Eli Roth continues to shy away from the megaphone and instead offer his services as a producer and support for new filmmakers.

Deadline has the Hostel filmmaker down for two horror projects (Clown and Aftershock) in which he’ll serve in the position mentioned above.

With Clown, Roth has laid out the potential he sees in the material:

People are hungry for the next Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, and while that has to be earned, we think this cursed clown suit can do it. I am giving us permission to go as hard at this as possible. I know I said I was moving away from horror, but old habits die hard.

Roth has been busy of late. Having helped steer The Last Exorcism towards solid box office (a $40 million gross in the US on a budget of $2 mil), he’s also producing Man With The Iron Fists (which he wrote with director RZA) and a remake of Toby Hooper’s 80’s slasher Funhouse.

It can’t hurt taking on a creative mentoring role in all these different productions, and I’m sure it’s an equally valid learning experience for him too, as he prepares to take on a his next intended directorial venture (a big-budget sci-fi epic called Endangered Species).

Yesterday Steven posted an inforgraphic from Yahoo which detailed the kill count of the top three horror franchise killers.   Today, Freddy, Jason and Michael face off in a very different type of arena: The Box Office.

Below you will find the infographic which details which slasher has brought in the most money over their long killing careers.  When you take a look at the chart it seems as if Freddy has made the most per film but due to the fact the Jason has been featured in three more films, he has been crowned the victor at the box office.

Looking forward to where round 3 will take place?  Then check back here tomorrow to find out who will win the next round of Slasher Showdown.

With 2003′s Freddy vs Jason doing little to sate fanboys’ yearning for slasher superiority – though, really, only Jason left the movie with his head intact – Yahoo!Movies have endeavoured to throw Michael Myers into the mix and settle this immortal debate once and for all. Their arena: Slasher Showdown.

It’s a good thing too, with the iconic slashers from Halloween, Friday the 13th and – most recently – A Nightmare on Elm Street each having suffered at the hands of uninspired remakes, and the proposed sequel to Freddy vs Jason as dead as any one of the trio’s stoner victims, it was beginning to look as though we might never determine which of the three greats deserved Serial Killer of the Century.

With the winner not crowned until Friday, the final result is still anyone’s guess. While Jason may have machete’d his way to the highest bodycount, the polls remain open as to which of the three were responsible for, and I quote, ‘the coolest kills’?

You can see the full infographic below, however, should your opinion require more than a simple tick box to do itself justice, please have at it in the comments section below.

Not to get all meta on you, but whatever the verdict isn’t there really only one winner? A villain even more dastardly and unstoppable than any Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees or Michael Myer’s. I propose that Platinum Dunes be crowned victorious, for doing what a combined 30 movie’s worth of teen-fodder never quite managed: killing the killers.

Of course, we covered all of this last year…

As London is currently awash with FrightFest fever it seems fortuitous that we’ve been pointed to this PC game which pits classic horror icons against each other in a Mortal Kombat-esque fashion.

While we had a whole film to tell us what would happen if Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy went up against Friday the 13th’s Jason, this game draws together many other recent Hollywood monsters in an Expendables style gathering of copyright-be-damned beat-em-up action.

The game is TerrorDrome and, as far as I can tell from the official site it’s a homebrew game for Windows PCs, which means you can download and play a demo version right now. There’s a lot of work gone into this one, the team behind the game clearly know their horror films, and seem to have created a professional looking game, sadly I can’t test it (being on a Mac), but if you’ve played it I’d like to know what you think.

Available alongside Freddy and Jason are Halloween’s Michael Myers, Ghostface from Scream, Ash from The Evil Dead series, Chucky, Leatherface – the list goes on.

Last year Gary stood between three horror icons as they battled it out, now you can celebrate FrightFest in your own home with this game.

Thanks to our friends at Thumb Culture for showing us the way.

Here are a couple of videos showing the game in action.

Thanks for reading my “VS” series of articles over the last 3-4 days. I took on Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger and i feel slightly disturbed afer seeing so much blood, gore and murder.

After 29 films, over 43 hours of horror, over 600 gallons of blood, over 270 slaughtered people shared between three iconic horror movie icons, here is the verdict of who is the champion slasher.

Firstly all three characters have provided me with an incredibly fun experience as i have not seen all the films before and watching them in sequence has added more enjoyment and also annoyance in seeing how the characters develop, how the stories evolve and how the mythology of each character has grown.

A consistent factor of all three characters is that their stories all followed a complete nonsense storyline linking one sequel to the next that tried to add something new each time which often never worked and left the film lacking the soul and scariness that made all three of their debut films stand out and forever memorable in our nightmares.

Round one:- Best image

All three have a striking image that is a powerful presence on the screen and is completely bowel exploding if you ever faced them in a dark alley.

Freddy Krueger’s burnt face, stripy outfit, killer glove and Fedora hat is a simple but memorable look and I bet if you ever see a green and red stripy jumper anywhere you will instantly think of Freddy Krueger. He is also quite comical which takes the edge off.

Jason Voorhees Jump suit, Hockey mask and Machete is again a well known and loved look, but its surely the hockey mask thats the main iconic association with the big murderous lump, and again if you ever see a Ice hockey mask you brain will first think of Jason before moving to the sport. Jason’s slow walking, size and presence is dam terrifying.

Michael Myers sports a blue boiler suit, a huge kitchen knife and the James T Kirk face mask, Although not as visibly terrifying as the other two killers, it’s all about the pale emotionless face that makes it work so well.

Winner: Jason Voorhees
A tough one and for me Jason only just beats Freddy due to Freddy’s comical side when he kills which makes Jason that little bit more scary.

Round two:- Most kills

I tried my best to keep score of all the kills but at some points there was a slaughter house amount of bodies so it was difficult to keep track.

Jason Voorhees has killed approximately 146 people in just 12 films, thats an average of 12.2 slaughters a film.

Michael Myers has killed approximately 94 people in 10 films, an average of 9.4 murders a film

Freddy Krueger has killed approximately 35 people in 8 films, just an average of 4.4 massacre’s a film.

Winner: Jason Voorhees
By a country mile, doesn’t have a set vendetta so just kills anyone he sees, a killing machine.

