The Legend of Halloween Jack from 2018, is different from other Silver Screen Cesspool movies, don’t get me wrong it’s still a steaming pile of horse caca, but it’s a steaming pile of british horse caca with authentic British accents.

The movie starts with the opening credits interspersed with classic horror film footage from the Bela Lugosi film White Zombie to set the tone for the film. Which I can’t help but feel like the filmmakers are setting our expectations a little high here. Then footage from another Bela Lugosi film to further set the tone, for Plan 9 From Outer Space. I still can’t help but feel like the filmmakers are setting out expectations a little high here, but hey at least we’re a bit closer. There’s more likely lapsed into the public domain footage, something that was very very pixelated I didn’t recognize. Noferasto, Nofesatoo, noforesschew and a few others. 

So we’re introduced to the actual plot by a news story about two murders, and accused of this heinous crime is our hero, er villain.. uh Anti-Hero, Jack Cain.  Listen I don’t know who we're supposed to be rooting for here. Everyone is kinda awful, or at best horribly dull. I think he’s the bad guy though cause he’s got a scar on his face. 

But anyway ... in court What we are seeing is not real, they are actors and are not actual litigants with a case pending in an actual court. No one has agreed to dismiss their court cases and have their dispute settled here, in our forum … the English court! 

The judge in this case is rather disappointing for several reasons. One he’s not wearing one of those poofy white English judge wigs, and instead has a Paul Senior from American Chopper handlebar mustache. Two, his name is neither Reinhold nor Wapner.  

Cain gets off scot-free because the cops failed to read him his rights. Do you know how much restraint it is for me to not say “This gets Halloween jack off?” A lot but I’m proud of myself for not saying it.  This case upsets the people on the balcony watching in the balcony. The mayor, the brother of one of the victims, the father of the other victims, and the sheriff of Nottingham. So they hatch a plan to revenge murder Cain. But before we can do that. More footage of Bela Lugosi from White Zombie, which Cain is watching on TV at his home while wearing the vest he stole from WCW’s Shockmaster. Someone bangs on his door and he opens it only to find no one there. But the audio from his TV repeats the last five seconds so oops. He hears a noise and thinks it came from the back of his Dragula so he goes to investigate, walking past a wooden chair covered with an excessive amount of bird shit. Only to be knocked cold by one of the balcony bros. 

He awakens, tied to the cross much like Jebus, and wearing a burlap sack as a shirt, because his kidnappers were afraid he might catch a cold or something.  Cain asks “What’s dis? A hallo’ween party or somtin govner? Pip pip cheerio wang chung.”  I don’t know about you, but I’d never revenge murder someone, and if I did I feel like it's just asking for trouble doing it on Halloween. Good lord I'm not going to pronounce Halloween like that the whole time. They put another burlap sack and hat over his head and then all take turns shooting him. CGI blood sprays everywhere, but somehow completely evaporates when they’re done leaving nice blood and hole-free clothes on Cain when they’re done. They bury him faster than John Cena buried the Nexus. They then swear each other to secrecy. 

One year later, the Sheriff of Nottingham’s daughter is making his bangers and mash or spotted dick or whatever English people eat for breakfast … Oh wait, it's probably an English breakfast. When he gets a call that the victim's brother off himself at the site they bury Cain because he couldn’t stand being in such a terrible movie anymore. 

We do get our first glimpse of Halloween Jack, though, who looks like they threw a flashlight into an orange plastic pumpkin pail and then threw that in a burlap sack which makes him one of the least scary-looking slashers I’ve ever seen on film. How do we know Halloween Jack and Cain are the same person, well as Halloween Jack was walking, Jim Ross was screaming “That’s gotta be Kane!” 

At the scene of the crime, the lead detective can’t help but comment to the sheriff on how right over there next to the body is what looks like someone was buried alive and then dug themselves out. It looks like a pile of mud with some hand prints if you ask me, but that makes the sheriff nervous. Also, this pile of mud is only visible when filmed in close-up. When they pull back for the full shot, there’s no mud whatsoever. Also, there are two CSI-type people randomly in the background in full biohazard suits doing what appears to be wedding the garden. Meanwhile, the detective and the sheriff aren’t so much wearing rubber gloves so I’m not sure what kind of plants CSI’s are dealing with. And throughout this whole scene, you can barely make out the dialogue because the wind is blowing on the microphones. Wind covers for microphones are like $5 tops. Or five pounds. Quid. Whatever. 

