Reviews

Uhhh ... so, did they even have writers for this? Maybe I'm picky, but I like a little dialog with my movies. And, as far as slasher films go, just a sliver of character development will suffice.

Unfortunately, The Prey provides neither—and if you think I'm being hyperbolic, you'll just have to see it for yourself. Scene after scene, we just get actors standing around, looking forlorn and awkward, abandoned by any sense of a script. Outside of calling out each other's names when they get separated in the woods (natch), the only instances where these people say something substantive is when one character explains the constellation Orion (clearly plagiarized from Funk & Wagnalls; scintillating slasher fare, no?) and another rehashes an old campfire tale that doesn't even have anything to do with the plot (wait, what IS the plot?) At other times, The Prey actually has the gall to film its characters with the boom mic just far away enough so that we can't exactly hear what they're saying. So we get entire scenes wherein the actors are murmuring! Deliberately! Seriously, I've seen more dialog in a silent film. It's as if the filmmakers sat down at a bar somewhere in Rancho Cucamonga in the heyday of the '80s slasher craze and one looked at the other and said, "Hey, I gotta really sweet idea for a gory decapitation gag. Let's somehow pad an entire feature around it." And ... well, they did.

To be fair, The Prey probably had some sort of writer on board. I mean, somebody had to jot down the scene sequence and label the dailies. However, I am fully convinced that this film did not have an editor of any kind whatsoever. There are glaring pauses, boring tableaux, and zero sense of pacing throughout. The filmmakers don't have anything else in the "script" to film, so they fill out the running time with exhaustive taxonomies of the flora and fauna that inhabit the forest in which our wild and crazy teens are getting sliced and diced. These critters are all filmed in straightforward, noontime daylight in a completely reserved fashion and with no attempt at atmospheric photography. If it feels like a science film, that's because it is. I'm pretty sure this is all nature show stock footage—all that's missing is a stuffy narration from some National Geographic alderman.

More exciting footage that was graciously spared from the cutting room floor: a scene in which two men discuss cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches, and another scene wherein a supporting character strums away on a banjo for what feels like an entire minute-and-a- half! A minute-and-a-half! That's a lot of banjoing to commit to celluloid to begin with, let alone insert into the final cut of the film! Way to go, guys! Brevity and concision are the real victims of this slaughterfest.

Admittedly, the film picks up quite a bit of steam (comparatively) in the last 25 minutes, into which much of the carnage is condensed and where a rip-off of Béla Bartók's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta" cuts in. Vaudeville great Jackie Coogan makes a fun appearance as a tubby, bumbly park ranger (this was his last role, if you can believe it). And there are some nice gory moments, including a splattery neck tearing and the aforementioned decapitation. The make-up used for the killer (Carel Struycken, aka "Lurch" from the Addams Family movies) is also quite effective, and makes him look like a strange hybrid of young Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. Plus, if you love wacky, straight-outta-left-field endings, you need to check out how they wrap this puppy up. You'll do a spit take, I promise.

Usually, I love films that are on this level of ineptitude, but the first three-quarters of The Prey are just so interminably boring that they pretty much spoil the rest. Overall, this is a largely pallid and tedious affair, and, while it ain't all bad, it should really only be seen by debilitated slasher completists. Why do we do this to ourselves, anyway?

There is one shot very early on in 28 Weeks Later where Robert Carlyle's character is seen fleeing a house that has been breached by the "infected" (I'll be referring to them as zombies from here on out, for simplicity's sake), leaving his fellow healthy survivalists -- including his wife -- to fend for themselves. Carlyle runs like hell, and we see in his face a sudden twinge of guilt and helpless desperation. It's nothing over-the-top; just a fleeting and seemingly natural reaction to what he has just done.

