Lists

10 Characters from the “Halloween” Franchise Who Definitely Deserved It

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The HALLOWEEN franchise is, without a doubt, a favorite topic of discussion here on NN and if you’ve ever looked at my list of pieces whether here on this blog, or elsewhere I’ve written for the past 10 years, you’ll come to the very correct conclusion that yes, I’m a superfan and could probably write about the subject forever without repeating myself once. However, there’s one thing that hasn’t been discussed by me, or really much anywhere, and that’s a hot take on who in the entire series of films actually deserved to die in these movies. Sure, there’s been talks here and there in forums; perhaps an article by some dopey website that aren’t even catered to horror fans. So, as a superfan myself, I’m obliged to take on the task, throw my rage at the keyboard and say “FUCK THESE GUYS, THEY HAD IT COMING.”

And no, as annoying as Tina can be in HALLOWEEN 5, she didn’t make the cut.

So let’s start slashing our way into these insufferable sons of bitches.

10. Bob (HALLOWEEN 1978)

If you’re wondering why I think Bob deserved to be strung up in the Wallace’s kitchen, the guy DID joke about ripping an eight-year-old girl’s clothes off. Plus because of his death, we wouldn’t have gotten one of the coolest shots of the entire franchise right here:

9. Kelly Meeker (HALLOWEEN 4)

The Haddonfield homewrecker, Kelly Meeker, the sheriff’s daughter, is just a total bitch. When Rachel confronted this hoe about sleeping with her boyfriend Brady (another fucking hoe) Kelly basically told Rachel that it was her fault that her man looked away and decided to spend Halloween with her instead. Ugh. She had it coming when Myers cleverly used a shotgun on her without pulling the trigger. Also, thanks for the Halloween costume inspiration!

But seriously, much love to the sweetheart that is Kathleen Kinmont. Only a fantastic actress can make us hate like that.

8. Mikey (HALLOWEEN 5)

An obvious choice if there ever was one. This prick had zero redeeming qualities. The guy only cared about his car and his dick. Tina, honey. You almost made the list because of your “electric connection” to toxic men.

Al least when you were riding with Mikey 2.0, you weren’t being verbally abused.

7. Pretty Much Everyone in HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION

I’m just going to make a bold statement and say that every single person who died in HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION, had it coming and I felt not a bit of sorry for any of them-including Laurie Strode. Everybody was just so dumb – downed and straight up intolerable. Be it their lack of common sense (Laurie with her wanting to “make sure” and that cameraman who just stood there waiting for Michael to slash his ass), or the entitlement of the entire cast of the “Internet reality show”. I literally cheered for every single one of them to go down. And let’s face it- the one guy who isn’t even really an actor per se, Busta Rhymes, is the only watchable thing in this movie at all.

Shout out Horror Net for putting together this kill count for RESURRECTION.

6. John Strode (HALLOWEEN 6)

Another no brainer is the abusive piece of shit John Strode. The uncle of Laurie Strode is one we were all very happy to see go down when it fianlly happened- and the fact it was extra violent was even more bittersweet. Smacking around your wife and kids in a horror movie gets your head blown up. Those are the rules!

5. Dr. Ranbir Sartain (HALLOWEEN 2018)

The idea of an anti-Loomis running around Haddonfield is entertaining. But I think Micheal was just as tired of hearing him talk as the audience was. Totally deserved that curb stomp. We can all only hope that we possess the superhuman strength, endurance, and durability in our 60s that Michael Myers has in this movie.

4. The Coroner Paramedics (Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN 2)

As much as I despise this movie and quite frankly, think pretty much everyone in Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN flicks deserve what they get, this scene in particular in RZ’s H2 is fairly satisfying and brutal enough to win a Golden Chainsaw award in 2010. The pair of nasty jackasses “joking” about necrophilia with dead women was enough for me to give this film a shout-out when Michael did his thing. And it was a beautiful service for the rest of us.

3. Ronnie (Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN 2007)

I don’t even need to explain this one-just roll that beautiful bean footage. I do think he got off way too easy though.

2. The Entire Halloween Kills Mob That Made Lance Tivoli Commit Suicide

EVIL DIES TONIGHT. And you know what, it sort of does when this asshole mob out of pure fear, drive a man, Lance Tivoli, to his own death in a case of mistaken identity as the mob believes him to be Myers unmasked. To make it worse, the man suffered from severe mental illness. It’s a terrible tragedy to have someone who cries out for help, actively seeking medical assistance, and suffers a deathly fate for simply existing.  So yes; I’m gonna let Joker take this one for Tommy Doyle and the mob of Haddonfield:

1. Michael Myers (Halloween Ends)

If you’re shocked to see Myers at number one, you just might be a sociopath. Listen, he did humanity a couple of favors by ridding a few insufferable twats from the Earth. But he also killed a lot of innocent people too, and plenty who didn’t deserve it. Danny Trejo anyone? I think the way he died was a bit weak and sort of a cop out, but then again there’s a lot I don’t agree with HALLOWEEN ENDS, and it has nothing to do with Corey. I actually thought him being the new Myers was a cool direction to go- until they killed him and fucked up their own potential. But eh, take what we can get for now, I guess. Let’s just hope the next set of reboot films gets things right this time.

