Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Halloween (1978) with Dr. Rick Worland
100 Plays4 days ago
We are terrifingly honored to have scary movie expert, SMU film professor, and published author Dr. Rick Worland on the pod with us to cover John Carpenter's genre-defining slasher of all slashers - HALLOWEEN (1978).
You can find Dr. Worland's recently revised book THE HORROR FILM: AN INTRODUCTION here.
Recommended
![Top 10 Zombie Films Ranked [Bonus Episode] image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/6841b5e32e7332fd76c5b99a/cc9b2867-2238-4390-96a6-6c6606e16a3d.png)
Transcript
Previous Episode Recap
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey!
00:00:05
Speaker
Hey, Lonnie! Get your ass away from there!
00:00:46
Speaker
All right, we're back. We are back. And this is our last episode for the month of October for kind of our atypical Halloween run here.
00:00:57
Speaker
so it's pretty exciting to bring this to close. We've had a lot of guests, a lot of unique episodes. um It's been fun. this This will come out just a few days before Halloween here. So you still have some time to get your costumes ready, get kids ready for trick or treating, what have you.
Rick's Halloween Costume and Appearance
00:01:12
Speaker
Rick, how are you doing?
00:01:13
Speaker
I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Still out here Montana, holding it down. and know you you were surprised by my lack of a mustache today, so I hope i hope that you can get through this without being too distracted.
00:01:24
Speaker
Quite shocked. Quite terrified. um It's so very fitting. like well i like This is my costume.
00:01:32
Speaker
Clean shaven Rick. um This is the Sunday Scaries. I'm Travis Tlaric. I'm Ricky Townsend. Today we are covering probably one of our biggest titles we've covered to date in the short history of our show in Halloween.
00:01:47
Speaker
And to do that, um it's a bit unique. we We have a guest with real bona fides here.
Introduction to Dr. Rick Worland
00:01:52
Speaker
Yes, our biggest guest, too. Biggest movie, biggest guest. um Yeah, so as I think some listeners know, Trav and I went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and I received a film minor there, three credits away from a film major, but I'm not worried about that or thinking about it, losing sleep over that.
00:02:11
Speaker
um One of my favorite professors out there was Dr. Rick Worland, who I took two classes with. One was the Golden Age of Cinema, and the other was the horror film, which really i was really taken with. And so he is with us today.
00:02:23
Speaker
He's received his MA and PhD in Theater Arts from UCLA. He's the Professor of Film and Media Arts at Southern Methodist University, where his teaching includes film history, popular genres, including the Western and the horror film, broadcasting history, and the films of Hitchcock.
00:02:38
Speaker
Um... One of my favorite Halloween slash just horror film books to read and reread is the horror film published ah back in 07.
00:02:49
Speaker
But there is a revised and updated edition of the first book ah that was just that was just published in 2024 by Wiley Blackwell. And it is now and updated with a lot more new horror films come out since then. So, um you know, Get Out,
00:03:05
Speaker
the films of Ari Aster Eggers. And so um we're excited to to to get into that. But you're also Dr. Orland working on a book on the 1970s for Hollywood movies as well.
00:03:18
Speaker
So ah busy guy, you had time to come on the podcast. Welcome to the Sunday Scaries. Well, thank you both. i This is a nice invitation. I'm glad to talk about horror films at about any chance I get. so And it turns out this month I'm getting quite a few chances because I just recently did a thing last week with ah with the new dean of the Perkins School of Theology, Brian Stone, who's written a book on Christianity as represented in horror films.
00:03:45
Speaker
um ah So we talked about that for like half an hour, and then I'm doing a thing for the Dallas International Film Festival week after next on talking about Hitchcock and Psycho. So so horror month I often get.
00:03:58
Speaker
exist Yeah, I get these I get these invitations and I'm glad to do it. It's it's fun every time. well but and we We asked you kind of early just for that exact reason.
'The Exorcist' and Themes of Good vs Evil
00:04:08
Speaker
i was like, well, if you're going to get hit up in October, let's let's let's get in the queue early here.
00:04:13
Speaker
um But speaking of the the the christian Christianity within horror films, was The Exorcist covered in that conversation? Yes, we talked about The Exorcist quite a bit. And it's it's always, you know it's such a milestone film of 1970s Hollywood and also for the genre.
00:04:31
Speaker
And we kind of got into the fact that in that over the years, William Peter Blatty, who had written the original novel and worked on the screenplay, I think, for the film,
00:04:42
Speaker
I'd never liked the original theatrical ending of The Exorcist because he said he's very devoutly Catholic and he felt that it suggested that evil had triumph and triumph that he had. I would say, and I think probably a lot of people would say, it comes across as being very ambiguous and it's almost, as I said in the book, i think it's an exhausting draw between good and evil that's been fought to the end.
00:05:04
Speaker
um But he never liked it. And so in 2000, he was behind this recutting of the film to have this much more kind of upbeat ending that makes it clear that the good guys have won and so on and so
Horror Film Evolution and 'Final Destination 7'
00:05:19
Speaker
on. And I never liked that version.
00:05:20
Speaker
So have you seen, he did direct the exorcist three though, which came out in the nineties. Blatty did himself. yeah you had directed it I don't know if you've seen that one, but it is one of my favorite equals for any horror franchise of all time. It's very good. And I'd forgotten that he directed it. That's really interesting. I saw the second one, exorcist to the heritage in the seventies, which is,
00:05:42
Speaker
really strange and didn't do very well. it was directed by the John Boorman, who did Deliverance famously. um And it's a really visually interesting film and the plot is really obscure as to what's going on and so on. I think Exorcist 3 ignores Exorcist 2. it retcons it.
00:06:03
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. So we're end of October here. I don't have much in the way of movie news or anything outside the film we want to cover before we hop into this film. Rick, duke do you have any housekeeping items other than the normal subscribe to the pod if you haven't already?
00:06:19
Speaker
um Anything movie specific? No, just to recap a little bit that Good Boy... ah jump you know recap a little bit the good boy did very well for an independent film. um It's, I think, up there with Shutter's now second most successful um theatrical release.