This is the moment where director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo shows us how he is going to turn a sequel to a moderately successful 2003 zombie flick into a great and wholly original film of his own. 28 Weeks Later is so triumphant that, as a sequel, I would say it falls just short of Aliens' greatness. This is a highly original entry into the zombie subgenre, whose realism and strong establishment of its unique tone and universe set it apart from other zombie movies (including 28 Days Later).

I won't go into the plot because, like any effective horror film, 28 Weeks Later's brilliance is in its simple and visceral structure. There are no huge derivations or twists that cause the material it adapts from the previous film to jump the shark, and there are no gimmicks. There are, however, some intriguing revelations in store. Otherwise, it's refreshingly forthright and streamlined for a horror sequel, and something that you simply have to experience.

The film features some solid performances, especially from the always reliable Carlyle and plucky newcomer Imogen Poots. And the proceedings are spiced up by amazing action sequences, including a fire bombing of the Isle of Dogs and a helicopter vs. zombie showdown that has to be seen to be believed.

Considerably more concise and tautly constructed than its predecessor, 28 Weeks Later might just be the superior film.

I can fault this silly, quintessentially '70s rip-off of Duel and The Exorcist for so many things, including:

1. Its indecisive vacillations between slasher film and human-interest piece (the sex lives of small-town cops: next on A Current Affair!)

2. Obnoxious lead Kathleen Lloyd and her histrionics -- especially that James Cagney impression! Ugh!

3. The clumsy and halfhearted handling of its demonic possession angle (though I am convinced that the Jamiroquai song "Black Devil Car" was inspired by this film).

However, director Silverstein gives this otherwise tumefied and corny affair the sleekest feel possible, thanks to adequate production design -- including the menacing titular vehicle -- and some well-executed photography (I love the long-distance shots of the car screaming through the New Mexican desert landscapes). A solid performance by James Brolin plus an early appearance by Kyle Richards (who would go on to play little Lindsay Wallace in John Carpenter's Halloween) make this worthwhile.

It's no surprise that Strait-Jacket was written by Robert Bloch, the esteemed novelist best known for penning Psycho. Both works are hinged on backstories of maternal anxiety that crackle with tension.

Joan Crawford gives a palpably frenzied performance as Lucy Harbin, a woman convicted of the brutal murder (decapitation via axe, if you want to get technical) of her husband and his mistress, all before the eyes of her young daughter. Twenty years later, Lucy is released from the insane asylum and reunited with her daughter, and all of a sudden, heads start flying again! Could Lucy be responsible, or is someone trying to take advantage of her fragile state?

Aside from Crawford's histrionics, Strait-Jacket also offers up a good supporting performance from Diane Baker. There's also a nice theremin-infused score by Van Alexander, shocking scenes of violence (for 1964), and some awkward and unscrupulous Pepsi product placement to look forward to! The film loses some points for its rushed, matter-of-fact, and oddly upbeat Hollywood ending, but all in all, it's an enjoyable and essential psycho-biddy flick.

Yes, the writing is highfalutin and portentous. Yes, the performances are overacted. Yes, the style is too sober and literate for fans of the demonic histrionics of the original The Exorcist.

All that aside, The Exorcist III deserves its pet moniker of "one of the most underrated horror films in the history of cinema." Writer/director William Peter Blatty has woven a thoroughly intricate and pensive story that engages the viewer with its disturbing complexities and distinct texture. I swear Blatty was an accomplished cinematographer in a past life, because his flair for creating iconic nightmarish imagery and committing palpable mood and atmosphere to film seems natural-born.

Along with Blatty's talents, the film, of course, boasts the acting chops of a cast filled with players known for both élan and intensity. George C. Scott, Brad Dourif, and Jason Miller are as great as you always expect them to be (perhaps a little too great -- again, the overacting). And Zohra Lampert, Viveca Lindfors, and Nancy Fish all give terrific supporting performances.

