Well the day is finally upon us and today I review the movie that many of you have requested over the past few years.
The 1978 John Carpenter classic is as powerful 35 years on as it was back then. I am sure tonight millions and millions around the world will be dusting this off and giving it a watch.
I first saw this movie when I was 12 and it had a very profound effect on me. Although I found the whole thing a bit terrifying there was also a very generous feeling of awesomeness as well.
So the movie starts out 10 years before and we see a young Michael Myers butcher his sister in cold blood with a carving knife on Halloween night.
Myers is sent to a mental institute where he is locked up for life. A decade later a few days before Halloween Myers escapes from the hospital and heads home to cause more carnage.
Halloween is the ultimate archetype when it comes to slasher movies. Its a movie about an escaped mental patient who goes on the rampage killing teenage babysitters on the scariest night of the year. This movie was a forerunner when it came to "bad stuff happens to bad kids in horror movies" as all the people that die take drugs or have sex just before doing so.
The movie has a very strong cast and is very well performed. With movie veteran Donald Pleasance taking the role of Michael Myers psychiatric doctor and Jamie Lee Curtis (daughter of Pyscho scream queen Janet Leigh) playing the role of the ever gentle Laurie Strode. The on screen relationship between Dr Loomis and Michael Myers is a very comical to say the least. Although Loomis calls Myers a monster throughout the film and tries to kill him, he also has a sentimental bond with the character due to the fact that they have spent many years together.
The movie is very violent but not very bloody though. Apart from the first scene where a young Myers butchers his semi naked sister, the rest of the killings are mostly from strangulation's and the odd stabbing to a wall.
The movie was made with a very low budget for the time and raked in a huge profit as well as great critical acclaim worldwide making it an artistic and financial success. John Carpenter would go on to make many more classic films over the next decade or so but many of the films were a bit hit and miss.
Halloween II picks up right after where the first movie left off. With the same cast and crew as the first film this one really feels like your still watching the first movie.
So the story carries on from the last movie where the seemingly unkillable Michael Myers is still on the loose.
Laurie Strode is taken to the nearby hospital but she is followed by the faceless killer whose motive is revealed in spectacular fashion at the end of this movie.
The plot of this movie is pretty simple, Michael Myers goes to the hospital and hacks his way though it to get to Jamie Lee Curtis.
Halloween 2 is a great movie and is a more amped up version of the first movie. Where the first movie wasn't very bloody this movie is a right out ultra violent gore fest. People get scalded to death, eyes gauged out, stabbed slashed and there is a huge body count.
If you are planning to watch the first movie tonight, then I highly recommend putting this movie on straight after just so you can get some closure of the story. This movie made a lot at the box office and was a success all round. This was meant to be the end of the Michael Myers story but after Halloween III: The Season of the Witch bombed so badly without him, Myers would return 6 years later in a string of sequels which should be avoided like the plague.
Like all good horror movies from back in the day, Halloween was remade in 2007 and directed by shock rocker Rob Zombie.
The movie plot is the same but a lot more of the story revolves around the childhood and juvenile incarceration of Michael Myers. It turns out that Myers went off his head because of an abusive home life growing up.
Malcolm Mcdowell plays Dr Sam Loomis and does a pretty good job but he's no Donald Pleasance. There are lots of other cameos from other famous horror icons throughout and the casting is pretty badass.
Although this is a pretty decent remake there are many flaws with this one. The main one being Rob Zombie leaving his ultra violent stamp on everything and by that I mean turning Myers into a metal head and putting over his wife at every available opportunity. The are also 2 versions of this movie one which the cinemas released and another which didn't make the cut.
I saw the one that didn't make the cut and I understood why. It's a far more graphic version which has lots of senseless ultra vilent scenes, one of which is a rape scene of a female inmate at the asylum which has nothing to do with anything.
The 2007 remake of Halloween isn't too bad of a movie. Its entertaining, contemporary and has some good scares and thrills but does nothing to surpass the original movie what so ever.
A sequel of the 2007 remake was released in 2009 and from where I was sitting.. sucked major balls. Yeah there were a few cool things in this movie but all of that gets over shadowed with pointless scenes and even more crap just to put over Rob Zombies fucking wife!
They turn Dr Loomis into a fraud and Michael Myers into a hobo. This movie is pure junk and I can't even bring my self to go into the details of the plot. After reading this far into the article and you still don't get what a movie about Michael Myers is about, then.. I actually give up.
I don't do this with many films but all I can say is that this movie is a pure waste of time and should be avoided at all costs, along with Halloween 3, 4, 5, 6 etc.
Well that's it for this years Halloween countdown. We hope you've enjoyed the articles and have a very good and Happy Halloween!
NOVEMBER
FLASHBACK REVIEW
Today is officially Flashback Friday! Flashback is one of the greatest side scrolling games ever made and was a huge deal back in the day when it was released on Amiga and the domestic consoles.
