Genuine excitement is a rare commodity these days. And by these days, I’m not simply referring to our daily dose of chaos because it stretches back further than any of us care to think about. No, for the purposes of this piece, let’s wind the clocks back to the summer of 2018.
Seventeen years after Joe Bob Briggs was ousted from TNT’s MonsterVision, a gift was bestowed upon Briggs disciples who’d never stopped missing the drive-in totals: Joe Bob was returning for a 24-hour horror extravaganza intended to be the Grapevine drive-in critic’s farewell to movie hosting. And the fervor felt by legions of Mutants was nothing short of electric.
“This is special, Joe Bob.” The T.V. cowboy (you heard that, didn’t you?) has since referred to Felissa Rose’s remarks from that initial marathon on numerous occasions. And for good reason. She was right.
Eight years on, what is most special can be whittled down to a single word: sustained.
To pull a Joe Bob, what is sustained? Something that is maintained at length without interrupting or weakening. And that, folks, is what made The Last Drive-In so special: that our excitement, from the anticipation of that first dusk-to-dawn marathon to the final regularly scheduled double feature, has been sustained.
Whether it was each week, each month, or each special, our giddiness never waned. We woke excited on Joe Bob Fridays, stocked up on snacks and libations after work in preparation, and shared that excitement on social media as we watched the “Joe Bob Begins” countdown tick toward blood, breasts, and beasts. And we have bookended server glitches to prove it.
The Last Drive-In gave us the most overqualified Mail Girl the drive-in has ever seen. It raised money for mental health, battered women, and more. It made “spry as fuck” part of our lexicon. And birthed an appreciation for Walpurgisnacht that borders on national holiday. It offered respite from the horrors of daily life and provided a community for those who didn’t feel seen. And so much more.
Our excitement and anticipation remained the same from that first night through the final night–last night.
And it will carry on to whatever’s next.
In the wake of Joe Bob’s somber social media post, he followed it up with a short video to answer our worried questions and emphatically stated “we ain’t done.”
So, whatever’s next, be it Shudder specials, another streaming service, or somewhere in between, we will be there because as I said following that first 13-movie marathon that we’d originally thought was the end–the drive-in, and our love for Joe Bob, will never die.
Whether you categorize it as action, science fiction, horror, or all of the above, PREDATOR (1987) is a god-tier film. With Dan Trachtenberg’s PREDATOR: BADLANDS (2025) set to surpass the franchise OG at the box office nearly four decades later, it’s time to talk about what made a ninth film possible: a brief but game-changing scene that lifted PREDATOR from interesting to indelible.
Though the film is a hybrid that refuses to be limited to a single genre, it’s impossible to deny that PREDATOR has action movie tendencies. And late-eighties action meant the machismo went to 11, a fact that required PREDATOR to venture beyond awe into something raw.
Screenwriters Jim and John Thomas threw down a gauntlet of emotion ranging from exhilaration to fear, but were keenly aware that to rise above the body count of action and slasher popcorn fare demanded the audience feel the toll of loss.
Despite boasting of peak Schwarzenegger, the bravado of Carl Weathers, and the otherworldly presence and performance of Kevin Peter Hall, none were up to the challenge of carrying PREDATOR to the mountaintop.
That daunting task was placed in the more than capable hands of Bill Duke.
The film’s first act firmly established the camaraderie between Duke’s Mac and Blain (Jesse Ventura), so when Blain fell, Duke took center stage.
After Dutch (Schwarzenegger) said “[Blain] was a good soldier,” Duke’s heavy-eyed declaration “he was my friend” superseded the well-worn trope of the revenge-fueled tunnel vision to come. Mac was mourning.
Accompanied by Alan Silvestri’s Taps-inspired horns, Duke knelt next to his fallen comrade, and those same eyes spoke volumes about years, memories, and an unbreakable bond. As the horns swelled and Mac took one last drink from the flask they’d often shared, only two words escaped Duke’s lips: “goodbye, bro.”
With two words and less than sixty seconds, PREDATOR clearly communicated that these weren’t one-liner-spouting action heroes inexplicably taking out an entire army, they were human beings trying to survive.
The culmination of the Thomas’ writing, Silvestri’s score, and Duke’s delivery created a magical moment that forced the audience to share the suffocating weight of Mac’s sorrow.
In that moment, PREDATOR went to a place few movies of its ilk or era dared visit—that soldiers were people—and sometimes people lose. A moment that guaranteed PREDATOR would stand the test of time.
Busta Rhymes crashes through a garage door like the fuckin’ Kool-Aid Man, drops a “trick or treat…mothafucka” on Michael Audrey Myers, and people openly hate on this film.
Read that again.
We adore THE TOXIC AVENGER (1984) and there are legions of fans who, when asked to share their favorite iteration of FRIDAY THE 13TH, respond JASON TAKES MANHATTAN (1989) with a straight face. But hey, no judgment here–I love CHOPPING MALL (1986) and NIGHTBEAST (1982)–I’m merely highlighting the fact that proclivities stretch far and wide.