00:06:36
Speaker
And that the other one was that that we have ah Michel Blanchard ah most likely directing Final Destination 7, who again, a big theme of our of our episode that time travel was that a lot of a lot of quote, nobodies, a lot of people who who haven't done um a lot. And so i my Michelle is not ah a ah stalwart in the industry, but yeah um he's... they Untested, largely unknown, but that's what they just did really with this last one. It was great. It worked
Stephen King's Views on Horror
00:07:06
Speaker
out. we'll see Same writers though, so we'll hopefully have the same kind of ah tongue-in-cheek humor.
00:07:10
Speaker
um don't know if you saw Final Destination Bloodlines, Dr. Worland. was one of our favorites of the year. No, I did not. You know what I'm doing currently... And I'm trying to change it up a little bit. but I'm doing exactly what I did after doing the first edition of the horror film book, which was I stopped watching new horror films that were coming out because I was starting to work on the book on the 70s.
00:07:29
Speaker
And so I was really behind. And so when I got a chance to do the update of the horror film a few years ago, I had to catch up with a lot of stuff. So and it was fun to do and in that amount of time. But I saw Sinners the other day. I really liked that. yeah That's another one of our favorites for the year. We're waiting to cover that one until they announce the Oscars nominations yeah in January because that'll be the next bump that people are listening watching. Ricky's really hoping and and likely so. It sounds like this far that it might be nominated for Best Picture. oh which I think it will be. we We keep a running list. There's only seven horror films ever to have been nominated for Best Picture. If you want to try and ah guess at them, you're more than welcome to. This could be number eight here.
00:08:09
Speaker
Okay. um I'm not going to do that on the record right now. And and i'll and i'll i will I will mention one thing, though. Do you count Rebecca? Is Rebecca on your list? Because Rebecca at the time was generally thought of as a gothic horror film, although you call it a woman's picture.
00:08:25
Speaker
something like that. And that won Best Picture, right? won all the top awards, except hitch cock Best Director.
Analysis of the Halloween Film and Michael Myers
00:08:31
Speaker
Hitchcock never actually won an Academy Award as Best Director. Hitchcock never won? we We don't count that on our list. um So it's always worth, and part of what we could talk about today, we were talking about it right before we hit record,
00:08:43
Speaker
is Horror over the years has become, it seems like more and more of a big tent. So there's so many different sub genres, but that also means it gets a bit more confusing on where do you draw the line for what is a horror film and what isn't.
00:08:56
Speaker
I typically rely on like IMDb or Letterboxd and how they tag it for its genres, but that is far from perfect. And I think there's always a lot of people who are upset about a film being left out or...
00:09:09
Speaker
upset that a film is called horror when maybe they think it shouldn't be. i i typically myself go on the side of I'd rather call more films horror than not. Generally speaking, what constitutes a horror film for me, one is affect. Again, does it make you, is the main idea of the movie to make you afraid or anxious or um in some way?
00:09:30
Speaker
um and But especially, if I think we tend to really believe, err on the side of it, has if it has these sort of traditional gothic associations like the haunted house or the castle or the bad place in some way.
00:09:44
Speaker
that was um And also this idea of a kind of repressed secret, some dark secret of the past that has to be guarded and that's not permitted to be public knowledge.
00:09:58
Speaker
as well as the you know violence and the violence that's either implied or or or shown. I mean, the the whole idea of repression in the horror film, i as I always say, what what always happens in a traditional Gothic story is that the travelers come up to the dark house in the middle of the night and You know, they knock on the door and the door opens about an inch and a half and a scary servant looks out.
00:10:21
Speaker
And and what does the scary servant say every time? Go away. And that's, you know, so that you cannot come in here. And so little by little, don't go in there. Right. And you go into the house and and eventually the secrets are revealed. But I mean, that's but so that's sort of all those kind of haunted house associations and images.
00:10:43
Speaker
ah That sense of a terrible thing in the past, a crime, a sin some something that can't be talked about, can't be acknowledged. um Those kind of stories feel like, I mean, those are horror films as far as I'm concerned, if it has those gothic associations.
Horror Film Elements and Cultural Influence
00:10:59
Speaker
And that's a very Western version of the horror film, too. And films made in in East Asia don't necessarily follow that. For example, Japan or Korea, they don't necessarily follow that a pattern at all. It's it's very cultural.
00:11:12
Speaker
There's but there's some more ghost stories, right? In Japan. Yeah. Yeah. It's just a different approach. I mean, and again, because movies, especially after the after World War II, movies travel across borders more and more frequently. Yeah.
00:11:26
Speaker
There's a lot of cross-referencing and influence and cross-pollination. But but i you know I always think, especially psychological horror films of one kind, or you know whatever you want to call them, psychological thrillers, et cetera, ah are often horror-adjacent or use associations to horror films. So, for example, there's a really good movie, let's see, when was it made? Late 90s or early aughts? Single White Female.
00:11:51
Speaker
with Jennifer Jason Lee. I don't it Oh, oh would dry yeah oh no it's a good one and Bridget Fonda, who has since retired from acting. But Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Lee, who's Jennifer's a terrific actress.
00:12:06
Speaker
And the premise is that ah the Bridget Fonda, you know, advertises for a roommate in New York City. I would i would prefer a single white female as a roommate. And it's Jennifer Jason Leigh, and she's crazy. But it's this sort of doppelganger thing where you see lots of shots of the two of them looking like mirror images. You see them reflected in mirrors.
00:12:28
Speaker
And so there's nothing supernatural about it. at all. But it it has, to me, all of the sort of associations of the horror genre. but So anyway, to sum up, ah by and large, as I said, my definition is is broader and kind of looser in some ways than it than it used to.
00:12:47
Speaker
We in our first very first episode, we we do mention something that I learned from you in in school, which was discussing the alligators of the soul. ah i don't know if you remember talking about that, but yeah, a little bit satiating those weird desires that we have to like be interested in. you know It's more of curiosity, I guess, and that, you know, the Puritans were like, don't even don't watch this kind of stuff because it'll make the the heart impure.
