Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

The Halloween franchise was never afraid to jump into the popular trends of the time. The franchise was born out of reaction. Black Christmas came out in 1974. It was the first true slasher, having a crazy man sneak into a sorority house during the Christmas festivities and begin killing the women within. It clearly inspired Halloween. The Christmas setting was replaced with a spooky season setting. The sorority sisters were replaced with high school babysitters. The basic elements were still present, though. There was a maniac who entered the women’s lives and began murdering them. The police tried to capture the maniac. Neither of the killers’ motivations were given; they simply killed to kill.

That wasn’t the only bit of inspiration that was pulled into the first Halloween. The casting of Jamie Lee Curtis was due to her mother being Janet Leigh. The reason that was important was that Janet Leigh was one of the stars of Psycho, a movie that paved the way for slashers like Black Christmas and Halloween to exist. The casting of Janet Leigh’s daughter was a nod to the importance of Janet Leigh in the horror landscape that led to that moment in time in the 1970s.

Other Halloween movies pulled in their influences from other horror flicks as well. Halloween II got more violent following the release of Friday the 13^th, a film that felt more down and dirty than the first Halloween had. It had been successful, so the Halloween franchise upped their violence in the second film. Halloween 5 and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers incorporated deeper mythology. Michael got a background that filled in the blank space of his motivations, much in the same way that every A Nightmare on Elm Street movie added to the Freddy backstory. The influences brought to Halloween H20 included the teen movie feel and the writing of Kevin Williamson. The franchise’s entire history was based on taking elements from other movies and recycling them through the lens of Halloween.

Halloween: Resurrection was no different. It wore its influences like a badge of honor, though how well that worked was up for debate. Most people thought the movie was downright terrible. But that didn’t make it any less interesting to look at as a piece of that time in horror filmmaking. It took many different elements and threw them together in a way that made it stand out. It might not have been good, but it was definitely the Halloween movie most tethered to what other movies were doing at the time. It all began in the story.

Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes) was the creative behind a program called Dangertainment. It was an online webcast where a bunch of college kids would spend the night in the Myers house. He selected Sara Moyer (Bianca Kajlich), Bill Woodlake (Thomas Ian Nicholas), Rudy Grimes (Sean Patrick Thomas), Jen Danzig (Katee Sackhoff), Donna Chang (Daisy McCrackin), and Jim Morgan (Luke Kirby) to star in his reality show. One unexpected star, Michael Myers (Brad Loree), showed up and started murdering anyone in and around the house. The reality just became deadly.

The most important takeaway from that synopsis was the Dangertainment portion. It was a webcast. That was bringing the internet into the story in a big way, which was semi-innovative. There weren’t too many horror movies before Halloween: Resurrection that utilized the internet in such an important way. Feardotcom came out the same year but couldn’t have been an influence due to how integral the internet was to the story. It wasn’t a case of the internet stuff being tossed into the peripherals because another movie was doing it. The story was dependent on the internet aspect.

The real influence came through what the internet was being used for. The webcast was a reality show where a bunch of college students spent a night at the Myers house. Reality television was hitting big in 2002, when Halloween: Resurrection was released. The Real World started in 1992 and was going stronger in 2002. Survivor began in 2000, with high ratings. The clearest influence, however, was an MTV reality show called Fear, which ran from 2000 to 2002. It was a show where a group of people were left at a haunted place for two nights and had to compete in a series of dares. That was strikingly similar to Dangertainment, only with dares added in.

Reality television shared some aesthetic qualities with found footage, which was also big at the time. The handheld camera, in the action with the people element was a part of both methods of storytelling. This meant that playing into the reality television aspect of Dangertainment put Halloween: Resurrection partly into that found footage niche that The Blair Witch Project popularized in 1999. With the three-year difference and a slew of other found footage flicks in between, that was surely a consideration for the filmmakers. They simply got their found footage (college kids wearing headset cameras) through the reality television concept (Dangertaiment).