Blatty shouldn't face any ignominy for the hopelessly silly conclusion of this film, which reminds me more of Amityville 3-D than the rest of The Exorcist III. Tremendous interference from the big cheeses at Morgan Creek yielded the blatantly tacked-on exorcism sequence at the end (Paul Schrader faced Morgan Creek's wrath to an even greater extent while directing the original cut of Exorcist: The Beginning). It takes a lot of cojones to defecate on a borderline masterpiece, but if somebody's gotta do it, leave it to the film executives.

And yes, the Brad Dourif Child's Play/redheaded boy reference is a little hokey, but it's merely another sly touch in an off-kilter and unorthodox film that is already teeming with slyness.

Now this is what I'm talking about! I love an unabashedly terrible slasher film that revels in its own sleaziness and stupidity. From the crappy synth score to the iffy performances, I was eating Don't Open 'Til Christmas up by the shovelful. I'm not even going to begin explaining the plot -- why should the plot even matter when drunk shopping mall Santa Clauses are getting their faces burned off, eyes slashed out, and penises castrated (YES!) all around you?!

I'd never recommend this to anyone who isn't into true bottom-of-the-barrel stuff like myself, but sludge lovers will want their grimy stockings stuffed with this filthy British exploit. Let me put it this way: if you liked Pieces, you'll also dig this film (which kind of makes sense, since some of the people from Pieces worked on this). Sure, Don't Open 'Til Christmas lacks the acting chops of the Georges (that's Christopher and Lynda Day to you), but it's slightly more enjoyable in the sense that it isn't quite as misogynistic as Pieces (i.e., most of the victims in this one are male). Skeezemeister Edmund Purdom (I find him inexplicably unsettling in a creepy uncle sort of way), who was one of the headliners in Pieces, claims this gem as his one and only directing credit.

This lesser-known, lower-budget Cronenberg film is actually superior to the director's more widely-acclaimed The Brood. Yes, Cronenberg still gets too caught up in his mutation and bodily function fetishes here, which creates another befuddling story structure. However, Rabid is better than The Brood because of its simple premise: after a life-saving surgery involving oodles of skin grafts, a young woman is left with a horrifying phallic object growing inside of her armpit. She wakes up with apparently evil intent, using the object to skewer all those who come near. The victims eventually turn into rabid zombie creatures and terrorize Montreal!

The not-so-subtle messages about the dangers of plastic surgery and hubris in the medical field aren't all that effective, and it never really makes sense why or how this woman ends up incubating a spiked phallus in her armpit. However, Rabid isn't as tediously pensive as The Brood. The action chugs along and, thus, doesn't give you a heck of a lot of time to worry about these problems. Marilyn Chambers is satisfactory as our femme fatale -- she turns in a particularly good performance considering she got her start in porn.

This nifty little drive-in slasher merits a heck of a lot of praise. Chugging along at a high- octane, and practically psychedelic, pace, Scream Bloody Murder is a deliriously fun case study of a young man with a teensy bit of an Oedipus complex.

The entire affair is quite competently filmed. Unlike other low-rent splatter fare of its day, Scream Bloody Murder benefits from sophisticated and professional location scouting, lighting design, and editing. Boyish lead Fred Holbert adds some genuine depth to the fragile underpinnings of his hook-handed, psychopathic character, without being over-the-top. And Leigh Mitchell, playing a hooker with a heart of gold, comes into her own in the latter half of the film.

While only b-movie and cult film connoisseurs are likely to check out this film today, its relatively high production values beg for a wider audience. More adventurous casual horror fans might want to take a gamble on this one -- they certainly could do a lot worse.

The Jaws franchise, more than any horror film series, exhibits studio executives at their most unscrupulous. Take a perusal through eBay's selection of original Jaws memorabilia and you'll get a sense of the cultural impact these films had and the extent to which they were pimped out back in the day. To argue back in 1975 -- when the original Jaws was scooping up awards and critical praise for its flawless intermingling of creature feature exploitation and Melvillian leitmotif, while laughing all the way to the bank -- that the notion of a second film was dishonorable would have been met with a hearty guffaw and a good swatting with a bushel of C-notes.

