Author: mdhughes

Still Rockin' Saturday Music

Spooktacular: Corpse Bride

Another animated toy movie by Tim Burton. Seen it a couple times.

So a bland, personality-free, impoverished, moon-faced, aristocrat girl Victoria (as in "think of England", played by Emily Watson) is to marry a whiny, nervous fishmonger's son Victor (played by Johnny Depp), overly managed by their awful parents.

Sidebar: Depp used to be a fun junkie, at least at a distance, but with his repetitive creepy roles, his creepy relationships with younger women, the creepy details of his Amb-r H--rd marriage… I really don't want much more exposure to him. He's probably not quite Future Harvey Weinstein/Phil Spector/keeping bits of girls in bottles material like Leo DiCaprio is, but he grosses me out. Terrible people can make perfectly adequate actors, but too far and I only see that.

After making ill-advised vows in a forest to what is very obviously a charred skeleton, Emily (Helena Bonham Carter) rises and takes him to a magic wonderland/horrific underworld. She's lovely, fun, charming, only a little bit rotted and maggoty. AND he gets his dog back. Really any guy should be so lucky.

Weirdly, the surface world is Victorian era, but rendered in very close to monochrome, but the underworld is basically 1930s New Orleans, with jazz songs and brighter colors.

Victor's a cad, a jerk, a bore, who doesn't appreciate anything good in life, and just wants a bowl of gruel and the dullest girl produced by the dullest race on Earth. I really have no sympathy for Victoria, and I don't think Emily should either, because she's just so dull.

So Lord Barkis (Richard E. Grant) shows up and lurks around, vaguely someone connected but nobody bothers to figure out who he is, and there's no other guests so you'd think they'd really focus on him. Nope. Until he turns out to be… related to Emily's backstory. But he makes no sense. If he's a thief & lady-killer, there's no money to be gained from Victoria, did he just do no research? Serial killers (as opposed to spree killers) usually obsessively study their victims first.

When Victor finally does agree to die and join the hot (but grave-cold) girl, it's out of character. Everyone in the underworld is excited, but I don't believe it possible of him.

The dead returning to the overworld is great, that's what the film should mostly be, instead of a short screamy parade. Girls dissolving into a swarm of moths don't make any sense in the cosmology shown so far; you seem to stay dead and just keep rotting away down below.

Victor & Victoria are going to have a dull, miserable life, still totally owned & controlled by their parents, nothing at all has changed except she knows he cheats with dead girls.

Such cute character designs, and Emily's great, but the plot and loser living couple all but ruin it. Danny Elfman manages to do some out-of-character music, but mostly it's Batman/Edward Scissorhands soundtrack all over again.

★★★★☆ I guess but I'm always disappointed by it.

Minetest Mapping

The MineClone2 "map" is basically just a compass, it shows a picture of the local chunks but can't be resized. So… where have I been? Where are my bases?

There's a couple cartography mods, but they seem to only make small maps for use in-game. There's a minetestmapper.py in the base game's distro, but it's python2, requires an obsolete version of PIL, 2to3 didn't fix it.

So there is this:

SIGH, C++ and libraries. I actually have libgd installed with MacPorts, gd2, but it wasn't found at first, adjusted my env vars and now:

cmake . -DENABLE_LEVELDB=1
make

Grinds for half an hour, get a full white image, because all the MineClone2 nodes are unknown, so copied colors.txt to my-colors.txt, and add this to the end:

Make a script, my-map.zsh (change mapname, worlddir to wherever yours are):

#!/bin/zsh
mapname="MineClone-2022"
worlddir="$HOME/Library/Application Support/minetest/worlds"
d=`date "+%Y%m%d_%H%M%S"`
./minetestmapper --colors my-colors.txt -i "$worlddir/$mapname" -o "$mapname-$d.png"

Repeat, half an hour… I still get 227 lines of unknown blocks, but the base map generates OK now, and looks good enough. I hate the sand color, and I dunno what the dark areas are. OOH, what's that structure at the far west? I'm planning to skyrail far west, then go there and the unexplored village W-SW next time. And I'll add more to my-colors.txt file and post that sometime.

Scaled down image:

Unearthed Experts

New Unearthed Arcana playtest document, see previously.

Characters who have levels in a Class are exceptional; most of the inhabitants of the multiverse aren’t members of a Class.