The story wasn’t the only clear influence that Halloween: Resurrection had. The casting was another of the important elements showing how influenced the movie was by other movies of the time. 2002 was nearing the tail end of the post-Scream teen horror renaissance, but it was still smack dab in the middle of it. The casting showed as much. A few of the stars were known for their other teen movie appearances of the time. Thomas Ian Nicholas was coming from the American Pie franchise. Sean Patrick Thomas had been in Cruel Intentions and Can’t Hardly Wait. Bianca Kajlich was in 10 Things I Hate About You and Bring It On. Then there was Katee Sackhoff who hadn’t been too big in that teen world previously but was clearly channelling Brittany Murphy in her Halloween: Resurrection role. It was like they couldn’t get the teen movie actor they wanted, so they tossed someone else into the role and made them play it like that other star. The casting was all about the major teen film actors.

The other major aspect in the casting was the casting of Black actors. That was a big thing in horror sequels of the time. Scream was filled with white actors, while Scream 2 had four Black actors in major roles (two opening scene deaths, new camera guy, and Sidney’s best friend). I Know What You Did Last Summer followed four white characters. The sequel brought in Brandy and Mekhi Phifer. The Halloween franchise was primarily white actors in sizeable roles until LL Cool J came in for Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later. Halloween: Resurrection tripled down on Black actors with Sean Patrick Thomas, Busta Rhymes, and Tyra Banks all having major roles. The franchise was simply following the casting trends of other franchises from that time.

Then, of course, there was the opening sequence of Halloween: Resurrection. It wasn’t the first time that there was a major pre-credits sequence at the beginning of a Halloween movie. The first film had the young Michael Myers scene, and Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later had the opening scene with the Marion Chambers, Dr. Loomis’s coworker from the first two films. Halloween: Resurrection was the one that really upped the stakes. It took inspiration from Scream and killed off an established big star in the opening scene. Sure, that star was Jamie Lee Curtis, who was made famous through the Halloween movies, but it was still an unexpected opening death for a franchise whose return hinged upon Jamie Lee Curtis being in the movies. It was true that the early death of an established star was originally inspired by Psycho. It was the use of the trope in Scream, however, that made it a major staple of the horror movies of the 90s/00s era. Halloween: Resurrection played off those movies, even if it was really doing it because Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t want to make any more Halloween movies.

Halloween: Resurrection was an amalgamation of many different inspirations wrapped up with a messy little bow. People weren’t huge on the movie. It wasn’t as bad as people made it out to be, fitting nicely into that teen horror trend of the time. That was because it used many of the teen movie actors and many of the teen movie tropes. It was a movie made in the time to be of the time, not to pioneer anything. It was a follower, not a leader, even though the franchise was known as one of the major slasher franchises. Maybe it was disappointment that made people dislike it.

The Halloween franchise was always about taking inspiration from other franchises and filtering them through the lens of Michael Myers killing people. Season of the Witch aside, that was. Although that one had some serious Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibes at moments. The movies frequently played on elements that other, recent movies had found success with. From the first film being a holiday slasher playing on Black Christmas to the eighth film playing with reality television and teen star casting, the Halloween franchise never really veered from its copycat ways. That doesn’t mean I don’t love it.

I don’t always love the notes, but they’re always here:

• The other Halloween movie that was covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies was Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (week 48).
• Artine Tony Browne returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies for the fourth time with Halloween: Resurrection, after already appearing in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (week 50), Snow Dogs (week 322), and Dudley Do-Right (week 336).
• Halloween: Resurrection saw David Lewis play a role. He was previously a part of Ghost Storm (week 97) and The Marine 4: Moving Target (week 154).
• This was also the third appearance for Jamie Lee Curtis, who was in Beverly Hills Chihuahua (week 70) and Perfect (week 195).
• Natassia Malthe was in Halloween: Resurrection, as well as DOA: Dead or Alive (week 191) and In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (week 220).
• Halloween: Resurrection featured Dan Joffre, an actor known for his appearances in movies such as Air Buddies (week 270) and Holiday Spin (week 317).
• Donald Pleasence was in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (week 48) and had archive footage in Halloween: Resurrection.
• Gus Lynch popped up in Halloween: Resurrection after being in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (week 50).
• Haig Sutherland made his Sunday “Bad” Movies return in Halloween: Resurrection. He was in Dudley Do-Right (week 336) before this.
• Finally, Lorena Gale was in both Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins (week 390) and Halloween: Resurrection.
• Have you seen Halloween: Resurrection? Did you enjoy it? Did you enjoy any part of it? What do you think about its influences? Tell me all about this stuff and more in the comments section or on Twitter.
• Let me know what movies I should be watching by getting a hold of me on Twitter or in the comments. I’m always looking for suggestions to put into the schedule.
• Sunday “Bad” Movies is on Instagram. Give it a look. You might enjoy it.
• The last thing that must happen in any post is a look forward to what is coming up next week. October will be over, which means a couple weeks, at least, away from horror. What better way to get out of horror than with Kangaroo Jack? That’s right! The outback classic will be coming up in one week’s time. I’ll see you then.

