Thursday Movie Picks: Movies set in a Mental Institution

If you've been hanging around here lately, you'll know that I've been taking part in Wanderer's Thursday Movie Picks Meme over at Wandering Through the Shelves. The quick and dirty on it is that you write about three movies that pertain to whatever category she has set up. The only parameters being they should either be your best (or favorites), worst (or least favorite), or hidden gems. It really is a blogathon-esque activity so swing by, see the categories she has set up for upcoming weeks and join the fun.

This week's theme was a tough one for me. We're talking movies set in a mental institution. Of course, the easiest route to go was pick the best and most famous of them all, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest then find two others to fill the need for three pictures. It's worthy of every drop of ink spilled and key stroked in praise of it. However, you should know me by now. When two roads diverge in a blog, I try to take the one less traveled by, and that makes all the difference.

Wow.

How dare I paraphrase the great Robert Frost knowing that in just a few moments I'm going to drop some nihilistic crap on you?

What do I mean?

Well, we're exploring one of my guilty pleasures for this week's picks: slasher flicks. These are certainly not the best movies to take place in a mental institution, for sure. Some might think they're the worst, but I don't. I wouldn't call these hidden, by any stretch. So, I guess we can call these favorites. Screw it, let's just get to it.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

When the kids of the Elm Street kids can't stop having nightmares, they get sent to a psyche ward where Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) goes after them, one by one. This was the first movie in the franchise to venture off of Elm Street. It's also the first to give us the wise-cracking while he kills you version of its iconic killer. If you're a fan of the franchise, then you know this is one of the better entries into the canon. Along with Freddy's change in personality, the movie also introduced some pretty cool concepts. Oh, this one last tidbit is a personal one. I'm not even sure why I remember this, to be honest, but watching this movie in theaters way back in 1987 was the first time I had heard the phrase 'sleep deprivation.' Incredibly random thing to throw in, I know, but that's what I got.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

So yeah, we're going from a part 3 to a part 5. Deal with it. This installment of the Friday the 13th series finds young Tommy (John Shepherd), who had just killed the iconic Jason at the end of the prior movie, The Final Chapter, being admitted to a mental institution for troubled teens. Of course, it's located deep in the woods, silly. Why yes, the kids at this institution start turning up dead, one by one. How'd you guess? Okay, I won't pretend this is some form of high quality cinema. I will say that it's one of the better pictures in the franchise.

Halloween (2007)

Lots of people hate on Rob Zombie's remake of John Carpenter's horror classic. Ignore everything I say from this point forward, but I think this one is just about as good. Unlike the original, it spends lots of time in the place where that movie only started from and spoke of, the mental institution Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) escaped from. The actual remake part of the film, Myers following around and killing the teens of Haddonfield, is actually the weakest part. Right up through that escape, however, director Rob Zombie gives us the best story-telling of his career and some of the best in an American horror flick in quite some time (in '07, that is). I promise I'm not drunk or high. Anyhoo, a large chunk of this involves us watching Myers pass a lot of years being counseled by Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell).

Okay, tell me I'm the one who should be committed.

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Halloween (2007)

Directed by Rob Zombie.

2007. Rated R, 111 minutes.
Cast:
Malcolm McDowell
Daeg Faerch
Tyler Mane
Sheri Moon Zombie
William Forsythe
Scout Taylor-Compton
Hanna Hall
Danielle Harris
Danny Trejo
Brad Dourif 

John Carpenter’s Halloween is widely regarded as one of the greatest horror movies ever made. It is undeniably one of the most influential and imitated movies of all time. Every slasher flick that followed owes it a huge debt of gratitude. Without it, there may not have been a Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street. That it would be remade was inevitable. Musician turned director Rob Zombie tackles the task.

To Zombie’s credit, he’s not content with merely doing a spot-on remake with updated wardrobes. He truly tries to make it his own. He does this by taking us deep into the world of the iconic slaughterer of teens. We first meet Mikey (Faerch) when he is just a wee lad, albeit one with a penchant for killing small animals. Very tired of how people treat him, he graduates from animals to humans. Through a startingly realistic series of events, he kills four people who make the error in judgment of pissing him off. We then spend some time with him in a mental institution, both at the beginning and end of his stay. Eventually, we get to the point that serves as the starting point for the original, his escape from the institution and subsequent return home. This constitutes the first half of our feature and it is spectacular film-making. It’s much more brutal, unflinching character study than true horror. Since it revolves around a child committing some hellacious acts, all of which are graphically depicted, it’s all sorts of unsettling. The magic of it is that through the mayhem of his life, we feel bad for Mikey. Like we do about most children who come from adverse circumstances, we feel his life could’ve been different. It could’ve been better. We see points where small changes my have made a world of difference.

