Spoiler warning: if you are planning on seeing this film, and are not easily dissuaded, then do not read this review. Because unless you like getting pretentious at Dennys afterwerbs, you ought not go. Basically, when the tally of things that bug you surpasses the things that are cool you are in trouble. But if you leave half way through the scary dreadlox goth people will push you around and play catch with your hat.

So Rob Zombie meets with Carpenter, or so it goes, all old fashioned like and asks for his blessing like hes gonna make an honest woman of his daughter. And Carpenter sez to him he sez, “make it your own”. So I cant give him the ol Peter Jackson when Johnny told him not to make the same movie. Because of White Zombie, I will start this thang with what I liked about the picture. Young Michael is awesome. First of all, the kid who plays hims name is Daeg Faerch. You couldnt make up a name that is more metal if you tried. Seriously. Try. The character wears a sweet KISS tee shirt, and although he is vacant and violent, the most offensive thing about him for me was that he was a little dirty. But this time we know whats coming. We know that he is going to turn into a superhuman psychopathic killer because we assume a certain faithfulness to the original script by Johnny and Debra Hill, and also because lil Mikey kills more animals than Ernest Hemingway. He is also seemingly unable to go anywhere without his 25cent clown mask, his first mask, which to my much happiness is not scary but kind of ridiculous looking so that the sinistration of the image is entirely caused by the evil of the boy. The final thing that I liked was that Don’t Fear The Reaper appears a couple o times. what about the nudity though, everybuddy loves tits and ass right, but in a world where Britney Spears flashes her clam like an airmiles card it really didn’t do much for me.

So now that were done with the good cowboys, lets move our attention to the bad cowboys.

I was kind of expecting some sort of jab-jab-wink-wink to Johnny Carpenter, but the more I waited and the harder I looked for it, the more painful was the realization that it wasn’t going to come. I love Carpenters Halloween because of him and Nick Castle in the Shape and Hill. Assault on Precinct 13 is my flavourite Johnny.
Ok chill, lets start orgamizing things here, lets us focus.

My problem with this film is its intention, I cant figure out what Rob Zombie is trying to tell me. In Carpenters treatment, Michaels existence is surreal; as a kid calmly and quietly stabbing his sister in full clown gear, and the Shape appearing and disappearing all over the shittin hell. Zombie demystifies the villain and shifts the sympathy dynamic. Little Daeg in his badass KISS shirt is killin this rat, and this dawg, and what have you, and his moms a peeler, and his step pop is an assho, and his sisters a hore, and he kills this irritating kid, so we stick all that in the ol John Douglas-o-matic and we get a serial killer. Which brings me to so what. Mikey goes to the hospital, he gets round the clock care, but hes too fucked. The system failed so that means what we got here is we need to deal better with those cases but we cant even if we do our best. Malcolm McDowell was really nice to the kid and that janitor who looked out for him got jacked up nonetheless. His mom was really nice to him too cept for the living with a fucking assho bit. So despite our modern understanding of mental illness, despite our technology and not-shock treatment, we are completely helpless which begs why should we even try to reform an insane criminal. Harumph. I ask you Rob Zombie what the crap was with all that lets understand how he became damaged by purging the sinners stuff when the only alternative youre giving us is to kill the poor understandably vengeful lil sumbitch.

So when the first part of the film with young Mike ended I was all waaaAAAAaaa?…….?? do I like him cuz he kills bad guys, or do I hate him for killin poor ol lil animals? And then theres boobs. And more bad people get ganked. And also good people get ganked. Let us not forget too that in 1978 the Shape was played by the guy who directed The Last Starfighter using the Cray X-MP supercomputer to render the digital effects.. today, he is played by a wrestler. Nothing against Tyler Mane, and maybe I should have included this with the good cowboys but I really like that Zombie has a stable of actors he reuses, I love that shit. But the wrestler didn’t even take a stab at the best part of the Carpenter picture, where Mike holds Lyndas bf Bob up against the wall and impales him, then he stands a foot away from the dead Bob and tilts his head side to side, examining the meat. A wrestler might be able to stab the shit out of me like a bastard, but he doesn’t make me piss in my pants and cry like Jimmy Garner. The original movie was a true origin in that thats where the clichés were copied from, but this new version wasnt putting two and two tugether. If Zombie is a fan of either Carpenter or his movie, I saw no indication as such.

And I am now leading into my most pressing issue, the one that runed the experience really for me, the music. One of the things that made that fuckin old version so scary was Carpenters score. He directed it, cowrote it, and composed the whole theme. So now we have Rob Zombie, a musician before a filmmaker, directing his favourite movie and wanting to be respectful yet he doesn’t pony up and give that extra effort like the pioneers with no money to play with had to? That right there tells me that the poor bastard is detatched from the work in that one area where he could have retardified his own cinematic success while giving props to the man who did it himself 30 yearz ago.

Waa waa, and so on. If I had never heard of Johnny Carpenter or Rob Zombie then I wouldn’t be in this mess, but waddaya do. You cant make a silk purse out of a sour peach. Or something.

Hey Zombie. If youre reading this, go rent The Butcher Boy.

Also don’t turn ME into a zombie.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 1:57 am and is filed under ABC IV, Books, T.V. & Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. All content (c) 2005 - 2008 Gus Greeper, unless otherwise credited. All rights reserved.