Not ‘that’ bad – 90s horror

Just as we are forever dissecting the divisions between the generations, prosecuting their comparative strengths and weaknesses in order to passive aggressively complain about millennials, zoomers, and boomers, it seems that pretty much every horror fan has strong opinions about the decades, enumerating their favorite eras as an act of self-definition, and deriding the “worst” epoch to establish their cool by looking down on the “right” things. And while the first decade of the 2000s sometimes gives them a run for their money, I think most people prefer to hate on the 90s.

The 50s and earlier (even if there were great lulls for the genre in the middle of the century) all count as obvious classics. In the 60s, the modern horror film found itself, with standout examples like Night of the Living Dead and Rosemary’s Baby leaving a stamp on all that came after. In the 70s, things got gritty and genuinely horrific, just as certain genre tropes were being formalized. In the 80s, there was an explosion of horror movies, of advancements in practical special effects, of both genuine classics as well as simply really entertaining schlock. But I suppose the train couldn’t keep chugging on forever, and sooner or later, it had to slow down. Ah, the oh so disdained 90s.

That said, some of my favorite horror (and horror adjacent) movies came out in that much maligned decade: Ford Coppola’s Dracula, Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, Craven’s New Nightmare (plus of course Scream, which set the stage for the whole late-90s teen slasher cycle), as well as one of the highest heights of the genre, Candyman. And it’s not only high profile “great films” that stand out – there was tons of just fun, quirky stuff as well. Return of the Living Dead Part III has tons of wild special effects and a cool, kinky sexiness. Exorcist III has got one of the best jump scares of all time amid Oscar worthy performances. Cemetery Man is artsy and funny and delightfully weird. And Army of Darkness just oozes campy charm and an army of pre-cgi animated skeletons that could give the great Ray Harryhausen a run for his money.  There was plenty of great horror to go around.

But while I can make a full throated defense of the decade, I must admit that I haven’t dug into it as deeply as I might, and so today, I thought I could remedy that with a few movies that didn’t really make the biggest splash, some of which were rather discounted at the time, but which nonetheless may be worthy of attention. So here is my assignment, my little series of “lesser” entries in big horror franchises from the 90s: Candyman 2 (1995), Slumber Party Massacre 3 (1990), Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4 (1994), The Howling 5 (1990), and Halloween 6 (1995). All new to me, all filling gaps, all about 20% on Rotten Tomatoes. What could go wrong? I’ve never written negatively about a movie on this blog – generally I only want to write about things that I appreciate. But none of these are particularly well thought of – will I be able to keep up my positive streak, or am I dooming myself to snark? Only one way to find out…and of course there will be spoilers.

Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh (1995)

Bernard Rose’s 1992 Candyman just may be my favorite horror movie of all time. I’ve written about it before here, but in short, I think it comes pretty close to perfection, full of poetry and social commentary and true horror and deep feeling, all wrapped up in a truly scary package that is expertly filmed and scored and performed. It is beautiful and grisly and rich in ideas – a real classic of both the genre and film in general. It was also instrumental in making me a horror fan and not just a person who might watch a scary movie from time to time. In fact, I love it so much that I’ve never had the slightest interest in checking out either of its direct sequels, though I did see and mostly enjoy the 2021 requel (of course, I have thoughts – someday, I will finally write about it, but today is not that day). They just didn’t look good and I felt I would be disappointed and/or flat out angry.

Well, I’ve finally watched the second entry and I’m happy…that I didn’t watch this sooner. I feel like at this point in my life, I can see something like this, observe issues I don’t like, and move on with my day. Twenty five years ago, I would have had blood in my eyes, raging at the desecration of something so dear to me by such a subpar, unnecessary continuation of its story – the utter offense of some executives taking the seeds of something beautiful and significant and using them to make just the worst kind of generic crap. Now, as I wrote above, on this blog, I don’t really write “bad” reviews. I only choose to write about something if I’ve already decided that it is interesting enough to invest the time and effort of considering it seriously, which usually means that I liked something about the given film. But, here I’ve given myself a homework assignment, and so I better do it, but maybe I can keep it short and sweet (“for the sweets”).

