The witching hour (and 38 minutes)
In the annals of horror sequeldom, few sequels are as reviled as Halloween III: Season of the Witch. On the surface, it’s not hard to see why. The original Halloween hit the horror and independent film scene in 1978 with a chorus of critical praise and audience screams. The saga of Michael Myers continued a few years later in 1981 with Halloween II, which picks up at the exact second the original ended. That film was also a success commercially (though not so much critically) and Michael Myers looked poised to become the first major horror icon (Jason had just made his first solo appearance in Friday the 13th, Part 2 that same year). The brains behind Michael Myers, John Carpenter and Debra Hill, felt pressured by the studio to provide a third entry for October 1982 but they had a different idea. Halloween II ended with Michael Myers burnt to a crisp, after all, so why continue that storyline? Carpenter and Hill liked the idea of a horror film series centered on the idea of Halloween but having storylines independent of each other. Thus, Halloween III: Season of the Witch was born. Audiences must have felt perplexed and deceived by this in-name-only sequel and the result was an interesting, albeit brief, experiment in taking the series in a new direction. Michael Myers would return to the series 6 years later with the aptly titled, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers but the wounds from Season of the Witch still haven’t healed even though my opinion is that it’s a fun and unfairly maligned film.
From the Vault: The House of the Devil
From The Vault is a feature exclusive to The Cinephiles “Month of Horror.” It will serve to shine a spotlight on some of the newer horror films that have flown under the radar.
Building tension is an art form I fear the horror genre doesn’t have much use for anymore. A killer’s strike can be startling for sure, but waiting for the killer to strike can be excruciating. This tension has been replaced with special FX, forcing me to reiterate the old, “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” rule. I am not entirely sure who made up that rule, but it was probably somebody’s mother. If there is one area The House of the Devil excels in, it’s taking that rule to heart.
Two quick thoughts
I’ve been working on a column about backwards compatibility in video game systems, and it’s exploded a bit (in a good way). So while I’m sorting out the pieces, I wanted to put out the one thing that I know for sure. I’m deeply interested in backwards compatibility, and right now to me it’s an important sign of a good system. I find, however, that I do not tend to use backwards compatibility to play the same games again and again. There are some exceptions to this—I’ve played at least three different versions of Final Fantasy IV—but for the most part I don’t find it fun to pick up old NES games. Most of them aren’t very good, and I’m immediately reminded that I was never very good at them.
The passions of John Waters
I got sucked into Waters’ work and manifesto at the age of seventeen, and in his books Shock Value and Crackpot I first learned all the infamous anecdotes devoured by other Waters fans long before me, including the one Waters himself now is cheerfully weary of telling years later (you know the one), but which new generations of fans love him for as soon as they discover his world. He still tells it though, because he is just that gracious, along with all the other great stories about how Divine escaped arrest in a gold lamé toreador outfit, about Edith Massey’s thrift store, Elizabeth Coffey’s mid-gender-reassignment nude scene and the burning of the Pink Flamingos trailer. Oh, and how Divine ate dog feces on film under Waters’ direction (that’s the one!); something Waters says he could never live up to and Divine could never live down.
But you already know all those stories. The behind the scenes DIY-ness and mania of the 1970s and 80s Waters-filmmaking-family has been meticulously chronicled, re-chronicled, poured-over and revered. Nothing about those crazy, intoxicating, renegade years was left out. Except one thing—one noticeable, unshared topic-hole in the works written by and about the filmmaker.
John Waters never spoke much about his personal life.
Happy trails
Watching the wonderful new installment of Ken Burn’s Baseball (the original, I sheepishly admit, I have yet to watch), The Tenth Inning, a player mentioned something similar: the chemistry comes when you’ve been winning together, when you are all bought into the plan, when the games get tough and you all— each of you—grind out each at-bat, each pitch, to get the right ball to hit and the hit that drives in the run that wins the game.
That kind of focus and workmanship has been missing from the Tigers since, well, 2006. And it’s the kind of thing you don’t get by building, or retaining, guys for amorphous reasons, like “He’s a veteran,” “He’s a leader,” or “The sound of the ball off his bat is different, like all the greatest hitters the game has ever known.”
So the Tigers have already announced who is not coming back—at least, not at this pay scale.
Pretending to know how to grill, or, Jill goes camping
A few weeks ago I went back home to Michigan to go camping in Watervliet, near Lake Michigan. My family camped multiple times a summer when I was younger, and used a popup. I don’t care if you think that’s not camping—when it’s pouring rain and you are sitting in the middle of the tent trying not to touch the sides for fear of moisture leaking in, and trying not to sit on the huge pile of sand or that dead bug, we’ll be sitting warm and dry at our table playing cards. I will agree, though, that if you take your gigantic 1-mile-per-gallon motorhome out to some spot and call it camping, you are either well past retirement or a total failure at camping. I may as well say I’ve been camping in Boston since January. I have heat, a shower, and an oven in my apartment, too. But we were going tent camping, which makes cooking that much more challenging.
Our favorite shops
When I travel or go anywhere new, really, I always make it my main goal to find a record store. Remember those? I’m sure that anyone living in New York or Los Angeles knows what I’m talking about. Other places perhaps not so much, as they are fading away, replaced by a computer application or a megastore with the cheapest prices and cheapest selection. I was lucky then to find Requests Music in Wailuku, Hawaii, which is, they claim, the only “record store” on the island of Maui.
It was a Monday and the family and I drove back across the island to get some food and a few other things. But first on my mind was getting to Requests. We came up on it; I parked the car and strolled up to discover it was CLOSED for President’s Day! I actually hit them up on Twitter (@RequestsHI) and returned the next day. I’m glad I did.
September 27-October 2, 2010
This week, in “Dysphonia,” Mike Vincent shares his discovery of one of his favorite record stores, and how to tell a healthy store from a dying one. Read “Our favorite shops”
October is horror month in “The Cinephiles,” and Kevin Mattison kicks it off by watching Night of the Living Dead alone in a bedsheet tent. Read “Fall of the living dead.”
In “Diary of a Casual Gamer,” Gavin Craig traces an incomplete history of video game console controller design, heavily weighted to his own preferences. Read “In control”
In “PopHeart,” Ana Holguin lets us in on a meeting of the Crafty Beavers, where the agenda includes knitting, flash mobs, and radical feminism, served with more than a dash of wit. Read “What beavery is this?”
In “Rounding Third,” Angela Vasquez-Giroux shares the regret of a season touched by greatness, but mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. Read “What happens in winter”
In “The F Word,” Jill Kolongowski finds that the true secret of Restaurant Week is dessert (and suggests that reduced lighting offers benefits beyond atmosphere). Read “Restaurant week 2010, or, The week-long food coma (part 2)”
Also NEW this week is “Sleeper Hold,” a comic by Zac Gorman
Fall of the living dead
If you can watch Night of The Living Dead on an old, 10″ black-and-white television, huddled under a tent made from your own bedding, I’d highly recommend you do so. The more intimate the viewing, the better. In fact, I believe it to be one of those rare horror films that doesn’t necessarily benefit from audience participation. It wants to scare you on a much deeper, more personal level.
