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Halloween: H20

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Notes jotted down while watching “Halloween: H20”: Medical science should study Michael Myers, the monster who has made the last two decades a living hell for Laurie Strode. Here is a man who feels no pain. He can take a licking and keep on slicing. In the latest “Halloween” movie, he absorbs a blow from an ax, several knife slashes, a rock pounded on the skull, a fall down a steep hillside and being crushed against a tree by a truck. Whatever he's got, mankind needs it.

How does Michael Myers support himself in the long years between his slashing outbreaks? I picture him working in a fast-food joint. “He never spoke much, but boy, could he dice those onions!” I have often wondered why we hate mimes so much. Many people have such an irrational dislike for them that they will cross the street rather than watch some guy in whiteface pretending to sew his hands together. Examining Michael Myers' makeup in “Halloween: H20,” I realized he looks so much like Marcel Marceau as to make no difference. Maybe he is a mime when he's not slashing.

Maybe what drove him mad was years and years of trying to make a living in malls while little kids kicked him to see if he was real. This also would explain his ability to seem to walk while somehow staying in the same place.

I happen to know Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays Laurie, is one of the smartest people in Hollywood. I cannot wait for the chapter on horror movies in her autobiography.

There is a scene in the movie where a kid drops a corkscrew down a garbage disposal. Then the camera goes inside the garbage disposal to watch while he fishes around for it. Then the camera cuts to the electric switch on the wall, which would turn the disposal on. I am thinking, if this kid doesn't lose his hand, I want my money back.

Michael Myers may also have skills as an electrician. All of the lights and appliances in every structure in this movie go on or off whenever the plot requires them to. I can imagine Myers down in the basement by the fuse box, thinking, “Gotta slash somebody. But first--geez, whoever filled in the chart on the inside of this fuse box had lousy handwriting! I can't tell the garage door from the garbage disposal!” I think Jamie Lee Curtis shouts “Do as I say!” twice in the movie. I could be low by one.

Yes, the movie contains the line “They never found a body.” Michael Myers, described in the credits as “The Shape,” is played by Chris Durand. There is hope. Steve McQueen started his career in (but not as) “The Blob.” Half of the movie takes place in an exclusive private school, yet there is not a single shower scene.

Speaking of shower scenes: Janet Leigh, Jamie Lee's mother, turns up in a cameo role here, and she started me thinking about what a rotten crock it is that they're remaking “Psycho.” I imagined Miss Leigh telling her friends, “They wanted me to do a cameo in the remake of `Psycho,' but I said, hell, I'd do `Halloween: H20' before I'd lower myself to that.”

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film Credits

Halloween: H20 movie poster

Halloween: H20 (1998)

Rated R For Terror, Violence and Language

91 minutes

Cast

Chris Durand as The Shape

Ronnie Jones as Cool J

Michelle Williams as Molly Cartwell

Ll Cool J as Ronnie Jones

Adam Arkin as Will Brennan

Janet Leigh Li as Norma

Josh Hartnett as John Tate

Joseph Gordon-Lewitt as Jimmy Howell

Adam Hann-Byrd as Charlie

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie/Keri

Jodi Lyn O'Keefe as Sarah

Directed by

Written by

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