Let’s just say it’s a missed opportunity. While I still don’t feel a sequel needed to be made, I understand that money is nice, and people want it – also, Tony Todd was a special talent, with such a tremendous voice and a real physical presence, and it’s fair that he got to make some more movies in this very striking role (though I would need real convincing at this point to watch the third). Following his 1992 performance, he deserved to lead a franchise – it’s just a shame that this was what he got. Sigh. So anyway, they could make a sequel, and even use a similar jumping off point as they did here, and that could have been interesting. Could have been…

One of the things I love about Candyman, both the original film and the Clive Barker short story on which it’s based (“The Forbidden”) is how the titular villain is an embodiment of an idea, a story made flesh, but not a historical character who has come back as a vengeful ghost. I feel this was implicit in the 1992 film (though, to be fair, the “Helen is his reincarnated lost love” thread undercuts this, but hey, nothing is perfect), but the 2021 movie explicitly states it. Thus, in a way, all stories about who he is, where he’s from, and why he kills are true if people tell them. This movie sets a more concrete origin – Candyman is, in fact, only and exactly the tortured spirit of Daniel Robitaille, a slave who had fallen in love with a white girl, and who was lynched, had his hand cut off (he’d been an artist), was covered in honey, and stung to death by bees, the honey earning him the moniker “Candyman.”

I personally prefer the more open, folkloric version of 1992 and 2021, but I can accept that it could be worthwhile to dig into him as more of a real person, as a more human character with psychological motivations. So I wish we had more of that here. There is one flashback close to the end when we see his murder, as he presents how he was transformed from who he was into what he is, and what it means when the Candyman name is used. We see the lynch mob laughingly, jeeringly calling him this and we understand the dehumanizing cruelty inherent in it (bringing to mind the revelation at the end of The Autopsy of Jane Doe *spoiler* They tortured and killed her for being a witch, but it was the harm they did that made her one – and here it is the pain done to Daniel that leaves a scar in world and makes him a monster). That is interesting. I wish we had more of it, more of his role in the local culture, more sociological exploration of race and class and disappearance and generational suffering (one of the things I think makes the original significant is how Cabrini-Green was such a focal point of the fear of the city that Candyman’s presence and activity within it poetically resonated and rang true). Apparently, Bernard Rose, the director of the 1992 film, had been developing a script which would have all taken place in the past, dealing exactly with this becoming, and possibly with these issues – but the studio nixed it because they weren’t comfortable filming an interracial romance. Oof.

Instead, we get a long (not actually as long as it felt) story of a fairly uninteresting White family down in New Orleans who have a blood connection to Robitaille – a bit of a procedural mystery to unravel – who was he to them and why do people keep getting gutted by this hook-handed ghost with a silky voice? Also, there’s a magic mirror macguffin that holds his “power center,” some dodgy mid 90s CGI, a whole lot of grating voiceover from a local DJ, rote police investigations, and shockingly flat filming of the vibrant city of New Orleans. Seriously, how do you set such a gothic, folkloric story in a city known for having so much atmosphere and life (at Mardi Gras, no less), scoring it with the same composer riffing on his original themes, and produce a film so grey, so dry, so blandly generic and muted of all color, contrast, or passion? That is some kind of feat.

And if you will indulge me one last mini-rant, I love the score Phillip Glass did for the original movie, looooove it. Maybe my favorite. Got it on vinyl. It’s been my ringtone for 20 bloody years. And here, it seems they have more original music from him and it simply does. not. work. It’s as if someone had a Phillip Glass cd and just put it on quietly in the background with no care to which bit of music underscored which bit of screen action. It is seemingly omnipresent and distracting, never dominating the mood and shaping our emotional journey. Never effectively used, it’s just noise. I’d never imagined that I would get more Glass Candyman score and wish they would turn it off cause it’s getting in the way of the very boring scene I’m futiley trying to stay awake through.

