Seriously. I'm spending like twenty minutes with assholes here. Make it stop. His mom's a slut, his sister's a slutty bitch, his dad's a homophobic redneck asshole, his school's full of assholes, the kid's an irritating evil little psychopath. The film tries to make up for this by throwing in scenes of Sheri Moon Zombie stripping to "Love Hurts", but we don't see much, and it hardly makes up for how god awful this movie is so far, we then switch to a scene where Michael's sister fucks some really dirty looking guy... who has the mask that'll become Michael's mask later on.
Michael comes home, tapes up his dad, and then murders his sister's boyfriend with an aluminum bat. We get a gratuitous shot of his sister's bare ass, he puts on the Michael Myers mask, feels her up, and then kills her once she realizes it's not her boyfriend. He then goes outside, is met by his mom, and we get some timeskips revealing her reaction to what happend, paramedics taking the dead family members away, cops taking Michael, etc.
Surely now we get a timeskip to the "present day", right? Right? With Laurie and all?
Nope! We skip forward 11 months to Loomis starting his psychiatric exmaination of Michael. Fuck you, movie. We didn't need to know these things. We knew what we needed to know with what little the first two movies gave us. That's all we needed. Anyway Michael claims to not remember being responsible for the killings, and is back to just acting like an irritating brat. On the bright side, more Malcolm McDowell.
Danny Trejo pops in as a janitor. It's always neat seeing him in a movie, because he's like, every mexican biker/gangster ever. You'll remember him as Machete, or the bartender from From Dusk Till Dawn, etc. He gives Michael some encouraging words about staying strong, and how he should learn to live inside his head, because there's no walls that can stop him in there. Malcolm McDowell tells us that black isn't a color, it's the lack of color, whereas white is every color. Thanks, Mr. McDowell. If only this movie was just you teaching color theory.
This film is like. The exact opposite of what I keep talking about. This hates the unknown with a passion, and hates your imagination. It needs to show you every little thing that happens, every single thing. It's like what Family Guy does to jokes as cutaways. They say something amusing, and then they literally show you that amusing thing, for like 4 minutes. Except this is worse. The first film spends all of 5 minutes on kid Michael, the rest we find out through dialogue strewn about in present day, and is handled really well, it doesn't feel like exposition. This? Dedicates 50 minutes to the origin of Michael Myers. It shows us everything the first film told us, because apparently that's all Rob Zombie knows how to do.
Loomis has issues getting Michael to talk, and when they leave him alone with a nurse, he brutally slits her throat. We needed to see this, of course. We needed to see all of this. Seriously, this is like Ctrl+Alt+Del, taking a simple joke and then explaining it in the wordiest way possible in order to ruin said joke. Fuck this movie. Rob Zombie, quit directing, never make another film again. Go back to doing what you're good at, making music. Keith Richards shouldn't be a doctor, Ted Nugent shouldn't be a park ranger, and you shouldn't be a director.
Finally, 38 minutes into this fucking movie, it skips forward in time by 15 years. Fuck this movie. We get to see Danny Trejo again, now he seems to be a security guard. Michael's cell is covered in all the masks he's made. And now he's like 10 foot tall, has long hair, and... well, he looks like Rob Zomnie got ahold of Bane's stash. Because obviously Michael Myers can't be scary unless he's a big hulking giant.
Dr. Loomis proceeds to go on to an audience about how Michael is the perfect psychopath, except it seems more like Rob Zombie saying "I've made the ultimate killer!", like the film is bragging.
One of the security guards and his drunk friend start sexually molesting one of the female patients, and bring her into Michael's room to rape her infront of him for some reason. They're really damn graphic about this too. I mean, more graphic than Clockwork Orange even. Seriously, Rob Zombie is the complete opposite of subtlety. Everything has to be shown, everything has to be graphic, everything needs time devoted to it. Not only is this so far worse than any of the previous Hellraiser films, but it's honestly one of the worst horror films I've seen this decade. Honestly, this is at least the worst horror remake I've ever sat through. I almost feel like Rob Zombie owes me for sitting through this. He owes me big time. Anyway, Michael murders them, kills Danny Trejo, and breaks out of the mental institution. And we get Rush's "Tom Sawyer." It doesn't make the pain go away.
