kindertrauma

Category: Holidays

The Lives and Loves of Laurie Strode

Posted on By unkle lancifer

It's that time of year when I watch every movie in the HALLOWEEN franchise. The quality ranges from "heart-pounding work of stabby genius" to the cinematic equivalent of a piece of fruit thrown into your trick ‘r treat bag; happily all of the films are required by law to take place on Halloween and I can't say no to that. I never watch the HALLOWEEN movies in chronological order, but there is a method to my Myers madness. First I get PART 3: SEASON OF THE WITCH out of the way, I don't want its joyous insanity mixing with the rest of the group, just like I don't want my gravy touching my peas. Then it's on to "The Laurie Cycle" which includes Part 1, Part 2, H2O & the beginning of RESURRECTION. (The rest of RESURRECTION, I discard like a corn husk.) Then it's time for "The Jamie Cycle" which starts great with Part 4, gets horrible with Part 5 and then gets who cares because PAUL RUDD is in it. The festivities are then completed with a drunken excursion into the ROB ZOMBIE zone.

Where I stand now is in the crossroads between cycles Laurie and Jamie. So while I'm here let's talk a bit about our old pal Laurie, the greatest female horror character of all time (Sorry Ellen Ripley, I love you too but since you drive a spaceship to work and break bread with robots, you gotta play on team sci-fi.)

HALLOWEEN
When we first meet Laurie (the one and only JAMIE LEE CURTIS) she is your typical American teenager except for the fact that she is responsible, respects her parents, shows signs of humility and reads books. In today's world such a creature would be terrorized into committing suicide via an on line social network, but back in the seventies you could wear beige and sing corny songs ("I wish I had you all alone…") in public without fear of retribution. In fact you might even end up hanging out with the two coolest girls in high school Lynda Van der Klok (P.J. SOLES) and Annie Bracket (NANCY LOOMIS)!

Folks can speculate all they want about Laurie's (assumed) virginity saving her hide, but I think that discounts her girl scout ability to make weapons out of household objects (knitting needles, clothes hangers) and her obvious talent for finding the quickest route between point A and point B. For somebody who is labeled a goodie-two-shoes, she sure smokes a lot of weed and spends a lot of time thinking about Ben Tramer. Alls I'm saying is Laurie is not the one note character she is sometimes painted to be. Just because she's not as slutty as Lynda, it doesn't make her a prude.

Interesting note: Knowing that nobody would buy the antiquated idea of a scrupulous, moral being walking the planet, ROB ZOMBIE insisted that in his remake, the thoroughly modern Laurie Strode (SCOUT TAYLOR-COMPTON) should perform various sexual acts upon a non consensual bagel to the horror of E.T.'s mom (DEE WALLACE) while threatening to escalate the atrocity to include an elderly owner of a hardware store.

HALLOWEEN 2
Directly after the incidents depicted in the first film, emergency workers tend to Laurie's wounds, place an insane wig on her head and drive her to the nearest hospital. Sadly, in this installment, our gal is mostly a drugged out blank slate. She's not so far gone as to not suddenly remember that she's her assailant's sister, but she certainly has lost some of her whip-smart edge. Laurie has not become a total dumb-dumb though, she props up pillows to create a decoy and has dead-on accuracy shooting a gun. She's even intuitive enough to start putting the moves on the still breathing orderly Jimmy Lloyd (LANCE GUEST) somehow knowing that dream date Ben Tramer is now a mincemeat and car sandwich.

Interesting note: If the ambulance is rockin' don't come a knockin! In the television version of HALLOWEEN 2, Laurie and Jimmy share a romantic moment at film's close and ride off presumably to go make little DANIELLE HARRIS' and JOSH HARTNETS.

HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS
I know I said this movie is "Cycle Jamie" and not "Cycle Laurie," but I should point out that Laurie does appear in this movie briefly in a photo. Turns out daughter Jamie (DANIELLE HARRIS) lovingly keeps a photo of her mother holding a pumpkin and waiting to be picked up by Annie on the Halloween night she was almost brutally murdered. Nobody knows who took this photo (The Shape?) or how it came to be in lil' Jamie's possession…

HALLOWEEN H20
It's twenty years later (hence the title) and Laurie has changed her name, dropped the wig and nabbed a sexy new boy toy (ALAN ARKIN, who I've come to refer to as "George Goonie.") She has reinvented herself not only as the dean of a prestigious school, but also as a high functioning alcoholic; you go girl! Many claim that H20 is a direct sequel to Part 2 and pretends that HALLOWEENs 4-6 do not exist. I always just assume that Laurie had two kids and kept one and dumped the other for reasons unknown…hey, it happens!