The game prided it self on being a CD Rom game which was packed onto a cartridge. The game had the most fluid animation and motion capture for its time, relying on the same technology used for the Prince of Persia games. Flashback was a side scrolling action platform game which also had some tricky puzzles to solve along the way.
The games plot is about a young man called Conrad Hart who stumbles upon an alien conspiracy to destroy all humans. He gets caught and his memory gets erased. He manages to escape but crash lands in a jungle on the planet Titan after he is shot down by an alien space craft.
In order to complete the game Conrad must get his memory back and stop the aliens before its too late. The game was a huge artistic and commercial success spanning over all of the big consoles and home computers. The games graphics were the best for its time and it has some of the smoothest animations of any video game made from that era.
The game was one of the first to use animated cut scenes which yes look dated today, but they were amazing at the time.
The game even used cut scenes when you used items or key cards which was pretty cool as well. The games overall game play and animations borrow heavily from the Prince of Persia series in which the main character runs, jumps, grabs onto ledges and climbs up them/swings down to navigate the levels.

The lead character of the game can die if he falls too far and has unlimited ammo in has hand gun. The fact you can draw and sheathe your weapon was a very innovative and cool addition for a game of its time. He also has a force field device which can be charged by machines located in certain parts of each level. When fully charged Conrad can take a few hits of gunfire. Later in the game you can pick up a laser force field device which deflects bullets right back at the enemies who fire them. There's also a teleportation device which you acquire later on in the game which teleports you to where ever you throw it. Because the game was pretty big save stations where implemented as well as a password system so you could power off without having to worry too much. The save station only worked for that period of play though and acted more as a level checkpoint.

The only real letdown with this game is the fact you have to do a lot of running around before you can complete a level. In fact you do more running around and solving puzzles than you do in combat. The games enemies are pretty cool and have fairly decent AI for a game made in the early 90's. The game was a huge success and is still a classic in many peoples eyes including mine.
Earlier this year Flashback was given a make over and remade for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 network by Ubisoft. The games difficulty has been increased and new features such as 360 aiming system has been added as well.
Although this is a pretty cool remake and a nod at the origina.
The only thing that lets it down is the poor voice acting. The cut scenes look beautiful in 2013 and the graphics are solid (and so they should be 20 years on).
A sequel to Flashback was made in 1995 called Fade to Black but I have never played it. I do plan to play it at some point though. Enjoy your weekend!
DECEMBER CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN
ARGOS 1993 CHRISTMAS CATALOG
Yes it's that time of year again! I haven't seen any Coca Colo trucks yet as I don't want much normal TV anymore (because its dog shit poor), but I have been told by someone who watches TV that its happened so I took their word for it.
Retro Argos catalogs are a big deal on Lost Entertainment and are the closest thing to a time machine you can find. Today we will be looking at the Argos Christmas catalog from 1993. Its not a big book and we will only be looking at the kids section.
So this page has some bubble bath bottles at the top which are themed on TV shows. There's a Gladiators one with a sticker of jet on the side and the lid is a molded Gladiator head which is awesome. I will be reviewing my Christmas gifts from 1993 and Gladiators plays a big part. There's also a bubble bath bottle shaped like Thunderbird 2 and a noddy one as well. I heard a funny joke about Noddy recently which really made me laugh. Why does Noddy have a little bell on his hat? Because he's a cunt!
This page also has some musical fairy lights wrapping paper and other generic Christmas items.
On this page we have some interesting stuff. The slogan on the bottom right hand side doesn't read very well to me. Surely it should say "get more for your money" instead of give? Oh well fuck it who cares apart from the internet spelling police.
On the top left hand side there is a Helix Treasure Chest which has a funny "contents not included" added on the side to make them bullet proof if a kid tries to sue them for not including the shitty Sonic the Hedgehog watch pictured inside of it. One of my friends still has one of these to this day and I have no idea what he keeps in it. One day I will find out and tell everyone.. if its something valuable I will just steal it or something.
On the top right we have Aladdin stationary sets and an Aladdin umbrella. Aladdin was the huge Disney movie from 1993 and was loved by both girls and boys so the toys and merch did very well that particular Christmas.
Now on to the bed sheets and we have some really cool sets to talk about. First up there's the Jurassic Park set which is just plain awesome. I have talked about the merchandise from this movie in many different articles on this site before. If you look on the side table by the bed you will spot the Kenner T-Rex and Raptor action figures.
There is a Sonic the Hedgehog 2 bed set as well. Sonic 2 was released one year before but was so awesome it ended up becoming a leading Christmas gift one year later as well.
There is also a Thunderbirds bed sheet set as well. Thunderbirds made a huge comeback during the mid 1990's and new versions of the toys and vehicles were released.