Michael goes to some truck stop, bugs a trucker in the bathroom into opening the door, then kills him. I should mention again, Michael's creepy looking, like 9 foot tall, and built like a professional wrestler. And 6 foot tall, somewhat athletic people keep threatening to fight him. That's fucking retarded.
Finally we cut to the Strode house. Now we see Strode's parents, who we'd never seen before. ...Also Laurie's irritating as hell, makes a lot of sex jokes... I already want her dead. She's more obnoxious than half the cast of Halloween 8, and more obnoxious than anyone in the 7 films before that. And she's our hero. Fuck this movie. We also see Tommy Doyles, who is full of so much fake pep that I even want Michael to kill him too. He's like Anakin from Star Wars Episode 1 only with the energy of Ruby Rodd from The Fifth Element. I want to punt this kid so hard.
Michael gets to his old home, and finds the mask he wore when he killed his sister. It's somehow received a bunch of cosmetic enhancments to make it look creepier in the years he's been away. Like the rest of this film, maybe I should just assume a wizard did it, and just be thankful that Rob Zombie didn't dedicate a 20 minute scene to the mask aging like that. Also Laurie randomly leaves mail at the abandoned Myers house... for some reason. That's... weird.
We get more gratuitous sex between two people we don't know, Michael follows them around the house, and kills both in an extremely gory fashion. During this we get a reference to the first film by having the male of the two put on a sheet and glasses, then get stabbed through the chest into the wall. Michael then puts on the blanket, glasses, and goes up to the woman... except this time it's just ridiculous. For starters, he's like 2 feet taller than the other guy at least, and has a completely different build. It's like confusing Johnny Depp's and Andre the Giant's silhouettes.
Michael goes to Laurie's house and murders both her parents. The film fools you into thinking one of their death's would be off screen, but you know Zombie! He has to show you every little thing.
Two more teens have sex, Michael kills both of them. I'm not really sure who either of them were, if they even were given names. This film is almost entirely just nudity, extreme gore, sex, and people using obscenities. I mean don't get me wrong, I say fuck a lot. I've said fuck a lot in this review. But Rob Zombie's like some 5 year old that just picked up a few new words.
Everyone in this movie is a complete asshole, except the two kids Laurie is looking after, who are just irritating as hell. Dr. Loomis and Sherrif Brad Dourif are fine too, but that might just be a bias. I love both actors, so they kinda steal the movie for me. They don't make up for how awful this movie is, but it's a start. Laurie finds the corpses of her friend, and the horribly injured body of the female of the two, who I guess is still alive, just horribly wounded... and topless. The film focuses on her breasts a lot, in closeup. Also Sherrif Dourif and Dr. deLarge scower the town for signs of Michael the Jolly Giant, who is still in that house. He chases Laurie out, and Laurie... fucking sucks at running away. Seriously. She limps around, she can't go very fast, it's like I'm watching some chase scene from fucking Scary Movie. We get a lot of this. Laurie and two kids, screaming bloody murder while the hulking brute Michael cases them. Finally he catches them, Laurie faints, and... he carries her out in his arms? ...What the fuck, movie?
We get more of Laurie struggling against Michael, before Dr. Loomis saves her, puts her in his car, she asks if that was the Boogeyman, much like in the original... and then instead of ending, Michael pulls Laurie through the car, and the movie continues. Dr. Loomis's head gets crushed, but thankfully he doesn't die, because he's pretty much one of the only enjoyable things in this god forsaken shitfest.
The fighting continues, until both Michael and Laurie fall off the balcony, and then Laurie shoots Michael. Film ends, thank god.
This film is... god awful. It's like a Troma film with a bigger budget. No, that's an insult to Troma. Troma films aren't as dependent on gore and sex as this movie is. This is more along the lines of if Cannibal Holocaust was made into a slasher film. I'm saddened that the man was allowed to do a second film, but am glad that he's at least not involved in the inevitable third movie. He's upset, even. Honestly Zombie, fuck you. You don't have a right to be upset over anyone doing a sequel to your shitty remakes. I seriously doubt anyone could do worse than you did. Roger Corman has shat out better films than this. Full Moon Entertainment, New Horizons, and Troma have all released an assload of films that are awful alone, but are magnificent in comparison to this piece of crap.

Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 starts us off with some bullshit about how white horse symbolizes things in dreams. And then we get a flashback hammering this in by having a sequence where Michael Myers, as a kid, talks about having a dream where he saw his mom on a white horse. Okie-doke, Zombie. I wonder if your brother's any better at filmmaking, the Powerman 5000 guy. Maybe prod him towards doing a sci-fi movie and we'll see. I'd imagine sci-fi at least, since Powerman 5000 is to sci-fi what your bands were to horror.
We flash forward to the ending of the last film. We get some extremely gory shots of Laurie being taken care of after the events of the last film. Seriously, Troma films are less dependent on gore than this. Jesus Christ. This makes Saw look virtually bloodless. In fact, I'm gonna review those soon, rewatch all of them. ...oh god they just removed one of her finger nails. why. why. Oh god I hate seeing that. The ambulance carrying Myers crashes, and we get some extremely gory shots of the dead paramedic, and the surviving one who repeatedly says "Fuck" for some reason. Fuck this movie. Then Michael cuts his head off with a small knife or piece of metal or something.
I recognize now why I keep thinking Sabretooth, Michael Myers is played by Tyler Mane, who was Sabretooth in the first X-Men film. We get some shot of Michael seeing his mom with a white horse... seriously Zombie, learn subtlety. Seriously.
You introduced an element, via text, into the story before the movie starts. The first scene repeats this element. And ten minutes into this movie you're hammering this element in again. Take a fucking film class or something, seriously. God damn. Y'know all those actors that take up music, and we mock how bad they are? None of them were as bad at being a musician as Rob Zombie is at being a director. William Shatner is a musical -god- compared to Rob Zombie as a filmmaker. Rocket Man! Burning out his fumes out there, alone!
The hospital is largely abandoned, despite being gigantic compared to the one in the first film, and Laurie wanders around it complaining that she needs medical treatment. She runs into a nurse, who is... bleeding profusely, but didn't realize it until she tried to talk? Seriously? What the hell? This fucking movie. She collapses and starts screaming, because she's now aware that she's been heavily wounded and bleeding. And then Michael stabs her to death over and over, long past the point where she should have died, just so we can have an assload of blood.
We then get to see why the hospital is abandoned: Michael's killed everyone. Corpses everywhere, blood on the walls, this is just... fucking silly. Seriously. This is silly. This is cartoonishly gory at this point, I can't take it seriously at all. It's like that fight scene against the large group of swordsmen towards the end of Kill Bill volume one, where they all shoot blood out in huge amounts because Tarantino had them loaded with bood-fueled condoms. It's like that, except it was meant to be comedic in Kill Bill.
It turns out that was all a dream, or something. Laurie's been under psychiatric care for a year. She lives with the Sheriff, whose daughter is... now kind of a bitch. Laurie too, moreso than before. I guess trauma manifests itself entirely by making you be louder and more aggressive towards people. Considering that everyone else in this movie, for the most part at least, is also an asshole, maybe this isn't a sign of trauma. It's just a sign that a truck carrying massive amounts of assholium sprung a leak while driving through Haddonfield.
I want to go ahead and say, I'm not misblaming Rob Zombie for any of this. He didn't just direct these pieces of shit, he was also the only screenwriter, and one of its producers. This film, and its predecessor, are all his fault.
We see Dr. Loomis, who is... much much more english this time around, which is awesome, because Malcolm McDowell not holding back his accent in the slightest is wonderful, even Rob Zombie's words can't make it less awesome. He's apparently become something of a celebrity after the events of last year, and he's become obsessed with his own fame. ...Alright. It's a different direction to take things, not necessarily a bad one, but it kinda sucks not having a single likable character.
Also I swear to god every teenager in this film is dirty looking. They look like they haven't bathed in forever, their clothes have never been washed and are made of scraps in some cases... it's almost like some crappy post apocalyptic thing going on aesthetically. It's like the film is starting to look like the garbage that it really is. I know that's an odd thing to point out, but it's weird seeing that in a movie, without much explanation. This popped up in Zomnbie's other live action films as well, so maybe it's just something he likes. Zombie himself typically looks really filthy, so maybe he just imagines all teenagers looking and dressing like him.
