…but for some reason I was having a hard time logging in to post them. Oh well– everything seems to be working fine now.
Halloween (2007), in which Rob Zombie isn’t the worst thing to happen to the franchise, but the movie would have been so much better if it were free to be something other than a Halloween remake…
The Pack (1978), in which the Jaws-knockoff formula gets an interesting twist from using a species that usually gets along very well with humans as the threat…
Total Recall (1990), which is simultaneously Paul Verhoeven’s last really good Hollywood movie, and a signpost pointing the way to Hollow Man and Showgirls…
and…
Vanessa (1977), in which it isn’t just your imagination– there really wasn’t a script, strictly speaking.
El Santo rules the wasteland-- and also 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting.
#1 by Brian on June 3, 2022 - 12:20 am
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Wow, three reviews in now and Rob Zombie still has yet to be awarded a score higher (or lower) than a 2-star rating. I feel like that demonstrates better than anything, the utter blandness of Zombie’s directorial career.
At least in this instance though he’s more hamstrung by the formula of remaking a franchise film, and a story solely about Michael’s time while institutionalized would have been the better option (since that’s where all the best stuff is in this film) as opposed to Zombie trying to redo the original halloween in his own particular, gritty style in the film’s second half.
It does make me all the more curious about what you’ll have to say about Halloween II ’09, though I now have this growing suspicion it’ll be a review of comparible analysis to the last three.
#2 by RogerBW on June 9, 2022 - 11:27 am
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I think Total Recall is pretty much Peak Arnie – along with Terminator 2 the next year – and while Last Action Hero and True Lies have their defenders (including me, for LAH) I don’t know anyone who’d go to bat for Eraser or the later-90s films.
I wonder whether what to you and me seems like casual cruelty is simply part of Verhoeven’s image of how normal people behave when they aren’t being forced to conform.
Oddly enough, a day of two ago I saw the teaser trailer for The Munsters, directed by Rob Zombie. Ho hum.
#3 by DamonD on June 10, 2022 - 10:45 am
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That’s a fantastic reading of Zombie’s Halloween.
It’s not my least favourite in the series, though in part that’s due to the series managing to plumb some serious depths. But I don’t like it much, and I’m realising and agree that’s because it fails when it has to be a Halloween movie , rather than on its own terms and being something original.