“Halloween II” was not shown to press, but last night contributor Phil Fava attended a midnight screening just so he could file this report. Here’s Phil:

What was I expecting, here? I don’t know. I didn’t necessarily anticipate good taste or stunning craftsmanship, but I definitely didn’t anticipate this. Truth be told, I’m just angry. I was angry at this movie immediately. I almost want to forgo writing a review and send the director a list of my grievances instead. I’m not scared; I’m resentful.

Isn’t Zombie supposed to be a massive horror movie buff? Shouldn’t he be clued in slightly to what works and what doesn’t? I just wanna grab him and scream, “Stop trying to humanize your villain! Please! It completely works against you and serves no useful purpose!” Showing Michael as a small child with deep affection for his mother doesn’t make him scarier.

Anton Chigurh (”No Country for Old Men”) and Heath Ledger’s Joker were a thousand times more menacing than this limp juggernaut could ever be, and that’s because the Coen Brothers and Christopher Nolan had the good sense to avoid giving those characters lame expository passages to explain their behaviors. Every murder in this movie hits precisely the wrong note. Michael Myers is not seen as a malevolent force; he’s seen as an oaf with bizarre hallucinations who obeys his wraith-like mother’s every command.

When I see a human being murdering another human being, it doesn’t scare me. It just upsets me. It’s ugly and depressing. And honestly, even if this hacky, borderline-Oedipal character treatment had been done well, it still would’ve been counterproductive. But, for the record, it wasn’t. It was cheesy and embarrassing.

What else? Oh yeah. Nausea and fear are not interchangeable conditions. Carefully showing me a person’s stab wounds, again, does not scare me. It grosses me out. It makes me queasy. Never, ever confuse this with the kind of sensation experienced when watching a horror movie made with prowess and integrity (like, for instance, the original “Halloween”). He might as well be showing us feces.

Also, I’ve had it with the parade of grotesqueness. Another major self-defeating portion of this movie is attributable to Zombie’s penchant for giving us awful, insufferable, disgusting, scummy characters who exist merely so they can cease to do so moments later. This renders every killing totally inconsequential. Why should I care when Myers decapitates an ambulance driver who’s spent all his screen time happily discussing necrophilia? Why should I care when Myers bludgeons two men to death who’ve both just assaulted him for trespassing?

Even the color palette is completely inappropriate. The grungy look accentuates the wretchedness of these characters and augments the audience’s disinterest in their deaths. If the victims are cruel and arguably deserving and even the undeserving ones inhabit a dreary, unrealistic world, how can I conjure up any level of sympathy for them? How can I have a stake in their survival?

This is basic stuff, Zombie. Seriously, what the hell are you doing? Haven’t you made a few movies already? Have you learned nothing from them? Even if this were your first film, it’s not like you didn’t have an impeccable frame of reference. You’re remaking good movies and changing everything about them that made them so.

I felt a lot of things while I was watching “Halloween II”: depression, annoyance, discomfort. Mostly, it made me want to shower. This is an ugly, clumsy, surprisingly awful film. Like I said, I didn’t expect high art. But I definitely didn’t expect to hate it. And I really hated it. So did my fellow audience members. They, too, were disinterested. They didn’t scream. They didn’t gasp. They laughed when they weren’t supposed to. As a matter of fact, laughter was their only audible response. Let’s just say a prayer for Malcom McDowell and move on with our lives.

Tags: film, Halloween 2, Halloween II, movie, new, remake, review, rob zombie, zombie

Michael Mann’s (”Heat,” “Ali”) new picture is an adaptation of Brian Burrough’s book “Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-43.” It stars Johnny Depp as legendary criminal John Dillinger and Christian Bale as famed FBI agent Melvin Purvis. Billy Crudup is FBI head Herbert Hoover and the movie is called “Public Enemies.” Movieweb and Empire have two new pics. Here’s one.

Director George Miller (”The Road Warrior,” “Babe: Pig in the City”) is no longer helming the DC Comics’ hero-studded superhero flick “The Justice League of America.” Dark Horizons reports that if the project does get going again, he expects that it’ll be recast as “the studios seem to want bigger stars in their superhero movies now.”