H20 is a dream of a sequel and offers us the rare treat of seeing a characters progress decades on. It sports tons of fanboy references (great job getting NANCY STEPHENS back!) that never get in the way or take you out of the plot. I'm not so keen on the new version of Michael Myers who changes his mask from scene to scene, but I'll live.

If they gave out Oscars for slasher flicks JAMIE LEE CURTIS would have earned one here. (I'm not talking about the scene where she grabs an axe and demands that Michael confront her. I'm talking about the scene where she grabs a waiter and demands a refill of chardonnay.) H20 may throw breadcrumbs to the SCREAM pigeons, but it also stands as an admirable tribute to a character that, when all is said and done, is just as much if not more important to the HALLOWEEN series than its masked killer. My only sadness comes from the fact that DONALD PLEASANCE did not live long enough to either participate or proudly observe from the sidelines.

HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION (Well, at least the first 20 minutes of it.)
Hey fence, this is my ass and it's going to sit on you! I'm not sure how I feel about the way Laurie exits the series. On one hand, it's a joy to see her all ragged and war torn in a mental hospital with semi believable long hair, but on the other she deserved the dignified end of the last chapter where she did not decapitate an innocent bystander, but her arch nemesis instead. I'm not sure I can accept this ending for Laurie; thankfully in horror there are no real endings. For all we know after Laurie got stabbed, made out with her psychopathic sibling and fell several stories into some trees that she landed in the bed of a truck passing by filled to the brim with soft, cushiony Silver Shamrock Halloween masks. A fanboy can dream can't he? Goodbye Laurie! I wish I had you all alone, just the two of us!

Happy Father's Day!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Happy Father's Day! There I was getting ready to write an elaborate ode to CRAIG T. NELSON when I realized, we kind of covered that guy LAST YEAR. (Also there is the whole thing where there is a nerdy sci-fi convention in town today and I'm going to it and therefore do not have the time to give Mr. NELSON the proper respect he so richly deserves.) So forget that idea, who wants to hear me babble on about the greatest Dad in all of horror anyway? Instead how about you folks take some time to visit some of our favorite fathers out there in internet-land? These boys really know how to bring home the bacon and, as far as I know, none of them have ever been possessed by a giant tequila worm!

Note: You should also stop by and visit our pal Vince over at SLASHER SPEAK. (He recently became the proud father of a bouncing baby Bram Stoker award!)

P.S. If we missed any blogging dads out there let us know, feel free to leave your link in the comments section. Happy Father's Day to all!

Happy Arbogast Day!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Was it really a whole year ago that we here at Kindertrauma declared that the day after Mother's Day will forever hence forth be known as Arbogast Day? Check your calendars kids because yesterday was indeed Mother's Day and that means you know what today is… Arbogast Day!

Arbogast Day celebrates all that is fellow blogger Arborgast of the stellar blog ARBOGAST ON FILM. We are not the type to let a restraining order or two cramp our style either. How does one celebrate such a day you may be asking yourself? One way is to spend a moment or two reflecting upon what Arbogast may be doing at this very minute. Is he writing? Is he painting a portrait? Could he be taking a bubble bath or is he more of the shower type?

Another way to celebrate Arborgast Day is to take a cue from the type of post that made him our hero. Arbogast coined the phrase "The one you might have saved," when he waxed philosophic about the horror film victims that maybe should have lived. Of course horror films need their dead folks, but we all have a favorite character or two that we find it painful to say goodbye to. With that in mind both Auntie John and myself have selected our own personal choices of film characters that we wish could have lived. (It is our plan to do this every year on Arbogast Day until such time as we forget to or the world ends.) Check our choices out, tell us what yours are and make sure you stop by and visit good ol' Arbogast HERE!

