Remakes & Reboots Part 3 – The Controversial

Previously on Remakes & Reboots, I took a look at a bad update of a classic 80s horror film, Friday the 13th (and the people responsible for that and more dreck), and I praised the one good remake out of the bunch, My Bloody Valentine 3D (and the folks responsible for making it worthwhile). Now I’ll give you my thoughts on another remake (not quite 80s, but close enough) that split audiences right down the middle — almost like the victim of a mad movie slasher!

And that movie is … Rob Zombie‘s reimagining of John Carpenter‘s classic, Halloween. The movie that really gave birth to the whole 80s slasher genre. Carpenter’s film was fresh, new and original with it’s faceless killer, over-sexed teens and, for the era, graphic violence (seen today, it’s remarkable at how little blood there actually is in the film). This is the film that begat Friday the 13th, and the notion that sex kills and only the virtuous survive. And like most well-regarded films, it didn’t need a remake.

But it got one — after countless, mostly inane sequels — courtesy of rocker-turned-director Rob Zombie. I will state up-front that I have not seen Zombie’s two previous genre films, House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, but from what I had heard about them, and from the snippets I had seen, I was not too keen on seeing him take on this classic. But to my great surprise, the film is actually pretty terrific. It’s not perfect, but it does what so many of the bad remakes never do … it brings something new to the table.

And that’s where the controversy begins. I thought Zombie’s take on the Michael Meyers backstory was brilliant. In the original, we never really knew much about Meyers (although more clues were given in the TV version with extra footage Carpenter shot to pad the running time after the network censors made their own cuts). Zombie takes us back to Michael’s childhood, his really awful childhood. We see the environment that produced a killer, all before he donned that Halloween mask and murdered his sister. Then, we see Michael grow up in the mental hospital, and his obsession with masks. We also meet Dr. Loomis, who comes off more as a fame whore than someone who genuinely has a connection to Michael like the original Loomis did.

Zombie opened up Michael’s life for the first time, and I thought it was great. After years of disappointing remakes and uninspired sequels, we were finally given a new spin on a classic story. And a lot of people hated it. I still don’t know why. Did they find watching Michael’s childhood difficult because of how he was treated? Did they object because of the whole nature vs nurture debate (was Michael born a killer, or did his family turn him into one?). In Carpenter’s film, maybe people thought it was scarier because all we knew of Michael Meyers was that he was an angelic-looking child who committed a horrible crime, spent time locked up, broke out and returned to the scene of the crime. But why? (That was a question that got answered in Carpenter’s Halloween II, but Zombie incorporated the “why” into his film).

Did knowing too much about Michael Meyers ruin the remake for audiences? Or was it the fact that after a brilliant first half, once the film moved to the town of Haddonfield, Zombie gave us an almost shot-for-shot remake of Carpenter’s film? If there was anything disappointing about this Halloween, it’s that after Zombie bravely reimagined the story and made it his own, he so easily slipped into lazy filmmaking by just giving us a rehash of the original, with a lot more blood. There were a few little additions here and there, and for the most part it was well done, but there was nothing new. I did have to tip my hat to Zombie for having the balls to actually kill Michael and Dr. Loomis at the end because he didn’t want there to be a sequel. Of course, a studio with a hit wants more, and after threatening to make the movie with someone else directing, Zombie was convinced to resurrect The Shape and Loomis for a less-than-successful follow-up (although there is still talk of a Halloween 3D written by … Mr. Todd Farmer!  Or not. No one seems to know the actual status of the film these days, but I’m up for a Farmer reboot). Actually, I’d like to see a remake of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and continue the franchise as Carpenter intended.

Any way you slice it, Rob Zombie had all the good intentions in the world to make the franchise his own, and he almost succeeded. I’ll take Zombie’s Halloween remake over just about any other horror remake from that era. What would be on your wish list of 80s horror movies to be remade?

Clacked by Chuck Duncan
on Oct 28, 2011 @ 09:00 EST5EDT