 |
| "I'm just in love with my new pin-up calendar. Gonna suck when I have to change months, though." |
Happy Halloween. Well, we've made it through another glorious October, and quite frankly, "glorious" is a bit of a stretch thanks to the 'vid. Things are returning back to earlier phases, restaurants are shutting down and business are ordered close earlier, which means we've got all the time in the world to sit around and horror watch movies. So you know I'm good with it. Now I know what you're thinking, "Cody, weren't you supposed to review Village of the Damned as part of this John Carpenter tribute?" Yes. I was. I ran out of time this week and simply didn't feel the need to address it. Don't worry, though. I'm sure it'll rear it's ugly head once again as it is a John Carpenter movie, so I'll probably talk about it in the future. There are other Carpenter movies I wanted to review too, including Escape from L.A. and Vampires, but the month got away from me. So... that addresses that. Maybe they'll come sooner than we think.
 |
| I got a Ph.D. in psychiatry with a minor in blowing holes in monsters' faces. |
With all that out of the way, let's get to the main event. The one you all knew was coming. A girthy re-review of the classic that launched Carpenter into the stratosphere. A masked killer visits his hometown fifteen years after he was originally locked away for murder. Halloween. But not just Halloween, we're also going to talk about the other films in the forty-year franchise that John Carpenter had at least something to do with, even if it was just a glancing involvement. So this is going to be a long-winded, epic post to celebrate quite possibly the quietest, lamest Halloween I've lived through in my entire life. So sit back, light a few Jack O'Lanterns, grab a few beers, order a pizza and let's look back on the history of Halloween.
Halloween (1978)
The plot of the original Halloween from 1978 tells the story of a mental patient named Michael Myers who was committed to a sanitarium for murdering his teenage sister on Halloween night when he was six years old. Fifteen years later, he escapes and returns to his hometown, where he stalks a female babysitter and her friends, while under pursuit by his psychiatrist. The original slasher movie; the one that set up so many tropes for future slasher movies to come, especially Friday the 13th, and we've covered those in great detail. So let's dive into the original Halloween, which Carpenter obviously had all to do with, writing the film, directing it, as well as composing and recording the score... as was his nature. This is Halloween; A movie that teaches us that even serial killers can peak in life, even being so bad as being nostalgically drawn to their lame hometown.
 |
| "Hey, you teenagers! Stop having premarital unprotected sex down there, I'm trying to sleep!" |
On October 31, 1963, on Halloween night in the fictional small town of Haddonfield, Illinois, six-year-old Michael Myers (multiple actors, most notably Nick Castle) inexplicably stabs his older sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) to death with a kitchen knife in their home... staring at his knife in the process for some reason... and is incarcerated at Smith's Grove sanitarium. Fifteen years later, on October 30, 1978, Michael's psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasance) and his colleague, Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens) arrive at the sanitarium to escort Michael to court. Michael escapes by stealing their car and returns to Haddonfield, killing some nameless mechanic for his coveralls, as well as stealing a white mask, a rope and knives from a local hardware store. Oddly specific, hopefully we see Michael show up with a Batman-style utility belt carrying all this junk.
The next day on Halloween, high school student Laurie Strode (then-newcomer Jamie Lee Curtis) drops off a key at the still unoccupied and dilapidated Myers home her father is trying to sell. Michael stalks her throughout the day, as one would in a small town and she notices, but her friends Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda Van der Klok (P.J. Soles) dismiss her concerns. Loomis arrives in Haddonfield in search of Michael, and finds Judith's tombstone missing from the local cemetery. Why Michael goes out of his way to steal to his sister's tombstone is beyond me. I guess Michael, while nuts, has a taste for the theatrics. He meets with Annie's father, Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers), and they both investigate Michael's house, where Loomis tells Sheriff Brackett of the danger Michael poses. Sheriff Brackett is doubtful of Michael's danger but goes to patrol the streets, while Loomis waits at the house, expecting Michael to return.
 |
| "Michael, please come out of the bathroom. I have to go really bad!" ... "Nope." |
Later that night, Laurie babysits Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews), while Annie babysits Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) across the street, unaware that Michael has followed them. Michael also kills the Wallaces' dog. When Annie's boyfriend, Paul (voice of John Carpenter himself), calls her to come and pick him up, she takes Lindsey over to the Doyle house to spend the night with Laurie and Tommy. Before Annie can leave, Michael, who hid in the back seat of her car, strangles her and slits her throat. I like how Michael does both... strangles her, then slits her throat. Michael couldn't decide? Soon after, Lynda and her boyfriend, Bob Simms (John Michael Graham), arrive at the Wallace house. After having sex, Bob goes downstairs to get a beer for Lynda and Michael stabs him to death, in the iconic-yet-unfeasible scene of Michael stabs Bob to the door and pins him there. In yet another iconic scene, Michael then poses as Bob in a ghost costume and confronts Lynda, who teases him with her breasts, but to no effect. I guess Michael is a eunuch. Annoyed, Lynda calls Laurie, but Michael strangles her to death with the telephone cord just as Laurie picks up. Meanwhile, Loomis discovers the stolen car, realizing Michael is indeed nearby and begins searching the streets.