Dr. Loomis holds some conference where he talks about the incident from a year ago, then goes randomly ballistic when someone asks if he thinks Michael is still alive, since no body was ever found.
Scene suddenly transitions to... Michael in a barn, his mom's glowing white like that elf chick from LotR, and young Michael's infront of him. I love that none of this happened before. This white horse, white dress shit is just being shoved into this film out of nowhere, and Rob Zombie just keeps hammering it in over and over like a new toy he wants to show off or something.
Some rednecks stumble upon him there, and deciding that a gigantic musclebound man isn't threatening at all they decide to attack him. For some reason, they actually do manage to take Michael down. Some girl with them pleads for them to stop, but they're random assholes that have to do evil shit for some reason, so they don't listen. Seriously, everyone in this film seems to go out of their way to be a complete asshole. The expected then happens when Michael gets back up and gorily kills both the rednecks and the girl that tried to save him.
We cut back to Brad Dourif's family and Laurie, where Brad Dourif explains to us who Lee Marvin is while eating pizza. This ...feels out of place, but it's kinda neat I guess. This is intercut with Michael killing a dog, and then eating it. I'm not joking. I wish I was joking, but I'm not.
We get more dream sequences from Michael's perspective. They're... fucked up to say the least. It's basically the setting of a Rob Zombie video. Seriously, it's just... this weird cartoonish horror... thing. I can't explain it. Just watch Rob Zombie's Feel So Numb video and imagine that in black and white, except there's people with pumpkin heads.
The next day Dr. Loomis is being a famous, pompous asshole again, to the point where even his agent is telling him to come off of it before he causes a lynch mod to form. He tells her off, even physically threatens her. That assholium leak must have been -massive-. Why is everyone such a dick in this movie? Why is everyone constantly in this state of being both angry and assholish? Why do so many random people in these two movies go out of their way to just be the worst kinds of people? Michael's hardly the only sociopath in this film, he comes from an entire town of them!
Rob Zombie then gives us what we should have expected. A dream sequence where Laurie randomly shouts "Fucking bitch bitch fuck fucking fuck bitch" over and over for a few minutes. I'm not joking. Again, I wish I was... but I'm not joking.
We then get Laurie telling some story to her psychiatrist about a normal day, but she stutters it out in this emotional, babbling way that is just irritating. She sees an old man in a Frankenstein outfit, and pets a pig. This translates into "Waaah old man perverted bleh bleh bleh waaaaah dirty blaaaah weeeeeaaaaah!" Seriously, it's hard to understand, half of it's this whiny gibberish. She then starts screaming at the psychiatrist to give her pills, sounding like a 3 year old throwing a tantrum in a shopping mall. I remember thinking on a previous film that I had to spend 20 minutes with assholes, well the Rob Zombie movies have thus far been around 3h30m of the most assholish, annoying people I've seen in a horror movie in a long time. Rob Zombie's at least succeeded in something, in the kind of way NegativLand has succeeded before in making songs that are so chaotic and noisy they're headache inducing.
We get more drama as Laurie throws her tantrum at Sherrif Dourif's daughter, who is also whiny and irritating, but not as bad. Laurie though.. god damn I have a headache now caused by her shrill whining. It seriously sounds exactly like a 3 year old throwing a tantrum in a Toys R Us.
We then randomly switch scenes to a stripbar filled with more rednecks. ...I lived in the deep south, rednecks like this do exist, but god damn do they not usually thrive in such large numbers as this film would leave you to believe, or any of Zombie's films. It's just that he can only write one character. Seriously. He's got this weird fascination with assholish rednecks that say fag alot and tell dirty jokes, and he just floods his films with them, in the same way Robert Palmer fills his music videos with thin, pale-skinned, dark-haired women in heavy makeup and tight black dresses.
?One of the rednecks goes outside, and... like the dozens of times before, he decides to go out of his way and straight a fight with Michael. Seriously, again. The expected happens, as it keeps happening, and Michael kills him. How many times is this going to happen? If Rob Zombie had done Halloween 3, at this rate it'd just be a line of rednecks going up to Michael, punching him, then getting killed, like some horror version of that scene in Airplane with the hysterical woman.