So, yeah, that’s that. I can’t say that I recommend it (if you couldn’t tell), but hey, maybe the third one was better. If you know that it was, if it is worth my time, please leave a comment and say so – I’ll otherwise keep my distance. Hopefully the rest of these will fare better.

Post Script: I just watched Final Destination: Bloodlines. If you’re in the mood for more Tony Todd, maybe check that out – it’s a beautiful goodbye.

Slumber Party Massacre 3 (1990)

I have written here before about my love for the original Slumber Party Massacre. I think it’s a really special flick, embodying all of the tendencies of the golden age slasher (and having fun with them – cheap, fake-out scares abound, for example), while at the same time, being drenched in irony and rich with a perspective critical of the content it contained. I think it beats Scream to the punch as a meta-slasher, and it gets extra points for doing so while the first wave of slashers had not yet fully crashed on the shores of the mid 80s. The second movie is interesting, weird, and just a rollicking good time, somewhat indebted to A Nightmare on Elm St., with some weird Freudian stuff thrown in. It has a totally different tone and is basically a musical – like I said, weird. But it does, in a way, continue the story of the first picture.

And then comes this third film in the “series,” such as it is. As far as I could tell, there is no connective tissue between this entry and what came before (Part 2 did continue the story of a character from Part I), except that once again, there is a group of girls having a slumber party, and a killer with a power drill is picking them off. Also, as with the first two films, this has the rare distinction of being both written and directed by women (something that sadly stands out in the genre and Hollywood in general – plus, it is notable for a subgenre like the Slasher, given how often it’s been accused of base misogyny).

I expect the less one knows the first two movies, the better this one seems. Both of those were really quite interesting and subversive in their ways, and while this one does actually sneak in a bit of viewpoint and better characterization and representation than one might expect, it doesn’t pop as something truly unique. But it’s not actually terrible. I mean, it’s clearly cheap and looks it, it’s pretty by the book as slasher fare goes, and it is flat and televisual in its style. But I kind of liked it. It isn’t the most suspenseful thing I’ve ever seen, but the kills were properly brutal and sometimes quite gory – they worked. It is a bit playful with the identity of the killer, dropping in three or four red herrings along the way, all of whom are at least a bit ridiculous – like the guy actually credited as ‘weirdo’ or the next door neighbor who is spying on the girls and their party (a far cry from Mr. Contant from the first movie – who was weird with his moonlit snail hunting, but surprisingly ok). And most significantly, I really do believe in the main characters and their friendships – I even like them.

The group of girls having the party largely come across as real young people who actually like each other. I can’t say that I remember their names and it’s not like we learn particularly interesting things about them, but for a movie this focused on delivering blood and breasts, I feel they are well drawn and, I don’t know, present. There are people there, and I always appreciate when a cheap scare flick takes the time to let me give a damn about the lambs being led to the slaughter. They don’t feel disposable and that helps the kills actually feel like something, actually hurt a bit.

Finally, as with the first two movies, there is still a point of view here. This is not as satirical or clever (also, sadly, nowhere near as good) as the other two films, but under its veneer of exploitation, it still slips in a concrete view of women, men, and the dynamics between them. The film is full of female characters who are confident and in control, who can unselfconsciously act in their own interests, can serve their own desires: The main character, Jackie, has to move across the country cause her mother got a promotion and her dad will just have to find a new job. When Juliette takes Ken to bed with her and he can’t perform, she tells him that “there are other ways you can make me happy” and then guides him to perform oral sex on her – good for her. Even early on, when all of the girls first get to Jackie’s house, there is something nice about their simple joy in eating and drinking – cookie dough and beer (charmingly, “beer” brand beer, no less) and pizza and basic bodily pleasure and having fun together.

