Something Old: Halloween (1978)
Something New: The Strangers (2008)
The Connection: Both feature the creepiest of horror creepshows, the lurky masked killer (or killers, plural, in the case of The Strangers)

Long before I had ever seen Halloween, Michael Myers scared the crap out of me. The iconic pictures of his blank white face, unmistakably human and at the same time utterly monstrous, the brief clips from the movie of him unhurriedly lumbering towards his hysterical victims; for me, Michael Myers was an exact representation of that thing that you suspect is lurking in your closet or following you down the street at night when you feel like you’re being watched. Michael Myers was, as young Tommy Doyle observes so astutely in the film, the quintessential Boogeyman.

But a terrifying killer does not necessary insure a good horror movie. And while I respect Halloween’s place in film history, and acknowledge that when John Carpenter made it in the late 70s, he was dabbling in uncharted territory, it just doesn’t quite gel for me. The movie opens with a six-year-old Michael Myers stabbing his older sister to death with a large kitchen knife while she babysits him on Halloween night. His parents arrive home shortly thereafter to find him standing on the lawn in a trance-like state holding the murder weapon.

Flash forward fifteen years to October 30th, 1978, and he’s being transferred from one institution to another under the supervision of psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis when he escapes, steals a car, and drives off in to the night towards his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois. Hiding out in his now abandoned family home, he spots high school student Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) on her way to school and spends the day stalking her and her friends, hovering around behind bushes and the like in coveralls and his sinister white mask. That night, while Laurie babysits the aforementioned Tommy Doyle and another neighborhood girl, Myers picks off her drinking, drug-using, promiscuous friends one by one until the final showdown between Laurie and Myers. Read More »

Couples
I can’t even have a couple of the week because it was couple madness!

Ashlee and Pete got married
Aubrey O’Day and Quddus are together (?!)
Brad and Angelina were freaking everywhere and looking hot the whole time
Kate Hudson’s going for a ride with Lance Armstrong
Jenna Jameson wants to have babies with Tito Ortiz
And there was a little bit of divorce going on

Song of the week
Lil Wayne Featuring Static Major, “Lollipop“…Again, whatever you say, Billboard Hot 100.

The new Indiana Jones movie is out in theaters. Not to worry, Harrison Ford did not break a hip during filming. Read More »