Round Three:- Killing at the Box Office

Jason Voohees earned a total of $465,239,523 in all his films which is an average of $38,769,960 per film

Michael Myers earned a total of $347,453,567 in all his films which is an average of $38, 605,952 per film

Freddy Krueger earned a total of $339,706,250 in all his films which is an average of $42,463,281 per film

Winner: Freddy Krueger
Freddy certainly drew in the audiences for his films and was the most consistent earner over his run of films.

Round four:- Best Kills overall

Jason Voorhees murdered in some of the funniest ways, whether it was smashing a girl in a sleeping bag against a tree or freezing a girls face in Liquid Nitrogen and smashing it on a table, they were enjoyable, a bit tongue in cheek and at times very brutal which is everything you want and look forward in a horror film.

Michael Myers murdered in a more brutal way than the other two and in the new reboot films crossed the line and entered a more realistic approach at the killings which i found difficult, even after sitting through all the other films.

Freddy Krueger Killed with a sense of humor, whether it was using a video game to kill his victims, turning into TV’s or eating future A-List celebrities in a bed and exploding in a shower of blood. Freddy’s kills also had a bit of imagination as they were set in dreams and the possibilities were endless.

Winner: Jason Voorhees
Again just beating Freddy in the quality of kills, The sleeping bag one alone was enough to win but as shown in my review of Jason his kills were the right mix of brutality and enjoyment.

Round Five: Story

Jason Voohees had a barmy story line but started of strongly with his mother, Pamela Voorhees being the murderer avenging his death. Then Jason takes centre stage going on a murdering rampage in each film, becoming supernatural after being struck with lightening and going onto fight Freddy Krueger and winning and then finally going where no man has gone before into the year 2455.
There was a slight stutter half way through the series as Jason was replaced by Tommy Jarvis as the new killer which was scrapped in the next film. A huge disappointment was the Jason goes to hell movie but apart from that it had a set formula that worked but was overused over the 12 film run.
A reboot was introduced to a new generation that didn’t work and added nothing new for Jason.

Michael Myers had the biggest balls up in terms of storyline, the writers tried to explain him by bringing in a druid cult that protected him and a curse that flowed from family to family which just didn’t work and ruined what was just a psycho killer trying to kill his family. Again the writers braved the idea of introducing a new killer in Michael’s Niece but again this was dropped in the following sequel. Halloween reached the lowest point of all 29 films in Halloween Resurrection which was the biggest load of rubbish I have ever seen.

Freddy Krueger had the biggest potential to do what ever he wanted as the writers were not really restricted by story line and could dream up anything they wanted as long as they kept to the premise that Freddy killed in your dreams, But they didn’t and created some nonsense stories of babies dreaming and unimaginative ways of killing Freddy.
The stories did stick with the Elm Street children of Freddy’s killers and also the excellent story expansion of the birth of Freddy which added a disturbing back story to his evil.

Winner: Jason Voorhees
Non-complicated stories which progressed in better directions than the other characters, Jason is just Jason and he’s a heartless unemotional killer who doesn’t stop at anything. No complicated explanations of what he is and he went into space and became Robo-Jason.

Round 6: Speed of the hunt

Jason Voorhees is a slow lumbering menace who never runs but still always catches his prey. Sometimes he walks pretty fast but his victims just end up in a cabin or trip up so he never has to break sweat to catch his play thing.

Freddy Krueger can run with the best of them, appear where ever he wants in your dreams or even turn into a car or probably any other thing he wants to get you. You have no chance of getting away unless you burn yourself or rely on a friend who hopefully hasn’t been eaten by his bed, to get you out of your dream.

Michael Myers is another walker who choses not to run, but you know off camera he does a little sprint to hide behind a tree or fence when you turn away for a second and look back to find that he’s gone. One time Michael did steal a car and do some chasing but that didn’t last long as it’s not as scary.

Winner: Freddy Krueger
He’s the only one who travels above a fast walk and can appear where ever he choses in dream land so no competition.

Final Round: Most times killed

Jason Voorhees was apparently killed as a child but probably wasn’t but he was definitely killed at the end of part 4 and part 8. He was later killed again at the end of Jason X, or so we are led to believe but also came out on top, or at least intact in the battle with Freddy, so that’s Three deaths to Jason.

Freddy Krueger was killed at the end of Part 6 and again in essence in A new Nightmare but never really completely killed in any other movie, came off second best to Jason in their VS movie and was left with just his head, so thats two Deaths for Freddy.

Michael Myers was never been killed in any film apart from the Halloween remake in 2009, although presumed dead in every other film he has always got up and carried on his merry way. So just the one for Michael

Winner: Michael Myers

Overall Winner: Jason Voorhees

With a grand total of 4 out 7 wins Jason is the deserved winner of the greatest Killer of all time, Freddy came in second with two victories and Michael in last with the one. Well done Jason.

Now a few videos of our killers in action and other related stuff. Enjoy.

Johnny Depp’s superb cameo in A Nightmare on Elm Street part 6

All the Friday 13th Deaths if you can handle it!

All the Nightmare on Elm Street Deaths back to back

I couldn’t find a Michael Myers tribute without an annoying sountrack so look yourself.

Thanks for reading.

To bring us out of Halloween I thought I would do a daring deed and take on Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger in a no holds bared face off (literally) where I have watched the entire back catalogue of their films to determine once and for all who is champion slasher, Part 1 was on Jason, Part 2 is Michael Myers.

The three killers have haunted us through our childhoods with each horror legend bringing us movies which have completely terrified and equally bemused us with poor sequels and terrible plots

Beware pictures of blood and gore to follow.

Michael Myers is very similar to Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger in that nothing seems to kill him, but the big difference is that Michael Myers is the only non-supernatural monster out of the three, he is a killing machine that has been shot numerous times, blown up in fire, stabbed and apparently beheaded but never outright killed.

First appearing in 1978 and going on to make nine films in total and killing around 95 victims he is the longest serving of the trio. But compared to the deaths i posted in part 1 of my Halloween Vs Me Blogs, Michael’s Myers kills are no where near as “fun” as the Jason Voorhees ones but vital in showing the kind of killer he was.

