Halloween (Rifftrax)

Film Year:  1978
Genre:  Horror
Director:  John Carpenter
Starring:  Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis, P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, Nick Castle
Rifftrax Year:  2006
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

And with that iconic theme we turn down the lights...

Trick or Treat!

Halloween is the ionic slasher movie that set most of those "rules" that Jamie Kennedy was going on about in Scream.  There were movies before it that contained some jerk waving something sharp around as the bad guy before, Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre being the notable entries in the genre, but Halloween was the film where something clicked so solidly that the imitators started springing up immediately creating a new subgenre, which eventually included decades late sequels to Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Given how many films built on and detracted from its simple formula it's easy to forget just what a beautifully tight creation the original Halloween is.

The plot is simple:  A madman has escaped from a mental asylum and has returned home to kill strangers at random.  His chosen targets are a group of babysitters on Halloween night.  Meanwhile his psychiatrist chases him down and seeks to put a bullet in his head.

Those looking for gore and sex are best left at putting in a Friday the 13th film instead.  Halloween has almost none of the former (just mostly acts of violence without visible skin penetration) and just a little bit of the latter (and a few innuendos thrown in for good measure).  John Carpenter wasn't interested in setting up tropes for other films to follow in this film but rather create as efficient a thriller as he possibly could.  And he succeeded.  Halloween is a fantastic little mood setter, one that has earned a place in everyone's scary movie marathon on All Hallow's Eve.  It wasn't enough that the movie called itself "Halloween" to be the ultimate movie to watch on Halloween, it bloody well earned it.

Though my rotation still favors Night of the Living Dead and the Evil Dead trilogy, personally.

MSTies will definitely remember Donald Pleasence from his roles in Warrior of the Lost World and The Pumaman.  Those with a fondness for him may want to check out one of his most iconic roles of Dr. Sam Loomis, the masked killer Michael Myer's psychiatrist who tends to act a bit like Captain Ahab and Myers is his white whale.  Pleasence is excellent here and commands every scene he is in.  He would reprise the role four times down the road, and while in each installment he brought his A-game his best material is all in this film.  The film also stars Jamie Lee Curtis, who started out as the original "Scream Queen" but bloomed into a bit of a star down the road in films such as A Fish Called Wanda and True Lies.  Curtis is pretty solid as "the virgin" and helps define the "final girl survivor" cliche most horror films work in.

With the subgenre that sprung from it Halloween became a franchise with Michael Myers being one of those unkillable killers that graces the screen.  None of the sequels were ever able to recreate the magic of this original entry, though many of which managed to mangle it up while attempting to do so.  As of this writing, 2018, the latest of which, simply titled "Halloween," is the latest to completely fail it.  Halloween is best viewed in a vacuum, wishing away the excess baggage of poor sequels, remakes, and reboots and whatever nonsense they came up with to add to "lore."  It works best just being a simplistic and spooky little film that graced cinemas in the 70's.

The Trax

To an extent I have a bit of a resentment toward the Halloween Rifftrax for various reasons.  First it's always confounded that they would choose to riff the most artistically crafted example of the slasher genre as opposed to its various imitators.  Even if you have your issues with Halloween there is little doubt that a film like Friday the 13th could offer more to the format than John Carpenter's film.  And the fact that they never did riff Friday the 13th just makes the Halloween riff a bit more of a shame.

Also the Halloween Rifftrax marked an early annoyance I was having with Rifftrax in general, in which their go-to safe joke is about how bored the riffers are.  I've never liked these jokes even in movies that genuinely are boring.  They've never been funny and they lack creativity.  When you get to a film like Halloween, which has a deliberate casual pace, I find themselves projecting a boredom onto me and making me bored in turn.  Since I've seen the movie many times and have never been bored once, yet I feel boredom during the Rifftrax then I can only conclude that it's the riff that's boring me and not the movie.  I suppose part of the joke is them playacting the role of an impatient mainstream viewer that wants more action, but the repetitious nature of the joke kills it.

For these reasons Halloween is a riff I initially didn't care for, though over a decade later I find myself warm to it.  While these aspects still annoy me to an extent I've opened up to certain things the riff actually does well.  There are some creative jabs at the film, including a rather cute sketch during the opening murder in which Mike and returning contributor Kevin portray as a grumpy director John Carpenter returning home to his nagging wife "Debbie."  They also play a bit with the silence of the movie, interjecting dialogue during ominous moments where the lack of dialogue adds to the tension, being throwing a voice into a telephone with no answer or just giving silent stalker Michael Myers his own batch of humorous lines.

"Come out with your pants up!"

The riff also plays off of the debauchery tropes Halloween tees up.  While it's true that a film that embellishes these aspects more would be a richer target, the fact remains that Halloween does have them and they are ripe for mocking.  Halloween is also a low budget independent film that was shot through artistic determination, but as such continuity errors remain and the duo won't deny their listeners of them pointing it out.  Some of these can be fun, such as their pointing out the constantly changing weather, while other points can come off as nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking, such as the points of daylight in the afternoon.  All of this and they never once mention the sidewalk palm trees in "Illinois."

I'm of two minds on Halloween, because the riff can be a bit rocky because often they go for an inspired joke while following it up with a dull one.  The fact however is that the Halloween riff is pretty funny and is at the expense of a great movie that never wears out its welcome.  Halloween just might be worth a shot even if my initial response didn't deem it all that worthy.