There's some calligraphy pens and a rubbish teddy bear thing on offer as well.
This page is filled with the top of the range Hi fi and electrical entertainment equipment. Here we have a portable CD player which is the most expensive thing out of the lot. A portable CD player from this era would not have the shock resistant feature and would skip more than Rocky Balboa on speed. So a £149.99 would have been a bad investment. There's lots of blank tapes and a talking alarm clock which says the word "precisely" quite a lot.
On this page we have some Disney VHS cassettes, a keyboard, an acoustic guitar and a karaoke box. Yeah that's all I can say about this page.
OK Now we are talking! A whole page dedicated to Sega products from 1993. So we have the Sega Megadrive 2 which was the exact same as the Megadrive only it had red buttons on the console instead of switches. The console came with Sonic 2 and was reasonably priced at £127. There's also a deal with 4 games included to the right.
Underneath we have the Sega CD system which is £269 and was one of the biggest flops in gaming history. This piece of equipment clipped onto the Sega Megadrive and played CD games. The games however were complete dog shit and consisted of long badly acted out cut scenes, which then turned into even worse computer games. I remember laughing so hard at some spoilt kid who got one of these for Christmas the same year.
I got the Sega Game Gear a year before as my main Christmas gift and was still playing it around this time. The Master systems are still on sale in this book and going for a good price. The six button joypads were popular at this time as Street Fighter II had just been released on the Sega Megadrive. As the Megadrive only had 3 action buttons this did not work very well for that game and they had to invent a new controller for it.
The Menacer light gun just like every other light gun was just a pure gimmick which only worked for a handful of games and sucked when it came to working properly.

Now this is the last page I am reviewing as the rest of this book is full of girls toys and I don't review those. On these 2 pages we have all the video games that were on sale in December 1993. There are some of the greatest video games EVER made on these pages and they were fucking expensive. Now I mentioned Street Fighter II making its way to the Sega Megadrive console and this is the most expensive game in the book at a whacking £59.99!!! Its hard to imagine someone paying the best part of £60 for a game we can download online in a matter of seconds today, but it happened. Its almost poetic justice when the pirates started making money from illegal gaming a few years later. These prices in 1993 are fucking extortionate and they knew that they could charge it because parents are not going to ruin Christmas 1993 for their children by not buying them Street Fighter II. If you got this game for Christmas in 1993 you should go and find your parents and hug them because that was a lot of fucking money back then and even more now.
There are some awesome games on this page such as Super Mario World, Mortal Kombat, Jungle Strike and Aladdin just to name a few. I also spotted Bubsy here for a whacking £39.99 I wouldn't even pay 1p for that game and would probably take a dump on the box out of protest. I hate that game because one of my friends got it for Christmas 1994 and we spent almost the whole of 1994 trying to get past the first 3 levels. It was soo hard beyond belief and sucked so bad.
The Nintendo Entertainment System is holding on by its claws at this point on the bottom right hand side of the page. Poor old NES.
HOME ALONE TOYS AND GAMES
ARTICLE BY KRISTIAN RODRIGUEZ
For me Home Alone is the ultimate Christmas movie. Its a movie that brings back very fond memories of my childhood and the festive season it self. You can watch Home Alone in the Summer, but it feels a bit weird, and it's not really the done thing. This is a movie about Christmas that should only be watched at Christmas. Kinda like Die Hard and Miracle on 34th Street.
With the success of the movie going through the roof in the early 1990's it was no surprise when toys and video games of the movie started to emerge. Today we take a look back at these classic but forgotten items from the ultimate Christmas blockbuster.
THE SCREAMING 8" KEVIN DOLL FROM T-HQ
The screaming Kevin doll is something I have talked about on the site before and he even makes an appearance in the Bootleg Super Street Wars from this summer (
click here to read).
This was one of my Christmas presents that was high up in my Christmas list in 1992 and I was over joyed when I got him. The only problem with this doll is the fact he was bigger than any other action figure that was released around that time.
The Screaming Kevin doll looked ridiculous among other action figures with the way he was a young child who dwarfed everyone. Another draw back with this toy was the fact he had no enemies to battle against. He was just the giant child toy that didn't fit in anywhere.
The figure it self is still pretty cool and has an electronic button at the back which activates a screaming sound. The screaming sound does not sound like Kevin one bit and sounds more like a woman being murdered. It's quite freaky. Sometimes my one malfunctions and screams on its own accord which is fucking scary.
The Home Alone toys were made by T-HQ who are now the famous video game company which brings us games such as the Saints Row Series and up until recently the WWE franchised games.
T-HQ stands for the Toy Head Quarters. Just a little fact there, not a very interesting one but a fact none the less. You can now feel free to tell other people this fact but I'm sure they wont care that much.
