SHOCKtober Day 14

It's a dark, windy, rainy day around these parts and it's really got me feeling the spooky scaries of the season! And let me tell you, it's the perfect time to be all pumped about those spooky scaries because tonight is the night I'm fixin' to see Halloween Bangs Part Two. As I mentioned on SHOCKtober Day 9, I am positively broken out in a rash of anticipatory hives (gross) over it. However, I thought I was excited about participating in a good old fashioned hate watch...but in the time since that post (has it really only been five days?), it seems that I am genuinely, unironically looking forward to seeing it. 

Don't get me wrong, I haven't tricked my brain (nor has my brain tricked me) into thinking I'm going to like it or "maybe it will be good." This feeling is something else entirely, and I can't explain it. Maybe it's Jamie Lee Curtis and Kyle Richards reuniting again a couple of days ago on Part 1 of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season 12 Reunion. Maybe it's the leaves blowing around outside. Maybe it's that even though the movies are awful, the yearly release schedule has somehow reignited the excitement I would get as a child when it was time to watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown or something. I don't know!

But I do know that today would have been a better day to talk about that lady with the iron in Halloween Bangs. That's okay though, we're still sticking with a Haddonfield denizen...

THAT KID WITH THE RAZOR BLADE IN HIS MOUTH IN HALLOWEEN II (1981)

Halloween II is such a weird movie. (I love it! And if you subscribe to the Patreon for The Evolution of Horror, you can listen to me talk about it (and its predecessor)! The empty halls, Jamie Lee Curtis's wig...it all comes off as really low budget and ultimately feels much nastier than the first film. 

That nastiness is exemplified by that kid who accidentally chomped on a razor blade--we get a bloody close-up that's much gorier than anything we saw in 1978, but more over it means that Michael Myers isn't the only Haddonfield wackadoo on the loose that Halloween. Some Brenda Bates-type out there made one of the most enduring urban legends come to life and gave any number of kids a lifetime's worth of trauma. That's a special kind of fucked up-ness we don't often see in horror movies, and one that wasn't matched until...why, until Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) wherein magic Druid power made bugs come out of kids' faces. And yet it's boring old Michael "stab stab" Myers who's still the focus of this franchise? Please. He doesn't even have bangs.

Which reminds me! If you'll excuse me I have to get ready to watch the conclusion of the Lindsey Wallace saga.