They also report (through Production Weekly) that “Minority Report” writer and writer/director of the overlooked “The Lookout,” Scott Frank, is going to direct “Genesis: Apes”, 20th Century Fox’s attempt to restart the Apes franchise. After what Tim Burton did in his re-imagining of “Planet of the Apes,” it’ll take someone really talented to erase that stinky memory.

The box-office and critical disappointment of Walden Media’s “Prince Caspian” has led to some retooling of the studio’s “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” project, says Jim Hill Media. Original location shooting in Malta, Iceland, and Prague has been ditched in favor of filming two-thirds of the film in the huge water tank in Mexico that was used for “Titanic.” Casting is done, however, and they are still reportedly moving forward with the third installment in C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” saga, even though Disney has yet to officially greenlight the project. In my opinion, this series needs a major overhaul. Tapping Michael Apted, the guy who reinvented James Bond in “Casino Royale,” might be a good way to do it. Hope they can keep him.

Before he became leader of the Autobots, according to the original Transformers TV cartoon, Optimus Prime was a peaceful dock worker known as _______ Pax.

Tags: Bale, Depp, george, justice league of america movie, Mann, miller, planet of the apes, Public Enemies, remake, scott frank, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie

“The Incredible Hulk” director Louis Leterrier’s remake of “Clash of the Titans” will be filmed on backlots with lots of greenscreen digital backgrounds like Zack Snyder’s “300,” and will star Sam Worthington in the Harry Hamlin-originated role of Perseus. The only cause I see for celebration is that the movie is written by Lawrence Kasdan (”The Empire Strikes Back,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Body Heat”).

The original “Titans” was the last movie featuring the stop-motion genius of Ray Harryhausen and featured a hideous Medusa, a mechanical owl named Bubo, and the giant Kraken (found recently on my Top 10 Giant Monster Attacks! list). Zeus’ son Perseus is on a quest to save Princess Andromeda and he must jump through several hoops, including capturing Pegasus and slaying the snake-haired One.

Part of what made it so creepy and unreal was the stop-motion creatures, so I don’t know if straight-up CGI will be that interesting. Maybe there is a digital way to approximate the same jittery, otherworldly feel that Harryhausen’s creations had. That would be cool. Leterrier’s “Hulk” was just fine, a workmanlike combo of the TV show and comic, so I’m not expecting too much here, but Kasdan’s presence is reassuring.

Other Greek epics in production? Tarsem Singh’s “War of the Gods,” in which Theseus, a warrior from Greek mythology, leads a fight against the imprisoned titans. One thing that makes this story unique is that unlike some mythological tales, the Gods fight alongside mortals. with Tarsem (“The Fall”) on board, this could be visually stunning. Let’s hope it’s not also incoherent, like his earlier “The Cell.”

Brett Ratner’s “God of War” is based on a popular videogame and takes place in ancient Greece where the warrior Kratos, who tackles mythological beasts such as Medusa, Cyclops and the Hydra, is on a quest to find Pandora’s Box and destroy Ares, the God of war. with the recent announcement of the above two pictures, though, Ratner is going to have an uphill climb. This seems like the one that will benefit the most from being released first, if only because the others will probably be more visually stunning and cutting edge.

And then there’s the rumored “300″ sequel. (Which is really weird, considering that the 300 Spartans are all dead.) Well, it’s kind of a prequel. But not really. It will take place somewhere between the Battle of Thermoplyae, which was fought during “300″ and the Battle of Platea, which is the battle that was started at the end of the film. But before any of this can be filmed, Frank Miller (who’s still finishing up directing duties on “The Spirit”) has to complete another graphic novel. Can you say overkill?

Tags: 300, brett, Clash, frank, gods, harryhausen, kasdan, lawrence, Leterrier, Louis, miller, of, prequel, ratner, ray, remake, sequel, singh, Tarsem, the, Titans, war, wars