00:13:12
Speaker
Whereas the other argument was no, we need to satiate those alligators of soul and and and better to do it via film and stories than going out there and killing somebody. And so thank you for letting us satiate the our own alligators of the soul here as we talk about Halloween. Well, i actually was in that particular instance, I was quoting Stephen King who oh travis who came up with that ah ah in his really good book called Don's Macabre that was published in 1981.
00:13:41
Speaker
And if anyone, if you really want to see what was going on with a lot of Stephen King's formative years, if you're interested in his work, then that's a really terrific book.
00:13:51
Speaker
I haven't read that one. which is Is that one of his non-fictions? It's non-fiction, yeah, yeah. I've read his on writing, which is more reflecting on his process for writing. Which is great, yeah. Which is great. But yeah, I'll have to add that to my list. I've read probably two-thirds of his body of work.
00:14:06
Speaker
It's Thomas' favorite author. Oh, wonderful. Well, i you know i i identify with a lot of things about him, and and i but Dance Macabre is a great book. And what he is doing there really is
Making of 'Halloween' and Casting Choices
00:14:18
Speaker
sort of using the kind of Freudian model about sort of recognizing that we have these drives that are dangerous, um and we appease them in certain ways. We satiate them. We compensate.
00:14:31
Speaker
And he says, because you have to feed these hungry alligators that are down in the subterranean realms of the mine. And Stephen King says, why do you do that? He says, because it keeps them down there, man, and me up here. yeah but They won't come up here if we feed them.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yes, I think there's some truth to that. what a great What a great reveal that the quote that we put it in our ah this podcast Instagram bio yeah originated from your guy, who we talk about a lot on this podcast. Well, i I'm an academic and I had to footnote it. It was King 1981.
00:15:08
Speaker
Oh, that's great. you're You're both getting credit. You're both getting credit. All right. Well, let's talk about this week's film. um We recently rewatched Halloween, the original, the 1978 film, but really put John Carpenter on the map.
00:15:24
Speaker
And we'll have a lot to talk about with the production of the film, um this film's place in the hierarchy of horror films of all time for the genre. Rick, for the for the few listeners who have never heard of the film Halloween and are listening to this pod still, what is this movie about?
00:15:40
Speaker
15 years after murdering his sister on Halloween night in 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois to kill again.
00:15:51
Speaker
So I'm very interested in hearing like the first time you saw this film, how many times you've seen it, what was maybe your initial take versus how you feel about this film now, just personally, like what does this film mean to you?
00:16:03
Speaker
I was in college at the time and I know I saw it on its first release and really liked it because it was being covered in a lot of the, uh, in the press and in a lot of the horror fan magazines like Cinefantastique and others that were there in the 70s.
00:16:21
Speaker
And I really liked it um right up front. and And I think it's a movie that over time, when I went back to it, which was with some regularity, um it became more and more impressive to me. And it still holds up very, very well. It's a film I almost always show when I do a survey of
00:16:44
Speaker
Rick, I'm curious, like since we were both born um well after the release, when did you first see this film and kind of what what did you think then? What do you think now?
00:16:55
Speaker
And um i like Dr. Worland, I don't remember exactly the day I saw it. um
Impact of 'Halloween' and Carpenter's Career
00:17:00
Speaker
I believe My interest in um and like classic cinema kind of spurred me on to go check out things that weren't just made a few years ago. And that all started when I was a a junior in high school. I started like, you know, going to the library and getting old movies and stuff um that weren't just made in the 2000s. And when it came to horror, I always knew that Halloween was, ah you know, a massive fixture in the genre.
00:17:28
Speaker
And don't while I don't remember the first time I saw it, I started to realize that I kept finding myself rewatching it and rewatching it and rewatching it, especially around the the holidays, as we we would call this time Halloween. um and despite despite not being that scared of it, I was drawn to its pacing and this creepy silent, you know, shape as Nick Castle is credited as here.
00:17:55
Speaker
ah And i think I mentioned this on the pod when we were watching and driving our watch along. But there is something really rhythmic and rewatchable and and powerful about just setting the scene. And we have the that suburban kind of malaise in the fall. And ah his disruption of all that is just really intriguing to me. And um he just he just tears through that town. He's he's unthinking.
00:18:20
Speaker
He's got this. The Dark Eyes, The Darkest Eyes, or whatever. Is it The Blackest Eyes or The Darkest Eyes? I can't forget. ah can't remember. but He's a good villain, Mike Myers, because...
00:18:32
Speaker
He is human, at least originally, but he doesn't speak. There's always this air of o mystery and uncertainty around how he operates, why he's doing what he's doing.
00:18:46
Speaker
And I think that really adds to the horror element of this where like, I love Nightmare on Elm Street, but Freddy Krueger's known for like his one liners. It's almost more of a comedy. Welcome to Pramham, bitch. Yeah, it's more of a comedy in that regards.
00:18:58
Speaker
And I think you can make a scarier villain, um ah scary antagonist of your films when you don't give them dialogue. You don't go too much into like what drives them, what are their motivations, and you leave that as a mystery for the viewer to ponder.
00:19:17
Speaker
Yeah, I would like a spinoff where we do see mike Michael Mars have some have some ah one-liners, though. you know What would he say? Would it be a lot of like sister jokes or like ah Halloween puns? I don't know. but Yeah, a man of few words, a man of few words.
00:19:33
Speaker
um Yeah, I like that. This is one of those franchises where I'm glad we just went back and rewatched it. And for anyone who's listening to this, I think we'll have released our watch long episode as well. If you want to hear, recognize audio commentary overlaid while you're watching the director's commentary without the director.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah, but I remember because when I was younger, I watched, I like binged the franchise. I've seen a lot of these films, but at such a young age, they all start to blur together. um Especially, you know, the original handful of entries with Donald Pleasance playing Dr. Luminouski. think he's the most recurring character through the first season.
