stephen.coverdale

Lets cut to the chase here. If you watch a film with the title Halloween 4, you know its not going to be Citizen Kane and as the critics have remarked how the sequel was responsible for the decline of the horror/slasher movies in the mid eighties then H4 is surely guilty as charged. However H4 is not the worst film in the series.The acting is mediocre and the script is littered with some horrendous dialogue(Check out Dr Loomis`s description of Michael Myers as "Evil on two legs") but hey, lighten up, this isn`t Shakespeare. H4 to an extent delivers the goods. Its short for starters, were not waiting an hour for the action to begin, its straight into it after a classy opening credits sequence. The characters are stock horror movie characters and thus we can relate to them. The gore is kept to a minimum (is that a good thing?) and there are a few minor shocks and twists along the way. The late great Donald Pleasance is at his eye bulging best and the film treats us to some dark humour involving some vigilante Rednecks out to nail Michael Myers but for me the major plus of this film is the John Carpenter penned music that was so well used in the first film. Surely this is one of the great movie theme tunes in history. In a nutshell H4 offers us nothing new but you pay your money and you get what you expect, a standard run of the mill low budget horror flick. hey I quite enjoyed it but don`t you think that Myers bloke is putting a bit of weight on.

Romper Stomper is a brutal and uncompromising movie that delivers a strange love story amidst scenes of savagery and chaotic violence. The fight and chase scenes are intense and are visually stunning almost drawing the viewer into the action. The actors are superb and play off each other well giving us the feel of a well shot documentary.However Romper Stomper is not without flaws,its pacing is weak and the protagonists are not well enough fleshed out, meaning that their actions are seemingly motiveless. The movie contains no sympathetic characters, even the Asians come across as violent thugs rather than victims and because of this the moral integrity of the film has to be in question. Unquestionably this is a film well worth seeing. Its well acted, well directed and it also has an original and unique look about it. In parts Romper Stomper is not unlike Kubrick`s` A Clockwork Orange as it shows the urban decay that scratches at the surface of society.