Mr Halloween (2007)

12th Nov 09





Plot
A haunted house museum attains super-realistic body parts when local teens start going missing. Now it’s up to some meddling kids to solve the crime…

Review
Sometimes it seems unfair to rip it into a film like Mr Halloween, a straight to DVD cheapo slasher direct from Hicksville, USA, but then again sometimes they make it difficult to resist. Shot on a Nokia 3310 (well, it may as well have been), the film follows a recluse (Bill Loomis – played by Bill Loomis) who runs the local seasonal amusement of a haunted house, only to become the number one suspect of the local teens when their peers start going missing. The police, of course, don't seem to give a shit, and before long two do-gooders are on the case Scooby-Doo style, minus the stoner tendencies and kitsch clothing.

In fact when watching Mr Halloween, I sort of wished I was watching an episode of Scooby Doo instead. It would probably be more plausible, have more frequent thrills and at least if the episode wasn't up to scratch I could fantasise about Daphne Blake in her Sarah Michelle Gellar incarnation. Here we're not even treated to a good-looking teen cast who are executed in a manner of inventive and shocking ways, as every single killing consists of a cut to a wall being sprayed with heavily diluted food colouring. The kids themselves are as dull as the rest of the film, and more often than not the ones you really want to see slaughtered or at least beaten to a bloody pulp don't even take the hit. There's a particularly excruciating little longhaired twat I was channeling all my depraved hope through, but alas, nothing.

The scares, if they can be called that, come from the creepy house that Loomis maintains, inviting the local population in to witness his horror exhibits including corpses that appear to move and guillotines that are slightly sharper than they ought to be. Sadly, he is about as frightening as your dad at Halloween, with his ridiculous masks, Ron Jeremy moustache, receding hairline and car mechanic jump suit, he's hardly an iconic horror villain in the making. He just stumbles around growling, occasionally chopping up unidentifiable parts of the human anatomy to a soundtrack that sounds like the work of a pretentious fifteen year old who's just discovered Aphex Twin.

The interesting elements of the film are limited to the bizarre fact that Loomis himself is re-animated, and needs to charge up every so often using a giant battery hooked up to his head while he sits in a chair with an facial expression midway between capital punishment and capital constipation. This and a twist ending which, I must admit, is not bad at all and at least explains why the cops are so inept and why Loomis is as one dimensional as a disused blow-up doll.

Mr Halloween reportedly cost only $6000 to make, and because of that fair plays to the filmmakers for securing distribution in at least two territories (USA and UK), however if you're planning to watch a film with Halloween in the title, best not make it this one.

Posted by
James Merchant



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