MST3K crowd aside, no fandom appreciates bad cinema quite like horror audiences. Joe Bob Briggs has made a career out of making garbage appear gourmet, so rather than condemning a HALLOWEEN (1978) sequel that, by no metric, could be held to the blinding light of the OG, I choose to walk the path of Napoleon Wilson.
The HALLOWEEN franchise is part of the John Carpenter universe so it only makes sense that perhaps his greatest character (I said what I said) should weigh in here. One of Darwin Joston’s go-to phrases as Wilson in ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976) was, “I have moments.”
Rather than ridiculing and rolling my eyes, I choose to focus on what I enjoy about a film–even a bad one. I concentrate on moments. And HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION (2002) has moments.
Asking you to look past the unceremonious way this movie dispatched of one of, if not the horror heroine of all-time, is a heavy lift–but I’m asking–because it’s the only way we can move forward.
To begin, is HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION well written? The short answer is no–but it has moments.
The long, slow push down the asylum corridor to Laurie Strode’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) room with Curtis’ voice over presenting the idea that eventually we all come to a door, the other side of which holds either heaven or hell. Curtis’ fearful delivery of “this is that door” to wrap the film’s open had me all-in and provided sustenance while events unfolded that I was less than fond of.
Let’s jump ahead to Jen (Katee Sachoff) sitting with Sara (Biana Kajlich) in the latter’s dorm room debating whether to partake in Dangertainment’s live stream from the Myers house–in 2002. RESURRECTION dove headlong into a new medium, and it was a fabulous idea. That they didn’t stick the landing doesn’t mean the messy journey wasn’t worth taking. Sara and Jen are interrupted by a fellow student (Haig Sutherland) who warns against them going through with it, touching on how little Mikey played in the bedrooms and hid in the closets of the Myers house before leaning in for the win: “then one day he picked up a knife…and he never put it down again.” The cut capturing the chill running down Sara’s spine was money, only to be almost immediately negated by the creeper semi-screaming before Jen escorted him out the door. A fabulous moment rendered mute by a poor editing decision. Should have let the moment linger, Rick Rosenthal. But that line, that moment, is what I take from that scene because it resonates more than two decades later.
And how can we forget Jim’s (Luke Kirby) epic video introduction to the internet audience?
“You don’t have to go far to find Michael Myers. He is the great white shark of our unconscious. He is the dark-eyed child of our spirits. He’s every murderous impulse we’ve ever had. He’s the little voice that whispers to us to strangle the old lady taking too long at the checkout counter. Get to know him, baby–he’s you.”
Pound-for-pound, the writing for HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION struggles–plenty of odd or flat-out poor choices–but it also possessed moments of brilliance that cannot be denied. “This is that door” and Jim’s diatribe among them.
Hell, before shit popped off at the Boogeyman’s abode, we got one of the best laughs of the franchise. With the crew setting up for the event, Nora (Tyra Banks) harrassed Charley (Brad Sihvon) because he wouldn’t just find a shot and move on. Charley shot back that elevated and low camera angles were scary, while medium shots were boring. Nora sarcastically responded that he must have learned that shooting all his weddings and bar mitzvahs. Charley jumped back in front of the camera and dropped hilarity: “Hey, I went to Long Beach State. Same as Spielberg.”
Moments.
By now, I’m sure you’re asking why I haven’t so much as teased a syllable about Busta Rhymes since the opening paragraph. And the answer is simple: ace in the hole.
If you can’t find joy in any other aspect of HALLOWEEN’s seventh sequel, I think we can all agree that Busta is magic. Even an ardent RESURRECTION apologist like me will readily admit that if you took Mr. Rhymes out of the equation this article would not exist. But Busta was in RESURRECTION and the world is better for it.
“Let the Dangertainment begin out this mothafu…”, donning the Shatner and baggy-ass overalls, creating Wok Cheun Lee because he could, then going Wok Cheun Lee on The Shape sounding like this-Bruce-Lee-goes-to-11 are 24-karat slices of fried gold that I dare you to dog and believe it.
Look, HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION is not a good movie. We are most certainly on the same page there. But at the same time, it has moments–ample ones in my humble opinion–and does not deserve its almost universal reputation of putrescence.
The owner of this site laughs at the “weird boner” I have for this picture, but that’s where it stays. I dig it, she does not. We laugh about it.
That’s all there is to it, folks. Whether it’s HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION or some other divisive movie–we can choose to see, or at the very least, accept what others love about them, or simply agree to disagree with a smile and go about our day.
If you’ve made it this far, maybe you’ll elect to give Dangertainment’s moments another shot with fresh eyes. Or not. No worries either way. No one is the keeper of horror fandom or authority on taste–least of all me. I hope you dig whatever you choose to press play on. But I’ll be watching HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION again. And again. And enjoying it for both of us.
