Black Gate

In March of this year, I told you about what was the latest offering from A24 entitled X. Though I love Ti West as a director/writer, I honestly wasn’t expecting too much from this film; after all, the movie title said it all. X combined the cheesy porn movie scene of the late 70’s with the hack-and-slash of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Not precisely a description that would normally get me to the theater.

But color me shocked when I walked out thinking about how entertaining X turned out to be. West did a masterful job telling a story that had humor, characters that I actually cared about, and a nice level of knuckle-biting suspense. It also wasn’t the senseless bloodbath I completely expected and this was thanks to the unconventional character who turned out to be the killer. Which brings me to the prequel I’m about to tell you about.

**Note: If you haven’t seen X and want to be surprised, stop reading now as I’m about to drop some serious spoilers…

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Last week I dropped a little truth on how box office take determines which movies and movie makers continue to get funded, or not. Using the example of Rob Zombie’s forthcoming The Munsters movie, I laid out the financial equation which allows films such as this to be foisted on an unsuspecting audience, whether the audience wants it or not. Now, keep that in mind while we examine this phenomenon from a different angle.

The very lucrative Halloween franchise, birthed by John Carpenter in 1978, has since had many foster parents, including Rob Zombie who cranked out two Halloween movies of his own in 2007 and 2009. Perhaps it is no coincidence that after those two efforts, death-defying slasher Michael Myers had the longest hiatus of his bloody career, as it would be nine years before anyone took another stab at a Halloween movie.

Enter GCN favorite Jason Blum and Blumhouse Productions. Blumhouse, who has been the driving force behind quite a few horror movie successes, partnered with Malek Akkad, the son of the late Moustapha Akkad, executive producer of the original Halloween franchise. In theory, their goal was to produce a 3-movie bookend to the franchise by bringing back scream queen extraordinaire Jamie Lee Curtis to reprise her role as Laurie Strode, the quintessential “final girl” from five of the prior films. This partnership gave us Halloween (2018) and Halloween Kills (2021), returning 17x and 6.5x profit to operating budget respectively, virtually ensuring Blumhouse would get another $20M to create the final film in his trilogy.

Which brings us to the thirteenth installment of the Halloween film franchise, Halloween Ends, whose first-look trailer was released this week.

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I’ll start this by saying I have nothing against Rob Zombie in general. As a musician, he has sold millions of albums, had Grammy nominations and sold-out concert venues for the past 20 years. Though I am not a fan of his movies, a little research explained why he keeps getting funding to make them. In general, a movie is considered a success if it makes a minimum of 2x its overall budget, but in reality, this is more like 3x or above. I actually researched all of Zombie’s theatrical releases and on average, his movies make 3.21x their budgets. So, though they are not considered blockbusters (for example, Top Gun: Maverick is currently at 7x its operating budget and counting), Zombie’s films definitely do well enough to keep getting made. Which brings me to Zombie’s latest film: The Munsters.

According to various interviews, Zombie like many of us, grew up watching reruns of the original Musters TV show, whose 70 episodes ran from 1964-1966. Zombie’s most famous song, “Dragula,” is named after the Munsters’ car built by Grandpa to win a drag race, and the chorus of the song quotes Grandpa directly. I get it, Zombie loves The Munsters. The question was whether or not a self-taught filmmaker whose prior films have been described as “grotesque,” “violent,” and “one giant loogie” was capable of creating a true homage to a cult classic like The Munsters?

Apparently, and unsurprisingly, the answer is no.

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Though Lapvona, a historical fiction tale by Ottessa Moshfegh, tops thirteen separate summer reading lists, it was not one of the books I took with me on a recent two-weeker through South America. Tropical blue waters and umbrella drinks in no way dissuaded me from delving into my favorite genre, and though I’ll be getting to Lapvona eventually, I opted for some classics on this trip: namely Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker and dare I say it, Stephen King.

If you haven’t heard, part of King’s current monopoly on movies, limited series and episodic juggernauts, is a remake of ‘Salem’s Lot. The original screen adaptation of King’s 1975 vampire story was a made-for-TV, two-episode mini-series released in 1979, directed by Tobe Hooper and starring David Soul and James Mason. Reviews were largely positive, with critics praising the film’s atmosphere, cinematography, Hooper’s direction, and scares. As of today, ‘Salem’s Lot the mini-series still holds an approval rating of 89% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. I tell you this, because in my humble opinion, like many of King’s books, the translation to screen missed the mark back in 1979.

Now, forty plus years later, we’re getting a theater remake, and given what was done to the remakes of Pet Semetary and IT, my personal expectations are pretty low. Which brings me to why I chose to reread ‘Salem’s Lot after revisiting Dracula for the hundredth time.

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I feel that a sense of humor, however dark, is an essential coping mechanism. Not having one would require we avoid the Web as well as news of any kind, leaving us in social isolation, streaming nothing but MeTV.

Thankfully that is not the case for me, though the term “graveyard humor” seems to get floated a lot in my presence. It is true that I have been known to laugh at inappropriate times or find humor in things that utterly mortify my parents. And if this describes you as well, then I can only assume you have, like me, been counting down the days to the next season of What We Do in the Shadows.

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