Hooray, 0-level NPCs are back. With no rules yet (how many HP?). This is good, in some ways, that a 1st-Level "hero" is useful for something, the town Blacksmith isn't necessarily a 15th-Level Expert who will stomp you into the ground. It's also awful, in that it leads right back to murderhoboing, squads of low- to mid-Level PCs literally being able to murder & loot hundreds of townsfolk before anyone can stop them.

There's a better balance somewhere above this. I tend to assume anywhere from 10-25% of a population are Level 1, and 10-25% of that number are higher. In tougher game areas, I make everyone at least 1st-Level, and up to 5th-Level in deadly areas; you simply don't live in northern Hyperborea if you can't wrassle a bear for breakfast.

WHAT’S AHEAD IN THE ONE D&D PLAYTEST?
Forty-eight Subclasses, including the Subclasses in this article

HOLY SHITBALLS. I'm a fan of simplifying down to 3 classes in my OD&D-based game (kind of 4), and no classes in my skill-based RPG (well, kind of 2, Magicians and Dilettantes). I didn't object to having a few more in Swords & Wizardry (equivalent to OD&D + supplements/Dragon magazine), but this is excessive. And they're in weird groupings:

Class Group OD&D Classes 5.5E Classes
Expert/Rogue Thief, Assassin, Bard Bard, Ranger, Rogue
Mage Magic-User, Illusionist Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard
Priest Cleric, Druid, Monk Cleric, Druid, Paladin
Warrior Fighter, Paladin, Ranger Barbarian, Fighter, Monk

A little history. In OD&D, the classic 3 classes were Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric.

  • Thieves were in Greyhawk (Supplement I), in some ways the first super-class, every "race" could be a Thief with unlimited Level! (which often didn't make sense, why is a woodsy Elf a better Thief than Fighter/Magic-User?!), ton of weird skills. But they were well-balanced by being weak, glass cannons in combat.
  • Paladins were in Greyhawk (Supplement I), as a special bonus for Lawful Fighters, not even a separate class at this time.
  • Monks were in Blackmoor (Supplement II) as a subclass of Cleric, even tho they're much more like Thieves being weak, non-magical, skill-based, and having most Thief skills! Everyone cheated to make a Monk at some point. My character Liu Shao (named after a one-season assassin Chinese emperor) had a lot of bad-guy monk adventures, got poisoned by a shitty player (I got some revenge later, but not enough).
  • Assassins were in Blackmoor (Supplement II) (long before religious nuts scared TSR into wussing out) as a Thief subclass, but their low Thief skills made them ineffective at their job. Everyone loves Assassins even if the class sucks, mostly due to Jhereg and Shadow of the Torturer.
  • Druids were in Eldritch Wizardry (Supplement III) as a subclass of Cleric. Despite a giant pile of powers, very few people played them, they were awkward to unusable in dungeons.
  • Rangers were in The Strategic Review (TSR) V1N2, as a subclass of Fighter; grossly overpowered, with an extra hit die (!), a very few spells from Cleric & Magic-User (WEIRD!) at 8th-Level, skills everyone needs outdoors, but then useless in a dungeon. Favored enemy initially was "Giant Class (Kobolds - Giants)", which is a bizarre range. Incredibly weirdly required to be Lawful like Paladins, when Neutral is the obvious alignment for Elf-friends. It's Strider from Tolkien, you know my distaste for that guy, Ranger should never have been added and the correct version is just a Fighter with a background of Hunter.
  • Illusionists were in TSR V1N4, as a subclass of Magic-User, great spell list with no real problems. My first character in 1978, Grecal the Grey Wizard, class-changed from Magic-User to Illusionist eventually (had a high DEX to start with).
  • Bards were in TSR V2N1, as an adaptation of the Celtic bards of history with limited skills: Charm & Lore at Level x 10%, Thief skills equal to 1/2 Level, M-U spells at about 1/2 M-U table (1 Fireball at 10th-Level), and some special magic instruments. A very solid, slow-developing class, that fit well with the classic classes. That wouldn't last long.
  • Barbarians were in Dragon #63 (1982), a subclass of Fighter based explicitly on Conan, so entirely about toughness, survival, and anti-magic, and actively destroy any magic they find, won't work with Magic-Users. They were basically unusable in a normal party, but fun as solo or with a sidekick Cleric, Thief, or normal Fighter, literally as seen in Robert E. Howard's stories.