Michael then goes into the strip cub, gets another vision of his mother in white, and of himself as a kid... and we switch over to the older redneck getting redy to fuck a naked hooker before Michael walks in and, of course, kills them after the redneck threatens to shoot Michael to death. The stripper tries to run off, but she can't run at all, and she runs into a fucking wall. Seriously. She runs into a wall. She finds herself locked inside somehow, I don't really see why or how.
We skip forward to the next day, Halloween. Sherrif Brad Dourif reads Loomis's book, which reveals a bunch of things he tried to cover up, such as that Laurie is Michael's sister. Laurie buys the book, and amazingly despite how moronic she appears to be in these two movies, reads it. In a day. It's a really thick book. Don't get me wrong, I read Stephen King's IT over a weekend, but... Laurie doesn't seem like the kind of person that -could- read a book as quickly as she does. Dr. Loomis meets a bunch of crazy fans, and the daughter of one of Michael's victims, who tries to shoot him but is carried away by security, though the police say the gun wasn't loaded. His agent is getting more and more pissed with how much of a heartless dick Dr. Loomis is becoming, I know how she feels. Everyone in this movie is just... gah. Seriously, I'm getting a headache.
Laurie becomes... well, no. She's just as whiny and tantrumy after finding out, she's no different than she was at the start of this film. God I want her to die already. Seriously. Michael's becoming the closest thing to a likable character this film has. He doesn't say anything. Sure he kills animals, but he also keeps a lot of these assholes from getting any more scenes. Just... let him kill everyone, end the movie already. Is there seriously 50 more minutes of this shit?
Then the unthinkable happens. Weird Al cameos. ...Seriously people. Weird Al. Weird fucking Al Yankovic. Weird Al Yankovic cameos in this movie. What. Dr. Loomis does a tv interview, and the first guest is Weird Al. Who is being himself. And he makes a funny joke. ...what. Why is Weird Al here. Is this a hallucination I'm having? Did I finally go insane? If anyone watches this film and finds Weird Al isn't in it, we'll know. Loomis gets further pissed that Weird Al made a joke about him and the host asked questions about the controversy, and the scene ends. ...seriously. The scene seemed to only exist so that Weird Al could cameo in this movie. ...Weird Al. ...Weird Al cameod in a movie featuring animal mutilation, intense gore, extreme amounts of random nudity, and the worst people I've seen in a movie in awhile. Weird Al.
The insanity futhers as Laurie decides that she needs to party, that's the cure for her depression and trauma. She seems genuinely happy over this. Seriously, what? Is she Andrew W.K. or something? Meds didn't work, she finds out even more traumatic info, and... partying fixes all of that? We get a big party scene where a bunch of people dress up like the cast of Rocky Horror Picture Show and dance to a psychobilly band. We also get a scene showing the sheriff's daughter being a bitch to a cop that is there to protect her, trying to get him to go away. Then we go back to the party for more music, and more random tits. If I didn't know of him beforehand as a musician, I'd assume Rob Zombie was a 10 year old. He's so damn sex obsessed that it feels less like some horny guy wrote this one handed and more like a kid with a loose grasp on sex but an obsession with the magazines he found under his dad's best wrote this. We get more tits, more crappy sex jokes, more vulgar sexual references... seriously this makes the Howard Stern radio show tolerable.
A woman dressed up as Frank n Furter from Rocky Horror tries to have sex with a guy dressed as a werewolf, but he has go to piss, goes outside, and predictably gets killed by Michael, who then goes and kills her. The party is so loud nobody hears any of this. So many god damn cliches, such a god damn predictable movie. Maybe the Weird Al cameo was thrown in just to give this film -something- unexpected. It's hilarious seeing Weird Al go "SSSSNAAAP!" at Malcolm McDowell, and the tv show host's "You just got snapped by Weird Al." I laughed so damn hard. The TV show host also makes a reference to Austin Powers Mike Myers... I'm confused though. What time does this movie even take place? It seemed like the 80s before, but now it's... I guess the late 90s?
