Roger Ebert, RIP

Bloody hell, the good guys are going down like tenpins lately: Herbert, Hautala, Franco, and now Ebert?

Even poor old Iain Banks (The Wasp Factory) is dying of cancer. What the fuck kind of filthy demon has crawled into the guts of 2013's maiden quarter?

I'll miss Ebert a helluva lot. I've followed him for thirty years. I have his books, I read his reviews religiously every Friday, and I visit his site Wednesdays in case he's posted something early (which he often did).

I first encountered him in '81 when I touched down in Detroit to begin a new life and 'Sneak Previews' came on the TV. The boys reviewed SCANNERS and gave SAVAGE WEEKEND a Dog of the Week award. After that, I was hooked, and I always hankered for those Dogs. The Dogs were made for my kind. Our kind, if you're reading this.

Having friends who agree with you on everything is not the point of friends. Sharing differences and engaging with those is the point. That's why I considered Ebert a twice removed "friend". Yes, Ebert hated most slashers, though not as much as Siskel (both admired HALLOWEEN, remember!), and he did champion a few films not worth a damn, but he was a bloody decent writer, and he made a convincing case every time.

I'll never forget his FREEWAY (Mathew Bright) review where he pointed out that it's not WHAT the film is about, it's HOW it's about. Sounds a little cryptic at first glance, but makes total sense when you let the words cool. It's the unique angle a filmmaker brings to the work that makes the work great or deserving of steaming turd status. Ebert articulated that in every review.

To the painful end, Ebert soldiered on, sharing the load recently with Roeper and a few others, and reviewing stuff he was passionate about. He was a potent writer, a man who drew you into a literary conversation, not a monologue. I admired his conversational style, his easy-to-digest sentences that sprung from his heart and belly. He hungered for cinema. Like we all do.

He had a kinky side, too, and embraced some good old-fashioned depravity when he teamed up with Russ Meyer and his cinema of the massive mammary.

I don't trust a man who denies his depravities, and Ebert didn't. He was a man of truth. That's why he endured.

I'll really, really miss his intelligence, wit, and passion. He's one of the very few critics who went mainstream but retained his brain. And you never got the sense that he saw you sitting down there while he was up on high tossing you his crumbs.

RIP, Mr. Ebert. You really were one of us.

Who Slew Halloween 2?

The biggest kill of Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 is the franchise.

I walked out of this thinking: I don't want to see another fuckin Halloween film as long as I fucking live. Or die.

I thought Zombie's first Halloween was pitiful. Well, it's endearing compared to this shit.

And I do use shit advisedly. This film deserves condemnation. And so does Dimension. They greenlit this turd. No wonder they're going to the wall. They've lost control of their material. Their first horror film, The Burning ('81), was fifty times better than this. Is that progress?

As this hulking bore was unspooling like a thick streamer of diarrhea, I had another thought: If a novice screenwriter had sent this script to an agent or studio, he would have been told to get the fuck out of town and come back in ten years when he'd learned how to fuckin write.

The writing here is virtually non-existent. There are no "characters", there is zero suspense, and the kills are so matter-of-fact and hard to see (thanks to the hysterical cutting), you could rate them PG-13.

I don't care who I offend, but Rob Zombie fuckin sucks as a horror director.

To be fair, The Devil's Rejects, which got by on pure adrenalin and viscera, is a very decent flick, but it's an aberration in Zombie's sad screen career.

House of 1000 Corpses is dumb, boring, hick shit, and both Halloween remakes are proof that he has no story sense and no passion left for the genre.

Good horror directors like Romero, Raimi and Carpenter were excited by ideas. Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead, and the original Halloween, for example, told simple but engaging stories, and were alive with invention, suspense, and fresh technique.

Zombie gets decent budgets, gets carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants, and he still turns out cinematic excrement that is impossible to flush from video shelves. It sits there like toilet seat smears that won't rub off.

As is obvious, this film made me really fuckin angry, especially in light of the fact that good horror like Grace, The Collector, Eden Lake, Dead Girl , and Sick Girl get next-to-no or zero cinematic exposure.

A big part of the problem are the studio suits who greenlight a stinker like this because they can't tell a prince from a bucket of toe pus. These people are running the industry. These people are fucking it to death until it becomes a moldy, stiff corpse.

What's he got to be so arrogant about?

Halloween 2, made by the goddamn sell-out Rob Zombie (Mr. Fuckin Horror, my ass!), who used to howl and pontificate about the pointlessness of remakes, is the personification of what's wrong with American studio horror.

In future, I now know what to expect from him. Crap. And what to do when another of his stinkers hits the mulitplex. Run in the opposite direction. Fast.

***

Believe it or not, there was an announcement today that the next Halloween will be in 3-D.

Whoopity-fuckin-do!

Will people pay ten bucks to watch someone take a dump right into their face?

The answer may be a depressing yes.

And finally, is there an antibiotic available that will purge a Zombie film from your system?

Yes.

Take one of these once a day for a week: Eden Lake, Combat Shock, I Stand Alone, Sheitan, The Shuttered Room, The Collector & Dead Girl.

Repeat if necessary.

At least the directors of these still give a shit.