At least it’s not as bad as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.

13. Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

I really tried not to have Halloween: Resurrection as my worst Halloween movie of all time. The infamously terrible eighth entry of the franchise, an early-2000s cyber-horror take on the franchise always feels like it’s going to be a better time than it actually is. But the moment it starts, you come to the crushing realization that it just sucks.

Sure, seeing Busta Rhymes do a shitty comedy routine with Michael Myers has some novelty to it, and seeing him karate-kick Myers is good for a hearty laugh. But those moments make up maybe 90 seconds of an otherwise crushingly tedious, ill-conceived cringe fest that clocks in at 90 minutes.

For anyone who hasn’t seen this, first of all, don’t. Second of all, the story is that Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks are reality TV show producers who gain access to Michael Myers’ childhood home. They decide to host a livestream show on Halloween night where a bunch of one-dimensional college students run around the house with GoPro cameras strapped to their heads, getting scared by dumb pranks Tyra Banks set up.

Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica is the dumb blonde friend, and the boring guy from American Pie is there too. There’s a funny chef guy who suggests Myers is a killer because of his poor diet, then casually mentions the Harvey Milk assassination. There’s also a female lead who went on to do nothing else and spends the movie talking to a boy online.

The movie cuts back and forth between the college kids wandering around the house, with Michael picking them off one by one.

This one is notable for killing off Jamie Lee Curtis in the first ten minutes and completely taking the air out of the excellent ending of the previous film. Of course, it ends in the morgue with a burnt Michael Myers opening his eye for one last jump scare.

KILL QUALITY: Despite a notable decapitation, the kills in this one are pretty uninspired and poorly shot. It’s definitely more violent than H20. 5/10

MYERS REVIEW: Michael Myers is pretty decent in this one. His mask is intimidating, and the actor who plays him (Brad Loree) does a pretty good job. He’s completely wasted on this piece of dog shit movie. 6.5/10

FALL VIBE CHECK: This one doesn’t really read as fall at all. Maybe it feels like fall in the beginning when they’re on the college campus, but I honestly forget. The movie mostly takes place indoors, and that kinda sucks for a Halloween movie. 2/10

12. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

I was very tempted to put this as the worst entry in the franchise, but unlike Resurrection, this one doesn’t reek of studio interference. Nope, the clumsy camel fart that is Halloween 5 isn’t the fault of a boardroom full of assholes. It’s really the fault of the film’s writer/director, Swiss “auteur” Dominique Othenin-Girard, who sought to humanize Michael Myers and turn every returning character into a psychopath for some reason.

At the end of the last one, Michael is blown to smithereens by an angry mob of rednecks in pickup trucks before falling down an old well, and little Jamie is set up to become the franchise’s next killer. Dominique dismisses all of that and has Myers float down a river, wind up in an old guy’s bayou shack (in Illinois?), and spend a year there before finally waking up, killing the old guy who rescues him, and returning to kill Jamie, who’s now in a psych ward.

Jamie no longer talks, and Dr. Loomis has become a screaming madman. Rachel, the teen lead from the last movie and this franchise’s best “final girl” besides Laurie and Jamie, is killed off with a pair of scissors early on. Instead, we’re stuck following the almost impressively obnoxious Tina. Serious contender for worst “final girl” of all time.

Michael takes off his mask and shows his face a lot, and at 96 minutes, this is the longest movie in the franchise. There’s also a pair of “comic relief” cops who show up now and then, accompanied by French circus music. And then there’s some mysterious cult man dressed in black, lurking in the shadows, who breaks Michael out of prison at the end with absolutely zero explanation.

This one is a friggin’ mess. It’s only fractionally better than Resurrection, but somehow even more of a chore to watch.

KILL QUALITY: Lots of horny teens get killed, and despite Michael using his most robust set of tools (knife, gardening hoe, pitchfork, a friggin’ scythe!), the kills are pretty lame and poorly executed. 4/10

MYERS REVIEW: Besides a kinda cool cherub take on the mask, Michael is a stumbling buffoon in this one, a real circus clown. Keep your mask on, buddy. We don’t want to see your clown tears. 3/10

FALL VIBE CHECK: A real step down in fall visuals from the first four entries. This one reads more like summer in Utah than anything else. There’s a barn towards the end, but yeah, nothing that screams fall. 3/10

11. Halloween Kills (2021)

I’ve tried with this piece of shit so many times, but I just can’t bring myself to like it, despite a barrage of nonstop, over-the-top kills.