And of course, the men are mostly awful: the aforementioned ‘weirdo’ (who is stalking the girls and lurking around the house at night) and the supremely creepy neighbor, but also the male friends who crash the party, sneaking up to scare the girls when they’re half naked, or the cop working the phone who keeps ignoring their pleas for help, dismissing them as stupid, drunk girls wasting his time, and is only moved to act when an older male neighbor calls to complain of a noise disturbance. The movie has opinions, but I think they come across more subtlety than they did in the first two, admittedly better, pictures. Honestly, in many ways, this feels a bit like a reboot of the first film – without the ironic spark and also less artful, but still quite watchable and more progressive than it might seem at first glance.

In the end, this is no classic, but I’m glad I watched it and you could certainly do worse for a cheap slasher flick. Fun, decently paced and generally well-acted – I don’t mourn the 87 minutes I gave to it.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4: The Next Generation (1994)

Ok – wow. Hmmm. This was genuinely interesting. I might not go so far as ‘good.’ But then again, maybe I might? I’d always heard this entry was pretty weird, but the word doesn’t do it justice. Either way, I’m really happy to have seen it – a thoroughly enjoyable experience from top to bottom, even when I thought it was terrible (and there were other times when I thought it was, if not great, then at least utterly fascinating).

So I’ve written about the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre here before, and I will reiterate that I think it may be just about the most effective horror movie I know – if it’s not the best horror flick ever, then there’s no top 5 that doesn’t include it. And just as I very rarely choose to watch it so that it might retain its nightmarish power, it also probably didn’t need any sequels. And yet, it has gone on to be one of the big franchises, with 9 entries (counting remakes and reboots) and Leatherface firmly implanted on the Mt. Rushmore of horror villains (though he (or even perhaps ‘they’) is/are quite an odd inclusion given how much the character mostly just flails around, freaking out – in this entry, no one is even successfully ‘chainsawed’).

So yeah, sequels it has had. Tobe Hooper’s part 2 (which I mentioned briefly here) took a very different tack than his first film and wasn’t as powerful and influential, but is still great in its own way – and quite a wild ride. I still haven’t seen part 3, so I can’t comment on it, but I’d long read that part 4 was really strange and probably awful, but that both its oddness and the fact that it featured early performances from both Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger made it a curio worth seeking out, and I gotta say that’s true.

First of all, the bad. So much of this movie, written and directed by Kim Henkel, an early Tobe Hooper collaborator and co-writer of the original film, just comes off as a direct rip off of that film (with one bit at the end seemingly stolen from part 2), and none of that serves this movie. I honestly don’t know what the intention was – are we supposed to read all of this as references to the first? There are reasons to think he might have wanted us to. Was he just returning to a well that had served in the past? I don’t know, but if you want to see a movie where a group of young people come to a rural Texas house and get terrorized by its residents, with one girl getting dragged, screaming into the kitchen and hung up on a meathook, with the main character spending half the movie running away from a chainsaw wielding, stolen-face-wearing maniac, jumping out of a window at one point before finding temporary refuge at a local business with someone who is actually part of the chainsaw family, and is then tied up and beaten with a stick and taken back to that house for a madhouse dinner scene, but who manages to get away, running to the road at dawn, riding off in a passing vehicle, leaving Leatherface dancing in the early morning light, waving the titular chainsaw around impotently, if you want to see a movie with all of that stuff, I suggest you check out the one from 1974. It did it first and it did it better.

Buuuut…I honestly really liked it. All of it. Even when it felt like a cheap rip off of itself. First of all, if you haven’t seen all that before, it is all delivered adequately and has a lesser but not insubstantial effect, and then there are other strengths – or at least other features that make it worth your time. Oddly, for something so self-referentially derivative, the writing is sharp, funny, and intriguing. From the beginning, when we start out with our young cast at the prom (with a soundtrack that really pulled me back to 1994), I was struck by how much I was enjoying its low key teen hangout movie dialogue, and I appreciated how Renée Zellweger’s Jenny (the requisite final girl) could so effectively cut through the bullshit of the main teen boy character. She is quiet and mousy, never making eye contact, but we come to learn she comes from a difficult home life and has had to learn to deal with real trouble, and she never just lets things slide – she keeps her cool and calls out his manipulative lies. And as the film progresses, so too does she.