00:20:07
Speaker
handful sequels and so it's fun to go back to just the original and where it started i i know there was films that predate this like black christmas that a lot of people might attribute the slasher sub-genre to but i think this one even though it came after the fact and borrowed a lot which i'm sure we can talk about in production notes from black christmas i i think this one's largely attributed as like you know, the grandfather of the the slasher franchise. Although I'm saying a lot in an area I'm not as familiar with. And so Dr. Worland, maybe I'd turn to you to see if I am just ah spouting nonsense here, if there's any
Horror Film Evolution in the 70s
00:20:42
Speaker
truth to that. I'm actually, before you answer Dr. Worland, I'm going to read your own quote here from the book.
00:20:46
Speaker
ah You said, we should note that psycho itself though a highly profitable and an instantly famous movie was not generally considered a milestone of the horror film until well into the nineteen seventy s true it did immediately inspire imitations from to from producers associated with this genre particularly william classll's homicidal nineteen sixty one and several knockoffs from hammer like maniac ninety sixty three and paranoia ninety sixty three cetera The kind of exploitation fare Hitchcock himself initially referenced.
00:21:12
Speaker
Yet because it lacked an occult foundation, Psycho was deemed a thriller or as the director's fame merged with the ascending popularity of the auteur theory, foremost a Hitchcockian film.
00:21:22
Speaker
um And then you go on to talk about, yeah, some of those like pre-slasher or horror horror films that ah that came before Halloween. Can you talk about the influence of ah these earlier films that didn't catch on as as quickly or as powerfully as Halloween did in terms of that.
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah, the there's no question that Psycho was a watershed film in 1960. And and it actually in my book on 1960s Hollywood, I take the position that a lot of other, some other critics have taken, which is that one could argue that Psycho is the key film of the 1960s of any genre because it's so influential in terms of its use of genre revisionism,
00:22:07
Speaker
um it's it's kind of foregrounding of style that really calls attention to itself and the fact that it really upends some of the conventions of traditional Hollywood style narratives, most radically the fact that the protagonist of the film or the person we think is the protagonist of the film, ah Janet Leigh's character, is killed 45 minutes or so into the movie, which strands us with the guy that we increasingly believe is either her killer or is certainly in in cahoots with her killer believing it's the mother.
00:22:42
Speaker
So Psycho was really important. Hitchcock was actually inspired to make Psycho, however, by looking at low-budget exploitation horror films in the late 50s, like those from William Castle,
00:22:54
Speaker
from Hammer, from AIP making a movie called I Was a Teenage Werewolf in 1957, which was made for like $150,000 and made over $2 million at the box office, which was substantial money and at that time, especially on such a low profile budget.
00:23:12
Speaker
But um so Hitchcock looked at those at this time, and Hitchcock was very astute about what was going on in the industry. And he he really looked at those films, and and I think he said to himself,
00:23:23
Speaker
I can do that. so and And my my cheap horror film will be good. and and he And he hated those movies. He thought they were terrible, but he respected the fact that they were making money. And so he consciously talked to people it. Have you seen these movies? Have you seen The House on Haunted Hill? Have you seen I Was a Teenage Frankenstein?
00:23:43
Speaker
And so he's making these, these his he made this big, the biggest profitable movie of his career prior
John Carpenter's Filmography
00:23:49
Speaker
to that, which was North by Northwest in 1959 with Cary Grant, which was a huge hit.
00:23:54
Speaker
That was his biggest box office hit. And then he just turns around and does something completely different in in making Psycho. um so Sorry, go ahead.
00:24:04
Speaker
Well, the other thing was going to the only other kind of influence that eventually that Carpenter acknowledges as well is that in Italy at the same time, there's a really strong period of Italian horror films being made in the 60s. Yeah, the early Giallo.
00:24:21
Speaker
But that's the 70s, but before that. Oh, yes. OK. So the the key director is a guy named Mario Bava. Oh, Blood and Black Lace. Right, right. And Bava made Blood and Black Lace, as it was called in the US.
00:24:34
Speaker
um in 1964. And that's a movie that was, and that you can see as an influence on the later ah psycho killer, serial killer films.
00:24:45
Speaker
So Carpenter is aware of all of this stuff. He was a film student. He went to USC. He was part of that 60s, 70s film school generation includes Copeland, Lucas, and Scorsese, and Spielberg, and all of those guys.
00:25:00
Speaker
when when you go from psycho on the slashers that I typically see listed, whether it was from your class or just, just general knowledge of the years, Worland
Low-Budget Creativity in 'Halloween'
00:25:09
Speaker
is yeah. Black Sabbath ah by Baba, um, black Christmas as Travis mentioned,
00:25:15
Speaker
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, um Peeping Tom ah by Michael Powell. and do do you Do you kind of see a similar straight line that led us to Halloween? Or do you kind of see Carpenter as just looking at those Jalo films, looking at looking at Hitchcock? Or do you see this growing sense of this interest in this mass killer, typically with a phallic weapon or something like that, that got us to to Halloween?
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a combination of those things. And i mean, the immediate circumstances was that this this film did not originate as an idea with John Carpenter, that there was ah ah producer in the 70s whose name was Erwin Yablons.
00:25:58
Speaker
And he was going, he had a company called Compass International that he created with ah ah with the Financier Mustafa Akkad. And they had seen um they had seen Carpenter's earlier film, Assault on presec Precinct 13, which was made in 1976. They had seen that film at a European film festival and they contacted them.
00:26:21
Speaker
And they basically had the idea, especially Erwin Yablons, had the idea We think you could make a low budget horror film and it has and we think it should do so it should have something to say about something about Halloween. It's set at Halloween.
00:26:36
Speaker
And so there's a prior to that time, John Carpenter had met ah Bob Clark, who was the director of Black Christmas in 1974.
00:26:46
Speaker
And ah the thing is, Black Christmas is a terrific film. It's really well made. It's really frightening. And its reputation has increased greatly in the last, especially probably 30 years.
