HALLOWEEN H20: 20 YEARS LATER (1998)

I don't really see how anybody involved with this movie could be proud of it. Completely ignoring Parts 3 - 6, Part 7, excuse me, I mean Part H20 picks up 20 years later and explains that Laurie faked her death and is now the dean of a elite private school in California. Nothing wrong with that really, just as long as Michael is an ultimate badass...and he's not. Instead, his mask looks like he's auditioning for a Slipknot cover band and he has zero personality. I've read that the actor who played Michael had never seen a HALLOWEEN movie before so he just decided "to tackle the role blindly". Well, he had about as much success tackling the role as Helen Keller would tackling that chicken from ROCKY II.

On top of the Shitty Michael aspect, the script is weak as fuck with zero scares. Laurie has a 17 year-old son who attends the school. All of the students are suppose to be on a school trip, but the boy and three friends ditch and hide out in the bowels of the school to par-tay. That's a good idea and it could have been used for some real scares.  Instead, Mike shows up, quickly kills a few of them, then Laurie suddenly decides she's fucking Ripley from ALIENS and goes after Michael. I guess this is seen as some kind of closure for Laurie's character, but I would have been happier with some kind of entertainment for the audience.

Worth watching, I guess, if you're a fan, but I was really disappointed. Zero nudity, zero gore, only a few drops of blood, multiple annoying jump scenes, low body count without any memorable kills, Janet Leigh's talent wasted and the ending was foreshadowed way in advance. Boring. Also why didn't Michael kill the people at the rest stop? What a pussy!

Part 1 - Halloween (1978)
Part 2 - Halloween II (1981)
Part 3 - Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
Part 4 - Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Part 5 - Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
Part 6 - Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
Part 8 - Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
Remake 1 - Halloween (2007)
Remake 2 - Halloween II (2009)
Sequel to Original - Halloween (2018)
Direct Sequel 2 - Halloween Kills (2021)
Direct Sequel 3 - Halloween Ends (2022)

Article incorrectly states the original massacre happened in 1968.

ENEMY AT THE DEAD END (2010)

This movie was a trip.

ENEMY AT THE DEAD END opens with a dude, Min-ho, in a hospital room. He's had a stroke, so his memory is all shot and he's partially paralyzed. He's been given shock treatment and he spends all his time trying to kill himself. Then one day they bring a new patient into the room and Min-ho freaks out because the new guy, Sang-up, wants to murder Min-ho! Lucky for him though Sang-up has amnesia and doesn't remember that he wants to kill Min-ho. Also he's completely paralyzed. So Min-ho decides he better kill Sang-up before he gets his memory back!

Slowly things start to unravel and the two guy's spend all of their time trying to kill each other! It's almost like a "Tom & Jerry" cartoon...if both Tom and Jerry could barely move. To make matters much, much worse they're put on some experimental medicine that causes them to hallucinate. So add all that to the fact that neither one of them sleep (out of fear), it's complete insanity! For the most part I really enjoyed this movie and laughed a lot at these two paralyzed guy's crazy plots to kill each other, but then the story writes itself into a corner and the explanation fails miserably. I would have rather it just left me hanging than insulted me with such a rubbish ending.

Crap ending aside it's a fun, original movie that's definitely worth watching. No nudity (by the hot female nurse), but there's tons of hilarious violence and the performances by the two leads were both excellent. Check it out.

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)

There's a new serial killer on the loose and as the partially skinned corpses of women continue to wash up on the shores of local rivers the FBI is getting more and more desperate to catch the killer. They're doing everything they know to do, including interviewing killers with similar M.O.'s already in custody. But the one they want to talk to the most, Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter, isn't interested in talking to them. So they send in a young, attractive FBI Academy recruit, Clarence Starling, to talk to him, because they know that she's "his type". It works and he talks to her, but only because he has something sinister in mind.

I'm sure at this point in time everybody on the universe has seen THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and they should because it's excellent movie. Watching it again for this review was interesting, because even though I've seen it dozens of times I still got wrapped up in the story.  The construction of the story is brilliant, the acting by the entire cast is mind-blowing and the editing is so sharp that it's hard to believe the filmmakers where able to cram so much emotion and detail and character development into 118 minutes!

If you haven't seen this movie, then you really should. Not only is it an excellent movie and massively influential, but it's one of the rare times the Academy Awards actually got it right...mostly.  Ted Levine wasn't even nominated for his performance!  But it did sweep all of the major awards, including Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins who was absolutely perfect as Hannibal Lecter. So perfect, in fact, that I still think of that role every time I see him.

Part 1 - Manhunter (1986)
Part 3 - Hannibal (2001)
Part 4 - Red Dragon (2002)
Part 5 - Hannibal Rising (2007)

Same few paragraphs over and over.