Puppet Master (1989)

A few producers have risen to prominence through the realm of the B-Movie or, as most people would consider them, bad movies. The most famous was Roger Corman, whose rose to fame in the 1950s with flicks like A Bucket of Blood and The Little Shop of Horrors. He continued to produce well into his old age and is still doing so. Another name that always got tossed around in the B-movie producer conversation was Charles Band.

Charles Band hit his stride in the mid 1970s when he began his directing career and started a production company called Charles Band Productions. After a dispute over the distribution of the films under that banner, he started a new production company, Empire Pictures. A bunch of successful low-budget fantasy and horror came out of the company. Stuart Gordon found his popularity through making films for Charles Band in this era, including Re-Animator. The Trancers franchise began under Empire Pictures. Ghoulies and Troll were a part of the Empire Pictures days. Those days didn’t last, however, and Empire Pictures went under in 1988.

That wouldn’t stop Charles Band. He quickly got another production company up and running. He started Full Moon Pictures (at the time called Full Moon Productions). That company is still going as of the writing of this post in October 2020. There have been successful films throughout the history of the company, with many franchises following those successes. One of the most successful was actually the first film and franchise to come out of the new company. That was 1989’s Puppet Master.

Alex Whitaker (Paul Le Mat), Dana Hadley (Irene Miracle), Frank Forrester (Matt Roe), and Carissa Stamford (Kathryn O’Reilly) were four psychics who reunited following the death of their colleague Neil Gallagher (Jimmie F. Skaggs). They travelled to Bodega Bay Inn, the former home of puppeteer André Toulon (William Hickey), where Neil had been living with his wife Megan (Robin Frates) to try and figure out what happened to Neil leading up to his death. Their discoveries were filled with death and puppets.

Puppet Master was clearly a part of the 1980s slasher craze. It fit well within that latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s era of trying to introduce new and interesting ideas into the villains, rather than have them be evil people, or the reanimated corpses of evil people. The killers would be monsters, toys, or other typically inanimate objects that were bent on killing people. It was the simple reasoning of having a hook to grab audiences. An audience might want to see puppets killing people because that idea was different than other slashers.

With that said, the only way to deeply get into Puppet Master would be to take a look at the puppets and understand what each of them brought to the movie, as a part of the team. There were five main puppets doing the killing, one puppet that had an important role, and one puppet that didn’t matter at all. Ignoring the one that didn’t matter, it would be best to start off with the non-killer puppet.

Shredder Khan

The best way to describe the look of Shredder Khan was that he looked liked a puppet caricature of a Chinese man from centuries past. His appearance in Puppet Master was so brief that it could almost be forgotten. Back in 1939, André Toulon was being pursued by Nazis because of his work in reanimating souls as puppets. The Nazis were approaching the hotel room he was staying in, so he packed up nearly all his puppets and hid them in the walls. Shredder Khan was the lookout that let Toulon know how much time he had left to complete his work. It was a brief appearance, but one that was immensely important to having the puppets hidden for their own safety.

Tunneler

From this point on, the puppets were able to stand out in memorable ways. Tunneler was memorable because he had a drill on his head. It looked like a birthday hat on a baby, except it was much more dangerous than that. His hat was a deadly piece of machinery that got used on multiple occasions as the psychics tried to figure out what happened to their former colleague.