00:26:59
Speaker
It was a complete box office dud at the time. It didn't do well at all. I saw it actually in 1974 in my little hometown movie theater, which was like the last picture show. And I thought it was really scary when I was like, i don't know how old was I, 16, 17 years old. I thought it was really scary. And then when I saw it 10 or 12 years later, I was like, I was right.
00:27:18
Speaker
But it's also understand it's really well made. We're covering that recovering that during the December, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. So he had, so he, Bob Clark had made ah black Christmas and I always like to point out, uh,
00:27:30
Speaker
Bob Clark didn't want to make horror films anymore. And one of the movies he's most famous for is is shown every Christmas, which is not black Christmas. It's a Christmas story. Ralphie and the Red Ryder BB gun.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah. So let's not forget about Porky's as well. And Porky's. which is also a really interesting movie and is better than you would think. Really? It's not, it's not just, if you haven't seen it, it's a really interesting comedy. It's not just like, okay, guys peeping on girls in the shower.
00:28:01
Speaker
That's there, but it's a really pretty interesting film. What a diverse filmography. yeah absolutely yes I heard watching Black Christmas and then going straight into a Christmas Story is one of the best, but most obscure double features ever. bit of whiplash. lot of directors work back to back. yeah yeah Yeah, so so Carpenter had met, ah had seen Black Christmas and he met Bob Clark and they were talking and and he said, you have you thought about doing a sequel to it? And Clark said, no, because I don't want to do horror films.
00:28:30
Speaker
um But he said, what if I did do something, what I thought was it would be about this same guy who's the we never quite know who the killer is in Black Christmas, but it's the same guy. He gets out of a mental institution and this one is called Halloween. And And that's so some people have said, oh, well, Halloween was stolen from Black Christmas. And and Bob Clark says that's not true.
00:28:51
Speaker
He said, yeah, we talked about it. He said, but he had a script that was the Carpenter. He Carpenter had a script that was brought to him by Erwin New Blondes. And so not a script, but a concept, just a horror film.
Iconic Scenes and Tension in 'Halloween'
00:29:03
Speaker
Cheap. It's set at Halloween. He said anyone could have done that. And he said, it's a totally different movie than Black Christmas. Yeah. what's What's Deborah Hill's involvement at this point when the script, these ideas are being passed around?
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, she was a screenwriter and she and John Carpenter were a couple at the time. And she was the producer, became the producer of the film. They co-wrote the first film and they co-wrote hallowen Halloween 2 also.
00:29:31
Speaker
But um it was Deborah Hill who came up with the idea of why don't we cast Janet Leigh's daughter? in the movie because, you know, she's an actress. Oh, that's that's awesome.
00:29:43
Speaker
And she had hardly done anything. She was on a, she was on a sitcom. She was in a couple of things. And she said, you know, she's working and she's a kid. But if she's any, let's read her for the part. And if she's any good at all, this will, we could use her.
00:30:00
Speaker
And this would be a great promotional hook. This is Janet Lee's daughter. um And so they, they brought in Jamie Lee Curtis. And she read for the part, of course, and she's terrific. And she was 19 years old.
00:30:15
Speaker
um And as I've said, i think that she's so good in Halloween that she it's really clear that at age 19, she deserved the career that she's had subsequently.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yes. I've read that Deborah Hill, for the writing portion of the movie, wrote but most of the female dialogue and lines. Totally. to The men. And I think you could see that distinction because most of the females in the movie are the teenagers and it it seems very stereotypical of teenage girl banter and it's fitting where, you know, Carpenter's writing lines for like Donald Pleasance as Loomis who keeps going like,
00:30:54
Speaker
I've known this man for 15 years. yes it said to me It's 15 years. It's a lot more like profound monologue on occasion about his experiences where I think, I think Dr. I think Dr. Loomis is profound. I don't know if other yeah listening to him think it's profound.
00:31:10
Speaker
Um, Yeah, that's too funny. um Well, we're jumping naturally into production notes here so we can yeah keep going this train, but we always like to talk with production notes. So talking about low budget films, I see that this film was made on a $300,000 budget.
00:31:27
Speaker
Now, this is the seventy s so adjusted for inflation, this is closer to little over a million dollars today, likely, but tiny incredibly low. Um, notably like the actors were providing their own costumes. I've seen. Um, I also saw like they had to, you know, for Donald Pleasance's role, there was a lot of bigger name stars at the time who are turning it down. Cause heard he was the highest paid highest billed cast member. And I think he made $20,000 for his role on this. But, um,
00:31:57
Speaker
With that small and limited budget, i can i don't know if this is including re-releases. I didn't do enough digging, but it has made $47 million domestic at the box office, which that figure adjusted for inflation is like $200 million dollars today. So a gigantic and outsized return on this small budget horror picture that that really took off and really propelled you know John Carpenter's career. this was i know it sold on Precinct 13. I think it released at film festivals, but I think this was his first.
00:32:27
Speaker
wide release, I believe. Oh, Assault didn't get a wide release? I don't know. um i don't know it probably played It probably played in drive-ins and urban grindhouse theaters, neighborhood theaters in the 70s. But before that, he had made, I don't know how successful it was, but he had made the movie science fiction comedy called Dark Star in 1974 that was an expanded version of a short that he had made at the USC Film School. And it was co-written by um one of his classmates who was a guy named Dan O'Bannon
00:33:01
Speaker
And Dan O'Bannon is later the guy who writes the screenplay for Alien or co-writes Alien. And he also then, Dan O'Bannon also directed Return of the Living Dead 1985, which is a really good comic. It's very good. We just watched that in in prep for 28 years later. We both- We were watching a lot of zombie films. neither of us had seen that one. We'd always heard it was fun. It was her held in high regard and you know influential for the eating of the brains and stuff. And we loved that one. Very punk too.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, again, Dan O'Bannon and and Carpenter were at USC. So he had made these low budget films. And at that particular time, from the 1950s through the 70s, there was this specific category, and it actually goes back a little further, that was called in the industry exploitation film.
