Review

This documentary marks the 25th Anniversary of John Carpenter's seminal slasher flick Halloween. Centred by and largely round a convention for fans of the series, the documentary seeks to cast some light on this horror icon. Helping immensely is the narration by P. J Soles that adds some class to proceedings. So let's pick up the carving knife and see if the jack-o-lanterns are up to scratch.

Halloween is like my favourite ever horror franchise, I can watch these movies over and over again. The original set loose an avalanche of second rate imitators, and pretty much spawned an entire sub-genre, taking into account that Black Christmas had thrown the first rules onto the table previously in 1974. So I was more than pleased to find 25 Years in my review stack, unfortunately the actual documentary didn't live up to expectations.

We get plenty of opinions about the original Halloween from cast, crew, writers, and some Critics brought in to broaden the scope. Where this went wrong was with the actual Critics, who seemed by and largely to be wasted space with a couple of notably exceptions. Director Hutchinson should have, for example, dropped the John Fallon segments onto the cutting room floor. Fallon adds nothing to our understanding of Halloween and does nothing more than add a vanity element to the doco. There's some mutual stroking of egos going down during Fallon's pretty much useless contribution. Kim Newman on the other hand was worth catching up with, some real insights there. If you are going to add talking heads to your doco, then the guiding principle would be to have some relevant content else hit the jettison button.

A documentary is simply never going to work if you don't trust the so called "experts" brought in to add their two cents worth to the debate. Come on! Rob Zombie, really? The Dude did two Halloween movies and in both demonstrated he didn't have any fracking idea of what made the original movie tick. As soon as Zombie appeared on screen I knew exactly what I was dealing with, a documentary film maker who wants to score some big names but who has no sense of what he is doing. As with Fallon, Hutchinson is making a vanity piece here with very little relevance for the Halloween fan.

Structurally the doco is pretty much a mad woman's breakfast; there is no cohesion or attempt to drive a single motif through the entire running time. At stages I was getting pretty bored as yet another person involved in the franchise was dragged on screen to add jack all to proceedings. Sure we journey chronologically through the first seven movies in the series, but to be honest some coverage of the later movies was so light that it shouldn't have been included. There was no attempt to discuss why the series went off the rails, or what could have been done to get it back on track. Once again Zombie failed with the reboot completely, which was I guess to be expected, but rumour has it a new hombre is taking over the director's chair, fingers crossed he does a half decent job. Sorry for the digression yo.

Stefan Hutchinson pretty much proves he's anothe individual who should get the frack away from this ailing franchise

I did like some of the cast interviews, they gave some real insight into what went down during the making of the movies. Pity the interviews were garnered from convention panels and not from actual interviews. Danielle Harris, Tawny Moyer, Tom Atkins, Ellie Cornell, et al, added some real meat to the bones of this try hard documentary.

There were of course a number of things I didn't know that I learnt from the documentary. Unfortunately, there's that word again, the film maker was shooting a puff piece and didn't get down and heavy with anything approaching investigative journalism. Some cool facts like the Meyers house was brought for a $1 and moved onto railway owned land, added to my knowledge, and invariably Pub quiz level fund of irrelevant expertise. But where was the heavy hitting look into what happened between Carpenter and Rosenthal, for example? Come on, that's the sort of thing we dial into a documentary for.

What I did glean from the documentary, and had a sneaking suspicion was the case, was that Producer Moustapha Akkad so completely mishandled the franchise that it's surprising later movies in the series were made. Akkad was the brains behind the idea of Halloween III not involving Mikey, cause Akkad thought no one would have been interested in a third movie including the Shatner masked one. See this is what happens when you allow Producers to make key decisions, you end up with Rob Zombie involved, it should be a salient lesson to everyone in the industry how not to run a franchise.

So overall I found 25 Years to be pretty lean on the gravy and not offering much in the way of insights into one of the warhorse horror franchises. I guess if you haven't been an avid Halloween fan then the film may hold some interest for you, otherwise there's nothing much to see here citizen, besides some dopey chick showing off her boobs to the punters of the world. If a documentary relies on someone like Rob "I'll never do a remake or a sequel" Zombie then you are on a hiding to nothing. Pretty light weight, waiting on a half decent doco to land on my desk y'all. Clearly, regardless of faults, a must have documentary for Halloween tragics like myself.

Okay so I scored my copy of the doco via the Eagle Entertainment R4 release. You get a two disc selection of about five hours' worth of Halloween related mayhem, but to be honest beside the actual doco itself and Horror's Hallowed Grounds there's not a lot of interest to be had. Most of the contents are taken from the convention, dear god I'm pleased I decided not to get up North and go to that one.