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As expected, Believer is getting savaged by fans and critics. But director David Gordon Green has a more serious problem to worry about. According to film and theatre critic Ed Whitfield, prior to his death William Friedkin vowed to return from the grave to possess Green and make his life a living hell. Here's the full quote:

"William Friedkin once said to me, "Ed, the guy who made these new 'Halloween' is about to make one to my movie, "The Exorcist." That's right, my signature film is about to be extended by the man who made "Pineapple Express." I don't want to be around when that happens. But if there's a spirit world, and I come back, I plan to possess David Gordon Green and make his life a living hell."

https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2023/10/6/g40s2lbt30b0vkas2b6ikk3a146jfo

If Green suddenly starts swearing backwards, trolling Nicolas Winding Refn on social media, and directing really great car chases, then we'll know that Friedkin's spirit has slipped into the driver's seat.

Since my previous post I've watched A Page of Madness (1926), X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963) and Evil Dead Rise (2023). For spooky seasonal reading, I'm currently halfway through Dracula the Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker, and I've just bought a copy of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux to read next.

Right now I'm just watching/reading general horror, but in the second half of October I'm going to focus on more specifically Halloween-related things.

This coming weekend (if possible) will be Nosferatu The Vampyre. This is the rare remake which I think actually exceeds the original. The dialogue, the creepy atmosphere, the sinister production design, Dracula's resemblance to Orlok, etc. Against all odds, Nosferatu The Vampyre is a worthy remake. Highly recommended!

The last time I watched Herzog's Nosferatu was when I was about 16 or 17. I need to check it out again. Murnau's original is one of my favourite vampire films, so I prefer that to the remake. But the remake is certainly good and I've seen a lot of film buffs saying they enjoy it more than the 1922 movie.

After that is Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. This is "the funny one". Yes, it's still a horror film. But it's less determined to be scary than its predecessors. I won't say this one's my favorite. But I do adore it.

I've never really liked the Friday the 13th series. I've seen every instalment in the franchise, but I still regard it as a poor man's Halloween. A Nightmare on Elm Street is my favourite slasher franchise, so when it comes to the whole Freddy vs. Jason debate I'm firmly on Team Freddy. That said, I remember Jason Lives being the F13 film I enjoyed the most. Partly because of the humour, but also because it has a more gothic visual flair than the earlier movies. I read somewhere that the director was influenced by Hammer movies, and it shows. The death scenes are also more creative in Part VI than in the earlier films.

Finally, there's The Lost Boys, a perennial favorite. I simply can't say enough good things about The Lost Boys. A true classic, if you ask me.

The Lost Boys is unquestionably a classic. I just re-watched it last month and it's aged like fine wine. Great visuals, great soundtrack, a skilful blend of horror, comedy and action. I generally don't like eighties teen movies, but there's something about The Lost Boys that clicks with me. It clicked with me when I first saw it at the age of 12, and it still clicks with me now in a more nostalgic sense. I always identified strongly with the Sam character. When I was a teenager I used to hang around in comic book stores and I had friends exactly like the Frog brothers. Guys who were into martial arts, comics and air guns and who acted as if they were commandoes. I also have an older brother named Michael who's cooler than me. So all that stuff resonated.

I think one of the reasons The Lost Boys works so well is that it gets across a more male-centric view of adolescence than the average teen film. Most teen movies focus on the female experience or on romance, but The Lost Boys is a more aggressive masculine film. It focuses on the love-hate relationship between brothers, the power dynamics within male groups where different people are competing for alpha status, dangerous peer pressure, the difficulties of adapting/changing in order to fit in, the immature way young males view girls as idealised trophies to be competed for, the irrational macho impulse to save face when confronted with violent and potentially life-threatening challenges, and so forth. Other films have used vampires and werewolves as a metaphor for adolescence, but few have done so as successfully as The Lost Boys.

The scene where the mother tries talking to Michael after he comes home late and he just wants to go to bed always struck me as real. I expect every teenage boy has had that experience, where a parent or older relative was trying to communicate with him and he just wanted to be left alone. Beneath the fantasy veneer, there's a kernel of emotional and psychological realism in The Lost Boys. It captures the excitement and awfulness of being a male teenager better than any other horror film I can think of. It's my favourite Joel Schumacher movie, and I rank it alongside Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark as the greatest modern day vampire film. I love both of those movies. Interestingly, they both came out in 1987, both have terrific soundtracks, and both feature sons of Exorcist star Jason Miller in prominent roles: Jason Patric in The Lost Boys and Joshua John Miller in Near Dark.