Rangers got toned down and up again in every edition, Illusionists were left alone until they got forgotten, Bards were mutilated badly by AD&D 1E, reverted sorta in 2E, turned into generic musician jack'O'trades in 3E and on, there's a reason everyone hates spoony Bards if all they know is 3E and 5E. Barbarians were turned into generic fighters with berserking in later editions, so you can have them with a normal party, totally discarding the only thing that made them fun.

When creating a party of adventurers, one way to form a well-rounded group is to include at least one member of each Class Group. That said, mix and match Classes to your heart’s content!

So in 5.5E there's 4 groups, 3 classes per group, 4 subclasses per class = 48 subclasses. Which lets you drill down a bit easier than just picking from 48 options, but it's still insane, they could trivially stop at the classes and have a 4x better game.

The 3 "Expert" classes are in this packet, and only one subclass for each.

In all classes, skills are listed as specific choices "or any X skills from this list". Spells are "you have these spells, or choose…", and a long list of exactly what spells are prepared at each Level, unless you change them. Equipment is a pre-chosen package, "or spend X GP". I like packages and pregens for pick-up games, so that's fine, but I don't like that it presents the package first, the actual range of options later.

  • Rogue: HP are d8, median for 5E, fine. Weapons are limited to "Simple Weapons, Martial Weapons that have the Finesse Property"; in OD&D Thieves had no weapon restrictions, but AD&D 2E has a similarly limited list. Armor is restricted to light, and looking at the glossary, that now just gives disadvantage on STR & DEX rolls, and can't cast spells, so a Thief in plate might be viable for stand-up fights.

Sneak Attack (for all Rogues) is mechanically simple to get: You need either advantage (which if you're not an idiot, you always have), or an ally adjacent, and gives +1d6 per 2 Levels(!).

The experience table gives you a specific class feature at each Level, tho many of them are "Feat", "Expertise", etc. where you pick from the lists. The Thief subclass gives you mostly the classic Thief features, the one weird part is you have to CHOOSE between Fast Hands (pickpocket) or Second-Story Work (climb walls).

  • Bard: HP are d8. Bardic Inspiration lets you magically rap, scratch, or twerk someone within 60' to boost a die or heal someone. This is beyond nonsense. Bard magic is now OP, 2 Fears at 5th-Level, double a classic Magic-User table, who knows what the actual Wizard will look like. They're limited at first to Divination, Enchantment, Illusion, Transmutation schools; but at 11th Level can take "Magical Secrets" and unlock all schools, or Divine or Primal, which is even wackier, and I would expect a "Learn one other school" Feat will be along pretty quick, so you can get Evocation and Fireballs.

At 2nd-Level and up, Bards get healing spells, only 1 use per day, but still utterly disconnected from the historical figures. Bards get no real special features, nothing to do with music or lore or prophecy here. I doubt anyone in WotC has ever read of Taliesin.

I Taliesin, chief of bards,
With a sapient Druid’s words,
Will set kind Elphin free
From haughty tyrant’s bonds.
—Mabinogion

The subclass given here is College of Lore, which at least puts a little knowledge-based skill in them, a whole proficiency bonus to a few generic skills woo. Mostly a combat-based "Cutting Words", tho, basically Sarcastro's power from The Tick. WTF does that have to do with a loremaster?

  • Ranger: HP are d10, but just one per Level. Favored Enemy is now just a free Hunter's Mark spell, usable on anyone, you don't hate Orcs or whatever else, as in Tolkien & Gygax's genocidal games. Spells start at 1st-Level, but are much slower than Bard, giving 2 Conjure Barrages at 9th-Level (they use the Primal spell list now). Some of the special abilities aren't bad, movement speed, extra attacks, temporary HP. Their 18th-Level power increases Hunter's Mark to d10 instead of d6, which is pathetic by itself, but possibly with Barrage it's a good upgrade?

Hunter subclass is OK, just extra damage and Barrage spells. Very boring and phoned-in. How about traps? Or some special tracking? An ambush bonus? Preparing extra meat from hunted game? Nope, dullness. Ranger will continue to be the most ignored class in 5.5E.

  • Feats: I'm going to ignore most of these for now. Feats were a bad idea in 2.5E, 3E, and 5E, and I'm sure they continue to be broken in 5.5E, let's just move on.