THE GIANT KEVIN SOFT TOY
A giant version of the toy was released, which was a soft toy with a rubber head. This toy has the same apparel as the screaming Kevin doll and also has a horrific screaming sound effect and also says a few phrases. This toy has a good likeness and has a different head mold which isn't of Kevin screaming.
THE HOME ALONE TALK BOY TAPE RECORDER
The Deluxe Talkboy tape recorder was a pretty snazzy gadget back in the Christmas of 1992. Don't you remember the Talkboy from the movie?
In Home Alone 2, Kevin causes all kinds of mischief and chaos with this special audio recording device. With this device he manages to play some pranks on adults in the shower and commit credit card fraud in a swanky New York hotel.
As an 8 year old child putting one of these down on your Christmas list, you had pretty high hopes. Prank phone calls, credit card fraud and managing to record an adult confess to something they shouldn't without them knowing. The problem with this is the fact adults don't like being recorded much.. especially at Christmas.. when they are drunk. Most Talkboys were confiscated by Boxing day and adults would never buy you replacement batteries for such an intrusive and annoying device. Great in the movie but no good in real life.
Saying that I did keep mine and use it as a Walkman up until 1996 until it died.
A Talkboy digital watch was also released which was a much more stealthier gadget which was much more convenient when trying to get a decent scoop on an adults conversation.
The only problem is, most adults stop their conversations when children enter the room. The children are normally told to go play in the other room or to "fuck off" depending who's house you're round! The watches were made by TIGER, that horrible company which made all them god awful hand held, LCD games back in the day. There was a Home Alone TIGER game made as well but I burped a bit vomit thinking about it.
THE HOME ALONE BOARD GAME
Licensed board games were still surviving (barely) in 1992 so the fact they released a Home Alone board game wasn't much of a big surprise.
The game involved going round the board setting traps on the burglars. The burglars had to steal house items in order to score points against Kevin. Its not a bad concept but I cant see Hungry Hippos or Scrabble losing any sleep over it.
HOME ALONE VIDEO GAMES
T-HQ went on to make video games of both the movies on all the consoles at the time. Each game was a complete pile of dogshit and barely playable. T-HQ also made the god awful Waynes World video game which is one of the most confusing and rubbish video games ever made. Playing that for 10 minutes is my idea of hell.
Each game was pretty much the same- set traps and stop the wet bandits from getting you and burgling your house. The games did not work well at all with bad sound effects, rubbish structure and hellish controls. Home Alone, like many other great movies flopped hard in the world of cartridges and controllers.
After Home Alone 2 it all went quiet until they made other Home Alone movies with another child actor some years later which were really bad. Home Alone and Home Alone 2 will always be up there as the greatest Christmas movies of all time.The toys were cool, the games sucked and that's all I have to say on that one.
JAMES POND 2 ROBOCOD REVIEW
James Pond 2 was the sequel to James Pond (surprise surprise) and was a game which was ported from the old school home computers on to consoles in the early 1990's.
The game was unique because it had a Christmas time setting in a toy factory in the Arctic. There are not many Christmas games around and most of them are very poor, making this one stand out as a gem to review.
The games story is simple, a load of penguins have been kidnapped and held hostage in a huge castle which is also an evil toy factory.
In order to win this one you must save all the penguins and beat the games bosses.
The games hero is a secret agent goldfish who has a robotic suit like Robocop. James Pond can only hurt his enemies by jumping on their heads until they vanish in a puff of sparks, so his suit isn't that great but beats flapping around on the floor I guess. I also think the suit must have some sort of perk that lets a goldfish survive in a game with no underwater levels what so ever?
The gameplay is standard for most side scrolling platformers from around that time. In order to complete the levels you must find all the penguins to advance. Each level becomes more of a maze as the game progresses. The standard enemies range from evil toys to men who very much resemble the man off the Berty Basset sweets.
The penguins are also product placement for the popular UK chocolate bars Penguin. There is even a Penguin advert placed in the Sega Genesis version. The game has some fun levels and some awesome bosses but does drag on a bit. The repetitive background music is enough to send you insane after a few levels as well. The version ported to the Super Nintendo (Super James Pond) has even worse music and sound effects, which is staggering when you think about the decent level of music and sound the SNES could produce. Overall this is a cool side scrolling platformer and its nice to play at Christmas but it feels it a bit odd to fire up any other time of the year.
JAMES POND 2 CHEAT
To make James Pond invincible simply collect the above items (at any time) during the game in order. The easiest way to remember this is that you have to spell the word cheat. Grab the cake, the hammer, earth, apple and tap from the roof near the entrance of the castle.
THANK YOU ALL FOR READING, SUBSCRIBING, SHOPPING AND SUPPORTING LOST ENTERTAINMENT IN 2013. WE WILL BE BACK NEXT YEAR WITH EVEN MORE COOL SHIT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT!
HAPPY NEW YEAR