During Michael’s escape, something happens that eats away at the movie. His humanity is quickly and completely stripped away. All of the empathy the film had been working so hard to build up comes tumbling down due to his final encounter with the guard played by Danny Trejo. This is an occasion where predictable would’ve been a good thing. Had the expected thing happened, basically the opposite of what actually does, it would’ve maintained our feelings for him going forward. Instead, the director’s nihilism got the best of him. From this point on Michael Myers (Mane) is once again a faceless monster we’ve no attachment to.

This brings us to the second half. From here we get a mechanical but truncated remake of the original. Things keep happening at a rapid rate so we’re never bored. The problem is our emotional involvement has taken a nosedive. The reason for this is two-fold. I’ve already explained the first part of it. The other part is this shortened second act. We meet the people of present day Haddonfield that Michael will shortly terrorize. However, we don’t know them. We don’t care about them. They are merely the bodies in various stages of undress that our killer will mutilate. Like all the best movies in the franchise, the original isn’t about Michael Myers. It is about Laurie Strode, the Jamie Lee Curtis character now played by Scout Taylor-Compton and the terror he cast upon her. We felt for her. We were scared with her. This time around we couldn’t give a flip about her. It wouldn’t be an issue if we still cared about Michael but we don’t. In the blink of an eye he went from a scarred, misguided and dangerous child to a superhuman behemoth who’s only function is viciously killing anyone in his path.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween is a hard movie to judge. The first hlf alone makes it worth seeing. It contains some of the best storytelling of any American horror flick perhaps of the 21st century. The second half is stilly visually exciting, but leaves us flat as the boogeyman coldly moves from victim to victim. Murder is a gruesome but clinical and joyless task he must continuously perform for our morbid pleasure. The director gave us Mikey and created a soft spot in our hearts for a child who can’t seem to help but lash out in ways fatal to others when he’s angered. Then, Mikey was snatched away. In his place, we were given the machine known as Michael Myers.

MY SCORE: 7.5/10

Halloween (1978)

Directed by John Carpenter.
1978. Rated R, 91 minutes.
Cast:
Jamie Lee Curtis
Donald Pleasance
P. J. Soles
Charles Cyphers
Kyle Richards
Brian Andrews
John Michael Graham

As a youngster Michael Myers kills his older sister on Halloween night and is put into a mental institution. Fifteen years later, again on Halloween night, Michael escapes and heads back to his hometown.

This is one of those rare movies that helped create a genre. In this case, that genre is the modern-day slasher flick or more specifically DTMs or dead-teenager-movies. Yes, there were slasher flicks, even DTMs before this but this provided the template for not only a host of sequels but also a slew of imitators that are still being made over 30 years later. As far as the actual movie, it uses some effective tension building methods that maintain a creepy feel to the movie even though not much actually happens over the first half of the film. Most notably these include the now-you-see-him-now-you-don't moments of the killer himself and the use of what I believe is one of the most effective scores in the history of cinema. Of course, things get fun when the bodies start piling up over the latter part of the movie.

The script cuts alot of corners. Its done in part to tighten the movie by keeping the run-time down. It's also done in part to keep from explaining things. For instance, how does this doctor seem to know what Michael Myers is thinking even though we're told he hasn't spoken a word since the night he killed his sister? Because what he sees in Myers' eyes is "pure EVIL", of course. How very scientific of you doc. There are more things in a similar vein so I could see why a remake would want to flesh things out. Unfortunately, Halloween establishes one of the slasher genre's main weaknesses right off the bat: the acting is nothing to write home about. Then scream-queen Jamie Lee Curtis isn't bad, you can see why she went on to bigger and better things. The rest of the cast is functional at best. By functional I mean they're slightly better than sounding like they're reading, except for Donald Pleasance as the doctor who just over-acts. However, all of that is forgivable especially given the same things still occur in horror movies so it doesn't even seem dated. What is laughable though is the way our bad guy fails to kill Jamie Lee Curtis (seeing how she's appeared in a few of the sequels and the movie is over 30 years old I don't think I'm spoiling anything). Honestly, more than once Myers has Jamie Lee at point blank range without her even aware of him, yet he misses her with a knife that has a blade on it the size of my forearm.

If you're a fan of horror movies, see this one if you haven't already. It's a classic within the genre and deserves to be seen. Definitely take a look if you plan on seeing the remake. I always recommend seeing the original, preferably before the remake. If you've already seen the remake but not the original, go back and see what they working with. If you're not a horror fan then skip it. The truth is it's a great slasher flick, among the best ever but not really a great movie in the grand scheme of things. There is a big difference between the two.