Epic Feats are new, all the class super-powers got moved down to 18th-Level, and you get an Epic Feat at 20th-Level. First, WTF kind of game is getting past 10th-Level anyway? In OD&D, my view was that you reach Lord at 9th-Level, maybe a bit higher as 10th- to 12th-Level, and that's about it. I'd rate Elric as an 8th-Level Fighter/12th-Level Magic-User (ignoring that as an Elf he's limited to 4/8), and Conan as a 10th-Level Barbarian at his heroic peak, prior to becoming fat old King Conan. B/X ended at 14th-Level, BECMI extended that to 36th and then Immortals, but that was extremely broken past 12th-Level, especially for non-Humans, AD&D simply didn't work above 10th-Level, and Gygax claimed nobody was above that in his games, except some NPCs/retired PCs. 3E routinely did push Levels higher, but then Epic 6 scaled that back down to a fun game at 1st- to 6th-Levels.

So anyway, if you are playing superheroes in Forgettable Realms or whatever, and aren't cunning enough to go play Exalted which is much more suited to this. These are very boring, and most suck:

  • Epic Boon of Combat Prowess: Auto-hit melee 1x/round. Pretty good, but high-Level characters always hit anyway.
  • Epic Boon of Dimensional Travel: Dimension Door 1x/round. Tactically interesting, especially for a mage or archer keeping range. 100% of magic foes should have Dimensional Anchor to stop this nonsense.
  • Epic Boon of Energy Resistance: Ignore one element type. Pretty obnoxious if you can do Fire when going to Hell, etc.
  • Epic Boon of Fortitude: +40 HP. That's only half a max-level Fireball, so meh.
  • Epic Boon of Irresistible Offense: Ignore target's resistance. Might be broken, you could fistfight a Tarrasque.
  • Epic Boon of Luck: Free Bardic Inspiration shit.
  • Epic Boon of Night Spirit: Invisibility 1x/action. You can literally cloak, sneak attack, cloak, sneak attack.
  • Epic Boon of Peerless Aim: Auto-hit missiles 1x/round. Pretty good, but high-Level characters always hit anyway.
  • Epic Boon of Recovery: Heal 1/2 HP, 1x/long rest. Don't you have, like, potions and Clerics and shit?
  • Epic Boon of Skill Proficiency: Bonus to all skills. "Whoah, I know BASKET WEAVING!" Lamest of the lame.
  • Epic Boon of Speed: +30' move, which is like a single Ranger bonus but less than a potion of Haste.
  • Epic Boon of Undetectability: Shitty version of Invisibility.
  • Epic Boon of Unfettered: Can ungrapple as a bonus action. Given how OP and Level-breaking grappling is, this might be a good idea.

  • Spell Lists: Now with some School of Magic changes, woo.

  • Rules Glossary, which totally replaces the previous document's:

  • Ability Checks no longer say "automatic win/lose" for DC 5 or 30. "The default DC for a check is 15, and it is rarely worth calling for an Ability Check if the DC is as low as 5, unless the potential failure is narratively interesting." They've removed crit on 20, fumble on 1, except in combat.

  • Now rolling a 1 on any "d20 Test" gives "Heroic Inspiration", and you can also get one whenever the DM says so. I don't mind Luck/Benny/Fate points, especially in heroic genres where you can "succeed forward" — jumping from a plane onto a moving train and punching a Nazi is cool so you can pay some resource to succeed at that. But Inspiration in 5E is pretty limited, and you can only have 1 point of it, and getting it by fumbling is weird.

This is definitely some kind of improvement over the origins booklet, and walking back the most controversial mechanical changes, but the classes are so heavy, make completely meaningless non-lore-based distinctions, and just make the game worse the more are added.

Spooktacular: The Crow

Back in the '90s, young goth industrial Mark watched this once a week or two, just as background angry music vibes, often before doing a radio show or DJ set. "Palm-slam the VHS in and do all the moves" as it were. Now I have a DVD which is almost too good, I dunno what I'd do with 4K Bluray, since the film to me is that dark, blurry vibe. There's terrible sequels & TV shows, and an upcoming whitewashed honkie sequel, which everyone involved with should die of shame. I'm only going to talk about the first one (and the original James O'Barr comic? Maybe sometime.)

Set on October 30th, "Devil's Night" in the film's world, I thought about waiting but I've got something else scheduled. And I need something a little more serious after the last few.

Eric (Brandon Lee) & Shelley are way too cute and nice, by now they'd be all cottagecore, Nightmare Before Xmas their favorite film, farmhouse and antique shop decorated with Hallmark® & pumpkins. But at this time, the returned Eric is all dark rage. Sarah the little girl and Darla the slut mom are kind of pointless, but it gives Eric someone to talk to in a few scenes. I hate Sarah's voiceovers.

