söndag 29 april 2012

Halloween Not Water and The Roaring Psychic Shark



Anyone else noticed how much Halloween H20: 20 Years Later parallels Jaws: The Revenge?

- Both movies are about a maternal, middle-aged woman (Laurie Strode/Ellen Brody) who is living in fear of a killer shark ("in baggy-ass overalls!") that killed members of her family. 


 - The female protagonist moves far away from her hometown but the killer shark follows her: amazingly drives/swims from Illinois/Long Island to California/the Bahamas in less than two/three days

 - The female protagonist has a son (John/Michael) and tries to convince him that the killer shark is after them and that he shouldn't be out on Halloween/the water. The son thinks she's paranoid and tries to convince her there is no danger.


- However the son eventually comes face to face with the killer shark.


 - The female protagonist has a charming and quirky but somewhat sleazy boyfriend (Will/Hoagie) who wants to bang her while she talks about her terrible past.



- Both movies features a Token Black Guy (Ronnie/Jake) who at some point appears to have been killed...


... but later reappears miraculously alive and quite well.


- "This time... it's personal" The female protagonist overcomes her fears and confronts, and kills, the killer shark.


So, yeah, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (original subtitle was The Revenge of Laurie Strode, btw) is just Jaws: The Revenge... ON LAND. What a rip off. :D

And, yeah, isn't Halloween H20 a stupid title? It was the 90s. I guess it was suppose to sound "hip" and "cool". Nobody (except for fans) would go see a movie titled Halloween 7. When I first came across H20 in a video store as a kid, I thought, looking at the title, "Water? Michael Myers stalks a submarine?" And that's what I thought (I didn't read the plot synopsis on the back, haha.) The image on the back cover totally fooled me. Looks like the window of a submarine door!



Instead we got Michael Myers stalking a school? Dammit. If Halloween Waters would have taken place in a submarine, we could have had possibly the best tagline ever: "Now, it will be a Red October!"

But, the "H20" in the title actually means "Halloween 20," not "water"... which, uh, means the full title of the movie is: "Halloween Halloween 20: 20 Years Later." 


The Powers That Be certainly exploited the "H20" in the title... one of the taglines for the movie was "Blood is thicker than water." Oooh... clever. Since this is about a woman who is haunted by something that happened in her past, which took place on a special day, and is stalked by a killer, maybe they should have just called the movie "I Know What You Did Last Halloween 20 Years Ago."