It’s just so tonally all over the place. One minute, it wants to be a dumb, fun, Michael-kills-everyone-in-ridiculous-ways kinda camp movie. Then we have to listen to Anthony Michael Hall give some downer speech about surviving trauma. It tries to be both a fun romp and a serious examination of trauma within the confines of a legacy slasher, and it just doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work in such a glaringly obvious way that I’m dumbfounded brilliant artists like co-writer/director David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny McBride didn’t realize it wasn’t working in the writing room, or at least in the edit bay. It gives this sense of gravitas, importance, and deep meaning to characters and a franchise that has never meant shit beyond “unpredictable guy with knife stalks babysitter.” That’s the real cringe part.

Laurie (the great Jamie Lee Curtis) and Sheriff Whatever (the just as great Will Patton) spend most of the movie in the hospital, getting nothing to do other than occasionally deliver overly dramatic line reads about the true nature of evil or some bullshit. I think at one point Laurie says, “Touch upon my face,” or some weird shit like that. Maybe not, but I certainly remember it.

Halloween Kills, much like its immediate predecessor, Halloween (2018), continues to use humor in an odd, off-putting way that clashes with the serious slasher tone. It certainly neuters all the would-be scares. There’s a big, dumb scene where everyone in town is shouting “Evil Dies Tonight!,” which I’m sure you heard about from the Red Letter Media boys, and that’s a migraine all its own.

Above all that, it also drags toward the end. At an hour and forty-five minutes, it’s one of the longest entries in the franchise. Michael is fun in about 85–90-minute increments. Didn’t you get the memo, David?

KILL QUALITY: Besides the Zombie remakes, this is the most violent of the Halloween films. Some pretty creative kills, love the fluorescent lightbulb to the throat. 8/10

MYERS REVIEW: As dumb as shit is around Michael, Michael himself isn’t dumb in this one. James Jude Courtney plays the absolute shit out of him and the burnt mask is just fucking *chef’s kiss*. 8/10

FALL VIBE CHECK: Not as fall-vibes as its immediate predecessor, but this is pretty fall vibes. The fall vibes near the swing set are popping but this one has the disadvantage of taking place completely during the evening. 7/10

10. Halloween Ends (2022)

The only one of these movies I haven’t seen at least three times, and for good reason. It’s not good. In fact, it doesn’t even feel like a Halloween movie. It feels like Green and McBride are pissing in our Cocoa Pebbles.

I will say, this movie’s pre-credit opening scene is fantastic, among the best opening scenes in the entire franchise. It’s been three years since Michael Myers terrorized Haddonfield, and everyone is still on edge. A teenage boy babysits a little asshole boy who plays a prank on the teenager involving Michael Myers, leading to the teenager accidentally killing the kid in a thoroughly shocking way.

From there, it’s pretty meh.

The teenager is ostracized by the community and eventually finds Michael Myers, near death and living in the sewers. Michael Myers (we think?) takes the boy under his wing, setting him up to become the new Michael Myers of Haddonfield. This is actually kind of interesting, but then the movie flat-out abandons the idea and replaces the boy with the actual Michael Myers.

It’s like, if you’re going to take a swing that big, don’t stop halfway through and course-correct. Follow it through like adults. It’s almost like Gordon and McBride sabotaged this movie on purpose.

Halloween Ends billed as the definitive end of the franchise, and if that’s the case, it definitely went out with a whimper. There’s even a part where you think it’s going to cut to the teenager riding a motorcycle with Michael Myers, but the movie chickens out there, too.

This gets points over Kills for doing some things right, but mostly, it sucks. It’s even longer, clocking in at an hour and fifty-one minutes. That’s almost three hours in Halloween-franchise time.