Good

Warty, the Toad (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2014
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

I just...don't even...with this short.

This short is a "moral" centered short for children that uses live animal footage as characters with a narrator talking over it.  It's about a toad named Warty who is incredibly vain over how ugly he is.  He dismisses all the other animals for not being nearly as ugly as he until they warn him about a hungry snake that plans to eat him.

Bill's deduction that the moral of the story is that "Confidence in your appearance will lead to your death, keep that self esteem in check kids!" which is about as good a guess as any.  There seems to be a lot of morals that are on the tip of this short's tongue, including ideas of individuality, self-awareness, openness and kindness to others, and beauty being only skin deep.  The short never commits to one, meaning those who watch it will take away what they will.  I think the last one in particular is pretty bizarre, as the short tries to be cutely ironic by switching the definitions of "beautiful" and "ugly" based on Warty's perspective.  I think it comes off as twisting it's lesson a bit too much.

The short gave me a headache, but luckily the laughs are there.  The riff is fairly strong as they have some fun targets in the animal footage, a dull narrator, and a bizarre premise.  The quips lean heavily into all three and there really isn't a dry moment in the Trax.  If I were to list a detraction in it I'd say that the audio on the short itself was fairly low and I spent probably longer than I should have trying to follow and figure out the short itself than pay attention to the riffing.  But I imagine most wouldn't try to study these things like I am, so I'm going to give Warty, the Toad an easy recommend.

Thumbs Up

👍

"Black Cat and Jonah"/"Tail of Death" (MST3K Comics)

Issue Number:  2
Release Date:  October 24th, 2018
Adapted From:  Black Cat Comics #1, Horrific #2
Original Publication Date:  June/July 1946, November 1952

Tom Servo is trapped in the 50's equivalent of a CW show and despite being shown on both covers for this issue he's actually sitting this one out.  Instead we finally get answers to what happened to Jonah and Crow as the duo is sent to an issue of Black Cat.  But the answer is no, this Black Cat is not the Spider-Man sometimes villain, sometimes ally, sometimes lover that most comic fans are familiar with today but rather an early vigilante comic from the 40's with the same name.  This incarnation is actually a glamorous movie star by day, scantily clad crimefighter by night.

Soon after arrival Crow disappears, leaving his appearance early on in this issue entirely pointless.  That just leave Jonah all by his lonesome with a woman wearing leather underwear all the time (I'm sure he's very upset about that).  Crow instead is accidentally sent to a 1950's horror mag called Horrific which sees a play on an Incredible Shrinking Man type of story (in fact, this story predates the original Shrinking Man novel by several years).

We'll start by discussing Jonah's story, which is a bit of a mess.  At first Jonah seems to get dumped right next to Black Cat and it's heavily alluded that he's her bumbling sidekick.  Later on he's a radio disc jockey for whatever reason that does very little in the storyline.  The main premise of the story features a group of mobsters trying to determine the identity of Black Cat and offer a reward to whichever citizen will come forward with the info.  Jonah gets in the game as a radio personality and Black Cat rescues him from a road mishap.

If MST is going to be riffing comics then superhero comics are ideal, because the medium is downright saturated by them.  But a bit like Tom Servo's run as Johnny Jason in the previous issue the fact that they cut this story down without any proper resolution really hurts it.  As stated above, Jonah is hardly present in it and even still the humor doesn't land all that often.  I somewhat suspect that half of the reason is because what little story we're given here is halfway incoherent, but there was hardly a rise of amusement out of me.  Not even the Tostito's ad, which was my favorite part of the previous issue, made me laugh.  Instead it seemed like a dud retread.

As we are thrown into Crow's horror tale the book makes a sudden quality boost.  For starters Horrific was an anthology magazine which contained many short stories per issue.  These short stories are ideal for the MST comic format because it allows for an entire story to be told.  The story in question has a scientist working on a growth serum but accidentally creates a shrinking serum instead.  Exposed to this creation he shrinks to the size of a mouse, and if you think this story is already nutty enough just you wait because it's going to get stranger.  This "Tail of Death" story is cynical and strange, and boy is it perfect for MST.

Crow hangs out in the story almost as an observer, as he just hangs around while the characters barely notice him.  This is a bit strange to me because both Servo and Jonah replaced characters in their respective books, while Crow does not.  I almost wonder if Crow is meant to represent the narrator, as he appears at the end after a ghoulish twist all rotted away like the Cryptkeeper.

Despite Crow's placement issues, "Tail of Death" is easily the funnier of the two stories featured.  It feels far more complete than any story we've seen thusfar, and the humor is on point throughout.  There is one line in particular involving an itchy nose that just slayed me.  I'd almost argue that it's probably the strongest riff section in the comics yet.

Kinga, Max, and Synthia have some solid asides in this issue as well as they discuss the "science" and unexpected side-effects of their new comic experiment.  I very much enjoy Max's childlike glee as the promise of comic book crossovers becomes a possibility.  Kinga's diabolical adaptation to the new scenarios is very amusing as well and she begins pondering renaming the experiment to "Mystery Science Comic Book 3000" (or Max's suggestion "Mystery Science Bookshelf 3000").

I'd recommend this issue on the strength of Crow's story alone, though the big issue is that Jonah's story really makes the first half of the magazine a slog.  On that uneven foundation I can't quite call this an overall good issue, but I think MSTies should have it on their shelves.

Average