4

The Psychologist In Halloween Is Good For One Movie Only

Halloween is about escaped serial killer Michael Myers and his constant run-ins with anyone who has the gall to exist on October 31st. While he was institutionalized, he was treated by Doctor Loomis, who alternatively blames handcuffs, an inept mental hospital, and himself for Michael slipping away. So from movie to movie, Loomis kind of follows Michael around, brandishing a gun and screeching at random townsfolk about the evil that's on the loose. He doesn't really accomplish anything, and his purpose in the plot is to basically fill the other characters in on why they're suddenly being pursued by death incarnate. He's six movies' worth of exposition stacked in a trench coat.

And the guys who have played Loomis are no slouches. Donald Pleasance, whom you may remember as the scarred Bond villain template who created the rockets that ate other rockets, brings a kind of manic I-Haven't-Slept-In-Eight-Years charm to the role. And in the Rob Zombie remake series, Loomis is played by Malcolm McDowell, a man unburdened by all of the regular laws of performing, going from overacting to underacting within the same syllable of a word. And both of them don't make sense past the credits of the first movie.

See, they're Captain Ahab characters. Michael Myers is their white whale. And while it's fun to watch two distinguished British men out-act every teenage thespian in the room, at some point, they need to fall victim to their inevitable tragic destinies. They need to pass the baton over to these teenage actors. Otherwise, the movies just devolve into an endless cycle of yelping 17-year-olds being saved in the nick of time by borderline octogenarians. Give the kids the whole "I spent seven years trying to reach him and eight years trying to keep him locked up. Also, bullets seem to be fucking useless" spiel and take a knife to the stomach for the good of the community.

When they're around past the first movie, you absolutely know that the rest of the cast is going to be cannon fodder, or ax fodder, or telephone cord fodder, or electric converter fodder. They're going to be waiting around to die until the next graduating class of the UCLA Department of Theater steps in. And I hate to vouch for kids who make decisions like "This is the murderer's childhood bedroom? GIVE ME THAT DICK, BOY," but it would be way more interesting to watch those teens carry the series after they ran into an expert in serial killing for an hour. I mean if he can't stop Michael, how are the kids going to do it? Well, that's the point: It makes them underdogs, and not the objects of our murder fetish. We ... we all have that fetish, right?

3

Killing Off Hannibal At The End Of Hannibal Would've Made Him Bearable

On the other side of the movie slasher spectrum is Hannibal Lecter -- specifically, the version played by Anthony Hopkins. Starting as a serious, menacing presence in The Silence Of The Lambs, he evolves into an infallible cartoon as the films go on. Hopkins' performance becomes an audition for the role of a Hannibal Lecter action figure. To put it in ways that we all can understand and appreciate, his role in Silence is Michael Jackson's "Bad." His role in Hannibal is Pitbull's cover of Michael Jackson's "Bad."

2

Why Does The Director Keep Surviving King Kong?

King Kong is one of the most indelible characters in movie history. The story of a giant ape taken from his island home and then shot down off the top of a skyscraper is tattooed on our pop culture subconscious. I believe beloved Cracked.com staple John Cheese put it best when he said, "Daniel, you sexual Tyrannosaur, pay attention. King Kong is life, and I will not stop until the world knows that."

1

There Is No Logic Behind Dexter Being Kept Alive

At the end of the eighth season of Dexter, Dexter Morgan -- serial killer, narrator, father, and pulled pork sandwich devotee -- takes his beloved sister, Deb, off of life support and dumps her body in the ocean. He then proceeds to drive his boat out into a hurricane, where he supposedly perishes. But a few minutes later, you see that he's totally okay. PSYCH, viewers! You thought you were going to get closure to the show that you've been dedicated to for the better part of a decade, but instead you got the old "Eh, eh? He might be back in the ol' killin' habit? Mayyyyyyybe."

This ending is infuriating because it is, as we critics and scholars like to say, dumb as hell. But that's just the most obvious reason. Why couldn't Deb survive, while Dexter gets wiped out? I understand that we wouldn't have the heartfelt scene wherein Dexter has to pull the plug on a family member, but was there any suspense about that in the first place? Dexter is all about killing people he has connections to. Season after season, Dexter wrestles with killing people he's grown attached to, and very rarely does he pick the option that involves continued breathing. So when he kills Deb, who is brain-dead at this point, it's just him checking another thing off his to-do list.

But Deb, who has gotten about three episode's worth of character development in the span of eight seasons, would benefit greatly from having to mercy-kill her brother, because there's actually a question as to whether or not she'll go through with it. Unlike Dexter, who's made a habit of killing family, friends, neighbors, kiosk dudes at the mall, etc., Deb doesn't have a packed resume of crime. Will she leave her brother be, or will she make the decision to end the life of the most successful killer since Vlad the Impaler?

That's way more interesting than pretending that Dexter might not do something that he's obviously gonna do. Plus, it would resolve the series, rather than delivering one big wink to the people sitting at home. Dexter's a pleasant antihero, but since he's ritualistically carved his way through half of Miami, I don't think I'll be that torn up if his sister decides that he isn't exactly a great role model to have around.

Daniel has a podcast about Top 40 music and a Twitter.

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