That family has some impressive horror movie credentials. But yes, The Lost Boys is superb. Looking back on it now, I can totally see why WB thought Schumacher would be a perfect choice for Batman. Chris O'Donnell's Dick Grayson wouldn't have been out of place in Santa Carla. In some ways, Michael can be seen as a prototype for Schumacher's Robin – a headstrong young biker with a strong attachment to his family, who gets drawn into a dark vampiric subculture, stumbles into a cave and is transformed into a violent creature of the night. I would've loved a Schumacher Batman film made in the same style and tone as The Lost Boys.

I recently read the prescient science fiction novel Remake by Connie Willis after one of my favourite YouTube reviewers recommended it, and when contemplating its themes I couldn't help thinking about The Flash.

The book takes place in a future Hollywood where filmmaking has become entirely computerised. The big studios are buying up the smaller production companies so that only a few conglomerates now monopolise the industry. They no longer shoot live action footage, but instead simply remake or sequelise old films using elements digitally harvested from pre-existing footage. This leads to constant litigation over the legality of using deceased actors in new movies, but the studios are able to get around this and insert dead performers into new productions. Old films are digitally censored to remove objectionable elements such as cigarettes or alcohol – in some cases completely ruining plots and character arcs – and special 'happy ending' cuts are made available in which movies with downbeat endings have their conclusions altered. Meanwhile Hollywood itself is populated by soulless drones trying to make themselves look like dead stars and numbing their senses with alcohol, drugs and meaningless sex.

Willis published this book in 1995, and it's eerie how accurately she predicted the current state of the film industry. She anticipated the increasingly destructive role that computer technology would play in moviemaking (I imagine she was inspired by the innovative tech showcased in movies like T2 and Jurassic Park, but also by nineties adverts that utilised footage of dead actors), as well as the death of the modern movie star and the studio obsession with recycling pre-existing IP rather than creating new stories. The book's themes touch upon censorship, the preservation of art and the ethics of exploiting deceased actors, and that latter theme is where it really connects with The Flash. In the Flash we saw no fewer than three deceased actors – George Reeves, Christopher Reeve and Adam West – resurrected via computer technology; all for a movie that largely recycled ideas and characters that have been depicted better in earlier productions.

It's almost as though Willis had glimpsed the state of Hollywood in 2023 and decided to write a dystopian novel about it 28 years earlier. And while I hate to admit it, there aren't many movies that better encapsulate that sorry state than The Flash.

I'm generally not into fan fiction, but for years now I've been seeing recommendations everywhere for Star Trek Continues, a TOS fan series produced between 2013 and 2017. I finally decided to give it a shot, and I'm glad I did. It's by far the best fan production I've seen for any franchise. And it's the first Star Trek production of the past twenty years that I've actually enjoyed. A testament to its quality lies in the fact I can forget it's a fan-made series about a minute into each episode. It's so absorbing, I feel like I'm watching missing episodes of TOS.

The show does a great job of capturing the look and feel of sixties Trek. I've read that the people behind it managed to get hold of the set designs from the original series in order to recreate the Enterprise precisely. It's also lit, shot and edited to look like the classic series, using the original score, and they've applied some kind of digital grain filter to approximate the look of 1960s 35mm film stock. It's uncanny how similar it feels to TOS Trek. The production values are excellent.

The cast is also good. Vic Mignogna manages to capture Kirk's mannerisms well, and from certain camera angles he even resembles a young Shatner. Scottie is played by Chris Doohan, the son of the original Scottie James Doohan. The first episode features Michael Forest reprising his role as Apollo from the original series episode 'Who Mourns for Adonais?' Several TNG actors also make guest appearances (playing new characters), including Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis and John de Lancie.

Jason Isaacs, Lou Ferrigno, Erin Gray and Mark Rolston all guest star in episodes, and Doctor Who actors Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant also make appearances. I mentioned years ago in the Doctor Who thread that I was featured in a newspaper article with Colin Baker when I was 10 years old, where we were photographed and interviewed together, so it was nice for me to see someone I've met in a Star Trek production.

