Day 177

Feeling a little better today, but didn’t get up to much. I read a couple of Judge Dredd stories and watched Halloween I and II.

Dredd/Anderson The Deep End collects three stories set after the Dredd film (which is a great film and you really should see it if you haven’t), Dust, The Deep End and Judgement Call.

In Dust Judge Dredd investigates murders that are somehow related to dust storm that comes in from the Cursed Earth:

The Deep End has Judge Anderson tackles a possibly supernatural foe:

and in Judgement Call she defends her place as a Judge:

All three of these stories do a great job of keeping the tone set by the movie and expanding the universe to cover the supernatural (or advanced science that looks like magic) and the paranoia and stress of being a Judge in a city of 800million people, that you find in the best 2000AD stories.

Judge Dredd Megazine 386 has the first part of a story centred on Bill, Ma-Ma’s computer expert, and what has happened to him since the film ended.

As it’s the first part of a longer story we see the dominoes being set up for the story. Life seems to be going well for Bill, he has a family and a job and is avoiding the criminal life, but then a chance encounter with a Judge send it all pear shaped and he loses his job and is pulled back into being a criminal.

 

Halloween I is a great slasher film, with some great actors, great direction and an unmistakable soundtrack. It’s these elements which build the tension and make the scares really pop. And all without having much gore or blood & guts. Pretty much all the elements of eighties slasher films are brought together here or invented, nubile young people doing naughty things being killed one by one, the virginal final girl, the baddie coming back to life for one last scare, etc.  Unlike many later slasher films (including some of the Halloween sequels) Halloween has an unconvoluted and simple storyline that drives the film, making sure that it doesn’t get lost in plot points and stays entertaining.

Halloween II takes place straight after the end of I and starts to build the Halloween backstory, explaining that Michael is hunting Laurie because she is his sister (which gets built on in later films to Michael hunting down and killing all of his blood relations as some sort of ancient Halloween ritual). As it carries on from the first film we keep the Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence, who, as you expect, do great jobs (although for a lot of the film Jamie Lee Curtis’s character is comatose), while the new cast do a good job of giving their characters some life, so that when they get killed they is some weight to their deaths, and there is more gratuitous nudity. There’s also more deaths and more gore (but not that much compared to modern films) and more people acting stupid/dumb, setting themselves up for good kills. All in all, it’s probably the best of the sequels that involve Michael Myers (or at least tied with Halloween H20: 20 Years Later).