The first film called Halloween was released in 1978 and directed by the incredible John Carpenter and was originally called The Baby Sitter Murders but was renamed after the producer Irwin Yablans suggested it get released on Halloween night and called Halloween and so it became legend. Made on a budget of just $325,000 going on to make $47 million, buying the scary William Shatner mask for just $1.98 and going on to be one of the scariest horror films ever made. All the original movies from 1-8 were joint produced by Moustapha Akkad but none ever reached the heights of the original.

The Halloween plot was simple, Michael Myers was shown killing his sister as a six year old in 1963 and later sentenced to Smith Grove-Warren County Sanitarium. 15 years later on the eve of Halloween, Michael escapes the sanitarium witnessed by his doctor Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) and colleague Marion Chambers. The next day Loomis discusses the apparent ease of escape from the sanitarium with a Dr Wynn and then heads of to Haddonfield as he knows Michael will return home to kill.

On route to Haddonfield Michael kills some guy and takes his blue boiler suit, then in Haddonfield he gets his mask from a shop and finally a big old kitchen knife to create the look that will stick with him for the next 31 years of movies.

Michael then proceeds to stalk Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her friends appearing subtlely in the background and vanishing like magic, at this point Loomis is panicky telling the police that Michael is back but until the bodies start appearing the police dismiss him.

Michael kills Laurie’s friends in the house over the road that Laurie is babysitting in and she goes over after she receives a strange phonecall and finds her friends murdered and comes face to face with Michael getting slashed and falling down stairs.

She hobbles back to the house and after a tense moment where she cant get in with a walking Michael Myers coming to get her she gets in. Michael gets access to the house and Laurie first stabs him in the neck wih a knitting needle apparently killing him, but it didnt, she hides in the closet and he smashes through, she stabs him with a coat hanger in the eye the uses his knife to stab him which apparently kills him, the children run off screaming alerting Dr Loomis, Michael sits up and walks towards Laurie and tries to kill her but Loomis comes in, shoots Michael 6 times and sends Michael falling off the balcony to his death. The next time they look he has gone.

The film really succeeded due to it’s simple story, terrifying monster and the haunting Halloween tune.

Best Kill :- Bob, it has to be Bob. Michael bursts out a cupboard and lifts Bob by the throat and whilst he hangs in the air stabs the knife through him pinning him mid air against the wall. What makes it brilliant is not that he dangles but how Michael reacts to it staring at him in turning his head from side to side, it’s a very subtle glance into his mentality and utterly brilliant.

Halloween Part 2, Released in 1981 and set straight after the events of Halloween, the film was due to be the last Michael Myers based Halloween film and then it was set to go into a Halloween anthology with a new Halloween story released each year which started with Halloween 3, but more of that later.

Michael is still alive and loose, Loomis is in pursuit screaming that he shot Michael six time, he shot him in the heart and Laurie is heading to hospital. Michael heads to the hospital to finish off what he started.

It’s revealed in dreams and flashbacks that Laurie is adopted and that she is actually Michael’s sister, Michael arrives at the strangely empty hospital and kills all the hospital staff one by one and finally comes for Laurie who’s a bit drugged up.

Meanwhile Loomis and his posse head to a school where Michael broke in and scrawled the word Samhain in blood which means “Lord of the Dead, The End of Summer and October 31″ it’s from here Loomis learns that Laurie is Michael’s sister from Marion Chambers (from Part 1) and so they head to the Hospital and face off where eventually Michael is shot in both eyes abd then finally blown up along with Loomis in a ball of flame

Best Kill:- Yeah, Michael myers is dead. Or is he?

Halloween Part 3: Season of the Witch 1982, As i mentioned before this was meant to be the start of a new and different Halloween story each year but due to the backlash from fans it was the only one to be made.

Although not a terrible film and quite a decent original story, I believe it was unwise to use the name Halloween without having Michael Myers starring after the success of the first two films. The basic plot of part 3 was of the sale of three Halloween masks by a company called Silver Shamrock Novelties and the suspicious murder of a patient of Dr Dan Challis who came in holding a Halloween mask claiming they will kill us all.

Dr Dan investigates and it takes him to Silver Shamrock HQ where he learns the Halloween masks all have a badge containing a tiny piece of stone Henge (that Silver Shamrock stole a pillar of!) which when worn and mixed with an annoying subliminal TV advert (that really grinds when you hear it for the 15th time during the film) the wearer dies and so do all around, the dead person then has bugs, worms and snakes come out of there head as is shockingly shown when a young kid is used as a guinea pig as proof to Dr Dan.

By now the craze of the masks has a meant there is one in every home and so the film climaxes with Dr Dan calling the TV studios telling them to remove the advert now playing it’s final killer song, they remove all but one and the song plays out with Dan Screaming and then presumably everyone dies, which is pretty dam cool. You have to love dark endings.

Best Kill:- Everyone who listens to the song dies probably due to the annoying tune, so it has to be the advert can you survive watching the advert? i certainly can’t.

Halloween Part 4: The Return of Michael Myers in 1988, after the omission of Myers in part 3 Michael comes back. It’s been ten years since Michael was blown up by his former doctor, Sam Loomis, at the end of part 2 and he has been in a coma ever since only a bit charred and not apparenty shot in both eyes.

Michael is being transferred back to Smith Grove Sanitarium and on route he is awoken from his coma by the news that his sister Laurie was killed in a car crash and that her daughter Jamie (Danielle Harris) is alive in Haddonfield and so Michael kills the ambulance crew and heads off to Haddonfield to finish off killing his family and anyone else in his way and of course the now burned/scarred and really over the top acted Dr Loomis follows suit to finish Michael “Evil on Two legs” Myers killing spree.

Jamie has nightmares of Michael but doesn’t know who he is and is bullied at school about not wearing Halloween costume so Jamie and her teenager step sister Rachel buy a Halloween costume which turns out to be the same clown costume as Michael wore when he killed his sister, now where is this story going?

Michael single handedly kills the entire police force at the police station, which leads to vigilanties hunting Myers, and he takes out Haddonfield’s electricity and follows Jamie. Loomis goes to Michael’s house and the town sheriff gets everyone barricaded in his house where Michael arrives killing all but Rachel and Jamie although Rachel is left unconscious and Jamie flee’s finding Loomis they head to the school with Michael in pursuit.