Before anyone asks me why I didn’t place Conal Cochran on here, it’s because he knows his Halloween folklore, so he gets a pass from me. I respect that kind of knowledge.

Editorials

Unsung Heroes: Video Rental Shops Inside Grocery Stores

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Long before Redbox, grocery chains were a formidable competitor for video and game rentals.

Many, MANY moons ago, I grew up in a quaint neighborhood where I had the privilege of having both a community center and a shopping mall about a mile away from my house. Just past the community canter and a bridge to the freeway, stood an array of stores that served my childhood basic needs, such as a McDonald’s, Naugles, Pizza Hut, Sav-On Drugs Pharmacy, the ALL IMPORTANT Mom-and-Pop video rental store Action Video, and our local Smiths grocery store-which also harbored its own video rental shop inside the store walls.

It’s another store inside a store! Cue it Mike!

Being able to grab a package of Magic Middles, some cherry coke, and a rental copy of Creepshow 2 is an experience that only 80s and 90s kids really got to live through, and I’m pretty happy I was a part of it. Although I have heard some whisperings throughout the Internet of some being active in small towns around the USA, they have mostly been lost to time and overshadowed by their big brothers of local video rental stores and the dreaded Blockbuster mass market for people looking back on video rental days with their nostalgia hats on; and I personally think they deserve a lot more respect dammit.

To be clear, I was a pretty loyal customer to Action Video, the fact that my mother worked at the deli inside Smiths sometimes made it more convenient for me rent or her to pick up and drop off my weekend requests if they were available. Plus, it never hurt that the clerk gave me free boxes of Raisinets. Also, there was something quite charming about them. They were small, quaint, and very personable. Hell, some of them even donned the ever mysterious black curtain!

It was also something to look forward to if you so happened to be dragged against your will to go grocery shopping with your parents because at least you could make that request to rent Sleepaway Camp a lot more convincing since you (or they) didn’t have to walk a few store pegs down to retrieve it; just to the front of the store by the smokey slot machines!

Don’t forget your free kid cookie card that allows you one free fresh chocolate chip cookie from the bakery on the way up there!

I also have to appreciate that if Action Video or your preferred video rental stop were out of stock of your wishlist movie or NES game, you could usually rely on ye-old tiny faithful here to at least have ONE copy of what you were wanting. Yeah, the place was like the size of my living room, (at least this one was anyway) but goddamn if they couldn’t fit at least 3,000 movies in there with their magic bred’ skills. Napoleon Dynamite would have pleased. These places did well enough mind you, but I just don’t think they had the kind of foot traffic a full sized store would have- hence the chances of your beloved rental being there even higher.

So indeed, I just wanted to take a portion of my day and salute these little video shops inside grocery chains. You made that Saturday morning food shopping trip a little more tolerable.

Retro Reviews

Hear Me Out- “Short Circuit 2” Isn’t As Bad As You Think

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Johnny Five Takes Manhattan!

Short Circuit 2 sure as shit might not be anyone’s favorite movie, and it’s definitely received a decent amount of hate as far as sequels go. But I’m here to set the record straight: It’s really not as bad as it’s made out to be.

I’ll admit to most people’s standards, you could consider my taste in films to be pretty awful. I was that kid who actually enjoyed terrible films like Garbage Pail Kids and Mac and Me. Are they badly made films? Yes, of course, they are. But I do find some sort of sick nostalgic joy in them every once in a while? Also, absolutely yes. There’s a sly charm inside “Black Sheep” films such as these that you won’t see elsewhere. A great example is the campy and comedic Howard the Duck as it was and still is, panned critically by a lot of cinephile snobs. But, honestly, how can you hate on a movie that showed us the first pair of duck tits ever on a theater screen?

Also, they were, indeed, the first pair of legit boobs I saw as a kid.

The sequel made two years after the original cult-classic Science-Comedy debuted to audiences didn’t seem to fare over well to the same group of people that embraced the now-named Johnny Five as their machine-wired counterpart to our human existence via the glorious 80s. Plenty of people talk a lot of shit about this sweet and sensitive robot turned vigilante scooting around New York City in the 80s- and I’ve had enough of it.

