10. Halloween 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...
I could probably name a few horror franchises from the 1970s and 1980s on this list.
Friday The 13th is not one of them however. I never got what was so special about them. There was the brilliant
Nightmare On Elm Street but that started off extremethough Freddy Krugers baby was an utterly ridiculous! It is the slasher movie masterpiece
Halloween that fits this listor more specifically, the terrible sequels that followed.
Halloween is a brilliant piece of horror cinema. We never get to know why Michael Myers is on this killing spree, but that mystery only adds to the tension. His ghostly white mask appearing in windows behind characters is chilling. Jamie Lee Curtis makes a great scream queen in Laurie Strode. There is a slow menacing build up the film, so that when the killing strikes its like a storm breaking. The calm, slow way Michael stalks Laurie across the street after finding her best friend Annie dead is much more frightening that anyone screaming or cackling as they weld chainsaws or a glove of knives. And of course, he livesending the film with the same menace and dread it began with.
Halloween II isnt too bad, but it sucks the mystery out of the story by making Michael, Lauries brother. And it doesnt do anything else except continue the killing spree with a little less menace than before. Im rather fond of the massive left field angle they took with
Halloween III. There is no Michael Myers. Instead the producers decided to continue the franchise with films based on Halloween itself. In this film killer masks actually end up killing hundreds of children as the film ends. But it is also rather slow and random and nothing to do with the first
Halloween, so it serves the audience nothing as a sequel, monstrous ending aside. The trouble is, people wanted Michael Myers when they watched the third film. As such, they got their wish with
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. For three films he continued killing, pursued by Donald Pleasances Doctor Loomis, who worked well in the first film, desperately trying to convince everyone of the terror awaiting them. By the sixth film he was a raving lunatic and was killed off by Michael himself. The deaths became so utterly ridiculous and Michaels resurrections became tongue in cheek. And by the sixth film,
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers the writers had Michael Myers supernatural abilities explained away as the result of the curse of the thorn by a druid cult. Yes, we now have druids. At least I can still enjoy the first
Halloween in all its greatness. And
Halloween: H20, which followed the post-modern trend of
Scream and ignored any film after
Halloween II. Needless to say I havent watched the remakesIll stick with the original thanks.