Blah blah blah Rachel saves the day after Loomis is thrown through a window and the two girls get picked up by the vigilantes, but wait Michael hitched a ride killing the guys, Rachel takes the wheel eventually throwing Michael clear then running him down, Jamie approaches Michael and takes his hand and as he reaches out to grab her the state police arrive to shoot the hell out of him and he falls down a mine shaft. Michael is dead, Horray!

But wait, Remember Jamie was wearing that clown costume and touched her uncles hand? well his evil soul has apparently passed to Jamie, she puts on her mask and stabs her mum with scissors recreating the scene from the first Halloween, Loomis being the crazed Psychiatrist he is pulls his gun to shoot her but is stopped just in time, phew, so now Jamie is the new evil right?

Best Kill:- The hero vigilante driver has his neck ripped open, don’t know why the girls are screaming, it’s not that scary!

Halloween Part 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers in 1989. Set one year after the ending of part 4 and starting with a recap showing Michael falling down the mine shaft and the police actually throwing some dynamite into the mine to really finish him off. But good old Michael climbs free just in time and crawls to a shack owned by a hermit where he lies in a comatose state for a full year until Halloween, what a body clock!

Michael returns to Haddonfield where Jamie, now a mute since the attack on her step mother and having some kind of telepathetic link to Michael sensing him kill a janitor that highlights a symbol on Michael’s wrist of a thorn and also the introduction of a mysterious character dressed in black that follows around Myer’s activities, Hmmmmm Plotting plotting plotting.

Michael kills more people, including Jamie’s step sister Rachel, that Jamie senses. This leads to more killings and Michael bored of walking drives around in a victims car chasing Jamie and her new heroine friend Tina through a forest where she finally sacrifices herself to save Jamie.

The raving lunatic Dr Loomis’s saves Jamie and plans to lure Michael back to his old home to kill Jamie and so off they go waiting for Michael to arrive.

Michael chases Jamie through the house in cat and mouse routine until finally cornered she calls him uncle which stops Michael and she asks to see his face and as he does he sheds a single tear and as Jamie reaches to wipe it away (Oscar nomination stuff) Jason freaks out and chases her where Loomis uses Jamie as bait to catch Michael in a chain net, shoots him with tranquilizer gun and then beats him with a wooden plank. Michael is taken to prison.

As Jamie sits in the police car outside the station an explosion occurs and Jamie enters the station to find everyone dead and Michael gone taken by the mysterious man in black.

Best Kill:- Mickey, the annoying owner of the car Michael steals gets a three pronged garden tool in the head after he confronts Michael for scratching his car, the perfect advert for the negative side of road rage.

Halloween Part 6: The Curse of Michael Myers was released in 1995 and was a bizarre mess with over 43 minutes of footage re-shot and it showed in the film.

it’s apparently set six years after part 5 and Myers Jamie and the man and black have all been in hiding since. The man in black is the leader of a Druid cult of Thorn (the tattoo shown on Michael wrist) and they have impregnated Jamie. A nurse helps Jamie escape with her baby and they try to head to Haddonfield but at an empty bus station Jamie calls a radio show reporting on the old Haddonfield murders and begs for help and warning of Michael’s return (the police might have been a better choice) here she is chased by Michael but her baby is hidden, a quick chase and she is killed.

Meanwhile we are introduced to Tommy, the small kid Laurie strode was babysitting in the first Halloween now a grown up and played by the comic star Paul Rudd, He lives in a boarding house and he spends his time watching over the old Myer’s house at Kara Strode and her son Danny as Michael’s old house is now lived in by Laurie Strode’s relatives, makes sense?!

Tommy heard Jamie’s plea on radio and hunts down the bus station and finds the baby and takes him into hiding, and after getting to know Kara he explains the curse of the Thorn which have protected Michael as part of the Druid rite to sacrifice one family so the entire tribe may be saved.

So from what i understand of this Michael was cursed with the Thorn symbol and unless Michael Kills all the Myers family then the Druid tribe will die with Jamie’s baby to be the final victim to save the tribe. But if he does kill Jamie’s baby the the curse will pass onto another child and this would be Kara’s son Danny who hears voices like Michael did as a child.

What complete utter nonsense to try explain the purpose of Michael Myers, he’s just a psycho killer Qu’est-ce que c’est?

Moving on, Michael kills a few people, Jamie’s baby is kidnapped by the boarding house owner and everyone heads to the Sanitarium where the man in black is revealed as Dr Wynn from the first Halloween. (What is going on!) Dr Wynn leads the cult who have been trying to grow a new Thorn Baby in test tubes (seriously) and are about perform some ritual when Michael kills them all, then there’s a final showdown and Tommy unleashes years of tormented hell on Michael and they all escape. Dr Loomis re-enters to find just the mask remaining. Michael is still alive. Great….

Best Kill:- For some reason a Doctor is running away from Michael Myers only to meet a dead end of a barred gate. Michael does the decent thing of helping him through the gate, well his head anyways in three pieces.

Halloween Part 7: H20 Twenty Years Later, Released in 1998 it was a fair enough attempt to revive the series and did the best thing possible and ignore parts 4-6 as no one could add a plot to continue on from the whole druid thorn curse shambles.

So Halloween H20 is the sequel to Halloween part 2 and the first film not to feature the raving lunatic Dr Sam Loomis, played by Donald Pleasance who sadly died shortly before the release of Part 6.

The story starts on 29th October 1998, Dr Loomis’s old collegue Marion Chambers comes home to find someone has ransacked her home, she enlists two teenage boys, one a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who find nothing. Marion discovers her file on Laurie is missing (clever) and runs next door where Joseph-Levitt face has an Ice Skate embedded in it, Michael is back.

Laurie, now living as Keri Tate in California, works as a headmistress at a private boarding school where her son studies but lives under her mothers strict paranoid state of mind as she still suffers from her ordeal 20 years ago.

Michael being quite the detective locates her and kills of students and staff and finally comes face to face with Laurie again. Her son, his girlfriend and Laurie escape but she chooses to go back to finish it and eventually as he she has him down and unconscious with a knife in hand about to stab him when the police come in and she leaves, the body of Michael is put in a body-bag and put in van but Laurie being quite the clever lady steals the ambulance and knows he probably isn’t dead.