We’re then shown an establishing shot of a parking lot meant to indicate we’re relocated across town, but given the makes and models of the car, and what side the steering wheel is on we’ve relocated to the United States in the late 1990’s. Inside the mayor compliments that the decorations for the Halloween party “looks great, you’ve outdone yourselves this year” So apparently he has very low standards for a Halloween party and there are nine helium balloons, an empty Tupperware bowl for punch, about a dozen red solo cups, an empty cake carrier and an unopened bag of pretzels.

The remaining balcony boy shows up and tells the mayor what happened last night, and needless to say, this causes some concern. 

The sheriff is talking to the mother of the deceased, investigating what happened, as if he somehow forgot what they did last summer … I mean what they did last Halloween: H20. Mom chastises the sheriff for not bringing Cain to justice. And he feels right, proper bad. 

Elsewhere the detective dude takes a phone call from his secret girlfriend, the Sheriff's daughter, who; 's sitting at the kitchen table dipping apples in beef gravy. I mean I assume it's supposed to be caramel but it looks like gravy. But maybe it is gravy because they’re British, I don’t know what they do in England for Halloween, maybe they eat gravy apples, bob for crumpets, and go door to door and beg for fish and chips. The point is,  England is so weird it’s like an entirely different country. 

The father of one of the original murder victims is sitting out in front of a dilapidated barn reading the newspaper, while his coworker is watching porn of the squirting variety on his phone. Father objects because that is inappropriate in a place of business, not because he called it a runny funny. Also what business are they doing in this barn? The business of storing rusty tractors? He then chastises the younger one for not respecting the old ways of finding dirty magazines in the woods while hiking to school uphill both ways barefoot in the snow. And the younger fellow is all like “Ok boomer” and proceeds to tell the story of him violating a friend with a condom-covered pencil by shoving it up his quote chocolate whiz one. When the elder one questions that British slang, he clarifies by calling it his balloon knot, prison purse, chocolate starfish, and finally his bum hole.  They finally get around to doing some actual work, automobile repair, apparently but uh oh, our weird little perv is dead, and daddy vigilante also gets stabbed to death with a pitchfork in the first clear appearance of Halloween Jack. He doesn’t look scary, and there’s no suspense, it just kinda happens. 

Detective and Shareff begin to investigate the murders, and which detective notes that he hasn’t seen anything like this since the Cain murders, just in case anyone is unclear about who the murdering scarecrow is. And also because no other crime happens in this town.

The Sheriff, thinking clearly, realizes he may be next to be murdered, and goes out and buys guns from a dude wearing suspenders and no shirt. Because in Jolly Ole England, the police don’t carry guns, and that’s why they have resurrected revenge-murdering men made of straw. 

Meanwhile, the mayor goes to talk to the mother of the now, two dead children and asks her how she’s doing, and if her son ever said anything about Cain. She tells him she’s awful thanks for asking, and no he said nothing. So he immediately asks her for some biscuits. This is strange because it wasn’t even tea time and also strange because in England biscuits are cookies. She goes to get them, but then he decides to get all stabby with her. That’ll teach her to try to pass off Hydrox as Oreos. 

The mayor decides to do the dishes before disposing of her body, which conveniently falls on a plastic drop cloth in the kitchen. But when he goes to move her, she’s not as dead as he thought, so he has to choke her in a totally non-erotic way. 

He goes home and bitches at his wife for burning the cakes, and not putting up the decorations right. And by decorations I mean a single string of pumpkin-shaped lights. She goes to fix things and he sits down in his British easy chair and watches White Zombie as apparently that's all the BBC ever shows. Oh yeah, also in England BBC doesn’t mean big black cock. Pumpkin Jack ever the astrocreep sneaks up on Mayor Mcsleaze and slits his throat. Then he beats in his wife's head with a rolling pin because we can’t kill the same way twice.  I can’t help but feel the acting direction given to Pumpkin Jack was “Act Like You’re Invisible. No no, don’t act invisible, act like you're acting invisible. No wait, act like a scarecrow in a silent cartoon, that’s also invisible.” 