Enter Jeannot Szwarc, the French director who brought American audiences what they wanted: a smash-bang sequel that delivered more of the same thrills. Szwarc takes the standard blockbuster sequel approach by substituting subtext with plain old fun, and thus avoids muddling the original film's potent message. Instead of the grizzled and multi- faceted Quint, we get carefree and one-dimensional teens. However, this is not to say that Jaws 2 doesn't bring its own intrigue to the table. The return of Roy Scheider is an essential component of this film, and the subplot where Chief Brody spectacularly loses his job is both interesting and well-executed (even though this storyline has been blamed for singlehandedly giving the film a sluggish pace).

Szwarc's focus is graciously straightforward, and his handling of action sequences is so clean and taut that he nearly goes toe-to-toe with Spielberg. At times, the style of Jaws 2 matches the first film so well that I often confuse the two (which one has the waterskiing, again?) The production is filled out by highly competent actors. Along with Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, and Fritzi Jane Courney are three other players from the 1975 feeding frenzy who make welcome returns here. Newcomer Ann Dusenberry turns in a rather arresting performance as one of the distraught teens. Furthermore, it's all punctuated by another original score by John Williams that is even better than the music he created for the first film.

Whatever its narratives, the Jaws series is a fundamental study of the economics of the film business. Whereas the original Jaws spurred a paradigm shift in marketing, the salary and personnel negotiations that must have occurred in preparation for the sequel must surely be enough to write a book about. If I am going to study financing, at least I have two good movies to use as case studies.

Beware the Scottish Play! In his riveting and harrowing Opera, Dario Argento returns to classic form, regaining the composure he lost while filming convoluted and delirious psycho- shockers like Tenebre and Phenomena. Indeed, predicated on a simple narrative that is offset by opulent set pieces, imaginatively brutal murder sequences, and refined photography, the film feels like the Argento we once knew. Opera's only real infraction is its lack of a score by Goblin, who provided unusual, iconic, and timeless music for many of Argento's greatest films (the opera selections used here are wonderful, however).

The production is filled out by several competent actors. While she's no Jessica Harper, Annabella Sciorra lookalike Cristina Marsillach manages enough pluck and compassion to grasp the role of the tortured heroine. Ian Charleson is interesting as horror-film-helmer- turned-opera-director Marco. And Daria Nicolodi is fantastic as always, even in her relatively brief role (watch the making of featurette on the DVD for a hilarious interview with Nicolodi about her role -- clearly brash and resentful over the end of her relationship with Argento!) Fans of Stage Fright (another excellent 1987 giallo, directed by Michele Soavi, who served as the second unit director for Opera) will barely recognize the final girl from that film, Barbara Cupisti, as a stage manager here (I think it's the glasses that do it).

With me, it's often the little things that matter, and Argento's fascination/obsession with solitary nightmarish images makes him my ideal filmmaker. Opera is full of minor details that left me smirking. For instance, I love that we never see "The Great" Mara Czekova's face. I also love the scene where the killer is scraping the tip of his/her deadly sharp dagger across a television screen showing Betty's performance as Lady Macbeth. Finally, I defy even the most grizzled slasher veterans not to cringe as the "pin grates" are placed over Betty's eyes.

In short, Opera is a clean, tense, and taut thriller. With its solid performances, lucid focus, and literate cinematography, it begs to be in the same league as Deep Red and The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. Might Opera be the last great giallo?

Michael Powell's masterful analysis of objectification and psychological frenzy is truly a deluxe thriller. Perhaps the most unsettling thing about Peeping Tom is that Mark actually isn't a bad guy. He isn't inherently evil -- he is simply a man that has become so consumed by his predilections and cerebral trauma that there's no turning back. Karlheinz Böhm (credited as Carl Boehm) gives a chilling and understated performance in this role. The actor portrays Mark as a stammering, nervous, awkward, and insecure fellow in the vein of Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates. He doesn't trust himself any more than we trust him. Because Mark is a fully-developed human being rather than a knife-wielding caricature, we become sympathetic towards him, to the extent that we are almost complicit in his murderous affairs -- certainly a disturbing experience with which audiences in 1960 likely didn't know how to cope.