00:33:47
Speaker
And exploitation is the industry word that means promotion. It means hype. And so exploitation movies were by definition, low budget films that didn't have big stars, didn't have significant budgets or production values, but what they had was a kind of,
00:34:06
Speaker
sexy or catchy title. And they had really lurid advertising and artwork that was frequently making promises the movies weren't about to keep.
00:34:17
Speaker
But so the exploitation again means hype and promotion. So these are the kind of movies that again, that Hitchcock is watching in the late fifties or seeing and knows of and says, I can do that. And that's where psycho comes from. So, so things like assault on precinct 13 before Halloween,
00:34:35
Speaker
was completely in line with those kinds of movies that played in drive-ins and neighborhood theaters in the sixties and seventies. So last note on the budget, which I think we have to bring up, um, has been off to repeated, but I, I'd feel miss if we didn't bring it up is again, with such a low budget, like Mike Myers costume, they had to get ah captain Kirk mask, I believe from, from star Trek. Right. And that's, that's what he was,
00:35:00
Speaker
wearing um you know yeah they took cover the guy another one of carpenter's friends and collaborators was a guy named tommy lee wallace and he's worked on a number of carpenter's early films and he was the production designer on this one or art director and whatever they would have called it and and they took this pre-existing don post studios captain kirk mask turned it inside out and then spray painted it And then they kind of adjusted the eye holes and did some other stuff with it. But they but basically they took this preexisting mask and of Captain Kirk.
00:35:34
Speaker
And so that um that that's that's what's that's where the iconic mask came from. So only other Carpenter factor. Well, I guess two other Carpenter points.
00:35:45
Speaker
One, we do need to acknowledge that he was a triple threat in this film. So not only did he write it with Deborah Hill, direct it, but he also did the score, um which he's done in many of his films. And Carpenter is no slouch. like this yeah i Again, I'm trying to give this accolades that Dr. Worland, you could probably weigh in better on better than I can.
00:36:07
Speaker
But to me, this is probably the most iconic core score, at least on the Mount Rushmore of iconic score scores of all time, what he put together for Halloween. Oh, it is. And it's instantly recognizable. John Carpenter's father was a professor of music at the University of Kentucky, and all which is where Carpenter grew up. His family was originally... they or from where We're from upstate New York, but the father got this teaching position in Kentucky. And so they went they moved there.
00:36:36
Speaker
And um Carpenter has said at different times, I'm not a musician. But at the same time, it's clear he plays piano, he can read music, he can compose. And he was smart enough, done to his big key for the Halloween score was to was to write it in five, four times.
00:36:54
Speaker
rather than the sort of standard which is the most conventional. So you write it in 5-4 times, it has this off-kilter... It has that... I can't even do it. It has this feel of like it's off-center somehow. It's like it just has that unsettling, the 5-4-B, if you count out 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4-5, it just has this...
00:37:19
Speaker
it just has this It just goes against the grain of so much conventional music, which is written before him. Yeah, I love the score. And that that's a good point. like It sounds fast-paced in that five four framing, and it sounds a bit off, but that's why it's also so appealing. Yeah, it's not it's not melodic. yeah It's like you want to get settled, and you can't. because And then those big bong chords are in there. oh And it just it just feels like in inevitable doom. It's just absolutely perfect for that reason. Just as soon as you hear it, it's slurred.
00:37:53
Speaker
sets you on edge and it feels doom laden and just completely perfect. And then speaking of the score being a bit off kilter, I personally, having watched a lot of Carpenter's filmography just the last few years, especially just horror movies, but also you know Escape from LA, Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China,
00:38:10
Speaker
this is probably the least weird carpenter film. I feel like after success with this, he starts going heavy into like practical effects and special effects in general. You know, all these other films, I feel like seem much higher budget, notably so with a lot more like zany things going on. But this one could all like really exist, I guess, maybe except for the very ending of the film. Like it's a lot more plausible. There's nothing like,
00:38:35
Speaker
over the top effects wise. I thought it's always stood out as being a bit different from his subsequent filmography he makes after this with like, you know, transformations in the thing or whatever the floating eyeball looking guy is in big trouble from Little China, like he starts getting a lot more. Lovecraftian, you know, themes of in the mouth of madness.
00:38:57
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. More straightforward, but more linear. Well, I mean, I think that was, you know, The Thing was released by Universal, and this was after, obviously, Halloween was a huge hit, and also Escape from New York was not an expensive movie, but it did very well and became kind of a cult movie right away. And so he got this bigger budget to do The Thing, and You know, it was a bop when it came out. It got terrible reviews, which just in retrospect seems like ah hard to believe.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yes. And he kind of took it badly because he said, you know, but he did, of course, within a few years, it was very clear that this was a hugely popular film. and And he was like, I knew I was right, you know, but it's just like the critics said terrible things about the film when it first came out.
00:39:49
Speaker
I'm speaking for myself, but having had this conversation with Rick before, I believe he agrees that The Thing is one of my favorite horror films, if not my favorite horror film of all time, where Halloween will always hold a special place in my heart, and it's always going to on like a top 50 list or top 100 list by myself or others. But I think the The Thing is probably his crowning achievement, at least from my perspective, looking back on the horror films Carpenter made.
00:40:15
Speaker
I don't know, Rick, if you feel the same or... how you weigh those two films. I know hard to put you on the spot here. I'll speak quickly since ah I want to hear Dr. Worland, but like for me, it's my personal favorite horror film is The Thing, um which obviously makes working with Kurt Russell now so cool. I try to pepper in little questions about how he was flying the helicopter and why he thinks he didn't do well at the box office. And I think a few days ago he had said, they just didn't want to, they didn't want to believe how bleak it was. They didn't understand how bleak it was. And he's like, now they get it. I'm like, didn't get it you're right.
