A day late for Halloween (and a dollar short), I humbly present two belated offerings before moving temporarily away from the '80s horror scene: Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and Legend.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch is famous for both totally shirking the Michael Myers storyline and going off in a totally different direction with all new characters, and also for not being nearly as bad as virtually every Michael Myers sequel that followed it.
No more Laurie Strode, no more Doctor Loomis, no more Michael in his Shatner mask. Hello pieces of stonehenge used by a half-baked Irish madman to turn half-baked children's Halloween masks into horrific explosions of bugs and snakes as a sacrifice to half-baked druidic gods. Wait, I thought the Irish hated snakes?!
The plot is quite stupid. Our main character is one of the worst doctors in movie history, as he seems to be the ONLY doctor on duty on the night shift in his small hospital, yet he has absolutely no problem leaving to have a tryst with a woman, and then to essentially become an investigator into this mask mumbo jumbo.
As many, many reviews have noted, the plot makes no sense because of time zones. Since the commercials come on during a predetermined horror film festival on TV, the minute the East Coast put two and two together, the Midwest and West Coast are saved. Poor planning!
Also, why do the masks only come in three varieties? There is Lumpy Pumpkin, Wizard of Oz Witch, and So-So Skull. I wouldn't have been caught dead in any of them as a kid, but the kids in this movie eat them up like so much Halloween candy. No one can get enough, as if it was a fad.
Plot aside, this was an attempt by John Carpenter to mix things up. He wanted, apparently, to release a Halloween movie every year with a different unrelated story. A noble idea, executed poorly here by writer/director Tommy Lee Wallace, but a noble idea nonetheless.
Despite their bafflement, audiences came to see Halloween III in droves - on a budget of $2.5 mil, it brought home $14 mil. Impressive!
The other '80s fare tonight is the reverse: made for $24 mil, but only brought in $14.4 mil - losing about the same as Halloween III made. It's also going to be a slightly different sort of review... Ridley Scott's strange fairy tale Legend (1985) came out after his masterpieces were done: The Duellists, Alien, Blade Runner. What a trifecta!! After that, he was hit or miss: Legend, Someone to Watch Over Me, Black Rain, Thelma & Louise, 1492, White Squall, G. I. Jane, and then followed by the long slow slide into action movies starting with Gladiator.
Legend is a weird, weird movie. I'm not sure what it wants to be. I'm not sure IT knows what it wants to be. It is extremely serious, without a single intentional joke in the whole movie. It acts like it wants to be a lost Grimm tale, deadly serious and full of ominous foreboding and Big Deep Messages About Life. But ... it also comes across as silly and thin as tissue paper and is not very well acted (sorry, young Tom Cruise and young Mia Sara). Tom Cruise seems baffled the entire time and has a particularly constipated look on his face. Poor Mia Sara, who is so good in Ferris Bueller's Day Off the year after this, has nothing to do here but look vaguely distressed.
The only really compelling reason to watch this is Tim Curry in heavy makeup as a really crazy Satan. At least, I think he's Satan. He seems diametrically opposed to all good things, and if the shoe fits... Curry really hams it up and is the only cast member who seems to realize what the hell is going on.
Legend is a really big misstep for Ridley Scott. After three really unusual movies in a row, all critically acclaimed and praised heaven to heaven, I'm sure the studios assumed anything he touched - no matter how weird - would come out OK. Sadly, he didn't have the Golden Touch after all. In fact, many/most of the film he made after Legend were pretty quickly forgotten and don't have much of anything to say.
One of my younger sister's best friends in high school was obsessed with Legend, so I've seen it a number of times. But the last time I saw it I was pumped to the gills and beyond on bloody marys and taco bell. And I've got to say... it was the best I've ever seen it!!
It's a movie ripe for a Rifftrax/MST3K treatment. Myself and three friends (and two young kids) just sat and made fun of the stink cheese that is Legend... and it was fun! So I recommend viewing this one in company and under aid of inebriation.
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