The body-bag moves and as he sits up and reaches out she slams on the brakes that propels Michael through the wind screen and then tries to run him over and misses but eventually pins Michael against a tree and confronts Michael, he reaches out and Laurie does too but the memories of what has happened is too much and she offs his head with the masked head rolling to a stop. Dead as dead can be….

Best Kill:- Not a Michael Death but a nice beheading by his sister Laurie that leads on to a plot twist for the next sequel.

Halloween Part 8: Resurrection in 2002, Hey wait a minute, Michael lost his head he must be dead! But no, Michael did the old switcharoo by crushing his larynx and swapped his clothes with a paramedic who was then carried off in ambulance and then beheaded by Laurie.

I hated this film, easily the worst film of the lot and just a pure cash in with an extremely dislikable cast of Busta Ryhmes and Tyra Banks who were so bad it was embarrassing and that with the appalling story after the initial opening that was ok that explained the switcharoo and then the final meeting of Laurie, now in a mental asylum as she couldn’t deal with killing the paramedic and the fear of her brother.

And so Michael finally kills Laurie and heads back to Haddonfield on Halloween one year later and six college students win a competition to appear on an internet reality show so spend a night in the old Myers household using cameras on their heads to broadcast what they see joining the band wagon of internet and reality tv concepts and of course Michael returns home to evict his squatters and thankfully he kills them all (including Battlestar Gallactica’s Starbuck Katee Sackhoff) except for Sara and Busta Ryhmes and in a final battle Busta Ryhmes does some kung fu on Michael and beats him down and he gets tangled up in wires, gets electrocuted and as is burnt as the flames rise.

He is taken to the morgue and as the woman opens up the bag his eyes open, hopefully he will go and kill Busta Ryhmes for embarrasing him and actually saying “trick or treat Mutha Fu*ka”. Shocking shocking film.

Best Kill:- All of them dying was fine by me.

Halloween 2007

Again Michael Myers was subject to a reboot in 2007 and a further sequel in 2009 when it was brought back to the big screen by Rob Zombie.

Zombie actually did half a great job in bringing something new to the franchise by focusing on what made Michael the killer he is famed for, It showed him being bullied by his dysfunctional family and by bullies at school, How he was killing animals and showing a taste for blood which all eventually led him to snap and kill his stepfather sister and sisters boyfriend in a brutally realised scene.

This was then followed by the excellent Malcolm Mcdowell as Dr Sam Loomis trying desperately to get through to him over years in the asylum with a young Michael slowing losing connection with everything and focusing only on making papier-mâché masks that were all very creepy, years later he’s six foot ten tall and built like a tank and escapes and so begins the Halloween story we all know. As reboots go this was a fairly good one and definitely added something worth seeing but it had too much of Zombie’s OTT scenes and dialogue which ruined some scenes and made some very disturbing and pointless.

The story covers the same direction as the 1978 original with the same Halloween theme music and even a familiar face of Danielle Harris (Jamie, the little girl from parts 4+5) as one of Laurie’s friends and daughter of Sheriff Brackett (the excellent Brad Dourif). Laurie babysits, Michael kills her friends comes to get her then kidnaps Laurie back to the old family home and tries to explain he is her brother through photo of them as children. Laurie doesn’t understand and escapes with Michael giving chase and here Loomis tries to help with gun in hand.

They head back to Myers house, Loomis gets battered and Laurie ends up falling out of the top balcony to the floor with Michael and lands on top of him, she holds the gun to his head and shoots, Splat.

The look of Michael was ok, although a bit to big, he was very dominant on the screen and very fearful. But the key to the film is the set up with the deterioration of the young Michael Myers which was not bettered through the rest of the film which was a shame.

Best Kill:- Just a brutal example of Michael expressing himself in the way he does.

Halloween II : 2009

Another Sequel and another step in the wrong direction. Everything that made Rob Zombie’s first movie a reasonable success is clearly missing from this sequel. With his usual use of grinding music and over the top brutality it’s a film that is bizarre and inexplicably stupid with the need to shock more than explain.

The film follows on directly from the point of the first movie with Laurie Strode shooting Michael in the head and then in a kind of homage to the 1981 sequel we see a dream sequence set in a hospital and then Laurie wakes screaming and it’s a year later and she’s in therapy, living with Sheriff Brackett and his daughter Annie.

Michael is carted of in ambulance but after crashing he escapes following a a vision of his mum Deborah dressed in white leading a white horse and later has further visions of a young Michael telling him to bring home Laurie and so off he goes to get her.

Laurie for some reason is having similar visions to Michael’s and acting out Michael’s murders and Dr Loomis is cashing in on Michael by promoting his new book on him and Laurie finds out she is Michael’s sister through the book.

Michael proceeds to kill including Sheriff Brackets daughter and Laurie is taken by Michael to an abandoned shed where she has more visions of her real mum and a young Michael, Loomis and the police arrive and Loomis tries to persuade Michael to let her go but the vision of Deborah instructs Michael that it’s time to go home and stabs Loomis repeatedly. Sheriff Brackett has an opportunity and shoots Michael twice and he falls on some spikes which releases Laurie of her visions.

Laurie walks over to her brother and tells him she loves him and then stabs him in the chest and face, she appears from the shed wearing the Halloween mask and as she removes it she is sitting in isolation in a psychiatric ward grinning as she sees her mum standing with a white horse in her room, what a laugh.

Again Zombie goes over the top and glorifies the violence far to much which in turn makes the film hard to watch and disjointed, Zombie proves again what a terrible director he can be.

Best Kill:- None.

That’s all the Halloween films, not as fun as Friday 13th and not as enjoyable to watch overall. The Reboot was definitely more successful than the Friday the 13th one but self destructed in trying to show the violence in a more serious and brutal ways especially in the 2009 Sequel.

But having said that, the original Halloween 1978 version was and is one of the best horror films ever made and that is what made Michael Myers such an iconic horror villain for over 30 years.

Next up is Freddy Krueger and The Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise that has also set on rebooting the franchise. Watch this space for my review and rundown of the Nightmare on Elm Street films and the final summing up of who wins the Slasher Faceoff.

