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Halloween II
Directed by Rick Rosenthal
Screen play by Debra Hill and John Carpenter
(Reviewed by C. J. Henderson)
For some reason, the country which once
embraced Lovecraft as one of its top terror-tale spinners, has turned to the
likes of second raters Stephen King and Peter Straub. Horror has been replaced
by slickness; the unnatural has given way to the unreadable.
And, unfortunately, the same has happened
on the screen. For the most part, today's film makers, lacking either the nerve
or the skill of a Smith or a Lovecraft, have fallen into the trap of using
psychos and silly demons in place of real terrors. Very few have dared to use
anything but the most banal of horrors in their pictures.
So the surprise is all the more pleasant
when a good film does come down the road.
Halloween, the most successful
independent production of all time, was the story of the night he came
home. With only five killings (one of those off-camera, another one only a dog),
it was the film which launched the entire sea of slasher films which has washed
over us during the past three years. None of these imitators has been nearly as
good. As a matter of fact, only one film since Halloween has come close: Halloween
II. In fact, it is better than the original.
Halloween II starts several minutes
from the end of its predecessor; in less than ninety seconds of recapping, John
Carpenter reestablishes all of the horror generated by the first film, and then
pulls the audience headlong into an unrelenting nightmare. There are no
breathing spaces; there is only terror, diving down from the screen, transfixing
every eye except for those tightly closed and hidden beneath trembling hands.
In Halloween II, the unkillable
"Shape" escapes Dr. Loomis, cutting his way through the town of
Haddonfield, Illinois. Anyone in his path is fair game. This time, however,
there is a method to his murders. During Halloween, it seemed that the
Shape was only killing those who happened into his path, but not this time. The
sequel makes it clear that he is after Laurie, the girl he failed to get the
first time.
Halloween II is not the quick cash-in one
might suspect. It is a well-crafted film, one which builds suspense rapidly,
sending an ever-quickening pulse of fear throughout all its audiences. Unlike
the rash of imitators which appeared on the market after Halloween, Halloween
II is a solid piece of work which does not release its stranglehold on its
viewers for a moment. "We started the cycle with Halloween,"
says producer Debra Hill, "and maybe we'll end it with Halloween II.
People don't seem to realize that we showed next to no blood in the first
picture. You think you're seeing a lot more than we're showing you. Chopping off
people's limbs isn't scary or entertaining, it's disgusting."
There is no doubt that Hill and Carpenter
understand the genre they have worked in most often. John Carpenter is a quieter
film maker than those others trying to step into the space opened by Hitchcock's
passing. He is also a better one. He is one of the few American directors who
understand what horror and suspense films are about. Unlike those who feel that
a maniac with a weapon is all you need to create a horrific mood, Carpenter
realizes that there is more to it than that. Where others have been dealing in
tales of petty criminals and lunatics, his films have tended to embrace concepts
such as hate, or evil, solidifying them into faceless presences
whose motives are the most subtly presented since those seen in Psycho.
Carpenter, like Hitchcock, is usually
averse to great amounts of gore on screen. He is a master of artistic terror,
orchestrating the nerves of his audience to the point where he can control their
every emotion.
In Halloween II, the audience's
nerves have been so finely tuned that everything in the picture works. Even in
the obligatory "cat-jumps-out-of-the-garbage-can" scene, where
everyone in the audience absolutely knows that the scene is leading up to
that same old leaping feline, everyone jumps nonetheless, because they are just
as scared as the man on the screen --- when he jumps, we jump.
The main reason for this is that Carpenter
does more than present us with the run-of-the-mill monsters. His
"Shape" is more than a man; he is that nameless, unstoppable part of
all of us which we keep bottled up tightly, for to let it out might destroy us.
Every person has a dark side which he keeps hidden both from outsiders and from
himself. Carpenter has shown us one man's dark side out of control, lashing out
at all that is around him, and everything he remembers. The Shape is a man
possessed not by the devil, but by the essence of evil. He has no balance; like
a savage nightmare, he is unstoppable simply because all dreams are unstoppable.
You cannot control a nightmare once you unleash it upon yourself. You can only
wake up.
Haddonfield, Illinois, wakes up with the
dawn, and finds its nightmare behind it. Like any properly disturbing dream, the
Shape has left its scars. Halloween II ends the same way the most
frightening of dreams ends --- until the last seconds, you are not sure that it
is over; until the last camera shot, the audience cannot be positive that it is
awake, and that the horror is gone for good.