The detective somehow discovers Sherif and his wife dead and in bed, and not with her head bashed in. He radios for help, saying “It’s bad, real bad. Shamon. A hehe ” 

We now cut to the stock footage of the same building from before, only now it’s nighttime, and the cars are all several years newer, and the resolution of the film has also improved. It’s odd. But inside the party is simply smashing, as they have a suitably band playing. And half the people are dressed as the Three Amigos. There’s even one who has the full-on Mariachi Vibe but with a hockey mask. Here in America, we got a dumb Friday the 13th sequel in which Jason was in Space, and another one where he takes Manhattan, in England apparently they got a sequel where Jason went to Mexico. Hey ever notice how the Muppets also took Manhattan, and also there were Muppets called Pigs in Space? I bet there’s some great crossover potential there. Friday the 13th: part 56, It Ain’t Easy Being Green or Dead! I'm kidding. Don’t make that movie. Or I'll be forced to watch it and review it here. 

So anyway the Halloween Jack movie …The detective and Sherif are standing around staring at the dead bodies in bed when the Sheriff decides to tell the detective about his horrible secret, and also that 6 months ago another convict named Edgar Winter confessed to the Cain murders. Also now he’s the last known murdering survivor so he’s likely being stalked like prey in the night. So instead of throwing him in jail for murdering Cain, detective doofus decides that with this new blackmail material, he has on him, it’s a good time to reveal he’s dating the sheriff's daughter. 

 The sheriff's daughter/detective's girlfriend is at the party. Her friend deduces that she’s pregnant because she’s drinking water, and everyone else is drinking ye olde alcohol. Which makes her friend a better investigator than her dad or boyfriend and anyone else on the local police force. 

The sheriff goes and questions the first person Cain called after he was arrested, and that person just does the traditionally creepy but enigmatic occult person not answering questions directly thing. Sherif asks questions about can the occult raise the dead or anything like that, not saying anyone has been raised from the dead, just purely hypothetical. Cain’s friend was like, maybe maybe not, but Jack Cain is no longer human, he’s more human than human. But if you want to stop these needless White Zombie references take a page out of the Druid’s book, and sacrifice yourself. I thought at first he was supposed to give himself paper cuts with that page from the druid’s book. But no. I also don’t think “You should sacrifice yourself” meant “You should shoot me dead” but that’s what happened. I feel like we’re supposed to be rooting for the sheriff, but …. I can't figure out why other than he looks all droopy dog sad about killing people. I killed people

Detective Charming shows up to the party and he drags his girlfriend into the closet for 7 minutes in heaven Also telling her that her dad may be murdered soon, and they should go to jail to be safe. 

Meanwhile, the friend goes to the loo and pees. She has a wee bit of irregular pee stream because for some reason they decided to make some poor Foley artist create pee sounds. At least I hope it was a Foley artist. Then she gets murdered by Halloween Jack because she heard him laughing in the stall next to her. Even if he wasn’t an undead murderer, why would you go looking into someone else's bathroom stall when they laugh? That’s not a poor horror movie decision, that's a poor life decision. I can hardly blame him for killing her peeping tom ass. 

Pumpkin Jack then appears on stage, says trick or treat and the crowd goes running for their lives. But why? Yes, he’s in a very debatably scary scarecrow costume, but I’d chalk that up as normal on Halloween. There’s no blood on him. No one knows about Halloween Jack or even a murderer in their town. Why are they running? Did he rip some epically historic ass that killed the party and cleared the room? 

He then starts to start to kill people. The first he gouges out his eyes with his thumbs, which would hurt like a mofo, but shouldn’t kill him. The next dude is maimed because the door was electrified. I genuinely wouldn’t have known that though, except my closed captioning was on and it said “electrical noises.” They were indistinguishable from the not-even close-to-Carpenter-level scary music playing. So really it just looks like he just touched a door. Also, when did Pumpkin Jack rig up this booby trap? And why did this dude's hands get covered with snot from getting electrocuted? Pumpkin Jack then body slams a guy impaling him on the leg of a wooden chair, and dear god, why is this the most believable thing Pumpkin Jack does in the whole movie? He then picks a guy up off his feet, punches him in the stomach, and somehow removes his heart without penetrating his stomach or being remotely close to the heart. Then again maybe Brits have their heart in a different place.