To bring us into Halloween I thought I would do a daring deed and take on Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger in a no holds bared face off (literally) where I have watched the entire back catalogue of their films to determine once and for all who is champion slasher

The three killers have haunted us through our childhoods with each horror legend bringing us movies which have completely terrified and equally bemused us with poor sequels and terrible plots

Beware pictures of blood, gore, slight nudity and terrible acting to follow.

I begin with Part one of the Halloween Special and start with Friday the 13th and Jason Voorhees, one of the most iconic horror villains of all time sporting the classic hockey mask and machete, Jason Voorhees has become a vastly popular member of the horror circle and would be up there with Dracula, Frankstein’s monster Wolfman and Fred West in a poll of people you wouldn’t want to be stuck in a dark house with

With his name first brought to the screen in 1980 and Jason murdering his way through 12 films in total with a 13th on the way, he has amassed around 155 kills and has been shot, stabbed, electrocuted, blown up, drowned, dissolved in sewage, hung, dismembered, anchored to the lake floor and dragged into to the lake by a revengeful dead father of a terrified child! I kid you not.

Jason’s first appearance was in Friday the 13th in 1980 but he was not the killer of the teenagers his vengeful mother was. After the death of her disfigured son Jason where he drowned whilst the Crystal Lake Camp leaders were busy getting horny, Pamela Voorhees decided to seek revenge by killing anyone at the camp and finally getting her comeuppance by having her head cut off by a huge machete by the last remaining survivor of the film, Alice.

That survivor then climbs into a boat and awakes in the morning happy as Larry, then from nowhere a young disfigured Jason jumps from the water and drags her into the lake, A classic ending but she then awakes in hospital and asks about Jason, He’s still out there.

Best Kill:- The leaping from the lake when all seemed calm is Jason’s only kill but in the film the best kill was a young Kevin Bacon lying on a bed and having an arrow come through his neck from below the bed.

Friday 13th Part 2 released in 1981 follows on two months after the first one where a mysterious man tracks down Alice, the survivor from part 1, and kills her. Then five years later another bunch of counsellors come to Camp Crystal Lake and one by one they are killed by an unknown killer who is revealed towards the end when Jason is is shown wearing a sack with eye holes, a far more creepy look that the iconic hockey mask.

Jason gives chase to one of the remaining survivors, a girl, to an abandoned cabin where she finds an alter with Pamela Voorhees severed head and sweater which she wears to deceive Jason but not for long, she is saved by her friend Paul with a machete through Jason’s shoulder and they escape back to their cabin only for Jason to appear unmasked smashing through a window.

Best Kill:- A poor counselor in a wheelchair gets a machete in the head and then rolls down a flight of stairs still with a stunned look.

Friday 13th Part 3 was released in 1982 was not only in 3D but was the film that finally introduced us to the hockey mask but not till near the end of the film.

It’s the next day after part 2 and another group of kids head to the area of Crystal Lake and are picked off one by one by Jason, including a rag tag mean bunch of motor bikers who have a conflict with the kids. Jason dispatches a majority in 3D protruding implements and picks up the hockey mask from one of the kids and completes the legend.

And so all that remains is a girl survivor Chris, who manages to hang Jason from the barn rafters, which doesn’t kill him and when he gets free a surviving biker dude tries to fight Jason who is killed easily, Chris seases opportunity and plunges an axe into Jason’s head and escapes in a canoe and falls asleep”¦.sound familiar? Well she awakes seeing an unmasked Jason from the canoe and this time a decomposing Pamela Voorhees rises from the lake to drag her down below only to awake again being taken away by the police clearly disturbed with Jason lying “dead” with his new axe hat.

Best Kill:- As it’s a 3D movie this kill was truly hilarious and must have been terrifying with an eyeball flying at you from the screen after Jason squeezes our victims head until it goes pop. Classic.

Friday 13th Part 4 The Final Chapter (yeah right)
Released in 1984 it’s the day after part 3 and Jason is whisked to the morgue (don’t paramedics check for pulses?) Inevitably he rises and kills the morgue staff and returns to Crystal Lake.
Here another group of teenagers are gathering to spend time at cabin and a mother, her son Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) and daughter Trish live near by.

Jason proceeds to kill everyone off in a variety of ways including a young George Mcfly, Crispin Glover getting a meat cleaver to the face and all that’s left is Tommy and his sister, Tommy is into horror and makeup and so cuts his hair short and applies makeup to make him look like a disfigured young Jason which distracts Jason long enough for Trish to attack with the machete but she misses and removes his mask, she drops the machete which Tommy picks up and stabs in his head but Jason moves so Tommy hacks the hell out of Jason with an evil look in his eyes. The End”¦..

Best Kill:- A swimming teenager is stabbed with harpoon gun in the groin by Jason, then lifted into the air and then Jason fires the gun, Ouch!

Friday 13th Part 5 A New Beginning is a bit of a con but a brave idea to get things going in a different direction in 1985. Young Tommy Jarvis who butchered Jason in part 4 is now a teenager and has been moving from various mental institutions and settles in at a place called Pinehurst run by Pam. A murder occurs on his first day and a disgruntled ambulance man by the name of Roy Burns seems a bit annoyed when picking up the body, Hmmmm plot point maybe.

From then on a series of killings occur by an unknown assailant which lead to Tommy becoming more unstable with his feeling that it’s Jason and by the end of the film a killer emerges dressed as Jason Voorhees but of course it’s not Jason, he’s dead and it’s a Scooby doo ending revealing under the mask it’s old Roy Burns the ambulance driver who’s son was killed at the start, and he would of got away with it if it wasn’t for falling onto some spikes.

Tommy recuperates in hospital and is visited by Pam who is attacked by Tommy, but it’s all a dream”¦or is it.

Tommy opens his hospital bedside cabinet and takes out the hockey mask, you hear a smash and Pam runs in thinking that Tommy has done a runner but as the door closes behind her Tommy is wearing the mask “Look out Pam” it’s too late your dead.

Best Kill:- Another Non-Jason death. Our victim is strapped to a tree by a belt around his eyes and the killer proceeds to twist the belt making it tighter squashing his eyeballs into his head, brutal stuff.