Also, there are tons of great, quirky little details, like that one girl at the dance who was somehow spiraling. I don’t know if she was meant to be on drugs or on the spectrum, but for a small background element, I really enjoyed the specificity of her inclusion. Similarly, later when we meet the Sawyer clan in their current incarnation (Leatherface being the only holdover from previous entries, though once again recast), they are constantly spewing out interesting, peculiar stuff. From W.E., who almost exclusively speaks in classical quotations, to Darla, who constantly offers sisterly comfort to Jenny while explaining away her current horrors with conspiracy theory nonsense, to, of course, Matthew McConaughey’s Vilmer, the primary antagonist who balances threatening venom with both ominous doom and gleeful vigor, all while talking a blue streak, they all held my interest and offered a constant stream of engagingly bizarre textual content (except, obviously, the non-verbal Leatherface, who only squeals and screams and cries, while continuing to play with gender and gender roles in unique ways that I’m sure others have written on extensively). I had the impression that there was much more “writing” in this movie than I’d expected, if that means anything (honestly it seems an odd thing to say, but I feel it’s true).

And of course, the film is lifted up by its casting. When this was made, both Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey had been in a few movies (they were in Dazed and Confused together right before this), but I’m pretty sure this was the first time either had a starring role, and Henkel really hit the jackpot when he hired these young local actors cause both are obviously movie stars, giving a spark to their performances that you wouldn’t really expect to find in something so small, cheap, ugly, and strange. (I’m going to focus on the two of them for a bit, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the rest of the cast is actually uniformly strong as well – I particularly liked Tonie Perensky’s Darla.) McConaughey brings a sadistic, unhinged intensity, but all with a charm that makes his abusive insanity a heck of a lot of fun. I loved a late moment when Jenny has run off, having hijacked Vilmer’s mechanical leg with a tv remote (yup), and he’s sent Leatherface on to catch her. He cycles through like ten different remotes before his leg finally works again and then triumphantly throws up his arms and calls out his own name, “Vilmer!!!” His joyful victory is so absurd and stupid, and he is such a wretched monster, but this elicited such a guffaw from me and left me grinning.

Similarly, Zellweger is great here. Jenny is a terrific final girl, and it is a treat to see her grow into her own, but not just as ‘a survivor’ or ‘a fighter.’ As we understand her background, she already was. But before, it had all come in a soft, demure package. But by the end, she grows dominant, such as a shocking scene when she has had enough of all of the shouting and chainsaws and craziness, and she browbeats Vilmer:

“If you’re gonna kill me, then do it! I’m not gonna put up with any more of your crap! It’s bullshit! Nobody believes any of it except your idiot girlfriend. It’s fucking pathetic! … Now, I’m gonna leave and no one is gonna stop me. (Leatherface rises and starts to squeal.) You sit the fuck down! (Leatherface sits.) And shut up! (Leatherface is silent)”

I’ve seen countless young women rise to the occasion and do what they needed to do to cling onto life, turning some monster’s weapon back on him and, in turn, becoming monstrous herself. But I’d never seen this before. She doesn’t descend into madness to survive; she doesn’t give into brutality. She does the opposite. It’s like she’s the only grown up in the room and she demands respect. It even works for a moment (before Vilmer lights her friend on fire and we’re back to the madhouse). And Zellweger does a great job with the material.

But then finally, there is one more element of all this, the part when the movie really surprises, and perhaps the reason that it stands out for me as actually noteworthy and not simply a curiosity. Shortly after Jenny’s commanding outburst, a new character enters the scene – looking like some kind of businessman in a long black limo. He comes into the house, criticizes Vilmer for doing shoddy work, opens his shirt to reveal arcane ritual scarification, licks Jenny’s face repeatedly like an over-amorous snail, tidies up some slices of pizza from the floor and leaves. That is all quite odd, but it’s the words of his criticism that pop: “This is appalling. You are here for one reason and one reason only (…) It’s very simple. I want these people to know the meaning of horror. Horror. Is that clear?”

