Podcast: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

After a contentious bidding war with New Line Cinema, Miramax was determined to revamp the Halloween franchise with this jumbled mess. It's 1995's Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, starring Donald Pleasance, Marianne Hagan, Kim Darby, and Paul Rudd.

When Michael Myers and his niece Jamie (J.C. Brandy) are kidnapped by cultists at the end of Halloween V: The Revenge of Michael Myers (don't worry, we get into the series chronology in the episode), Jamie is forced to give birth to a baby for we assume child sacrifice purposes. She escapes with her newborn but is murdered by Michael; the killer is singularly determined to wipe out his entire bloodline (but is shockingly not very adept at it).

Meanwhile, a new Strode family has moved into Michael's murder mansion. Kara (Hagan) is a young woman trying to get her life back on track with her six year old son Danny (Devin Gardner). Much like his namesake in The Shining, Danny has special murderer powers and voices in his head, but unlike The Shining, this is unimportant and barely comes up.

Tommy Doyle (Rudd, credited as Paul Stephen Rudd in this pre-Clueless role) is the kid from the first movie who talks about the Bogeyman. This run-in with Michael 17 years prior has left him traumatized and obsessed with the killer, researching occult reasons for his murder spree on the mid-90s internet. He finds Jamie's baby at a bus station and lackadaisically decides to take care of it while they kinda figure out a way to do something. Also Dr. Loomis (Pleasance) is back on his perpetual mission to find and apprehend Michael.

Will these characters intersect? Does this movie have a purpose? Is Michael's mask too large, thick, and lumpy? Will someone get electrocuted so bad his head explodes? You’ll have to listen to find out.

Podcast: Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Direct download.

In honor of Halloween Kills slicing up the box office (and the holiday of Halloween in general) we reviewed a less successful foray into the franchise with possibly its worst entry, 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection!

After decapitating Michael Myers in the last film, the embarrassingly titled but by all accounts decent Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, this movie opens with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in a mental institution. The exposition nurse reveals that in a stunning plot twist that allows them to make more Halloween movies, Michael switched his outfit with that of an innocent father of three EMT, who was the person Laurie actually decapitated. Michael is still alive.

Laurie is in a constant state of pretend shock one year later, but lies in wait for Michael to come for her on Halloween so she can unleash her trap for him. Unfortunately for Laurie (and fortunately for Jamie Lee Curtis, who desperately wanted to stop making these movies) Michael slips out of the trap and kills her.

A year later, and unrelated to everything that just happened, some college students sign up to star in a livestreamed internet reality series called Dangertainment. After being recruited by Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes) and Nora Winston (Tyra Banks), the cadre of horny teens are locked in Michael Myers’s childhood home and must search for clues as to why he’s so crazy. But what’s really crazy is Michael has been living under the house this entire time and emerges to kill them off!

Some Notes:

• Directed by Rick Rosenthal, who directed Halloween II.
• Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck in the Battlestar Galactica remake) appears as Jen Danzig, I assume the daughter of Glenn.
• This movie continues with Halloween H20's continuity, which ignores Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. I can't definitively say Halloween III: Season of the Witch is not canon; this universe may also contain an evil Irish toy company located in California that used pieces of Stonehenge placed into Halloween masks in order to turn millions of children into bugs and snakes when they watch a television commercial. I can't be 100% certain.