Friday 13th Part 6 Jason Lives. And so he does in 1986, at last supernatural Jason takes centre stage in a brilliant plot device that ignores the last film almost completely.
Tommy Jarvis is back, he’s not an insane killer he’s just stupid.

Jason is buried in a cemetery (with mask still attached of course) and is actually dead with his own tombstone and Tommy and his pal decide to dig Jason up and destroy the body once and for all as Tommy is haunted by Jason in his dreams and so in a fit of rage and some unbelievable odds Tommy impales Jason with a piece of iron fence that is struck by lightening reviving Jason into an all powerful killing machine, Opps.

Tommy retreats after his friend has his heart ripped out and flees to Crystal Lake (now Forest Green as the old name seemed to effect the tourist trade) knowing that’s where Jason will return. With Tommy’s mental past the police find it hard to believe him and so blame him for the recent spat of murders that are occurring.

With the help of the Sheriff’s daughter Megan, Tommy hatches a plan to send Jason to the bottom of Crystal Lake, Jason by now has killed all the new counsellors at Camp Body Count and is lured into the lake where Tommy and Megan wait and eventually send him to the bottom of the lake with some chains and a rock, and so we see Jason is finally dead”¦.. No wait he opened his eye and clenched his fist, Grrrrrrr.

Best Kill:- A teenage girl gets dragged into the bathroom in their RV whilst her boyfriend drives, Jason then smashes her head into the mirror and continues pushing so a perfect imprint of her head comes through the wall on the other side.

Friday 13th Part 7 The New Blood is a venture into the ridiculous for the Voorhees franchise in 1988, not that being electrocuted back to life or being hacked to pieces and still living isn’t ridiculous, but Jason is put against his greatest match, a girl called Tina with telekinetic powers.
The film starts showing the girl at seven years old killing her father, after he abused her mother, by collapsing the jetty he was standing on into Crystal Lake.

Ten years later Tina is still struggling to cope with guilt of killing her father so her mother, the most loving mother in the world, sends her back to their family home where she killed her father (if that doesn’t work nothing will) to be studied by an exploitive psychiatrist with a hidden agenda, now what could that be.

His skills as a psychiatrist are basically shouting verbal abuse at her to increase her mental powers which leads to her accidentally breaking the chains round Jason’s neck that Tommy used to sink Voorhees in Part 6, Oh no!

Jason is obviously quite annoyed at being left on the ocean floor for years and kills everyone near by, including some more kids partying in a cabin down the road and after he has made up for lost time it’s time for the final battle between Tinakinetic powers and Jason, She spins him round, sends him up and down, makes his mask tighten and break revealing his decaying face and finally exploding the family cabin.

Jason is pretty hard though and keeps coming and just when he is about to kill Tina on the Jetty her dead father (presumably brought back to life through her powers) explodes through the jetty, grabs Jason and brings him back to the bottom of the lake, now that’s redemption for abusing her mother isn’t it.

Best Kill:- And probably the best kill of the series, A terrified teenager decides the safest place to hide would be in her tent in her sleeping bag, alas Jason is not an idiot and drags the sleeping bag outside where he smashes it into a tree killing her instantly, it’s hilarious and quite brilliant, so much so in Jason X it’s copied with two girls and two sleeping bags hit against a tree multiple times. Fantastic.

Friday 13th Part 8 Jason Takes Manhattan in 1989, The greatest title of the series and another start that ignores the previous sequel.
Jason is stuck at the bottom of the lake but not by a dead father of Tina, he just is dead.
A randy couple of teenagers on a boat weigh anchor into Crystal Lake which hits an underwater power cable that resurrects Jason who quickly dispatches them and takes a hockey mask the boy used to scare his girlfriend, haha not funny now.

Jason then grabs an anchor of a large boat heading to Manhattan for a graduation party from Crystal Lake as he is probably sick of the sight of Crystal Lake, too many bad memories. Our heroine Rennie is onboard with other soon to be dead teenagers and she starts having visions of Jason as a child drowning and soon the kids start getting killed off and one thing leads to another the boat starts to sink after an explosion and five of the group and Rennie’s dog escape on a row boat to Manhattan.

Jason follows suit and arrives killing a few more on his hunt for Rennie, it’s here we learn that Rennie was almost drowned in crystal lake by Jason as a child, so I take it Jason wanted to finish the job which is why he targeted Rennie, heavy vendetta!

The chase continues through dark alleys and Jason finally meets his demise in the sewers of New York where for some reason toxic waste is used to flush the sewers and it melts Jason away leaving the body of a young Jason”¦.now that’s closure.
You hardly saw any of Manhattan and he certainly didn’t take it so bit disappointing overall.

Best Kill:- Has to be amateur boxer Julius who admirably takes on Jason when he is cornered giving him punch after punch pushing him closer to the edge of a building but Jason has last punch knocking his block off, with one punch decapitating Julius. What a knock out.

Friday 13th Part 9 Jason goes to Hell: The Final Friday (again) 1993 and probably the worst of the series as Jason is hardly in it.
It opens with an unexplained resurrected Jason stalking a woman who leads him into an FBI trap where they shoot him up then blow him to pieces. The remains are then taken to a morgue where the coroner gets hypnotised by Jason’s beating heart, the coroner then decides to eat it therefore leading him to be possessed by Jason’s demonic spirit. Oh dear.

The spirit then transfers from host to host through a terrible looking snake creature and many bodies lay dead. A cool character is introduced in bounty hunter Creighton Duke who seems to know all about Jason and delivers a n explanation to try explain a way to finally kill Jason “Through a Voorhees Jason was born and so through one he can be reborn, and that only by the hands of another member of the Voorhees family can Jason finally be destroyed”.

Jason then tries to locate and get reborn through a relative, so lucky then that he finds Diana who’s his half sister and her daughter Jessica. In a crazy twist of fate Diana is killed and so it’s down to Jessica to finish off Jason using a magic knife (The Bone knife from the Evil Dead films) to the heart which is given by Duke, the knife is the only thing that can kill and send Jason to Hell.

In the final fight, Jessica faces a Jason possessed body who has his head chopped off and the weird Jason Soul snake escapes and finds his Diana, his half sisters dead body and is reborn back into Jason with boiler suit and hockey mask, Right on!