Fuck.

KILL QUALITY: Some good ones, pretty violent. 7/10

MYERS REVIEW: They finally make Michael dumb in this one. James Jude Courtney does his absolute best but it’s the writing of the character that takes the jelly out of his donut. Cool mask tho. 4/10

FALL VIBE CHECK: More fall vibes than the previous one but still not as much as Halloween 2018. 7.5/10

9. Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

I’ve really come around on The Curse of Michael Myers since I first rented it from my not-so-friendly neighborhood Blockbuster. It’s still a very bad film, incoherent in places and poorly conceived as a whole, but somehow it delivers on the bare minimum of what we expect from a Halloween movie. The atmosphere is there, the kills are elaborate, and at 88 minutes, it’s mercifully short.

I’m talking about the theatrical cut, of course. The Producer’s Cut, which hews more closely to screenwriter Daniel Farrands‘ original vision, is a hokey, headache-inducing mess. Left to pick up the pieces of Dominique Othenin-Girard‘s flaccid geek show, Farrands goes all in on the whole Michael Myers-was-spawned-by-an-ancient-Druid-cult storyline. Halloween and Myers have become infamous in Haddonfield, and everyone is trying to forget about him. Meanwhile, a cult of rich psychopaths, including Gary Busey‘s boss from Lethal Weapon, has kidnapped Jamie, Michael’s niece, and forced her to give birth to a child conceived by Michael so the cult can sacrifice it. I shit you not.

The Producer’s Cut bogs us down in all this cult mumbo jumbo, which does a remarkable job of making Michael Myers less scary. There’s even a sequence where Michael just hangs around during a cult ceremony without killing anyone. It’s bizarre.

By this point, the rights to the franchise had landed with Miramax’s Dimension Films, run by Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who had a habit of aggressively recutting their horror movies. This is one of those rare instances where their meddling arguably improved the product. The theatrical cut opts for nonsensical, occasionally glorious slasher mayhem over an elaborate mythology nobody asked for.

The movie kills Jamie off early in a particularly fucked-up and violent sequence, then proceeds to have Michael tear through Haddonfield. This entry is also notable for the first screen appearance of Paul Rudd, who plays a grown-up, deeply weird Tommy Doyle, the little boy Laurie Strode babysat in the 1978 original. Tommy is obsessed with Michael and spends his time calling radio shows and spouting all sorts of crazy shit. It’s a bizarre, unhinged performance that feels like Rudd is openly trolling the franchise. I love it.

Donald Pleasence also returns for his final performance as Dr. Loomis, looking and sounding like a man who’s been through hell and has absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on. Pleasence died shortly after filming wrapped, and the movie’s abrupt, unsatisfying conclusion only adds to the sense that the whole production was falling apart with principal photography.

From a storytelling perspective, this is a laughable mess. The characters are unlikable, the acting is often terrible, and the logic is practically nonexistent. And yet, against all odds, the theatrical cut manages to generate more tension than the franchise has delivered since the second movie. Michael feels dangerous again, the atmosphere is properly ominous, and the kills are mostly fun.

It’s a very bad movie, no question. But it’s the kind of bad movie that people who like shitty slashers keep rewatching.

KILL QUALITY: An insane tractor equipment through the chest kill, an electrocution that leads to an exploding head, and a brutal axe decapitation to name a few. 9/10

MYERS REVIEW: Same stunt actor as Halloween 4 (George Wilbur) but they lose that dumb mask and his walk improves. He spooked me. 8/10

FALL VIBE CHECK: This is one of the ones that screams FALL the most. 9/10

8. Rob Zombie‘s Halloween (2007)

Here’s my take on Rob Zombie: pretty much every movie he makes is the same. And while he’s a very gifted director, I can’t stand him as a writer. He makes every character into a childish, trashy, foul-mouthed sociopath, even the ones we’re supposed to empathize with and like.

So while Halloween (2007), the franchise’s first and only remake of the original, looks great, the story is garbage and the dialogue is even worse.

