Well, I have once again moved and updated the venerable 73 Miles to Haddonfield website. And with this update I feel it is necessary to emphasize what the philosphy behind the site's existence now is. I realized this philosophy almost out of the blue a few days ago when I was thinking about what a good film HALLOWEEN is to watch, and how terribly most of the sequels have botched the original idea and the atmosphere that made the original so great.
You have to remember that when I started this site it was October of 1996, and the most recent HALLOWEEN entry had been "The Curse of Michael Myers" (Part 6 for the uneducated, released 9/29/95). While the theatrical cut of this film received its share of criticism, which it probably deserved, it was still in the vein of its predecessors, namely parts 4 and 5, carrying on the plotline begun in those films and adding to it. Thus HALLOWEEN was still a respectable franchise because each film (save for the third entry) built upon the events of the last. So everything was fine until 1998, at which point H20 was released, completely bypassing parts 4 through 6 in order to stop the confusion and appeal to a mainstream audience. This resulted in the highest box office returns for a HALLOWEEN film in years, but in my opinion it was not worth it. The series will never be the same again.
I must admit that HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION is not nearly as terrible as H20. But that does not mean that it is very watchable. I rented it on DVD the first time I saw it but I couldn't stand watching it as a normal viewer so I had to turn on Rick Rosenthal's commentary about 20 minutes through. I didn't really miss anything, either, because there is so little depth to the story and characters that you could watch the thing on mute and get the same understanding of it as someone who has listened to every little "line" of dialogue. So although it appears the series is improving (technically, and only by a little bit), it is still nowhere near what the original was conceived to be.
At this point I almost wish there had never been sequels to HALLOWEEN. The original is so impactful and unique that you could never capture that again. It would have been great to have that ending and know that Michael Myers survived and that's all there is to it. Our minds can fill in the rest, force people to be creative for once. But instead, greedy producers have decided to milk all they can from the franchise and continue to bombard us with pitiful new stories about our beloved serial killer.
That brings up another point, which I read in a viewer comment on IMDb and had to agree with: HALLOWEEN is nothing without Donald Pleasance. His presence at least made the sequels tolerable. And knowing when a new one came out that the same old Dr. Loomis was going to be back and chasing Myers once again added an interesting and unique factor that has been completely lost with the newer entries. The producers seem to think that all major movie audiences want to see is Michael Myers killing people. And with the returns that the recent films have been getting, their theories seem to be proving right.
Thus, the philosophy of this site is to remember and recall how great the HALLOWEEN series once was. That is why I will not post a lot of updates on the progress of the "new installment". Because at least the first four films are watchable in their own right, and Pleasence's presence makes the fifth and six entries tolerable, but beyond that, the spirit of the original has been lost, seemingly forever. So in this case, it's good to live in the past, so we can remember it, and so people don't forget that at one time, HALLOWEEN was a great franchise.
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