00:40:46
Speaker
And he just said ah how gruesome the monster is. He's like, people just didn't want to see it They didn't want to market it. They didn't know how to market it. um I can still, though, hold those two things in tension and acknowledge that Halloween had a bigger impact on horror, given the success of the franchise a whole and what it did, for better or for worse, to the slasher genre. But um it's like, I can also say, I can be like, I think the thing is his best work, but maybe the Halloween is his greatest work, if that makes sense.
00:41:12
Speaker
But I don't know if Dr. Worland, what you weigh in. Well, I would just say as an observation, I like the thing lot as well. And I would just say as an observation that it's so well-known and well-respected today that if you think of John Carpenter, you think Halloween and the thing. Yeah. And he was making virtually a film a year from the late 70s up to 2001.
00:41:38
Speaker
but and he made some really interesting ones star man was a really change of pace movie that was a was a big hit um and which i liked i liked that one a lot too and ah vampires and that's that's a really good one it's just kind of an action movie but i think the thing in halloween or the movies you always think up with john carter yeah what else What else during – anything else on production, Dr. Rowland, as far as – The only thing I would say about it is that I didn't realize until I – many years later that Halloween was all shot in the Los Angeles era. Oh, I didn't know that.
00:42:15
Speaker
and No, I didn't know that either. And actually, because they looked at some Midwestern locations, but because they didn't have much money, they they didn't want to move out of state. And so they actually went out to the eastern San Gabriel Valley and shot it in, I think, in the towns of El Monte and Duarte, which are out there to the far edge and of L.A.,
00:42:38
Speaker
And but it's in the suburbs. It's in the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles. And they they found neighborhoods that had mature trees. And then, of course, you can always you can always get you know bags of leaves, fake leaves to blow them around with wind machines and then things like that. But it's convincingly this is a Midwestern small town. And I and I like it. But it was all shot in all shot in L.A.
00:43:04
Speaker
That's surprising. I would have never thought that. Yeah. It's set in Haddonfield, Illinois. Which is not a real place. Deborah Hill was from Haddonfield, New Jersey. okay. And I really like the fact that it it was Haddonfield, New Jersey. They call it Haddonfield, Illinois, and it was shot in LA because it's just like horror coast to coast.
00:43:24
Speaker
so This is a dangerous place regardless. Yeah. Well, the only other production notes I have is talking about casting. i I know we talked about Jamie Lee Curtis already. I did want to talk a bit about Donald Pleasance. But before we jump into casting, anything else on the maybe production side, um whether it's Carpenter or otherwise?
00:43:42
Speaker
Yeah. So as I said, it it really was a ah deal that was more or less presented as by Erwin Yoblans and Compass International, his film. They said, we've got about $300,000. It actually ended up costing, I think, they say it's like $340,000 or something like that.
00:44:01
Speaker
And if you can come up with a movie that takes horror film, $300,000 takes place at Halloween, we'll make it. And so he and Debra Hill came up with the story.
00:44:13
Speaker
um It has those conscious references in the film to Psycho that we've talked about, like Sam Loomis is the name of... Marion Crane's lover, her boyfriend, playing by John Gavin in Psycho. and there's A lot of naming tributes or homage to to different horror films, I've realized.
00:44:36
Speaker
Yeah, that thought that those kind of things are there. And then, um so then they cast Jamie Lee Curtis, but... the but But the thing is, as you're right, you're saying about Donald Pleasance is that he was, he's first bill to the cast because Donald Pleasance was a well-known and well-regarded character actor in British and American films in the sixties and seventies. He was a Bond villain in, uh, he was the first Blofeld. I'm a, he was the first Blofeld. And you only live twice. Yeah, exactly. We could sing that together. We could chorus that together.
00:45:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, so he was very well known and he always played these sort of sinister characters who typically played villains. And that's all the more interesting that they cast him as this sort of frightened villain.
00:45:21
Speaker
frightened ah hero as, you know, half hero that he tries to be in in Halloween. Ultimately, he does, of course, save the day at the very end. But I mean, casting this guy that that most audiences in the late 70s would have realized, oh, yeah, this guy's shifty. We can't we can't trust him. And casting him as this sort of positive character, that was a good move, too, because it's a little off balance for what what the expectations were.
00:45:46
Speaker
So what I've read is they initially offered the role to Peter Cushing, turned it down because again, for $20,000, his agent was like, absolutely not. And they next went to Christopher Lee, which I think would have made a I love Donald Pleasance playing his role in this film, but I'm a gigantic Christopher Lee film where I like to think of the what if the hypothetical if he was ah playing Dr. Loomis in this.
00:46:10
Speaker
um I think it's funny because Cushing could do that sort of cringing. i'm I'm worried. I'm genuinely frightened. You have to listen to me. He could do that. It's not that Christopher Lee wasn't a good actor. He was.
00:46:22
Speaker
God, he's so commanding. He's like 6'4". like He's not afraid him. Michael should be afraid of him. He was Dracula. He kind of sucks up all the energy in the room, too, where it's hard for any other character demand a presence. Donald Pleasence, he's almost like pestering people to listen to his story. and i feel like ah If Christopher Lee said that, they'd be like, okay, yes. They'd figure it out and this movie's over.
00:46:47
Speaker
The entire town would be doing a manhunt within a minute of him there. This guy over here, let's listen to him. Yeah, Christopher Lee on record saying it's one of the biggest regrets of his entire career is that he didn't take the role.
00:47:00
Speaker
um But yeah, that's really it. Donald Pleasance would come back, work with Carpenter a few more times. Prince of Darkness, which is another great Carpenter film he's in ah as a protagonist in that one. He's also in Escape from New York.
00:47:12
Speaker
um So he I think he does a great job and they would become frequent collaborators after this film.
00:47:20
Speaker
Dr. well We don't typically we typically ah loop analysis and thematic observations into our overall thoughts. Trav and I don't have an MA or a PhD in film. So we we kind of like it's more like what we like about the film and then what we think it's about what we personally think the movie is about. But in this case, um we'd love to hear some of the the the thematic things that resonate with you as far as the familial,
00:47:45
Speaker
um how characters kind of reappear later in and in the film as different versions of themselves. I know at at one point you talk about how three figures from the prologue, reckless teenage girl, her conceited boyfriend and child killer reappear as distorted reflections as Laurie, Tommy and the adult Michael.