Böhm is supported by a game cast, including the winsome Anna Massey as the doe-eyed heroine and Maxine Audley as her mother (in a particularly eerie and poignant turn). The proceedings are buoyed by sumptuous cinematography and lighting design, which impart portentous feelings of dread and mystique.

Sadly, Peeping Tom is also known for destroying the career of director Powell, who simply made the right movie at the wrong time. Imagine the penury that Alfred Hitchcock would have faced if Psycho were filmed in color!

Night of the Living Dead is an uncompromising, indelible masterpiece that pulls no punches despite its forty-year vintage. The film wins in all aspects of film-making, including writing, pacing, and cinematography -- not to mention assembling a terrifyingly ferocious cast of the undead.

The film's biggest strength is its bleak, desperate atmosphere, which is heightened by stark black and white photography, high-contrast lighting, and mono sound. It suspends many moments of unmitigated terror within the same feeling of morbid isolation one can find in Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chain Saw Massacre (but, of course, earns extra kudos for doing it first).

Romero approaches the story with a steady hand and gives taut direction. The proceedings are supported by an engaging cast, especially leads Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea. Jones -- the first African-American lead in a horror film -- is wonderful as the handsome, assured, and no-nonsense hero, while O'Dea gives a pensive and uniquely off-kilter performance. Captivating from its riveting beginning to its downbeat conclusion, Night of the Living Dead stands as a pivotal entry in the zombie subgenre.

I loved this film. Madhabi Mukherjee is gorgeous and so engaging, with the virtuosic ability to represent the stresses of a changing Calcutta through a simple glance. Mahanagar is a fascinating dramatic case study of the collision of modernism and traditionalism that produced a sociocultural duality/dichotomy in twentieth-century India's urban landscapes.

We see all sorts of manifestations of duality in Mahanagar. The tension-cum-rivalry of Arati and Subrata is, of course, the most obvious manifestation. However, we also have the duality of the new- generation Arati/Subrata and the old-generation Sarojini/Priyogopal (Subrata's mother and father) and Arati, who wears traditional clothing and speaks Bengali, versus Edith, the English-speaking Anglo-Indian in Western dress. These instances of duality speak directly to the moment in which things began to make a 180-degree shift in India, when women became the breadwinners of the household and traditional gender norms became subsumed by sexual liberation.

With a leading lady as precise as Mukherjee, Ray was able wrap these complex coterminous processes up in a relatively tidy package. Mahanagar is essential viewing.

For a film with such a long running time, Gone With the Wind has a relatively straightforward story. Certainly, it is presented in an epic fashion, complete with intermezzos and sublime landscape shots, but this film is all about intimate interpersonal relationships amidst the tumultuous sociopolitical fallout in the American South in the immediate wake of the Civil War. The film would probably be about three hours shorter if the characters realized that their cultural values were actually restraints on their lives. However, these people's obsession with contemporary mores is all part of the intrigue. The occasionally meandering pace complements these anxieties.

Vivian Leigh aptly carries the film in an Oscar-winning performance as the feisty, brazen, and conniving Scarlett -- such a strong, independent leading lady, who is certainly more representative of the 1930s than the 1860s. If she were played by another actress with less zeal, Scarlett would simply come across as despicably spoiled and shallow. However, Leigh playfully skirts that line, while also providing enough fragility to convey Scarlett's rise and fall. Clark Gable is another remarkable player as the sly, suave, and frequently hilarious Rhett Butler, the one man who ultimately tempers the spitfire Scarlett. Olivia de Havilland delivers a heartwarming (albeit one-dimensional) portrayal of Melanie, who, because of her genuine charity and benevolence, Scarlett has a difficult time loathing for "stealing" her first beloved. Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel -- as talented as she is pioneering -- is a revelation here as the pragmatic yet caring Mammy. And Butterfly McQueen (one of my personal heroes) is an oxymoronic combination of adorable and annoying as the screechy young servant Prissy -- I wonder if Rae Dawn Chong modeled her performance as Squeak in The Color Purple after McQueen here.