It's not just the cast and production values that are impressive. The quality of the writing is also high and each episode has a central idea at its core, which is a hallmark of classic Trek. I've only watched four of the eleven episodes so far, but I've enjoyed all of them. There's a particularly strong episode titled 'Fairest of Them All' which is a direct continuation of the original series episode 'Mirror, Mirror'. It begins with a recreation of the final conversation between Kirk and the Mirror Universe Spock in 'Mirror, Mirror', and from there we witness what happens when the evil Kirk is returned to his ship, with the entire episode taking place in the Mirror Universe. It's a superb sequel to one of Star Trek's greatest episodes.

I might post more about this series when I've watched the other episodes, but for now I just wanted to recommend it. Gene Roddenberry's son, Rod Roddenberry, has endorsed the show and said that he thinks his father would have considered it canon. I have no problem accepting it as such. If, like me, you've found that official Trek over the past couple of decades has left you cold, then this fan series is the perfect antidote. TOS fans need to see it.

All eleven episodes are available free on YouTube.

I saw Halloween (2018) a couple of years ago, but I still haven't seen either of the sequels. I've been keeping out of this thread for a while now to avoid spoilers. However Halloween Kills is currently on Netflix, so I've added it to the list of horror films I'm hoping to watch during October.

I've already watched several old horror films this month that I'd not seen before, including The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), Dos monjes (1934) and Return of the Daimajin (1966).I'll probably watch Halloween Kills soon. I also want to re-watch The Exorcist for its 50th anniversary, and I always like to revisit a few of Roger Corman's Poe movies around this time of year. I'm aiming to balance my October viewing between movies I'm familiar with and films I've not seen before.

If we're talking the most nineties Superman redesign, I'd like to nominate the armoured costume the Mother Box created for him in Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey Vol 1 #3 (June 1994). This has all the marks of a nineties eXtreme Liefeldian makeover: lots of straps/belts, unnecessary pouches, shoulder pad, armour plating, etc.

It even has weapons built into it, including a sonic gun and a sword.

It looks like an action figure. In fact an action figure was produced based on it.

It doesn't get more nineties than that.

These days, my viewpoint has shifted completely the other way. I say go classic or go home. No need to change his uniform in any substantial way.

I feel that way about both Superman and Batman's costumes. Stick to the classic designs, including the trunks.

This is a fun video.

Course, now it's unlikely a Keaton Batman Beyond trilogy will ever happen, but I think I would've been very OK with these ideas.

That outline for a Batman Beyond trilogy is so good, it's actually kind of painful to contemplate. I doubt the Christina Hodson-scripted BB movie would have been that good, but this video shows that other fans are clearly thinking along the same lines as us. If only the studio was too.

The AI-generated image of the Keaton clone is eerily evocative of a young Keaton, and yet strangely unlike him at the same time. It almost looks like a cross between Keaton and Paul Rudd. Very uncanny valley.

This guy ^, with the same strength, skills, intelligence and weaponry as Bat-Keaton but the mental stability of Patrick Bateman, would make a terrifying villain.

Back in 2019 the prospect of a Batman Beyond movie with Keaton seemed like an impossible dream.

In 2021 it seemed like a highly plausible possibility.

In 2023 it seems like a highly unlikely pipedream that's destined to be a missed opportunity.

But at least we have James Gunn's Creature Commandoes and Amanda Waller TV shows to look forward to...

That's a terrific interview, KeatonisBatman! Thanks for sharing.

I had no idea that was Witting in Catch Me If You Can and all those Scorsese films. Between his screen acting, theatre and directing work, he's had a solid career. It's a pity his other scene with Jan Hooks at the masquerade ball was never filmed. It sounds like that might've offered a payoff for the nose-biting scene.

I'll keep an eye out for Witting in Scorsese's The Killers of the Flower Moon later this year.

They can take what you did, Batman or whatever, and culturally misappropriate it, or whatever you want to call it. Even though you're a slave of Disney or Warner Brothers, they can do whatever they want. So in my latter years of life, I'm in quiet revolt against all this.

This sounds like the closest we'll get to having Burton comment on The Flash. His choice of words – specifically 'misappropriate' – indicates a less than favourable perspective. Perhaps that's why he hasn't spoken more openly about The Flash and the Batman '89 comic. It is his Batman after all, and yet it doesn't seem to have occurred to the studio to invite his participation in either of these projects. I'm going to take his 'quiet revolt' as tacit condemnation.