Aunt John's choice:: THE BAD SEED's RHODA PENMARK

They always say it's a real tragedy when a young life is cut short. Your Aunt John says it's an even greater tragedy when the work of a murderous child is cut short. Had Rhoda Penmark not gone out in a well-lighted blaze of glory at the end of THE BAD SEED, she was to have gone sun bathing on the roof with her frumpy neighbor and pretend Aunt, Monica Breedlove. Based on the final bedtime interaction between Rhoda and her father, the pig-tailed psychopath was set to inherit a lovebird named Sweetsie in the event her Aunt Monica ever died or went away. Rhoda Penmark was a take charge little girl who made things happen, and had she survived that lightening attack on the dock, she would have made that date with Aunt Monica. She would have also facilitated some tragic slip and fall for the bombastic Breedlove and snared herself a lovebird in the process.

It should be noted that Rhoda escapes unscathed in both the novel and play formats of THE BAD SEED; it is her wishy-washy mother that does not survive her suicide attempt. Alas, it appears my poor Rhoda was a victim of the oppressive Motion Picture Production Code (a.k.a. the Hays Code), which forced filmmakers to adhere to the adage "Crime does not pay." I can only reckon that this Victorian approach to film making also dictated the goofy curtain-call tack on in the closing credits in which PATTY McCORMACK politely curtsies for the camera. If you're gonna kill the kid, don't rub salt in my wounds and trot her out like a show pony three minutes later. In killing Rhoda, they also killed off a potentially lucrative franchise. It's a damn shame that we have to live a world where the kid from PROBLEM CHILD can land a two-picture deal, and all McCormack received was a playful spanking from NANCY KELLY. Where is the justice in that?

Unkle Lancifer's choice: BAD DREAM'S LANA

After much thought my "The one you might have saved" ends up being the character of Lana from 1988's BAD DREAMS. I tried real hard to think of a super plucky or noble character from a classic film, but any answer other than E.G. DAILY 's Lana would be a complete lie. Why should I pretend to love Crêpe Suzette when I am always so darn hungry for meatballs? Lana's death is a real shame for many reasons. First off, who wants to see anything bad happen to adorable E.G.? I also gotta admit I love Lana for being such a shivering Chihuahua basket case. I know you are only supposed to like strong willed characters who know exactly what they are doing at all times and always say the right thing, but I've come to terms with the fact that I just don't. Human strength is boring as hell; give me a train wreck any day of the week. Mental patient Lana hides behind her hair and drips pathetic, over sensitivity all over the place like a pelted martyr. That is why I LOVE HER.

Watch what happens when lil' Lana tries to reach out to self obsessed final squirrel JENNIFER RUBIN…

She's Carrie White without the chance of telekinetic redemption, a doormat with a punching bag for a heart. She's also the first victim to kick the bucket. She shows up, whines a bit, has a momentary flash of hope for the future, has said hopes trampled on and then gets drowned by RICHARD LYNCH. Misery, false hope and then death, now there's a character arc I can believe in.

I would have loved to see Lana stick around longer, not to watch her lace up army boots and kick ass but to maybe just be a rock of Gibraltar sidekick with a few hidden talents up her sleeve. I mean, c'mon BAD DREAMS you could have at least had E.G. perform a theme song over the closing credits! Oh Lana, we hardly knew ye and perhaps due to your galactic vulnerability, you actually are BETTER OFF DEAD, but let me tell you, the movie BAD DREAMS would have been better off with a double dose of E.G. and a lil' bit more of that sacrificial Lana.

A video that sports not only E.G DAILY but fellow "One I might have saved." AMITYVILLE 2: THE POSSESSION's DIANE FRANKLIN? How appropriate is that for Arbogast Day?

BY THE BY: Every Arbogast has his day, but the night belongs to Amanda! Check out Kinder-chum Amanda by Night's up to the minute report on made for television remakes HERE!

Happy Mother's Day!

Posted on By aunt john


When it comes to any holiday here at the Kindertrauma Castle, your Unkle Lanciferand Aunt John are all about the recycling and the re-gifting of presents. Call us green, call us thrifty, call us lazy, we could care less. What we do care about, though, on this special day, are mothers and, more specifically, our mothers. Please join us in revisiting the countdown of Trauma-Mommas (both naughty & nice), and two very special Traumafessions from two very special ladies: