h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So, 31st October then, the night the guys and ghouls come out to play. And more importantly, it's the night that Michael Myers came home.
Now I don't know about anyone else, but I think John Carpenter's Halloween still stands up today as an absolute horror masterpiece. The first-person steadicam stuff at the beginning is one of the most unnerving sequences, which still looks great despite the fact that it's been ripped off horribly many times (cf Friday the 13th).
The Halloween series has to be THE most confused horror franchise, lacking as it does ANY consistency across its 7 parts. I'm going to write this up as a proper guide entry I think, but it seemed topical for today, so here it is.

So tonight it's pumpkins, Halloween and Halloween:H20 and a big pot of chili (not very festive, but I make great chili and want to spoil my guests.

Hello there and welcome to h2g2 i must say that i like a good film as much as the next person and have just seen h20.

I don't know about you, but I think Halloween H20 is the most disappointing of the Halloween series. The previous films led up nicely to a large conspiracy theory, which if a little confused at times, still worked well, despite the death of Donald Pleasance during filming of "Halloween: The Revenge of Michael Myers".
Halloween H20 just had far too many "fake jumps" trying to make you scared with nothing happening. And Michael Myers didn't really look right - he walked too fast and his eyes weren't black enough. Michael Myers is at his best when he is slow and menacing, and when you hear his breathing. In many ways, I think that Halloween II is the best of the series, certainly one of the best sequals to a film I've ever seen.
(By the way, I pretty much ignore Halloween III)

So, what's your view?

<BB<

Sorry, but I truly have to disagree with you on this. The 'large conspiracy theory' you mention is the unscariest thing in the whole series. As you say, the way Michael does everything slowly and definitely, the way he waits (and breathes) before he acts is very scary, but what is scariest is the way that there is no discernable reason for it. Likewise his invulnerability remains unexplained and therefore more unnerving. By putting Myers as a kind of enforcer/God for a druidic conspiracy he becomes laughable. Also, the idea that he does anything else except stalk and kill (like eat. And father children? Pur-lease! Back in the day, Michael killed anyone who had sex) undermines his position as this completely inhuman killing machine. So Revenge and Curse suck, to be honest. I still go with the first one as the best of the series, just because it quite obviously is, but the second is a passable sequel. Even 4 works well, with its twist ending.
As for H20, you have to remember that the whole point of it was to break the franchise out of its rubbish straight-to-video hell and bring in some decent production values, and some post-Scream clever-cleverness. I think they also wanted to return to the original idea that it's most scary when you're waiting for something to happen and it doesn't, and then nothing should happen and it does. They just did it in a more 'Hollywood' way.
I've written a guide entry about it. I'd post the link but can't remember it - you should be able to follow it from my space tho'

The article is here:
http://www.h2g2.com/A463114

I admit that the whole "Michael's sign is Thorn" |> thing is a little unbelievable when it suddenly comes into the plot. The silliest bit is when Michael Myers just decides to hang around for a year (between 4&5?) and does not do anything until Halloween next year. 5 is definately the weakest of the series, and yes, when I first saw it, I thought that the whole "man in leather boots" bits and the ending were pathetic. I also found it crazy that throughout Jamie was more worried about her sister's friend Tina then her sister Rachel, who hadn't been seen since the start of the film. Jamie worries far more about her dog!
But I guess I liked Curse because of Donald Pleasance - in my view, he was the one who made the Halloween series, and H20 lacked that. Yes, it had a badly dubbed voice-over at the start, but I always thought that it was Dr Loomis' mad obsession with Michael Myers that made the films what they are - otherwise you're left with a standard killer that's not that different from any other serial killer in any other slasher film.
Curse would have been better had Donald Pleasance not died, and as it is his last film, I cannot dislike it.

You see, I think Donald Pleasance actually UNDERMINES a lot of the atmosphere in the later films, because he's so bloody histrionic all the time. There are only so many times you can hear a deranged man shout 'PURE EVIL!!!! EVIL!!! HE'LL KILL YOU ALL!!! DON'T YOU SEEEE???!!!" or similar before it starts to get, well, silly.

And isn't there a Loomis character in most slasher films? The obsessed survivor who no-one believes until it's too late? Granted, they don't usually last as long as Loomis does in the Hallowe'en films, but they're a fairly standard device. I think Hallowe'en (the original) works well becuase it's a damn good film, Hallowe'en 2 and 4 work because of strong performances from Jamie Lee Curtis and that little kid whose name I can't remember (ah and THAT shock ending to 4), and H20 works because it pulls back all the elements from the original films, before things got a bit daft, and wraps them all up in shiny Nineties teen-flick production values.
So there.

Okay - we can agree to disagree.
I'm glad that you like most of the films, though.
We'll just have to see what the next one's like