When a franchise has legs, the people who own it whip it so hard that those legs inevitably come off. That doesn't keep them from flogging its backside, of course; there have been eleven Friday the Thirteenth movies, eight Freddy Krueger flicks, and so many James Bond movies that they're starting to use grocery lists written by Ian Fleming on the back of cocktail napkins as their source material. The Saw franchise is already on its fifth installment, despite the fact that the first movie opened roughly three weeks ago, and I'm pretty sure they were filming the sixth and seventh movies at the craft table of the set of the fifth one. Compared to this level of sequel overinflation, you might think that the venerable Halloween franchise is a virtual model of restraint. That's what I thought, anyway, when I decided to watch every single one of them in a row. Frankly, I didn't even think there was enough of it to make a Take Five; I was completely convinced that the ultra-bizarre Halloween III had killed the thing off until Rob Zombie decided to bring it back with his 2007 remake of the original. It turns out there were five more sequels before the White Zombie frontman took a swing at reviving Michael Myers. A chilling prospect, but lucky you: this Halloween, you won't have to read my mini-reviews of each one. The first five will do, but believe me: simply living in a world that has Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers in it should scare you more than anything else about the holiday.
HALLOWEEN (1978)
Often credited as the movie that kick-started the whole slasher-film genre, Halloween doesn't really deserve that title. For one thing, it's too good. Tautly directed by John Carpenter, and featuring performances by genuine movie actors like Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance, Halloween was likewise a big-budget picture with a canny script, a plausible if terrifying villain, and actual production values. The future would belong to movies like Friday the Thirteenth, which would be released a few years later and combine all the low-budget qualities of an indie production with the bloody aesthetic of Carpenter's best work, but none of the smarts or skills. If it can't lay claim to being the progenitor of the genre, though, Halloween can at least say that it's one of the best; it still holds up years later, and makes what came after that more of a waste.
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