The plan last Sunday morning was to get up early-ish so we could hit the first (i.e., cheap) showing of "Inglorious Basterds". I'd looked up the movie's start times on Fandango.com and I will swear to my dying day that it said the film started at 10:00 a.m. We drove out to the theater in Rockaway and it pretty much all went downhill from there.
"Inglorious Basterds" did not, in fact, begin until 11:35 - a full 90+ minutes after the time Fandango had indicated the day before (which got me thinking that maybe the Sunday times are different than the Saturday times, since I'd looked the info up the night before ... I got to thinking about this too late, obviously). We really didn't want to wait, because the movie itself is about two and a half hours long and we had other errands we wanted to check off our list. We'd anticipated getting out at about 1:00, and now we'd be pushing 2:30 or later, depending on how many trailers we'd be forced to endure.
We had also wanted to check out "Halloween 2", but wanted to see "Inglorious Basterds" more. "Halloween 2" started at 10:05, though, so we decided to see Michael Myers kill a bunch of teenagers instead of hanging out to see to see Brad Pitt killing a bunch of Nazis. (Just so you know, we're not sociopaths - the week before, we'd gone to see "(500) Days of Summer", which was very good and not a single person died, thank you very much.)
I'd liked roughly the first two-thirds of Rob Zombie's "Halloween" re-make a couple of years ago. I thought it fell apart toward the end when he started re-hashing John Carpenter's story (Michael Myers trying to kill Laurie Strode), but liked the whole new backstory he'd created along the way, showing us an "origin" story rather than just a simple slasher flick. I also liked "The Devil's Rejects", though it was a very, very difficult movie to watch. Very violent, very gruesome. Something about it clicked, though, and while I certainly wouldn't recommend it to just anyone, I'd give it a thumbs up overall.
And I'm no prude when it comes to graphic content. I've seen zombies tear people apart whole ("Dawn of the Dead"). I've seen fountains of spouting blood ("Kill Bill"). I've seen compound fractures ("The Descent") and dental torture ("Old Boy"). I've seen unimaginable horrors I wouldn't want to repeat, because they're too repulsive to describe (Rob Schneider in "Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo").
Pretty much, I'm up for everything and anything.
About fifteen minutes into "Halloween 2", Nicole and I got up and left the theater leaving the other four people there to wonder why were were taking off so soon.
Nicole was visibly ill from what she'd seen and heard, and even I was uncomfortable in my seat.
The movie opens with an interpretation of what a white horse means in one's dreams, and there's a flashback to young Michael Myers being visited by his mother in the mental hospital. These are the best parts of what we saw. (The story was so shocking, I will now swap verb tenses. The horror!)
Also, if you don't like reading about really, really nasty stuff (or if you just don't want to read potential spoilers) you might want to skip the next two paragraphs. Seriously.
Soon, we flash back immediately to where the last film ended. Laurie Strode, bloody and battered, shambles down a road with a gun in her hand until the police find her. She's convinced that she's killed Myers, but can barely speak and is clearly suffering from physical and mental overload and shock. She, her friend Annie, and Dr. Loomis are all taken to hospitals. The body of Michael Myers, who is presumed to be dead and weighs so much that six EMTs have to load his body into an ambulance, is also packed up and shipped off.
The ambulance driver and his co-worker proceed to use the f-word at every opportunity and have a disgusting conversation about necrophilia. Of course, the situation goes to hell, and Myers escapes decapitates the ambulance driver (who has been pleading for help, blood gushing from his mouth) with a large shard of broken glass. Next thing you know, he's at the hospital where Laurie Strode has been stitched up and resting. Too bad Zombie didn't spend more time focusing on the "resting" part, because he sure spent enough time focusing on the "stitched up" part. We are shown Strode's hands, with skin peeling off of the fingers that she has remaining. We are shown her emergency surgery. Stitches, broken teeth, giant meaty gashes ... nothing is left to the imagination. Despite all of this, Strode wakes up later that night and stumbles down the hall to find a nurse because she wants to check on her friend, Annie. Surprise surprise! This is pretty much exactly when the giant killer shows up. The nurse on duty comes around the corner, a giant slash down the middle of her face, through her lips, with blood pouring down the front of her uniform. Myers follows, and brutally and repeatedly stabs the woman with his giant knife.
I don't remember the exact context of the situation, but I recall years ago having a conversation with my friend JD about a news article we'd read about a real-life murder victim who'd been stabbed 30+ times. "At what point," JD wondered, "does it stop being stabbing and start being stirring?" This is how I felt about "Halloween 2".
Not only was the absolutely brutal, unrelenting violence portrayed visually, the sound mix was completely over the top. Every sickening slicing, squishing, and squirting sound you can think of was amped up to top volume, like someone was pouring gallon after gallon of pulpy tomato sauce on the ground next to you.
Anyway, this is when we got up and left. Nicole was a little wobbly from the experience and was willing to wait for me in the lobby, but I wasn't going to make her wait another hour-plus for me when she obviously wasn't feeling well, and at that point, I'd pretty much given up any hope that the movie could be redeemed besides.
If violence has a point in a movie, I can usually live with it. This was something else entirely. Just 15 minutes or so in, I no longer cared what was going to happen. I didn't care about the characters, I didn't care if the story found closure, and I didn't care that our morning plans were ruined. I didn't even care that Rob Zombie, who I believe to be smarter and more talented than he showed with this exhibition, had let me down. I just wanted to stop feeling like I was being assaulted by the film. I just wanted to leave.
I proposed going into one of the other 15 theaters to see something else instead, since we'd already bought tickets for a movie we weren't going to watch, but Nicole was on the green side, and the only movie about to start was "G-Force". So we bailed. Fortunately, the woman working the ticket counter was able to refund both of our tickets because we were leaving so early. "I don't like these kinds of movies", she said to us. "They're no good."
Got that right.
A couple of weeks ago I watched the Kevin Smith comedy "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" via Netflix. It's certainly not a great movie, and I didn't need to see Seth Rogan's naked ass or Jay Mewes' naked EVERYTHING. There were some boobs thrown in for good measure. There were all sorts of synonyms and euphemism for various sexual acts and body parts during clearly humorous conversations. Nobody died. There wasn't a drop of blood to be found. And in the end, there was a happy ending. (Not that kind, either.)
Before it was released to the theaters, "Zack and Miri" was slapped with an X-rating and had to undergo many cuts to earn an R. TV and print ads wouldn't use the film's full name.
How there was so much attention paid to that movie yet "Halloween 2" slid by with an R is beyond me. The violence in just the first 15 minutes of H2 should have earned it an X-rating, or an NC-17 ... hell, given our reaction to it, NC-35 might have been too lenient.
It's frustrating to me that such varying standards of what is allowed and what isn't exist in the eyes of the MPAA. Apparently, if you show the body you're born with, that's a horrible thing that nobody should be allowed to see, but if you chop all of those parts off, you can do it on-screen in whatever revolting, graphic, bloody way you want. Not that I want every movie to feature sexual situations just because they can, of course - it's just that I wish filmmakers would also realize that they don't need to pile on the violence just because they can, either.
I wonder about the DVD release of this film. I'm sure the studio will release an "Uncut Director's Special Edition" at some point, but given what we saw, what the hell could Zombie have left out? I would think it impossible to be even more violent, but I'm sure I'd be wrong.
So there's our horrible experience at the movies, which might have been prevented (or, at the very least delayed) had Fandango given us the correct film times.
Thank you, internet!