Zombie‘s first misguided idea is thinking we need a Myers origin story about how child abuse can turn anyone into a monster. It’s handled with about as much tact and sensitivity as you’d expect, with one character screaming that he’s going to “skull-fuck the shit out of…” a woman in front of her three children.

From there, we see Michael in his room slicing up hamsters with pocket knives and learn that his mother is a stripper and his stepdad is an unemployed alcoholic prone to “skull-fucking the shit” out of people. Michael kills a bully at school, then goes home and murders his stepdad, teenage sister, and her boyfriend in various gruesome ways, described by news reports with such phrases as “stabbed 17 times” and “duct-taped to a chair and slit open his throat.”

Michael goes to juvie, his mom suicides herself, and then we jump to the present day, where Michael escapes to kill his baby sister, now all grown up and babysitting on Halloween.

The cast here is a real mixed bag. I think Scout Taylor-Compton is pretty weak as Laurie Strode, while Danielle Harris (who played Jamie in 4 and 5) is pretty stellar as Annie Brackett. Brad Dourif (Sheriff Brackett) and Malcolm McDowell (Dr. Loomis) are also really good, and Tyler Mane makes for a very scary Michael Myers. He’s a big motherfucker who looks like he could rip you in half like a jury duty summons.

The second half is stronger than the first and offers some genuine suspense, but ultimately, you don’t really care about any of the characters besides Annie and her dad.

It has its moments, but overall, it misses more than it carves.

Lol, I’m almost as bad a writer as Mr. Zombie.

KILL QUALITY: It’s exceptionally brutal and mean-spirited. Kills look like they really hurt and we focus on the immense pain every victim is going through. The kills aren’t exactly fun to watch but they go undeniably hard. However, I’m subtracting a full point because the Director’s Cut features the most gratuitous and disgusting r*pe scene that adds nothing of value to the movie. 7/10

MICHAEL REVIEW: This Myers lacks the playful curiosity of Nick Castle and the sly cleverness of James Jude Courtney, but Tyler Mane’s Michael is big, stupid and the angriest of the bunch. He doesn’t just want to kill you, he wants to erase your body from the face of the earth. 7.5/10

FALL VIBE CHECK: Yeah, it’s absolutely the fall season in Rob Zombie‘s Halloween. 8.5/10

7. Halloween II (1981)

I’m probably going to get a lot of shit for placing this often-lauded sequel lower than usual, but Halloween II is kind of boring.

The first twenty minutes are stellar. Michael Myers has survived being shot off a balcony by Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) and is now lurking around Haddonfield, killing random citizens in their homes. It’s shot exceptionally well by cinematographer Dean Cundey, with a real sense of dread and menace that makes Michael feel like a really present threat.

Then we get to the hospital, where Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) spends most of the runtime confined to a hospital bed, and things really start to drag. The characters are uninteresting, the suspense is weak, and Michael often feels a more dapper Jason Voorhees. The movie trades the original’s creeping slow-burn for a more conventional slasher setup, and the results are not very good.

Then there’s the big creative decision to make Laurie Michael’s younger sister, a twist even co-writer John Carpenter hates in retrospect. It’s as if he saw The Empire Strikes Back and thought, “What if we reveal Michael and Laurie are related?” Except the choice doesn’t deepen either character or add much thematic weight. It mostly just takes away the mystery of why Michael is chasing her.

The final stretch is elaborate and entertaining, and the movie certainly has its moments, but it’s hard to ignore that there’s a roughly 45-minute chunk in the middle that feels like a slog. And that’s all I have to say about that.

KILL QUALITY: There’s some interesting stuff here like the scalpel lift and the hot tub drowning. 8/10

MICHAEL REVIEW: Dick Warlock is pretty good here, probably the fourth or fifth best Myers. He has a very clinical, almost robotic walk to him I don’t particularly care for. The mask is pretty mid. 7/10

FALL VIBE CHECK: All of this takes place at night and most of it takes place inside so we don’t get much other than some trick or treats and some jack o’ lanterns. 6/10

6. Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (2009)

Look, I’m as surprised as you that Rob Zombie‘s Halloween II ranks as high as it does on this list. It’s mostly a giant incoherent mess, but when you forget it’s supposed to be a Halloween movie, or even that it’s supposed to have any plot at all, it’s quite an interesting and effective piece of visual art. Revoltingly beautiful, but still beautiful in a lot of places.

