Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Jason slips into a Vortex on Halloween and sees HALLOWEEN III and SUSPIRIA

For Halloween--aka my birthday--I was up at my favorite underground movie club and for once actually stayed for both films (I took the next day off from work.)

HALLOWEEN III: THE SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982): is often unfairly maligned as the "bad" Halloween movie just because it has nothing to do with the Michael Myers character of every entry in the series. The fact is, John Carpenter's original idea with the HALLOWEEN series is to produce a new low-budget horror film every year, to be released around Halloween. And this is really the only time they fulfilled that vision. To all the haters, can you really say this film is worse than an endless string of re-hashed Michael Myers stories (including the remakes)? I think it's a great story on it's own, a cult classic about a madman who plans to wipe out all the children on Halloween using magically booby-trapped masks. Very sick, and a great ending (which I won't spoil even though it's over three decades old.)

SUSPIRIA (1977): I can never really deem any movie my "favorite." Sometimes I'm in the mood for comedy, or action, or drama, or supernatural horror. But there are moments, when I'm in just the right mood, when SUSPIRIA is my favoritest movie ever. Dario Argento at his best and weirdest (I prefer this over his more realistic giallos, I think he has an underrated flair for the supernatural and surreal.) Saturated primary colors. A bizarre, dream-like plot. And some of the most inventive, original kills in any movie ever (screw the "SAW" series. When they have Jigsaw punch a demon arm through a window, yank a victim outside, drag her across the roof, throw her through an elaborate stained-glass-window, and then hang her from an electrical cord, then we talk.) No matter how many times I see it, it's still just fantastic.

And that made for a very happy birthday indeed.

Total Running Time: 190 minutes
My Total Minutes: 340,723

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