Mr. Halloween

Obviously a micro budgeted film, Mr. Halloween is a Wolf family affair, written by Cody and Andrew, the latter also directing.  Amongst the credits are other members of the Wolf family (Josh, Lori, Phyllis, Leanna and Amber), either playing children, acting in one of the lead roles, or designing costumes. 
 
The film is set in Sauquoit, a small town in New York where, every year a reclusive gentleman by the name of Bill Loomis puts on a proper Halloween show by turning his garage into a haunted house.  Those who've been through it either state how realistic it is and suspect that Mr. Halloween uses real body parts or laugh it off as great effects.  The rumour about the realism does have some weight because Sauquoit has the highest missing persons rate in the entire US.
 

Friends Jack, Jason, Jill and Michael seem confused by the sheer numbers of kids that have gone missing and the Sheriff's utter disinterest of getting to the bottom of the case.  They are also interested in Loomis' haunted house but are wary of visiting it just in case the rumours are true - in any case, they aren't allowed out after dark because of the spate of disappearances.  Jason and Michael (spot the slasher movie references) work out a way of going during an evening when they plan to watch a pirated DVD.  Sneaking around outside Mr. Halloween's house, they look through a window and see the loner hacking up what appears to be a human body but, of course, it can't be and must be a prop for his attraction.  When Loomis notices them, he gives chase and Michael trips over a gravestone which seems to indicate that Bill Loomis died in 1951. 
 
With references to Halloween (or Psycho if you trace the name right back) and Friday the 13th, Mr. Halloween is obviously written by a couple of horror fanboys who know the conventions and wanted to make a film with the limited money available.  As such, this isn't the most adventurous or entertaining of films and certainly won't be a must-watch on October 31st in years to come.  It is outrageously amateurish with the signs that the filmmakers know all the camera angles and want to use every last one of them, whether the script calls for them or not.  There are exterior scenes where the soundtrack is muffled by the wind blowing on the microphone and the gore effects are laughable as the blood is an obvious effect, blown out of a squeezy ketchup bottle, often going in directions where blood wouldn't and landing on items for aesthetic reasons rather than realism. 
 
There is nothing particularly endearing or intelligent about Mr. Halloween, it just shows that the most influential of horror films are still influencing filmmakers to this day and Carol Clover's writings on the genre still apply some 20 years on.  Some low budget horror movies are charming and eminently watchable - Mr. Halloween isn't one of them.  The acting is far from convincing and the constant switching of camera angles was annoying rather than interesting.
 
The main flaw is that the villain is completely inadequate, looking nothing like the scary knife wielding clown on the front cover.  Bill Loomis is a fairly ordinary looking bloke in his mid-50s with a dodgy moustache whose idea of scaring people in his haunted house (other than gruesomely realistic displays) is to don a cheap zombie mask and laugh at them loudly!
 
 

The Disc

 
Picture and Sound
Shockingly, for a DVD with an RRP of £12.99, the picture is letterboxed.  It's not the best of transfers, grainy and badly defined, to begin with but to put it in a 4:3 frame is ridiculous for a DVD priced this high.  The low budget is obvious with a string of 'world's least convincing...' settings and characters, led by the Sheriff in the Sheriff's office which seems to be an empty town hall with two desks and two computers, neither of which are on at any time!  The filming drains all tension from the film and the terrible score doesn't help.  The dialogue is hit and miss when it comes to clarity and, as I've said, the microphone occasionally picks up the wind and sounds horrible.
 
Final Thoughts
This is a bad movie on a bad disc with only trailers as extra features.  Mr. Halloween shows that ambition is no substitute for talent and this is no great first time effort like The Evil Dead or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre - it's instantly forgettable and not in the slightest bit scary.  Cody and Andrew Wolf may one day make a decent horror movie and look back on this and wonder what the hell they were doing.  I hope for their sakes this is the case.