In fact, I’ll just let Johnny himself tell those people exactly what I think about their distaste for Short Circuit 2…

Number Five, now dubbed Johnny Five as he so enthusiastically named himself at the end of the first film, now finds himself in New York helping Ben Jahveri (Fisher Stevens) and tag-along scumbag street-slinger “friend” Fred (Michael McKean) get Ben’s business going into mass production with mini Johnny Five robot toys for kids. Cute, right? Well of course in the middle of this old warehouse Fred had scrounged up as ground zero for the assembly line, is right in the way of a couple of diamond burglars’ plans to heist a very valuable set of jewels. And of course, we all know that our formidable heroes will have to face off against these scoundrels towards the end of the film so we have to throw in a bunch of zany subplots to fill the void until then. Such as:

  • Upon Johnny Five realizing he’s in a city, the once midwestern town robot immediately gets duped into ripping off car stereos by a Latin gang; and then make him an honorary member. “Los Locos kick your ass! Los Locos kick your face! Los Locos kick your balls into outer space!”
  • Ben falls in love with the girl who discovered his toys and got him a deal for a line and is too socially awkward to tell her how he feels. J5 to the rescue as he hijacks a Times Square billboard where he helps woo his friend’s love interest while teaching us some insults in Spanish.
  • Fred tries to sell J5 on the side of his Rolex watch hustle, and our pre-Wall-E robot falls out of a skyscraper via the fear of him being a corporate slave. Just like Batman, this guy has all the gadgets and is saved by his backpack wing glider, and we get a fantastic pre 9/11 view of the New York City skyline!
  • Johnny gets arrested on the street because the cop thinks he’s a man in a suit or someone playing a joke.
  • Ben and Fred get locked in a freezer by the jewel thieves and are rescued in the most ridiculous way possible: calling Ben’s love interest (Cynthia Gibb) and using ye’ old faithful touch tones keypads to play oldies pop songs that give her clues to their location. Oh, with the help of a very nice taxi driver- which is already bullshit fantasy because ain’t no taxi driver in Manhattan that friendly.

All those filler antics have their place in the film for some sort of progression I suppose, be it the hammer over our heads that Johnny Five has emotions like the rest of us, or that we goddamn better remember the exact tune to “Doo Wah Diddy” if ever I get locked in a fish freezer. But perhaps the best moments in this follow-up film that originally starred Alley Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg, is when J5 is cornered by the jewel thieves and beaten to a “battery fluid bloody pulp” in broad daylight on a public sidewalk.

Hey, just another day in New York in the 80s!

What a fucked up segment in a movie that was aimed more at kids this time around. But eh, that’s just the beauty of 80s movies’ trauma.

This is where you might get some sort of feels going, or just laugh your ass off depending on what kind of sick fuck you are, (personally a mix of both is totally acceptable). Left for dead, J5’s backup power kicks and miraculously gets up, rather painfully and makes his way down an alley where Fred finds his frenemy. Lucky for them, Johhny damn near collapses by a Radio Shack and as we all know, that place is the Johns Hopkins Hospital for robots. With a little aid from Fred, the former military robot rebuilds himself into Travis Bickle from TAXI DRIVER and goes on a revenge rampage to track down the men responsible.He is so pissed off, he ignores his low battery warnings and literally revenges himself to death. Well, close to it anyway because what kind of ending would that be for kids?

It’s a 80s flick aimed at kids, so it would be a proper ending if you asked me.

Let’s get one thing straight. This movie may suck to a lot of people. But for the rest of us, it’s a feel-good kind of suck that we want to revisit over and over again. As a kid, we all liked these movies, this one in particular, but as I grew older, the child in people just died and formed some sort of disdain for this film; like it was idiotic to like this movie or something. And honestly, the hell with those people.

Worth noting, however, is the “Brownface” donned by Fisher Stevens as an immigrant from India, whereas looking at it now is a tad cringe and unacceptable. At the very least, they made the guy a scientist and not some corner store worker. This isn’t a dig at Fisher Stephens by any means. From what I understand, he worked very hard at getting the accent down and he is a talented guy. However, to this very day, the only guy able to pull this off and get away with it is Robert Downey Jr in TROPIC THUNDER. Other than that, looking back at films like this and SOUL MAN (1986), it’s just a little uncomfortable, especially in today’s climate of change.

Aside from the unpolitically correct problem there in SHORT CIRCUIT 2, the film does a pretty decent job of sending a good message about not being accepted in America and the tribulations of those going through the system to become a citizen. It’s a little subtle for young eyes, but upon viewing it as an adult, the theme seems a little more apparent. And hell, we get to see our Johnny become the first robotic citizen!

As zany, whacky and ridiculous as most of the movie is, at the end of the day, it really isn’t that bad of a sequel. In fact, I actually PREFER it over the first! Yeah, I said it. I just wish they would have made a third one!