The technical aspects of Gone With the Wind are, perhaps, more remarkable than anything else. The film's art direction, lighting, color, sound, and cinematography are on par with, and even exceed, some of the work you find in productions today. There are many memorable images in this film. A few of note: the swooping, surrealistic landscape of Tara and her grounds; Scarlett dancing and merrymaking in her black garb of mourning; the young band member playing the piccolo while tears stream down his face; and the parade of fieldworkers bellowing their haunting Negro spiritual through the streets of crumbling Atlanta.

A landmark cinematic achievement in every sense of the word, Gone With the Wind, as its title and textual narrative allude to, beautifully captures and preserves an era that is gone but not forgotten.

If the original Friday the 13th is "distilled slasher heaven," the third film is vaporized bloody bliss. Friday the 13th Part 3 is pared down to the fundamental essentials of the subgenre, and is all the better for it. Because it was originally filmed in 3D, it is blatantly clear that significantly more time was spent on getting the effects right than fleshing out the characters and storyline. In any other genre, this would sink a movie, but not in a slasher film. Friday the 13th Part 3 graciously spares us the hackneyed idea of Jason actually surviving the drowning in the lake and coming back to avenge his mother's death and instead turns him into an anonymous killer. Indeed, Jason's name is never uttered, not even once, during the ENTIRE film (unless you count the archival footage from the previous film tacked onto the beginning). The complete lack of a backstory for Jason thus augmented his frightening mythos and, combined with his acquisition of the trademark hockey mask in this film, put him on the trajectory towards becoming one of the major pop culture icons of the 1980s.

Our heroine Dana Kimmell is a terrible actress -- just watch her diorite-encased delivery of the line, "You go ahead. I'm going to take my bags in the house first and look around." However, she is strikingly beautiful in that glitzy '80s soap star way, and she manages to hit some nice congenial notes that suit the Final Girl trope well (plus, Amy Steel, the Final Girl from Part 2, is an impossible act to follow). And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Larry Zerner, who, as the portly and piteous practical joker Shelly won the hearts of millions of Friday the 13th fans -- who, incidentally, tend to be rather portly and piteous themselves (okay, don't kill me for this, fanboys -- I really am on your side, I promise).

If it wasn't for Amy Steel's stunning performance in Part 2, Friday the 13th Part 3 would easily be the best sequel in this lengthy series. It is condensed slasher goodness with less filling. It is the archetypical Friday film. It is, from what I hear, quite a treat in all its 3D glory. It is genius in its stupidity. It is the best kind of cheese, and goes great with a full-bodied Pinot Noir.

The Last Shark would actually be pretty great if it had a better editor: the heroes leave port to kill the shark and return unsuccessfully so many times it will make you seasick. However, this is still an enjoyable Italian rip-off of Jaws (and Jaws 2, for that matter), featuring some decent attack sequences and gory moments, not to mention Vic Morrow as a hilarious ersatz Captain Quint.

One great thing about the shark in this film is that it appears to be jet-propelled (at least that's what it sounds like when its conical head breaks the surface) and has the ability to blast watercrafts fifteen feet into the air. Hilarious! If you're looking for camp, The Last Shark certainly doesn't disappoint.

And, while the animatronic shark isn't on par with Bruce from Jaws, it's not bad for a knock-off.