It is this subtle undershaping that makes Halloween
II the dynamic picture it is. Probably the only sequel to pick up
immediately where its predecessor left off, it is definitely in the ranks of
second films such as Godfather II and The Empire Strikes Back
where the sequel is actually better than its forebear.
Part of this is due to the fact that all
of the castmembers are the same. It is partly due to the fact that Carpenter's
favorite director of photography, Dean Cundey, worked on both films, with
virtually the same camera, lighting and sound crews. Mostly, however, it is due
to Debra Hill and John Carpenter's understanding of the horror genre.
Vastly different from
Kronenberg, DePalma,
Romero, and all of the rest, Carpenter continues to make comparatively quiet
films, lacking in blood spatters and spurts, and yet somehow all the more
gripping because of it.
The sad thing about Halloween II,
however, is that it was practically the only good horror film in 1981. Many were
made, but few were chosen.
Ghost Story
Directed by John Irwin
Screen play by Lawrence D. Cohen
(Reviewed by C. J. Henderson)
And amidst the comic werewolves, knife
murderers, and circus mutants, the most widely touted and possibly the worst of
them all was Ghost Story.
It is almost impossible to find a place to
start blasting this tired abomination. Even The Howling had a few things
to recommend it, but Ghost Story, supposedly the biggest horror event of
the year, has nothing.
The story is almost impossible to describe
logically, for most of it doesn't add up. For some reason, a young girl who was
accidentally killed by four drunks stays alive (but not alive) for fifty years,
teams up with two bizarre, unexplained psychopaths, and sets out to kill her
murderers and their offspring. She never does any physical killing, but she does
scare a few people into falling from high places. The human psychos do the
killing, except that the little one doesn't seem to be human --- but what else
could he be? And so on, and so on.
This is the style of the entire film. One
confusing distraction after another is thrown at the audience until the point is
reached when even the dullest theater goer realizes that none of the questions
raised are going to be answered. By the time the picture has reached its halfway
point, the only things of interest left are finishing one's popcorn and glancing
at one's watch.
The stars try; there is a light sureness
to Fred Astaire's performance which far outstrips John Houseman's ponderous
ramblings, and Craig Wasson's irritating sniveling. Melvyn Douglas and Douglas
Fairbanks try, but the material they have been given is so foolish, that they
are like Shakespeareans cramped down behind a Punch and Judy stage.
And the rest of the film? The sets, the
location shots, and the special effects are as uninspired as everything around
them. There is no newness to Ghost Story. Everything about the film is
thoroughly predictable. The only dialog which even a first-time audience
couldn't intone along with the actors up on the screen, is that which makes no
sense in the first place.
Ghost Story is the perfect example
of what horror is becoming in America. Innocent people die, not at the hands of
an unspeakable evil, but in the grasp of the unnamably petty. It has the stock
sinister noises, boarded-up houses, mouldering corpses, lightning right on cue,
and as much sex as can be squeezed in without making the entire thing
"vulgar".
Horror is no longer a genre of eldrich
terrors and of things better left unknown; now it is the home of Harlequin
heroines and of men more like J. R. Ewing than Charles Dexter Ward or Henry
Armitage. In Ghost Story, for the most part, the characters are
terrified, cowardly, and bumbling. The hero is saved by an old murderer,
although the way he is saved makes little sense when balanced against the rest
of the film. We know for sure that at least one of the murdering psychos gets
away scot-free.
A number of other problems might be
listed, but why bother? Suffice it to say that Ghost Story, like almost
every other horror film made in 1981, was just not worth seeing. Outside of
Kronenberg's Scanners (which was really a science fiction film, anyway),
the field has had very little to offer during the past twelve months. Next year
looks to be even worse.
'82 promises to be the year of the horror
film spoof. Already in the can, searching for release dates, are Caroline
Munro's The Last Horror Show, and another laugh frolic entitled Thursday
The 12th.
Whether or not these pictures become hits
is not the point. In the fifties, when audiences grew tired of the monsters
which had terrified them only a few years earlier, the same creatures (often
played by the same actors) began showing up in comedies. The only recent Dracula
films have been Love At First Bite, and Langella's Dracula; people
are still arguing over which one was funnier. It may be time for this cycle to
begin again. Film makers, tired of trying to do something new with the same old
material, may once again take the easy way out and begin making fun of that
which is too much for them to handle.
It would be a shame, but at a time like
the present when we are surrounded by an army of self-proclaimed
"moral" censors, we may have little choice in the matter. Before Halloween
ll, the last good horror film was Alien. We may have to wait just as
long for the next one.
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