Zombie has always been as good as Tarantino in picking music for his movies, and here he uses it effectively. Motorhead. Foghat. The Moody Blues adds new layers to a scene involving Myers stalking Laurie in a security guard booth.

There are of course one million things wrong with Halloween II, like how Dr. Loomis is suddenly a fame-hungry asshole and how most of the movie is Scout Taylor-Compton obnoxiously screaming and crying. There’s also a scene where two ambulance drivers talk about sodomizing the corpse of a teenager because she had good boobs. Nobody asked for that.

However, there is more humanity to hang onto in this one than the last one in the form of Sheriff Bracket (the always great Brad Dourif) and his daughter, Annie (Danielle Harris).

The white horse imagery is dumb, and the ending is so pretentious it should trigger a chortle, but there’s some genuinely creative technical filmmaking going on here that’s deserving of a much better script and, let’s be honest, a much better franchise.

Weird Al Yankovic is also in this, and that’s pretty great.

KILL QUALITY: The most violent entry in the franchise, if you’re into that sort of thing. The mirror kill, especially, is horrific. 9/10

MICHAEL REVIEW: Tyler Mane is still good here, but the mask being torn and exposing his face doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t want to know what Michael looks like. He looks like a pissed-off biker guy. When he has his mask on, though, he’s top-notch. 7.5/10

FALL VIBE CHECK: Very strong fall vibes with this one. I can say many negative things about Zombie as an artist, but one thing I can’t say is that the dude is bad at aesthetics. 8.5/10

5. David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018)

No matter how many times I try, I’m just not able to love this movie. I’ve seen it five times, and each time it seems to depreciate in value. It’s frustrating because it has all the makings of a great Halloween entry: a great cast, a talented indie darling turned competent director (David Gordon Green), Danny McBride contributing to the script, some funny moments, some dope kills, etc.

It’s just such a tonally unbalanced movie. The humor constantly undermines the scares, and the new Dr. Loomis turning evil twist comes out of nowhere. I also just don’t buy that Laurie Strode would be this traumatized considering the existing timeline only recognizes the events of the original 1978 movie. She’s been pursued by Myers, sure, but not in the “he’s actually a supernatural killing machine” way he’s portrayed in the sequels. Except that’s the thing: in this entry, he’s portrayed as a supernatural killing machine. How has he gotten so much more lethal in his old age? He’s like 60 here.

It’s stupid that I’m even dissecting this, but the setup is full of holes and seems to exist only to help peddle the dead-on-arrival trauma metaphor Green and McBride are going for. I have a hard time getting lost in this one.

There’s a lot to like, though. Some of the best and most suspenseful set pieces in the franchise live in this movie, and the characters are likable. We just have to weed through a bunch of unnecessary crap to get to them.

While not perfect, this is one of the better entries in this decomposing rat of a horror franchise. Easily the best of the Green/McBride post-9/11 trilogy.

KILL QUALITY: This has some amazingly effective sequences, from the podcaster confrontation in a gas station bathroom to that awesome oner where Michael just wanders into people’s houses and slices them the fuck up. 9/10

MICHAEL REVIEW: James Jude Courtney is the only Michael to rival the original. He’s a big, methodical killing machine, intentional and economical with every slice, stab, and jab. 9.5/10

FALL VIBE CHECK: Them dead-ass leaves are everywhere on the ground. Crunchity-crunch-crunch! 9/10

4. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

I was introduced to horror during this era, so excuse me if I’m a little biased. Based on a last-minute treatment written by Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer screenwriter Kevin Williamson, this beautifully streamlined 86-minute chiller goes down super easy.

Unlike the David Gordon Green version, this Laurie Strode is a lot more grounded and believable. It also helps that the events of Halloween II (1981), where Michael graduates from serious threat to unstoppable superhuman, have already taken place.