 |
| "Michael, I'm heading out for Wendy's. You want anything?" |
Suspicious, Laurie goes over to the Wallace house to find her friends and figure out what the heck is happening, and finds the bodies of Annie, Bob, and Lynda, as well as Judith's headstone, in the upstairs bedroom. In yet another iconic scene, Laurie cowers in the hallway, where Michael suddenly appears and attacks her, causing her to fall backwards on the staircase. Laurie narrowly escapes and flees back to the Doyle house, where she gets Tommy to wake up and let her in. Michael gets in and attacks her again, but she keeps him at bay by stabbing him with a knitting needle, a coat hanger, and his own knife, temporarily knocking him out each time, then sends Tommy and Lindsey to go to a neighbor's house down the street and have them call the police. Loomis sees Tommy and Lindsey running from the house and goes to investigate, finding Michael and Laurie fighting upstairs; during the fight, Laurie rips Michael's mask off, making him hesitate and put it back on. Loomis shoots Michael six times, knocking him off the balcony. Agreeing with Laurie that Michael is the "boogeyman", Loomis walks to the balcony and looks down to see that Michael has vanished. Unsurprised, he stares off into the night as Laurie begins to sob. Michael's breathing is heard during a montage of locations he had recently been, indicating he could be anywhere...
Halloween II
In 1980, Carpenter and his then-girlfriend and producer Debra Hill were asked to come back to write and direct Halloween II. By then, The Fog had come out and Carpenter was well into production on Escape from New York, and neither he nor Debra Hill had interest in making a sequel as they believed the original film was a standalone movie, and the ending was supposed to remain entirely ambiguous. When the studio offered them more money to write the script, Carpenter took the job so he could earn back what he believes was his owed pay. It became legend since that that at the time, Carpenter had seen little earnings from the original movie, though he admitted that he received a significant back-end salary much later in his career. So Carpenter came back as writer and even also worked with longtime collaborator Alan Howarth to compose the score to the sequel as well. However, during pre-production the script was not forming out as well as he thought or wanted, and he has personally stated that the only thing helping him through the screenplay process was a six-pack of Budweiser every day, which led to what he believes an inferior script and bad choices in the movie's story. He later called Halloween II "an abomination and a horrible movie".
 |
| "Nurse, I have a pain in my backside. I need more morphine." |
Without walking throughout the entire plot, Halloween II originally served as a direct sequel to Halloween, until it was retconned by the 2018 film serving as a direct sequel to the 1978 film. The plot picks up directly after the first film, with Michael Myers (now played by Dick Warlock) following survivor Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) to the local hospital, while his psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) continues his pursuit of him. The film proceeds with, as Carpenter described, "much of the same thing" as Halloween, and ends with a solidified, no-sequel-possible finish of Michael and Loomis blowing up inside Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, supposedly killing them both and ending the Myers/Strode/Loomis/Haddonfield storyline.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Well into his 1980s boom, Carpenter had by 1982-83 largely outgrown Halloween. By now, Escape from New York had come out and The Thing was either about to come out or had also already come out. Carpenter and Hill were once again asked to come back and be apart of Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Halloween III surprisingly enough is the only entry in the series that does not feature the series antagonist, Michael Myers, trying its best to stick to its guns on the finished Michael Myers/Haddonfield storyline that was wrapped up at the end of Halloween II. In fact, Halloween III: Season of the Witch treats the prior films in the franchise as fictional films, and the film's tagline is a reference to the one from the original as well.
 |
| "Yes... Dominoes? I have been on hold for thirty minutes now and I would just like to say your customer service sucks... but your pizza is to die for." |
It also departs from the slasher genre, which the rest of the installments were a part of, and instead features a "witchcraft" theme with science fiction aspects. John Carpenter and Debra Hill believed that the Halloween series had the potential to be an anthology series of films that centered around the night of Halloween, with each sequel containing its own characters, setting, and storyline. Halloween III director Tommy Lee Wallace stated that there were many ideas for Halloween-themed films, some of which could have potentially created any number of their own sequels, and that Season of the Witch was meant to be the first. Carpenter, meanwhile, solely returned to the series with this film to compose the score, once again with collaborator Alan Howarth. The score for Halloween III: Season of the Witch still remains a pretty damn good horror synth score, and one of Carpenter's best.
Halloween 4 Development
Six years would pass after the end of Halloween III: Season of the Witch. In early 1987, John Carpenter was once again asked to come back for revitalizing and rebooting the series with a new sequel revolving around the Michael Myers/Haddonfield storyline. Carpenter pitched a story with screenwriter Dennis Etchison that was very mentally thrilling. Etchison described his and Carpenter's story outline as:
"Halloween was banned in Haddonfield and I think that the basic idea was that if you tried to suppress something, it would only rear its head more strongly. By the very attempt of trying to erase the memory of Michael Myers, the teenagers were going to ironically bring him back into existence."
 |
| "WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT HAVING THE T.V. ON AFTER BEDTIME?" |
 |
| "Ma'am, your Uber has been waiting outside for twenty minutes. Shit or get off the pot." |
 |
| "Man, smartphones? Vine? Social media? I can't be scarier than that. Forty years in the looney bin as done me dirty." |
 |
| "Don't turn your back on me, young lady! Explain how this phone bill wound up over five hundred dollars?!" |
No comments:
Post a Comment