Jason is stabbed through the heart which sends him to hell and all that remain is his mask, and that’s the end of Jason. BUT NO, The hockey mask is shown laying on some sand and as the camera pulls back Freddy Krueger’s clawed hand reaches out and grabs Jason’s mask and brings it to hell, Awesome!!

Best Kill:- Probably one of most goriest kills and most badly timed as two teenagers are caught doing the thing in a tent that Jason hates the most, so to show his disapproval Jason impales the girl with a spike and rips it through her upwards cutting her in two .

Friday the 13th 10, Jason X.
Released in 2002 but initially set in 2008 to avoid problems with the timeline with Freddy vs Jason being released in 2003 as that would have been ridiculous!

Jason has been captured by the U.S Government and held at the ridiculously named Crystal Lake Research Facility where they have unsuccessfully tried to execute Jason so they intend to cryogenically freeze him to neutralize the threat which surprising goes badly and he kills everyone except our heroine Rowan who lures him into the cryonic chamber where she is stabbed but along with Jason is frozen.

And to finally end any chance of adding a further sequel (so you would think) we head over 400 years into the future to the year 2455, Earth is polluted and vacant and our two popsicle roommates are found by a research ship and taken to their spaceship to go to Earth 2.

Amazingly they have a machine that can heal any wound using nanotechnology which fixes Rowan and she warns that Jason is not dead, To cut a long story short (Too late!) Jason is accidentally thawed out and starts killing, he kills more randy teenagers and a bunch of marines led by Seargent Brodski are quickly dispatched.

Jason finally comes face to face with a female android programmed to fight who kicks his ass shooting off his leg, abdomen and chest, one arm and most of his head and is dead, Yeah! but look you fools he’s fallen in the Nano repair machine, why are you walking away!!

Jason is rebuilt into Uber-Jason, making him part cyborg and quite angry but Brodski comes back and saves everyone by blowing him out into space but Jason doesn’t give up and comes back to the ship where some futuristic Holograph machine creates a version of Crystal Lake with frolicking girls to distract Jason whilst they fix the ship to escape. Hilariously Jason recreates the girl in a sleeping bag against a tree kill with two of them this time pounding them over and over (probably one of my favourite scenes in the franchise) and then gets bored and starts the hunt for the survivors.

Jason is again ejected into space but as he comes back again Brodski, the sly dog, grabs him wearing a jetpack suit and flies him into the Earth 2′s atmosphere where they burn up on entry and killing Jason once and for all, unless the image of just his mask floating to the bottom of a lake after surviving the heat of re-entry can possibly mean anything else”¦

Best Kill:- Adrienne, Jason wakes up from his hibernation and the first thing he does grab the girl by the head, sticks it in a vat of liquid Nitrogen that freezes her head than smashes it on the table shattering it to pieces, Brilliant brilliant death.

Freddy VS Jason, 2003

Finally the battle we have been waiting for since the ending of Friday 13th Part 9 ten years previous and what was made was a very well thought out story and a pretty decent horror film.

The basic story is that Freddy is trapped in hell and has been forgotten by the children of Springwood and so he finds Jason Voorhees in Hell and disguised as his mum Pamela Voorhees, instructs Jason to go to Elm Street in Springwood to kill so to get the kids thinking of Freddy again.

Jason does the business and Freddy is mentioned in the aftermath and so our heroine Lori dreams about Freddy but not giving him enough power to kill in dreams. Lori awakens and tells her friends of the dream and so they dream of Freddy giving him more power but the problem is Jason isn’t going to stop killing and step aside for Freddy to return.

The kids hatch a plan to get Jason to Camp Crystal Lake and to draw Freddy from Lori’s dreams into reality to finish it once and for all. They manage to drug Jason to sleep and get him there then Lori sleeps and finally gets Freddy into reality and the two legends face off revealing in the process that Freddy killed Lori’s mother blah blah, the two continue to fight and fight really well with machete and glove slashing and stabbing, until finally Freddy gets stabbed with his own decapitated arm and glove then gets his head decapitated by Lori as Jason’s falls into Crystal Lake due to his injuries. They are both dead.

But Noooooooooo, Jason rises from the lake holding Freddy Krueger’s decapitated head still alive and giving a wink to the camera and that’s that.

Best Kill:- Trey, Is stabbed multiple times with Jason’s Machete whilst in bed and if that wasn’t enough whilst laying face down Jason folds the bed in half so Trey’s feet are touching the back of his head.

Friday the 13th 2009.

A pointless remake adding nothing to the franchise.
Basically a reboot cash in to show Jason Voorhees to a new generation that won’t except the cheap looking versions of the early films this is the same film as the Friday the 13th parts 2-4 but with some added plot to make it modern.

The film starts off showing a young Jason witnessing his mother being beheaded by a camp counsellor then jumps 30 years later to where a group of friends are camping trying to locate some marijuana that was grown in the forest (hey, there teenagers right) they are all murdered except Whitney who he kidnaps because she resembles his mother.

Six weeks later Whitney’s brother Clay (Supernatural’s Jared Padalecki) is searching for her near Crystal Lake and Jenna and her group of young friends are also coming to town to stay in a cabin to party.

The kids all start to get killed off in pretty gruesome ways and Clay and Jenna go off to search for Whitney who find her chained up. They escape but Jenna is caught and killed and so Clay and Whitney run to safety, Whitney pretends to be Mrs. Voorhess and then stabs Jason with his own Machete and Clay dumps Jason’s body in the Lake but as They leave the dock Jason burst through the wooden dock and takes Whitney into the Lake.

It was all too similar to the originals for me and Jason did what he did best which is killing teenagers but with more realistic FX, but there was no scares that were not predictable and no added story to the great character of Jason.

Best Kill:- Teenager camper is sitting round the fire screaming like a girl because he has his foot caught in a bear trap and within seconds Jason appears and slams his machete straight into his head to shut him up.

Although mildly enjoyable it is completely unnecessary reboot and it’s already got a sequel in development that will hopefully add something more but in the hands of Michael Bay producing I doubt it.

And so from one Michael (Bay) who murdered Transformers my next part of the Halloween special will be the murdering star of the Halloween Films Michael Myers.