Now throughout the movie, there had been inklings of a larger conspiracy which felt out of place with the Texas Chainsaw vibe, so it was easy to discount them as conspiratorial blathering. Darla had earlier explained to Jenny that her boyfriend, Vilmer, worked for a secret group that is in charge of everything that happens in the world, and on the side of his tow truck, you can see something about “illuminati.” But no, it actually ends up being true – he does work for a nightmarish conspiracy, and his very stressful and important job is to torture and kill for them. I honestly didn’t see that coming.

But past that direct read, the impression I got was much bigger, more interesting, and also more puzzling. Overwhelmingly, during this speech, I felt that we were getting authorial voice, that Henkel was criticizing the horror genre, Texas Chainsaw movies, and even his own movie that we are watching right now for failing to live up to their potential, for being silly, for being entertainment rather than something deeper, more important. Closer to the end of the movie, his limo pulls up again as Jenny is fleeing, and he has one more small illustrative speech: “This…all this, well, it’s been an abomination. You really must accept my sincere apologies. It was supposed to be a spiritual experience. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am. I suppose it’s something we all live with – people like us who strive for something, a sense of harmony. Perhaps it’s disappointment that keeps us going. L’ raison d’etre.”

I’ve seen plenty of repetitive slashers that underperform, but I’ve never had one look at the camera and apologize to me for not being better. For not being art. What is this movie? I kinda love it. It reminds me of the first time I saw Cabin in the Woods when one of the technicians said they weren’t doing this all for their own enjoyment, but for “them” – of course he was talking about Lovecraftian ancient evil gods, but he was also talking about us in the audience, right? – about our own insatiable hunger to see the worst. Now maybe Henkel’s speechifying is meant to be critical of others only, or maybe only himself, or maybe it’s all sending up a kind of artistic pretentiousness. I truly do not know. Perhaps he is ashamed to have ripped off the first movie, offering such a pale imitation, but perhaps that failing repetition is all part of a big meta joke, maybe it is all intentional failure, and hence success – but I think that could be over-generously stretching it. Either way, what a freaking hoot!

So yeah – I can’t promise that this is a ‘good’ movie or that you will ‘like’ it, but in spite of its notable flaws, I think it’s rather singular.

The Howling 5: Rebirth (1990)

So, first off, I’m even cheating by including this one. A UK/Hungarian co-production, it was actually released in 1989 in the UK, but it came out in the States in 1990 and I was hard pressed to find a part 5 released in the 90s that I hadn’t seen – so this is it. And it is … ok, I guess.

I mean, The Howling was not famous for having good sequels (of which there have been seven) – Part II (aka  Your Sister is a Werewolf) is one of the all-time great “bad movies” (seriously, check it out if you haven’t – it’s a blast), and while I must admit I haven’t seen any of the others, for some reason I trust that when people say Part III: The Marsupials isn’t likely to get a Criterion release, that it’s likely true. And so this is probably one of, if not the, best in the series following Joe Dante’s pretty great 1981 original. It’s not amazing by other standards, but for a Howling sequel, it’s pretty good.

And it is, at least, something different: A group of strangers are all invited to the grand re-opening of a remote Hungarian castle that’s been sealed off since the Count and Countess living there mysteriously murdered all of its other inhabitants before committing suicide back in 1489. It’s a spooky old place, all torch lit and snowed in, with secret passageways and an underground labyrinth (like you do), and a very small staff who speak no English and seem quite suspicious. It isn’t long before all involved have split up to unlock the secrets of this long abandoned stronghold and they of course start getting picked off one by one by something big and fanged and hirsute.