His first kill, Tin Tin, is messy, no fighting skill but superior strength & speed, putting his knives back in him. His preying on the pawnbroker is a show of invulnerability, and cold rage. He's figuring out what he is and why.

"At least he didn't do that walking against the wind crap, I hate that."

Ernie Hudson as beat cop, occasional giant walking armory. I just wish he could do one Winston Zeddemore line.

Second kill of Funboy is all taunting and jokes and ironic killing with his own implements. Actually the first 3 are, arsonist T-Bird burned into his ride, but the last two (and all the thugs) stop being ironic.

"This is the really real world, there ain't no comin' back!"

Joyride with T-Bird, for once a bad guy recognizes that he's in a horror movie and not the monster this time. Eric's crow graffiti got more elaborate each time, after this he wouldn't have time to draw these out before the cops arrive, even as slow and useless as they are in the city.

Boardroom meeting has a lot of Batman (1989) vibes. "Gentlemen!" in the same tone as painted-up Joker. Gang of disposable thugs. Invincible hero in black. But all the specific sides are backwards.

"I'm not Skank, that's Skank right there. Skank's dead!" "THAT'S RIGHT."

Final church duel, with an almost mortal Eric and Top Dollar, and creepy sister thinking she can use the crow's magic. Very Highlander, actually, I always expect lightning and Queen music here.

And then a gun with blanks, not checked for safety, shot Brandon Lee dead on set. They finished the missing scenes with the stunt double & bad CGI face swap.

"You didn't say goodbye. And you're never coming back."

★★★★★

Spooktacular: Demon City Shinjuku

Anime from 1988. I'm shamefully watching a dub, as the better version I have has no subtitles! This movie was so popular it got a Big Eyes Small Mouth RPG adaptation, tho it's 2 decades out of print. There's several remake/inspired-by games. I barely remember actually watching this, must've been 25 years ago, but I've used the game several times.

Hairy man with a stick, and sorcerer Levi Rah have a swordfight on a rooftop, and when the sorcerer wins, he plunges an elite shopping district of Tokyo into darkness and ruin. That monster!

10 YEARS LATER, President Can-do-no-wrong has stopped all war and flies around in a Space Shuttle. This is the future world if we only got rid of shopping!

Scruffy hero Kyoya (son of hairy man) & sexy woman co-worker who talks like a Southern hillbilly work at a noodle shop, and he trains kids in kendo, but SECRETLY he's a master magic ninja "Nenpo". Ghost Yoda shows up to recruit him, but says he's not ready, and all he has is a wooden bokken. Can-do-no-wrong is tangled up in evil vines for some reason, guarded by Real Yoda. Daughter of Can-do-no-wrong follows scruffy hero down a dark street to recruit him.

Long segments of Kyoya & President's daughter running around Shinjuku, fighting gangs, getting conned. Everyone who talks is sucked into a black void, or a sewer, or attacked by a giant bug.

Young punk Chibi guides them around. Cool trenchcoat guy Doctor Mephisto with faux-Transylvanian/Russian accent shows up to help, which is so not suspicious. A sizzling hot chick refugee from Wicked City shows up, with explosive results. So far all the weirdo monsters have been good, but there's half an hour of nothing happening between them. There's zero character development of anyone, just weird people in a dark city.

Multiple times, Levi Rah can pull Kyoya into ghost worlds to be hit by monsters, or just sit in a nice park (actually an abattoir populated by demon children, the worst kind of children!). But he never seems to seal the deal.

A final showdown, a sacrificial virgin, Levi Rah rules all, and has an actual magic sword instead of a stick and Nenpo. "I despise you!" [exploded] Levi Rah finally gets to monologue at an audience, and it's pretty good. Kyoya finds the magic stick of his father, which failed to killed Levi Rah the first time, but somehow it works now? This final fight makes no sense. Anyway everyone walks away happy, with a hint of a sequel that never came.

The visuals of this film are astounding; this is why we have anime, to make demonic hellworlds real. Not enough is done with the fact this is Shinjuku, there should be more shops, style-gangs or demons, government intervention instead of it being like Escape from New York. The music's pretty mediocre, jazzy trumpet city pop mostly, with some synth stingers. This cries out for a full-on vaporwave soundtrack in a remake. The actual plot is the most linear D&D adventure possible.

