Wooley's Halfway To Halloween III

Thank you for that, I laughed out loud IRL, and I needed that.

Never seen it!

Are you ****ing kidding me?!!!

Look, this is no hidden gem, although it also can be sort of, but like you say, when they get it right, which is actually about 2/3 of the movie, it's kinda special. Never at the level of its predecessor, you have to disavow yourself of any such notions before you go in, but there for sure. You just gotta be prepared to suspend any expectation set by RHPS and to pull yourself up by your bootstraps after 4 or 5 flat musical numbers (most of which fall in the middle of the film), though no worse at all than Phantom Of The Paradise, and appreciate all the things that are all the good things about early 80s off-kilter film and music videos.


"We're no strangers to Confusion."

Hey Takoma...

Ouch.

What a glib misreading of the entire film. Shame shame shame.

Also "He doesn't like domineering women because when he was a child his mother threw boiling water on his father"? Let's try: When he was a child his father was abusive, but like some witnesses/victims of abuse he ended up siding with the abuser, something that was cemented when in an act of self-defense his mother threw boiling water on his father.

The misreading is two fold. As you stated, Siskel is already showing how shallow his understanding is of the effects of domestic abuse. The film pretty clearly lays out the reasons for Ironside's warped world view, but he can't get past seeing a woman throwing boiling water on her abusive husband as 'domineering'. It's real oof worthy.


But it is also, yet another example of how critics don't even invest any kind of good faith in talking about genre films. They clearly are bundling Visiting Hours together with the glut of other completely empty and gratuitous slashers out there at the time and it's a total failure on their part. Getting hung up on the violence and losing sight of the character and the films structure. For shame is right.



It's really not that different from Eberts reading of Ridgemont HIgh, refusing to grant depth to Jennifer Jason Leighs character, whose experiences in the film are possibly some of the most honestly rendered and despairing of any teen comedy. But, I'm assuming because it's just a film about stupid highschool hijinks, Ebert only views her experience through the lens of exploitation, when it's actually a deeply layered character and a deeply layered film. All he got out of it is a need to save her from the terrible director and screenwriter by covering her vulnerability up with a blanket.

SOME Visiting Hours SPOILERS AHEAD, NOT IN TAGS!!

His entire summary is a misread.

Especially his off-hand mention of a nurse getting stabbed.

That nurse has a name, and she is one of the most pivotal characters in the film. The stabbing occurs in her home, in front of her children--something that critically connects to the idea of why the killer is the way that he is.

I honestly don't understand how you could get to/past the sequence where he abuses the woman he has sex with and NOT understand that the movie is trying to say something about how and why violence is perpetrated against women by a certain subgroup of men. The fact that she survives an act of intimate partner violence and then has a conversation with the nurse (who has clearly seen similar situations) about her abuse alone sets this film apart.

I thought it was pretty glib, as especially Gene Siskel could be, but I figured I'd tease you with it.

Agreed completely. Such a sad and honest look at the path of a young girl trying to find her way through being a female teen in the 1980s.

Ebert's Fast Times review might be the worst one he ever did. In his other widely hated reviews, you can chalk up his opinions to obvious biases or concede that he landed on the wrong side of a divisive film. With his Fast Times review, it's not even clear he watched the same movie as the rest of us. Still love the guy, but oof.

Yup. And of course that's one of the inherent dangers of your entire career being putting every single one of your takes out there for everyone to see, particularly when, for most of your career, you are one of the rare and pre-eminent voices, and at a time when not that many people were doing it. It becomes eternal.
I mean, I just enjoyed listening to Gene Siskel pan The Big Lebowski.
But yes, terrible take.

I don't mind a critic hating something I love or vice versa. But I honestly engage with the movies I hate (and then decide I hate them). It's frustrating when you can tell someone wrote a film off before the opening credits.

Well, that's what I mean about Siskel's glib write-off reviews, like Lebowski. He's just so dismissive of the film, like there was just nothing to see there and, of course, now it's considered a Great Film by many.
Kinda gives me a lil chuckle.

Siskel obviously doesn't get what Lebowski is up to. Even though he comes off as a little clueless in his dismissals, this mostly seems like a case of it just not being on his wavelength. An issue anyone can have with any great movie. Like me with "Some Like It Hot". Few movies leave me as cold. If it wasn't a classic I wouldn't give a second thought about it. But I've no doubt people have their reasons for loving it.



The issues with the Fast Times or the Visiting Hours reviews is that they are fundamentally bad reviews. Like, objectively bad. The take away they get from those films was completely the opposite of what is actually in the film. In the Visiting Hours case, there is a refusal to even look at any of the emotional mechanics of the movie seriously. And with Fast Times, Ebert can't overlook his emotional discomfort in the Jennifer Jason Leigh scenes, and instead resorts to some kind of protective stance of her that is both missing the point of the film as well as genuinely icky. And, in both cases, I feel a lot of the misreading is due to not giving a deeper look at films that on the surface might appear to be superficial by design. But that, in fact, probably two of the more intelligent examples of their respective genres.

Don't forget about what Ebs wrote about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre back in '74; I mean, I obviously agree with him (to a certain extent) that it's not a great movie either, but the gist of his review basically boiled down to "it's not just because it's a Horror movie", and even I was like "C'mon Roger!" when I read it.

I don't think I've ever read that. But it's not surprising as he carried that bias throughout his career.



Still top notch critic though, regardless of how often I thought he stepped in it

What I take away from his TCM review is that he's trying to meet the movie halfway despite his biases. Can't object to that.


Ebert 1
Stu 0

Well, he gave it a lot of credit for a movie that was too far outside of his understanding.
"And yet in its own way, the movie is some kind of weird, off-the-wall achievement. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to make a movie like this, and yet it’s well-made, well-acted, and all too effective... "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" belongs in a select company (with “Night of the Living Dead” and “Last House on the Left”) of films that are really a lot better than the genre requires. "

I mean, I know we all know how Ebert felt about horror.

But this is so condescending!