Laurie is the headmistress at a super-posh California boarding school where her 17-year-old son, played by Josh Hartnett, attends. She’s super overprotective, and Mr. Hartnett is at his breaking point and needs some space. But just as Mama Bear loosens her bear-claw grip, Michael Myers returns out of nowhere and proves Laurie right.

The great Michelle Williams is super underutilized as Hartnett‘s girlfriend, as is a very young Joseph Gordon-Levitt. LL Cool J as a comic-relief security guard and Adam Arkin as a horny guidance counselor get a lot more to do, though. But this is Jamie Lee Curtis’ show, and she gives her best performance of the franchise here. One of her best screen performances, period.

The biggest problem with this movie is actually a big one: it just isn’t scary. Not at all. The musical score is cheesier than it’s ever been, too. There’s one scene where they had to CGI Michael Myers’ mask onto the stunt guy, and it will make you want to shut off the movie and bash your TV screen in with a baseball bat.

Please resist the urge to do this.

At this point, the movie only has thirty or so minutes left, so stick around for a third act for the ages. The Laurie/Michael showdown is one of the single most satisfying sequences in the entire series. Laurie has had it, and she’s ready to kick the ever-loving shit out of Michael. This is the real “evil dies tonight” moment of the franchise.

It ends with her cutting off his head with an axe. Halloween: Resurrection corrects this potential banger of a franchise-ending moment by explaining that she accidentally cut off someone else’s head, belonging to a guy wearing Michael’s mask.

I’d explain in further detail, but I’m desperately trying to get this article finished by Halloween.

KILL QUALITY: They’re all pretty weak, this is probably the tamest entry in terms of blood/gore in the entire franchise. Shit, it probably could have been PG-13. 5/10

MICHAEL REVIEW: The stunt man does his best but every iteration of the mask looks dumb. 6/10

FALL VIBE CHECK: They nail the fall vibes. 8/10

3. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

The closest thing this franchise ever came to becoming an action movie, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is one giant apology from producer Moustapha Akkad for omitting Michael Myers from the previous entry.

Originally, creator John Carpenter had planned to kill off Michael for good in Halloween II and turn the subsequent sequels into anthology stories, with a new one every year for Halloween. The horror-going public violently rejected this idea and was pissed to find out the albino-faced babysitter-stalker was nowhere to be found in Halloween III. That movie did so terribly at the box office that it took them six long years to resurrect Michael for the people.

Halloween 4 follows an alternate timeline where Laurie has died in a car crash because Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t want to do the movie. Survived only by her orphaned 7-year-old daughter, Jamie (a precocious Danielle Harris, who would later go on to play Annie in the Rob Zombie remakes), Laurie’s spirit and the events of that fateful night hang heavy over Haddonfield. This is presumably at least ten years after the events of Halloween II.

Anyway, Michael Myers is being transferred from one nut house to another when he springs to life and escapes. He’s headed back to Haddonfield to kill his 7-year-old niece, Laurie’s daughter, because she’s related to him and anyone related to Michael must die. Hot on his trail is Donald Pleasence as Dr. Loomis, who must save the town again and stop the evil from spreading.

Featuring car chases, explosions, shoot-outs, a rooftop chase sequence, and some teenager getting impaled with a shotgun, this one has it all. Not to mention a really good set of protagonists in the form of a great child actress (Danielle Harris) and her foster sister, Rachel, played by the very good Ellie Cornell. Besides Laurie, Rachel is my favorite “final girl” in the series.

Anyway, the only thing missing here is a really good Michael Myers. The mask is dumb, and some of the stunt guy’s movements are Scooby-Doo-level goofy. It serves to undermine the well-constructed chills and thrills surrounding him. However, you ultimately can forgive the goofiness for the pure entertainment factor.

There’s a lot more comedy in this one, and it works better than in any other entry in the franchise. From Bucky the electrician to the drunken Baptist preacher Loomis hitchhikes with, it’s got a lot of colorful side characters.

It all culminates in a fantastic cliffhanger ending with Jamie falling prey to the family evil and stabbing her foster mother to death with a pair of scissors. Basically, it sets the 7-year-old up to be the new killer of the franchise. That would’ve sure been something, but the next installment, the rancid pig fart that is Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, fucked all that up.