His first big moment came during a sex scene between Frank and Carissa. See, they did research in sexual psychology. Frank could seemingly read minds and Carissa was able to sense the entire history of an object by touching it. Their work together was helped by the fact that they were a couple. When they got to Bodega Bay Inn, Frank was checking their room for the signs of anything suspicious. Carissa was sitting on the bed. All of a sudden, the urge for sex came over her. She could sense that Clark Gable and Carole Lombard had sex in the bed. One thing led to another. Carissa and Frank went at it.

Things got a little kinky (no shame in that) when Carissa tied Frank up and put a blindfold on him. She could surprise him with all the naughty things she wanted to do, and he would, literally, never see them coming. In the throws of passion, she heard something under the bed. She slid off Frank and got on all fours on the floor. She lifted the sheet to see under the bed. Tunneler was under there waiting for her. His drill started up and he charged at her face. That was the end of Carissa.

Tunneler returned later, for the climax, to inflict some pain upon the villain. The villain was trapped in an elevator with no way of escaping. That was redundant. Being trapped and having no way to escape are the same thing. Tunneler revved up his drill head and charged at the villain, digging into the villain’s leg, and bringing the villain to the ground. Then he stood by as the rest of the puppets took their turns at attacking the villain.

Leech Woman

The name kind of took away any question as to what this puppet did. Leech Woman was the only female puppet to get a major role in Puppet Master. She was able to cough up leeches. That was it. That was her one ability. She coughed up leeches like she was a cat coughing up furballs. It was both disgusting to look at and… Well, it was disgusting to look at.

Leech Woman first appeared in the same scene as Tunneler, only a little while later. She waited until after Carissa was dead. Frank was still tied up on the bed. He was still waiting for Carissa to come back and finish the sexual escapade she started. Leech Woman joined in, now that Carissa was dead. She climbed onto the bed and began kissing Frank’s bare chest. He somehow didn’t notice that it wasn’t Carissa, even though the small mouth of a doll and the regular-sized mouth of a woman would feel vastly different. Then she started sucking on his chest. Then she coughed up a leech and placed it on his chest. Eventually, the leeches got to a point where they sucked enough blood out of Frank that he died. It should be noted that Alex Whitaker’s psychic ability was to dream about things that would come, and he dreamt about having leeches all over him. This was what the dream meant.

The climax saw the return of each of the killer puppets, Leech Woman included. She got her turn to attack the villain, coughing a leech into his mouth. That was really all there was too it. She coughed out another leech as her part of the attack. It was a disgusting attack to look at, but it was one that didn’t have a lot of variation. It was always going to be the same, and the person would have to be unable to move away for it to even work.

Pinhead

This was not the character from the Hellraiser franchise. The Pinhead of the Puppet Master franchise was a puppet with a tiny, bullet-like head, broad shoulders, and two human-sized fists that could pack a major punch. He was the second-best puppet besides the one that will get mentioned next, probably because their attacks didn’t rely on something specific. He didn’t rely on a drill head or coughing out leeches to be frightening. He simply punched people, but he punched hard.

Pinhead’s big scene came when he went after Dana Hadley. He previously hit the housekeeper over the head with a fire poker, but it was his attack on Dana that really brought the character to life. He got into her room and began beating her. She grabbed him and threw him, seemingly incapacitating him, and crawled from the room. He chased after her and punched her again and again. She grabbed him and threw him down some stairs before fleeing, beaten and battered, into an elevator. She almost made it, too, but her demise will have to wait a minute.

That elevator would later be the place where the villain was defeated. It began with Pinhead. He waited for the villain to stumble into the elevator. He closed the door and wouldn’t let the villain reopen it. Pinhead tried to beat the villain to a pulp, but the villain kept tossing him around, before removing his head. That wouldn’t stop Pinhead, though. He searched for his head, replaced it, and headed back into the fray with the other puppets as they attacked the villain.

Blade

Maybe the most important of the puppets in the Puppet Master franchise, Blade became the most recognizable. He had a pale, skeletal face. He had hollow eyes. He had long hair and wore all black. His primary weapon was a blade, but he also carried around a hook. Blade was essentially the leader of the puppets when there wasn’t a puppet master to pull the strings.