★★★½☆

Mac Protip: Open URL in Browser

Not all browsers have an "Open in" service. I tend to use Chromium for media so it's a different crashy app than my main Safari. I've been manually copying URLs, pasting into it.

Open Automator, create a new Quick Action, pick Run Shell Script, paste in:

read -r url
open -a Chromium "$url"

Save it as "Open URL in Chromium". Quit Automator.

You can now right-click on any URL, Services menu, and send it there.

Old Man in the Woods Way of Argument Parsing

So, my premise is that only developers use command lines anymore. And after years of corporate enslavement, it's nice to run off to the woods, make a log cabin and all your tools yourself.

Therefore the best way to parse arguments in Scheme is:

(define debug #f)
(define outfile #f)
(define infiles '())

(define (main argv)
  (set! debug (if (member "--debug" argv) #t #f))  ;; boolean
  (set! outfile (if (member "--out" argv) (cadr (member "--out" argv)) #f))  ;; key-value
  (set! infiles (if (member "--" argv) (cdr (member "--" argv)) #f))  ;; all after --
  (unless outfile (error 'main "No outfile given")) ;; maybe show a whole usage & exit
)

This has some disadvantages. It's only discoverable by reading docs or even code, and you have to write the docs yourself. If you want short args, you have to duplicate lines and maybe set the arg twice.

But it's trivial to set up, you can't really get it wrong, and the amount of effort is appropriate to a developer interface.

(You might complain I'm using globals, you can just change those to let)

For the young over-engineering crowd, there are a variety of arg parsing libraries. And I'm too lazy to demonstrate each of them. But in the set of generates usage, is easy to use, and you'll be able to remember how it works in a year, they all get maybe 1, and need to be 3.

Spooktacular: Rob Zombie's The Munsters (2022)

A prequel origin story we never asked for. Setting seems to be a random mix of 19th to mid-20th C Transylvania by way of overacting and bad jokes. Every shot is lit with colored gels or neon, it's like Atomic Blonde got drunk and threw up on the screen.

Opens with a series of vignettes. Mediocre, campy graverobbers (Richard Brake—Night King, Jorge Garcia—fatass Hurley, shocked he's still alive) collecting parts. Grampa/The Count (Daniel Roebuck) comes up from his coffin, with Igor (Sylvester McCoy! Not my favorite Doctor!) all excited about matchmaking Lily with Count Orlock. Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie) has an excruciating date with Orlock (also Richard Brake), full Nosferatu makeup. The terrible bar is kind of nifty, a goth Star Wars cantina vibe. Werewolf (Tomas Boykin, eventually named Lester) is The Count's disowned son, which at least explains where Eddie will get his lineage; the Countess is not seen or mentioned, but I expect she was a bitch! Breaking news tells us idiot & genius brothers have both died… WHICH BRAIN will the graverobbers collect? Yeah.

"I want a man that makes my blood run cold. That every time he enters my crypt, it's like a stake thru my dead, black, heart." —Lily

Up until Herman's (Jeff Daniel Phillips) unwrapping, I'm pretty dubious of this whole joke. But then he comes out… tells some jokes, clowns around, and… OK, this guy can play Herman. He is really dumb, but having him become a vaudeville/rocker works for dumb.

Zombie-a-Go-Go nightclub is pretty lit. I wish we had that for real.

Long sequence of them dating, over the Count's objection, then typical sitcom hijinks. The visuals are great, the plot is recycled '50s rom-com, and I really really hate rom-com. Half an hour or more with the only amusing bit being them collecting little baby Spot.

Through shenanigans, they move to Hollywood… 1313 Mockingbird Lane… on Halloween. There's a long block party sequence which is actually fun again. The movie nearly redeems itself!

And in the morning, under blazing sunlight, the Munsters react to their new normal life among square honkie pastel-clothed Los Angelinos with the same shock I would. IT IS A HORROR MOVIE AFTER ALL!

The end credits are pretty great, tho, recreating the series intro, then a little rock song by Count Orlock about them.

It has all the flaws of a Rob Zombie film, without any gore or fucking, and only a few funky scenes to make up for it.