It’s kind of Ten Little Indians meets a bodycount Slasher meets The Howling. I can’t be the first to make this observation. It does rather show its budget, but it does have moments that work. I rather liked some of the initial scenes of the characters meeting each other and discussing the old place. It was all a bit stagey, but it had its charm. I like that it really keeps its cards close to its chest as to the identity of the werewolf until the very, very end. It periodically had some halfway decent atmosphere, and moments of propulsive editing.

I can’t say it was an amazing film or that I’m likely to rewatch it, but it’s not a bad way to pass an hour and a half on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I’m always appreciative when films set in foreign countries feature local people who actually speak the language (rather than speaking English with a faux Hungarian accent). And there is one element that really does stand out: I dug the music. The credits attribute it to someone or something called “The Factory” but some cursory googling is failing to find any real info about it/them. But the score is really surprising (not least of all, due to its tendency to blare really loud, industrial sounds at you suddenly before reverting to silence). The music seems so out of place for this gothic, folkloric mystery, but honestly, it works, and I think it’s pretty cool and actually serves the story though it features a flavor of sound I wouldn’t expect in a movie like this. Check out the theme on Youtube at least.

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

Ok, I’ve been waiting for this one. Waaay back in 1994, I wasn’t yet a horror fan. I’d watch a horror movie occasionally, but I hadn’t, you know, converted. Still, I’d always dug the dark and gothic and Halloweeny and when The Crow (1994) came out, its tenebrous industrial music video/supernatural revenge / comic book love story vibe just captured my little 14 year old heart, and after seeing it a few times in the cinema, when it was released on VHS, I had to own it – I watched that tape till it wore out and could pretty well recite the whole thing, including the one trailer it included, which was for Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers. I’m not sure if I’d even seen the original Halloween at that point, but I vibed on Donald Pleasence’s sorrowful inflection as he said “I knew what he was, but I never knew why.” And I’ve got to say, I’ve always been more than a little bit curious. Since that time, I have become a horror fan (I’d better be, or else what am I doing here?) and have seen all of the Halloween movies (and have written about a couple). Well, all but one. Yeah, there’s long been just one I hadn’t seen, until today. You know, the one with the shining 8% on Rotten Tomatoes… so let’s go…

And I gotta say, that was actually pretty solid. In various versions even – after enjoying the movie this morning, I read that what I’d just watched was the “Theatrical cut” and that there was also a “Producer’s cut” which is quite different and preferred by many, so after a bit of internet digging (I saw a claim that it was available for rent on Amazon, but not in my country – happily the Internet Archive has it), now I’ve watched both, and I’m really surprised with how perfectly enjoyable (far from perfect, but I had a fine time) both cuts were. I really don’t know why this has such a bad reputation among the series or why it was so poorly reviewed. I’ve never been the hugest fan of the franchise (the first is a real classic and the third is fun, but for me, the rest are all just basically ‘fine.’), but I feel that this stands among them without drawing any great shame on itself. It continues the storylines of parts 4 and 5, both of which centered around Jamie Lloyd (Laurie Strode’s daughter and Myers’s niece since they made Laurie Michael’s sister in the second movie), it’s well paced and attractively filmed, and it delivers what you generally expect from a Halloween sequel: Michael Myers appearing out of the shadows to surprise and murder hapless victims, atmospheric music and cinematography, and a needlessly convoluted backstory revolving around family permutations that send you back to Wikipedia to check which timeline you’re in and who is related to whom. That last part isn’t my favorite, but the rest was all good fun.

In this case, Michael and Jamie have both been held by a mysterious cult since the events of the last movie and poor Jamie has grown up in captivity (at least 6 years) and under what (in the theatrical cut) are unknown, but clearly bad, circumstances (and in the producer’s cut are downright creepy and incestuous) has come to be pregnant. The movie starts with her ritually giving birth and running away with the baby before something nefarious can be done to it. Michael follows her back to Haddonfield and the story is set in motion. We then meet our other players, Tommy Doyle (who Laurie had been babysitting in the original film), all grown up and obsessed with occult research into the origins of Michael’s power, Kara Strode and her son Danny (who have moved into the Myers house because Strode Realty somehow never managed to move the murder house), and, of course, good old Dr. Loomis (and it is nice to see Pleasence get top billing – he passed away a few months before this was released).