Halloween 4 is a lot of fun, though.

KILL QUALITY: Without being too gory, this one has some pretty inventive kills. Standouts include the shotgun impaling, a thumb driven through a forehead, and a really theatrical electrocution. 8/10

MYERS REVIEW: That mask is awful, and some of those movements are goofy. He’s not great here, but he’s also not so bad that he distracts from what the rest of the movie is trying to do. 6/10

FALL VIBES: We get the most amazing opening credit sequence, which plays like a love letter to fall, shot in Utah of all places. The rest of the movie is pretty on-point, too. 9/10

2. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

My favorite sequel in the franchise is the one without Michael Myers, and that’s because the original never needed a sequel. John Carpenter‘s Halloween functions perfectly on its own. It was never really a horror movie about a story. It was a technical exercise in creating tension, executed flawlessly by a master of his craft.

Halloween II felt like reheated leftovers repurposed to fit the Friday the 13th slasher mold. Halloween III, on the other hand, is a fresh story, something completely different. In fact, there’s a commercial for the 1978 Halloween playing on a TV at one point to let you know this isn’t even in the same reality as the first two movies.

Anyway, this one centers around an evil toy mask corporation run by an evil grandpa named Colonel Cochran (Daniel O’Herlihy from RoboCop). He has the gentle charm of a nice old fella, but he’s a real nasty son of a bitch who plans to murder all of America’s children on Halloween night with exploding Halloween masks.

How will he pull that off? Well, each children’s mask is equipped with a microchip powered by Stonehenge rock technology and some wizardry (???). The plan is to get kids to put on their masks and watch a TV special on Halloween night that will trigger something in the microchip, causing their heads to explode into a mushy pile of cockroaches and snakes. I don’t really understand the science behind it, but I enjoyed it all the same.

The only people standing in Colonel Cochran’s way are Tom Atkins as a “sexy” 50-year-old doctor and Stacey Nelkin as the 23-year-old he’s currently sleeping with. That’s almost as gross as the cockroach masks.

Anyway, Dr. Predator and Underwritten Young Female must stop the evil mask tycoon before it’s too late and America’s children explode into bug mush.

The plot is ridiculous, and the movie is more than a little goofy. Not everything works, but it’s really solid technical filmmaking, and the score (by John Carpenter) is extraordinary. This one has a very unique look and feel to it. It doesn’t even try to emulate the intense fall vibes of the original.

The cast is pretty solid, with Daniel O’Herlihy creating one of my favorite ’80s horror movie villains. He’s such a quietly menacing presence. He has a scene where he ominously tells a character, “Happy Halloween,” and it always gives me goosebumps.

This movie was widely rejected upon its original release, but year after year, more people come back to it and reassess it as a worthwhile little movie. Honestly, it’s become a total cult classic at this point, and it’s the best movie in the franchise besides the original, so says I.

KILL QUALITY: There’s some nasty kills in this one but nothing compares to seeing the full effect of the exploding mask. That is purely the stuff of nightmares. Lot of solid practical effects in this one. 8.5/10

MYERS REVIEW: No Michaels here. 0/10

FALL VIBES: Ehhh, not really besides all that Halloween jingle. 4/10

1. John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978)

It’s not only the best movie in the franchise by miles and miles, but it’s also one of the best horror films ever made, period. It’s a beautiful work of art and a perfect example of how to build tension. It’s minimalist and low-key, yet still effective as all hell after almost 50 years. I don’t know what else to say about this movie that hasn’t already been said or written 100 times better by far more talented journalists and writers than I’ll ever be. It’s one of those rare films that has stood the often brutal test of time. I try to watch it every year.

KILL QUALITY – Very conservative when it comes to what is shown but each kill is extremely effective. There’s hardly any blood but the scares are there. 7/10

MYERS REVIEW – Nick Castle played him better than anyone because he understood that simplicity and subtlety go a long way. This is the scariest Michael has ever been, lurking in the shadows and the background. 10/10

FALL VIBES: Perfect. Crunchity-crunch-crunch. 10/10