★★½☆☆

Spooktacular: Halloween I-II

  • Halloween (1978): I always forget this opens with little Mikey murdering his sister's tits (all we can see thru the mask), it's not a flashback later. Carpenter has a heavy hand with his soundtrack, which is awesome but often overpowers the dialogue in scenes. Adult Michael Myers (Tony Moran) escaping from an institution in the rain is perfectly goth; could he try any harder? How does he know how to drive, or find his old house, or cut phone lines after half a lifetime institutionalized? We don't know, but he's doing good!

Teenage high-school friends & baby-sitters club Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis, b.1958), Lynda (P.J.Soles, b.1950), Annie (Nancy Kyes, b.1949) (ages 20, 28, 29; but JLC looks mid-20s) fart around and see spooky Mikey driving around, then hiding behind bushes, but do nothing about it. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) warns everyone, stridently and repeatedly, that Mikey is evil. EVIL! Honestly I'm more worried about the good doctor's mental state.

Long segment of doing nothing, there's a good 30 minutes of this film could be cut at the start, it's so very slow. Here's a minute watching Forbidden Planet, admittedly one of my favorite films. Until finally… A KILL! 53 minutes in. Next one's another 12 minutes, after the sacrifices nominate themselves by fucking. Laurie finally starts investigating. "Your fucking on the phone sounds a lot like someone dying!" (she doesn't quite say).

Mikey's staging of his kills like a funhouse is great. Kill spread out on a bed with the stolen tombstone above, jack'o'lantern beside. Hanging one corpse. Stuff another in a spring-open cupboard, oddly illuminated for a dark house. When chasing, he lets his victims see, slowly walks over, waits for them to run around, freak out, and hide… then moves in. Just perfectly theatrical. As noted in Scream, "movies don't make people serial killers, movies make serial killers better!". Neighbors in this very white suburb of course don't help anyone screaming outside on Halloween, like Kitty Genovese.

Laurie's not helpless, of course, she's got that killer instinct of her own. And Loomis is looming around somewhere with a gun, as doctors often do. The Sheriff (father of one of the slain girls) is utterly, totally useless. It's common in horror RPGs to have the police be unavailable or incompetent, and here's the trope creator at its peak.

★★★★☆ for the first 15 & last 45 minutes, ★☆☆☆☆ for the middle 30.

Note: This film was made for $325,000, earned $47M.

  • Halloween II (1981): Immediately starts with the last few minutes of the previous film. Z-grade films often use stock footage or rip off their previous installments, but we don't usually see that in independent but well-funded films like Carpenter's. This has a budget of $2.5M, earned $25M. Almost the exact same soundtrack, and same heavy-handedness.

Not quite Steadicam®, but hand-held filming for killer's POV, might be the first time we'd ever seen that. Pretty soon it switches back to conventional camera behind the action.

Michael is a little different, here played by Dick Warlock (what a great name!)

Even if Mikey gets a couple more kills in, Loomis can't find him. But he can just about shoot another kid in a white mask, who then gets killed by exploding cars. Pointless death! Nobody is punished for this near-shooting/vehicular homicide.

None of the new characters have much development, even as much as the first movie. Sheriff & then useless cop don't believe Mikey got away. Ambulance guys and their nurse girlfriends are creeps. Very slow lack of plot movement, couple cops and Loomis wander around looking at things.

Most of the kills in this are very inartistic, just walk up behind, hit or stab, done. No posing. There's a hot tub scene where Mikey shows a little creativity, and the second kill is more creative/gross. The old doctor & virgin nurse have somewhat more medical deaths, possibly even predicting Dexter! Jimmy the ambulance guy, wannabe boyfriend to Laurie, has the dumbest, most accidental death in any film.

Laurie's cunning, self-defense instincts have been missing for the first hour, but finally she gets up and wanders around hiding; pretty good for a girl who was stabbed & broke an ankle just hours ago.

The institution finally comes to collect the madman "Doctor" Loomis and implement Reagan's policy of "care in the community" (let crazy people roam & be homeless). Now we find out why Mikey's after Laurie!

Of course nothing stops the Mikester. He's become completely unstoppable and inhuman at this point, an avatar of death. Even the worst possible injuries only inconvenience him.

While there's a little additional plot & lore here, it doesn't really feel like a plot resolution. Maybe he's dead, maybe not. Laurie's got the thousand-mile stare of Linda Hamilton in Terminator. She's ready to murder some of her own.

This is basically 92 minutes of film hiding the 30 minutes that should've been in the first. I'd love to see a "Halloween Good Parts Edition" without all the flab.

★★★☆☆ MEH.