Generally, the 96 minute Producer’s cut spends more time on the Cult of Thorn (set up in the last film), establishing an “origin” for Michael’s need to kill. I know there are many who object to this since Michael’s whole thing is being simple, inexplicable, implacable evil. I’m fine with that, but also, it’s Part Six of an endless franchise and all of these movies, even when they work well and give cinematic pleasure, can get kinda samey, so I’m really ok with shaking things up a bit. Alternately, the 88 minute Theatrical cut (which is much easier to come by – it’s what you’ll probably find on a streamer) eschews much of the cult stuff (like it’s ashamed of it, like it’s just too silly). The shorter version is generally tighter and runs at a better clip, but also makes considerably less sense. Watching them back to back, it’s kind of crazy to see how the last act gets chopped up, with significant reshoots in order to spend less time with the wierdos in robes.

I watched the Theatrical cut first and did rather like it, but after watching the other version, it’s easy to see why many fans prefer the Producer’s, even if it explains away Michael’s evil with a kinda silly cult story (not to mention Tommy Doyle and his magic rune rocks – um, ok). The shorter version feels much more like a product of 1995. It’s got music stingers for jump scares up the wazoo and gone is a lot of Carpenter’s theme and scoring riffing on his compositions, replaced with very mid-90s sounding rock songs (none of which ring a bell, but they sound of the era). Whereas the Producer’s cut has a strange ending, it’s almost as if the Theatrical cut doesn’t have an ending at all – after a very odd edit, it just stops more than it ends. Also, there is a clear difference in one of the main performances.

So this was Paul Rudd’s first big starring role, having previously been in just a few smaller things, and I understand he came in for some strong criticism on release. Sadly, I get it. After watching the Theatrical cut, I was thinking that I really like him, but he was just not the right guy for the part. He feels very much like Paul Rudd – likeable, charming, kinda sardonic. These elements of his performance feel very mid 90s (thinking of the comedy of a movie like Scream, but also just thinking of him in Clueless, and really, the whole Gen-X irony thing). That just didn’t work for a role where he’s supposed to be obsessed with unravelling the dark forces that he knows are out there, that scarred him as a child, and of which he is terrified. There’s an inordinate amount of smirking and “hey this is crazy” laughs and wild smiles, and it undercuts the horror. But then, having thought about how he was miscast, or at least misused, I was surprised when watching the Producer’s cut to find all of the smirks and laughs and any note of sarcasm gone. He didn’t exactly blow me away, but it’s a much more grounded portrayal. Clearly, when they did reshoots for the Theatrical release, he was prompted to lighten things up. Bad idea.

So yeah, if you like some of the Halloween movies and haven’t seen this one, check it out – I think it’s worth your time. It’s got some fun sequences, decent kills, some ok performances (better in the longer cut), and one thing it has in spades is Halloween atmosphere. It gives such a feeling of late October – all is damp and kinda chilly looking, a gloomy pallor hanging over the town, brightened only by the colorful decorations and costumes adorning the houses and children, respectively. You can almost smell the sour tang of wet piles of decomposing leaves. I loved it – a great backdrop for all the stalking and killing and culting. My only gripe is that, you know how at the beginning I mentioned that one line I always remembered Pleasence saying in the trailer? It’s not in the movie! Blatant false advertising!

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And so, that’s my brief foray into some poorly regarded horror sequels of the 90s, and for the most part (let’s never again speak of Candyman 2), they weren’t that bad. Sure, none of these will become my new favorite, but there was plenty worth taking away. Other decades might indeed be “better” for the genre, but I think there are gems to be found in any time or place if you’re willing to dig. And if you can find so much good in stuff that’s supposedly “bad,” then there must be a lot worthwhile out there. Keep digging.