The Brood is an overpraised Cronenberg effort whose gruesome sight gags bely its turgid (and stodgily conveyed) messages about divorce, child abuse, and alternative medicine. While the dwarf creatures are certainly some of the most horrific beings of recent cinematic memory, they factor into the film too late and too sporadically, with the rest of running time spent on weaving a tedious subtextual web.

Oliver Reed's hammy performance certainly doesn't help matters. However, Samantha Eggar is great as usual, and deserves praise for slogging through her particularly undignified (and very goopy) appearance at the end of the film. And Art Hindle, who gave a solid supporting performance in the 1974 horror classic Black Christmas, gamely revisits the genre here as an excellent leading man. A few scenes of sheer terror save this sluggishly-paced film from being a complete wash.

Don't ever confuse this with the antagonistically wretched 2006 remake. The original Black Christmas is a masterful, progenitive slasher film that constantly tests my loyalty to John Carpenter's Halloween. Like that latter film, Black Christmas' strength is in its simplicity: a demented killer is making disturbing (and I mean DISTURBING) phone calls to a snowbound Canadian sorority house, sleepily populated by a skeleton crew of Christmas break stragglers. Little do they know, the calls are coming from inside the house.

A major trick that elevates the simple plot, however, is that, even though we know from the get go that the calls are coming from inside the sorority house, the film is scant on so many other details that we feel as in the dark and uneasy as the characters. Our interest in the film is sustained throughout because we want to know what happens to these people.

That brings me to my next point. Surely odd for a slasher film, the characters in Black Christmas are well-drawn and the performances that fill them are top-notch. Olivia Hussey (one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the screen) and Margot Kidder are, of course, the obvious stand-outs, as the grave and level-headed Jess and drunken, sailor-mouthed Barb respectively. However, there are other remarkable players here, including Marian Waldman in a delightfully hilarious role, genre veteran John Saxon, and Art Hindle, who went on to play a fantastic leading man in David Cronenberg's not-so-fantastic The Brood.

Overall, the film is seeping with classic '70s style and atmosphere. Even the minimalist score, with its quiet, brooding sustained notes, reveals a bygone flair for film-making. Lastly, the phone calls the killer makes have to be heard to be believed. If you were scared by Regan's possessed ramblings in The Exorcist, Billy's psychotic shrieks will have you trembling for days.

The first act of Rob Zombie's Halloween delves into the origin of my favorite movie maniac (thankfully without any of that idiotic Thorn Cult business from Halloween 6). While the scenes of Michael Myers' childhood are plausible and disturbing, they are rather predictable and mundane, following a clichéd worm turn back story. However, it is in these scenes that Rob Zombie showcases his unique flair for direction, as he aptly mixes a sensitive focus with his trademark gritty aesthetic.

The latter half of the film, unfortunately, falls into the mire of any other slasher retread you find cramming the multiplexes these days: lots of stylized color correction, musical stings, and murky scenes of generic carnage. The goings on are livened up, however, by the countless cameos from some of the genre's superstars, including Ken Foree, Dee Wallace, and Sybil Danning. Ken Foree is bad-ass here, just as he is in everything he does (even Kenan & Kel!). And how great was it to see Danielle Harris being pursued by Michael Myers again? All in all, Halloween 2007 is not a bad re-imagining. Not necessary, but not bad.

Aliens is the most pulse-pounding, white-knuckle cinematic experience you'll likely ever have. Not that his already gargantuan ego needs a boost, but the reason why James Cameron is indisputably the greatest action director out there is because he's perfectly meticulous at turning his characters into actual humans. He's not afraid to turn what could have easily been a mere quick-buck 90-minute noise machine into a complex 150-minute epic that yields plenty of time for character development and motivational intrigue to gradually build up into rip-roaring action.

Weaver, of course, is back to reprise her iconic role (which was originally written for a man). There has never been a character like Ripley, and the script here makes her fully multidimensional.

Thrilling from the get go, Aliens is capped by a deliciously tense and hugely gratifying extended finale -- too bad Alien 3 squandered all of it.