Sometimes no matter how bad an idea sounds, you still want to hope for the best. When it was announced Joel Schumacher, of all directors, would be helming Eight Millimeter, which was a great script by Andrew Kevin Walker, the writer of Se7en, I tried to convince myself that maybe somehow it would wind up a good movie. Having read the script two years before the movie was made, and then seeing the finished result in the theaters, I was so infuriated at how Schumacher completely screwed up what could have been a great thriller in the hands of a good director, I felt like ripping my chair out of the floor and hurling it at the screen.

After seeing the promising trailer for Rob Zombie’s Halloween at the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors, it gave me some hope that, well, maybe it won’t be so bad after all. Then several months later when Halloween was the cover story in Fangoria, and I saw that in Zombie’s version Michael Myers’ mother, played by his wife Sheri Moon Zombie, is a stripper, my hopes crashed into the basement.

The reviews for the new Halloween have mostly been terrible, and the fan boys have been gloating that their prophecy of doom came true. “I Told Ya So!,” read the headline on Aint-It-Cool-News. Yet I find it hard to blast Zombie out of hand for this like many fans are doing. More than hate or anger, my state of mind over this latest remake of a horror classic can only be described as unfortunate.

As I wrote in a previous blog last May, I don’t think Zombie’s a hack. I wasn’t thrilled with House of a Thousand Corpses, but I couldn’t totally dismiss Zombie’s movie debut because it was clear to me the film was made by someone who was technically skilled, and was following his own vision. I still believe Zombie has a lot of potential as a filmmaker, but I also feel a remake of Halloween is the wrong venue for him.

No matter how good Zombie’s take could have been, the shadow of the original is too strong to step out of. A director who is capable of doing something original shouldn’t be working on what’s essentially a cynical cash grab. The critics have also pointed out that Zombie’s sensibilities, like giving Michael Myers a back story, and giving the characters coarse, trailer trash dialog that fits better in his own films instead of a Halloween movie, worked against what Carpenter had previously set up in the original, ultimately canceling itself out.

Not that John Carpenter is totally blameless here either. In MovieMaker magazine, he joked that the people who showed up to the set of the new Halloween and protested it were “homeless people…Those are my only fans. They all live under freeways.” He also couldn’t understand why the fans weren’t happy about Zombie, but weren’t unhappy about Rick Rosenthal, who directed Halloween II and Halloween: Resurrection. Ah, John, if you’re reading this, we’re fans of yours here at Tom’s. We don’t live on the streets, we weren’t happy with the Halloween sequels either, and there are more fans of you and your work out there than you realize.

MovieMaker also pointed out that Kurt Russell, who we’re also big fans of here at Tom’s, isn’t thrilled about the upcoming remakes of Escape From New York and The Thing, which back in the day Carpenter was blasted for remaking, and now his remake is a classic in its own right. Carpenter replied that Russell is “very passionate about what he’s done in his career and the characters he’s created. I’m a little more cynical.”

The horror fans especially hold their favorite films near and dear to their hearts,
but in all fairness, this isn’t as blasphemous as remaking Citizen Kane, or even more appropriately in this case, Psycho in color. The original Halloween was made by gang of filmmakers who wanted to make the best movie they could on a $320,000 budget. Certainly no one working on it thought it would become an untouchable classic, or that it would one day wind up in the Library of Congress.

Carpenter’s vision as a filmmaker elevated Halloween from what could have been a standard drive-in flick into a well-crafted shocker. It certainly didn’t cry out to be remade or improved, and in the scares department, it would still be tough to surpass. As remake mania swept through the horror world, the late Bob Clark actually tried to stop his classic Black Christmas from being remade because he felt it couldn’t be improved (the even more unfortunate remake, which did indeed get made against everyone’s wishes, certainly proved him right).

As writer / director Don Coscarelli recently told Rue Morgue magazine, he’s been offered to remake his 1979 horror classic Phantasm, and could probably make big bucks from it, but for right now he won’t allow it to be remade out of respect for the fans. Why couldn’t Carpenter do this for Halloween?

Ultimately, the powers that be will point to the film’s opening weekend box office success, laugh at the fans who are boycotting the film, and dismiss them as pathetic geeks who need to get a life. And win, lose or draw, it looks like this will be the only Halloween revival. Rob Zombie said he won’t be back for another, and Bob Weinstein told The Hollywood Reporter, “I never say never never…but it would have to be something very, very different.” What, no Halloween II remake? No one wants to try Halloween III with a different title to see if it works as a non-Halloween film?!

Funny enough, Carpenter may have the last laugh here. This remake has ultimately proven what the cheesy, mad slasher films of the ’80’s proved decades ago. The original Halloween has been imitated many times, but it has yet to be equaled.