 Then a big burly dude who has wrapped himself in cheap dollar store plastic ivy as a costume for reasons, challenges Pumpkin Jack to a fight. Oh, sorry, They don’t have dollar stores in England because they don’t have dollars. They instead have stores called Pound Town. Seriously, google it. Poison Ivy falls however and severely breaks his leg. Finally, Pumpkin Jack goes after a girl dressed as the often-forgotten sixth member of the British Pop group, the Spice Girls, Pumpkin Spice. And he tells her what he wants what he really really wants is to slashy slash ah. I also want to be clear that none of the people who have died have added any suspense to the story because they die before they can even attempt to escape. 

Pumpkin Jack makes it to the back room and starts to go after the detective and his baby momma, so the detective pulls out the gun the Sheriff gave him earlier and shoots Pumpkin Jack several times and what looks like confetti comes out of him. But again they had no idea anything was happening anywhere else in the building and for all they knew he was just a guy in a costume who made a wrong turn looking for the bathroom. 

Detective Bumbleshit checks for a pulse, and of course, there is none. As soon as he says that though, Pumpkin Jack immediately jumps back to life.  So either he had no pulse because he’s the undead, he had no pulse because he was a scarecrow, or the detective is still the worst cop ever. They engage in brief fisticuffs, and then Pumpkin Jack becomes Pumpkin Dick as he knees Detective in the ole twig and berries as they say across the pond. 

The girlfriend then runs away like she is 10 months pregnant, not 4 weeks pregnant, and before she can even leave the room, Dad enters the room and shoots Pumpkin jack multiple times with the other gun he bought, there’s more confetti, so maybe it's Rip Taylor who’s back from the grave? 

Dad then turns his back on Pumpkin Jack to hug his daughter and comfort her because, for some reason, she thinks her boyfriend is dead. He may be wishing he was dead after the smashing pumpkins. But it turns out no, he's alive, and now all three of them are facing away from Pumpkin Jack, who didn’t die the first five times he was shot, but now none of them are worried about after shooting him another five times. 

The sheriff of Nottingham tells the detective to take his daughter out of there and to take care of her. The great mouse detective assures him he will.  “No Dad you're coming with us” Why would he do that? Technically, as far as they know, still, all this guy in the scarecrow costume has done is defend himself against a dude who shot him.  And if he had done more, it’d be the sheriff's job to deal with it, dead or alive. “I don’t have time to argue, just go” Why don’t you have time to argue? None of this makes any sense. They leave and he locks the doors, to keep Halloween Jack in with, and also as a side effect all the partygoers. 

But apparently, the showdown is on, and Halloween Jack is up and about and finally has a weapon that just materialized out of nowhere, and he tells the sheriff it’s time for him to pay. The sharif agrees, bends over and opens a nearby combustible gas canister, sticks a fag in his mouth, and lights his zippo and the place goes boom with lots of leaves blowing around and very little shrapnel, so apparently Ivy Guy bit it as well. A music box plays row your boat, for some reason.

Cut to a news report covering the explosion, which lets us know a dozen people died in the explosion, which means the sheriff killed some people exploding the building, cause Jacko only killed 5 or 6 tops. 

One Year later 

The daughter is sad and crying at her DJ job. Not because she's a DJ, but because her dad’s dead. She then goes to the cemetery walking in slow motion and out of focus while what I think is a surfabilly cover of Little Big Town’s Girl Crush plays.  His dad’s tombstone is a thin sheet of shiny aluminum instead of stone for .. you know I don’t even know why I try to give reasons at this point. 

She also goes to Jack Cain’s grave which is stupid, because everyone thought he just left town not that he died, and also why the hell would you do that?  Did you feel bad for him after learning he was innocent and your father was a murderer? 

Oh then jump scared as the hand comes out of the grave, because why the hell have an original thought now? 

My final thoughts …The Legend of Halloween Jack is Jack Shit.