Review Detail

9.5 3 10
The Shape & Ghosts.jpg
FanMix February 25, 2016 3445
Overall rating
 
10.0
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
10.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
I find it really hard to be objective when it comes to John Carpenter's movies (and now maniac51's edits), well maybe with the exception of the latter part of his career. In his prime I don't think any single director made movies that oozed with as much tension as him. maniac51 does another exceptional job of taking two of Carpenter's finest works and smashing them together to make a fun, lean ride.

Halloween, now "The Shape" is Halloween but stripped down to it's most essential moments. Yeah, you miss out on some fun stuff, a few Loomis one-liners for instance, but it's still Halloween in tone. I love the original film, I had two posters of the movie in my room growing up and I really enjoyed this edit of that film. Stripping out the extraneous dialogue and sequel-teasing work surprisingly well. It won't replace my numerous copies of the original but when viewed as a double feature as intended it's a great watch.

As for "The Fog" I know the original gets a lot of flack for being slow but it's always been a film that worked for me. It was the first Carpenter film I ever saw and I remember my friend goading me about how the fog would get us. As a kid I can honestly say fog terrified me for a good while. I still love the movie but I can see it's flaws. maniac51 addresses some of the problematic elements of the movie namely its pace and dialogue dumps. Cutting a lot of this material again feels organic and the edit is completely seamless.

I agree with the previous reviewer that Halloween is by far the superior film and the double feature is top heavy but I really appreciated the time and care that went into cutting both films. These double features have been great to watch and see the same films I have seen many, many (probably too many) times but in a different light.

User Review

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Yes
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Digital
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