Laurie has a vision of her mom/Michael's mom, in white, with little Michael, before she Michael grabs her in her dream and she freaks out at the dance. These dream sequences are getting irritating. There's too damn many of them, seriously. I get that Zombie came up with a neat idea that he didn't use in the first film and wants to make up for it, but this is just irritating at this point. Maybe you could have just, y'know. Cut down on the 38 minute long prologue the first film had and added some of these there?
Anyway Michael kills the cop outside of the Sheriff's home, and breaks in just in time for a gratuitous shower scene. Or not. Rob Zombie actually avoids showing nudity for once! I'm shocked! She sees Michael right before she can do anything, slow-mo runs away, and then gets brutally slaughtered... off screen! Oh god! He avoided showing nudity -and- he avoided showing us her being killed! Did Zombie fall ill and have to bring in a guest director for this scene?
Laurie gets back to the sherrif's home, with a friend in tow. She seems pretty happy again, even happily announcing, in a kind of drunken way, that she's Michael Myer's sister. I'm gonna start partying anytime I'm feeling down, or anytime I go through anything traumatic. Best friends get killed? Party. Parents die? Party. Find out your brother is a serial killer? Party.
Sadly I spoke too soon, as Laurie sees the aftermath of the fight, we get flashbacks showing the sherrif's daughter being brutally murdered. Rob Zombiiiiiie! Her friend runs off to call 911, as Laurie tries to keep her sister-of-sorts from dying, even though she's basically drowning in blood. Myers, of course, brutally murders the friend that went to call for help. Y'know, I think Rob Zombie's been horribly misinformed over how much blood the human body containers. Just a thought. Either that or maybe Rob Zombie's actually a water balloon filled with blood, and he just assumes everyone else is the same way.
Laurie makes it out alright, and the cops arrive on the scene. Brad Dourif proves he's at least the second best actor in this movie by delivering a pretty damn good performance when he finds his daughter's body. Now crappy director will get in Chucky's way, I guess.
Laurie manages to flag down a driver who, despite dressing like a redneck, is actually helpful and nice, unlike all the unnamed rednecks in this film and the previous film. Sadly, for this, Michael appears and murders him. ...then flips over a car with his own two hands. It catches fire, Michael saves him, and we're treated to... Michael walking away from an exploding car, not looking back. Seriously. God damn it. God damn this movie.
The sheriff finds out Michael took Laurie off to his cabin, and he sees this as the perfect time to get some vengeance. This could be awesome. But then we cut back to Michael and Laurie, Laurie sees the vision of her mom too, and starts screaming out that she loves her over and over. I feel like I dropped acid at some point during this film and forgot, but then I realize that no, this film is just like that. I didn't imagine any of this, not even the Weird Al cameo.
Dr Loomis finds out about all this from the news, and uses his superpowers to get to the scene super fast. Seriously, is he the motherfucking Flash or something? Still, his superspeed is no match for Dourif's superstrength, as he's quickly punched to the ground by the sheriff. I cheered a little bit inside. Dr. Loomis promises the sheriff he'll make things better, goes into the barn, and tries to talk sense into Michael in order to save Laurie. ...okay. We see that Laurie's been having an insane little episode and isn't actually being held by Michael, Michael's just watching her while she's flailing about imagining Little Michael is holding her. Then suddenly out of nowhere, from the outside view, we see Michael Myers plow through the wall like the Kool Aid man, say "DIE!", and stab Dr. Loomis to death. He takes off his mask revealing that yes, he's Sabretooth from the first X-Men movie, and gets shot to death by the police. Thank god. Now hopefully they'll shoot Laurie too.
...they do. In a really shitty slow mo scene that is so poorly done I thought my video player was lagging. I don't know why they shoot her, but I'm thankful. Also "Love Hurts" plays. ...seriously. "Love Hurts" plays when they shoot her. Seriously. I'm not making this up, I'm not joking.
The film ends with some drying dream thing where Laurie's in a glowing white room, dressed in white, and sees a white horse with her. All the while "Love Hurts" is still playing.

It's over. It's finally over.
No more. For the love of god no more.
Rob Zombie's remakes were god fucking awful. I'm gonna need to watch some genuinely good horror movies to wipe my mind of this shit. Expect some reviews of those soon.

This has been Dr Iron, and I swear I didn't make up Weird Al cameoing in this movie.