Blade first appeared in the opening scene as he ran ahead of the Nazis to escape them. He reappeared in the present-day hotel, attempting to kill the psychics. Remember when Dana almost escaped with her life into the elevator? The only reason she didn’t escape was that Blade was waiting for her. He took his blade and slashed Dana’s throat, fulfilling a prophecy of her own death that she experienced at the beginning of the movie.

Blade was present when the villain was killed, as well. He was seemingly the ringleader of the puppets. They weren’t going to follow through without his watchful eyes looking on. He got a few stabs in. Mostly, he made sure that the other puppets did their part. He made sure that Leech Woman spit a leech into the villain’s mouth. He made sure that Pinhead broke the villain’s neck. He supervised the entire takedown of the villain, like a good leader would.

Jester

The final puppet was the one that brought the movie to its conclusion. Jester was a little different than the other puppets. He didn’t really have a way to attack people. At least, that wasn’t apparent in Puppet Master. It might have become more apparent in the sequels. His ability was a tad bit different. Jester’s face was divided into three parts. It was divided into thirds: top third, middle third, bottom third. Those three parts could rotate, allowing Jester to have different facial expressions. It felt as though he was meant to be a way to portray the emotions of the puppets, coming into the movie at a crucial time when the puppets began targeting someone else.

Late in Puppet Master, Alex and Megan discovered that Neil had been brought back to life. He figured out a way to reanimate people and had set the puppets on their killing path so that he could have human bodies to toy around with. The dead man was the villain all along, pulling the strings that made the puppets kill. He had the dead bodies of Dana, Frank, and Carissa at the table, as well as Jester. One thing led to another and he threw Jester across the room, much to the shock of every puppet. They snapped. They decided that Neil had to die, again, and they acted on it. The puppets killed their master. Jester looked on with joy and surprise and joy. His face rotated to each different emotion.

Charles Band managed to hit on something special with Puppet Master. He found a slasher story that fit into what was popular at the time, non-human killers. The story brought a bunch of memorable puppets to the audience. They looked interesting, there were fun ways that they attacked people, and they didn’t take shit from anyone. The puppets were pure killing fun and Puppet Master would become a money-making machine for Full Moon Features.

The success of Puppet Master led to (currently) twelve sequels and/or prequels and a spin-off focused on Blade. One of the sequels was even a crossover with Demonic Toys. The popularity of the franchise helped Full Moon Features spawn other franchises like the continued Trancers franchise, Demonic Toys, Evil Bong, and The Gingerdead Man. After two production companies that had found mild success before burning out, Charles Band had finally found the stability he needed to continuously churn out the movies that made him famous.

Roger Corman made a name for himself by producing low-budget horror films through the 1950s and continues to produce movies of that kind in the present. He left a legacy that would inspire generations of filmmakers to make the movies they wanted to see. In the 1970s, Charles Band took up that mantle and started his journey to become the next Roger Corman. The thing is, he didn’t become the next Roger Corman. He became the first Charles Band, finding his own place in that same low-budget B-movie world. Charles Band is the real deal.

Now it’s time for a few notes before you head off:

• Charles Band’s movies Evil Bong and The Gingerdead Man were mentioned in this post. Evil Bong (week 52), Evil Bong 2: King Bong (week 104), Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong (week 271), Evil Bong 420 (week 388), The Gingerdead Man (week 69), The Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust (week 252), Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver (week 302), and the crossover film Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong (week 347) were all covered in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• Puppet Master featured Barbara Crampton. It was the third time she was in the Sunday “Bad” Movies after Robot Wars (week 37) and Chopping Mall (week 306).
• Have you seen Puppet Master? What did you think about it? Do you like any of the sequels? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• You can also find me in the comments or on Twitter if you want to suggest a movie for me to check out for a future post. I’m always looking for movies I may not have heard of that could make for interesting Sunday “Bad” Movies material. Tell me about them.
• Take some time to head on over to the Sunday “Bad” Movies account on Instagram as well. I’m always trying to feature interesting things over there.
• Finally, I have to let everyone know about next week. Halloween is coming up quick and, for only the second time in the history of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, I’ll be visiting a movie from that film franchise. I’ve already written something after checking out Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (week 48). Next week I’ll be watching Halloween: Resurrection. Come on back to this blog and see what I wrote about it. See you then.