00:48:02
Speaker
that's the kind of examples of things that we'd love to hear you talk about that maybe listeners or viewers of the movie don't pick up on consciously, but that subconsciously they can be like Oh, that's why this is evoking this weird echo or this weird feeling or this, this eeriness.
00:48:16
Speaker
Um, just want to give you the floor to talk about, we've done influence, but talk about themes in the movie that, um, that you like to pick apart and and discuss in your book. Well, uh, you know, I think the,
00:48:28
Speaker
the fact that you talked about the familial horror, that also is traceable back to Psycho most directly, this sort of eruption of the horror within the nuclear family. And that's certainly what is, that becomes a prominent feature of horror from the late 60s forward, starting with Night of the Living Dead and Chainsaw Massacre and so many others. It becomes just a feature.
00:48:51
Speaker
It's older, of course, because it goes back to Gothic literature. And so much of Gothic literature in the late eighteenth century and the 19th century is really about problems within a family.
00:49:02
Speaker
And it's that family home that has all these generations there. And, you know, the crazy person is in the tower and, is you know, you can't, we can't let them out. and And so, so that familial basis, but, but what happened in classic style horror films going back to the is that is that The movies end with a definite sense of catharsis. We feel like the monster is really dead.
00:49:27
Speaker
And the sort of idea of what's the normal is signaled by either the formation of a heterosexual couple or the sort of preservation of a family or a family-like group.
00:49:40
Speaker
And so these these sort of traditional social institutions are upheld and defended. Well, Psycho makes it clear that the monster appears within the family. ah Norman Bates is completely crazy as ah young child probably implicitly and kills his mother and her stepfa and stepfather who's who's a lover.
00:50:03
Speaker
Insinuated that was in bed, right? Insinuated that he killed them while they were bed? it's directly that. and okay When they're telling this story, it's the the what he's telling it to the sheriff of the small town and um you know his his wife is standing there and they're in their bathrobes because ah Sam and and Lila woke him up in the middle of night and she says he had Norman killed his parents and she leans over to Lila and says, yeah,
00:50:26
Speaker
Which means as much as you could they weren't asleep. They weren't asleep when it happened. As much as you could do ah while the production code was still being enforced. Yeah, absolutely, before 1968. And Psycho was considered pushing the envelope, by the way. It was considered very much on edge of what could possibly be done at at that particular time.
00:50:47
Speaker
so i mean So Halloween begins with this amazing opening scene. ah That was one of the early uses of the Steadicam in a long take. The Steadicam was marketed and was available for use in, I think, 1975.
00:51:01
Speaker
um And so if you see like the scene of Rocky, the the famous Rocky montage of him training and running through Philadelphia, and then he goes up the steps of the art museum, that was...
00:51:12
Speaker
look Go back and look at that scene and it's really well done. And the camera operator follows him up the steps. And so so the Steadicam was becoming still kind of unusual at that time. And and the Carpenter uses it very well. So we have this long take, the exterior of the house, which looks kind of scary.
00:51:30
Speaker
And we go into the house, we look through the window, the audience voyeuristic, and we're seeing his, Michael's sister and the boyfriend, you know, kind of looking around and sort of necking and playing with each other. This is this is all one unbroken shot, right?
00:51:44
Speaker
It is, yeah. Most of it is. I think I've never read the actual the actual bit on this. It feels like a continuous shot. I think maybe, and I'm not certain, that when they when Michael goes around the house and comes in the back door, I think there's potentially a hidden cut That would make sense, yeah. Because going from outside to inside is always difficult. yeah Yeah, I think so.
00:52:06
Speaker
but it But it goes into black for just a split second, and of course that's where you cut that. Right, right, right. And then we follow Michael upstairs. um ah he First he goes to the drawer. He pulls out and we see that he has the house clown costume. We see the sort of satin and ruffles that on the sleeve. He's taken out taking out the big knife and he's looking around. And then the scene I always love, that the boyfriend comes downstairs like pulling on his shirt, and feeling like, oh man, I am such a stud.
00:52:34
Speaker
As I always say to the students, I'm like, you know, this guy's really proud of himself considering he's been upstairs about one minute. Yes. We we called that out when we just did our watch along. Like very short duration until he is fully clothed again.
00:52:49
Speaker
like don't get too don't be too proud of yourself, buddy. He's insufferably proud of himself. And he's just like sort of already brushing her off. She goes, will you call me tomorrow? um Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. So he goes upstairs, he picks up the clown mask that the kid that the boyfriend had had earlier. And I think there's another potential cut there when they shift to the yeah literal, yeah the visual mask. And when he puts it on his face, kills the sister,
00:53:14
Speaker
um in a bloody fashion, and then goes outside. So anyway, it's just like this hat, and then you go outside, and the little boy, where he's revealed as a small child, ah and it's his parents who have come home, obviously, from from a night out or something. And so the the family is just central to this.
00:53:33
Speaker
I will say, though, kind of putting together both the ideas about the talk about production and themes in the film, I think there's no question that family is centrally important all through the film.
00:53:44
Speaker
um The idea that Michael is Laurie's brother, that that she's the sister of Michael, was created originally for Halloween 2. And that's that's the the big sort of twist in Halloween 2. However, Carpenter, at the same time that he was shooting Halloween 2, that he was producing, not directing it.
00:54:05
Speaker
that they were shooting Halloween II in early 1981, he was also going to make shoot some extra footage from the original for the original Halloween since he had some of the cast members there um that would be included in a broadcast network television version of Halloween, which was then run in nineteen on Halloween in 1981.
00:54:26
Speaker
So while he had, like, you know, P.J. Souls and and and and ah Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence and the other woman, had them all together, they shot these additional scenes for the broadcast TV version.
00:54:42
Speaker
And it's also, and one of the scenes in the broadcast version is Dr. Loomis inspecting Michael's cell where he was escaped from in the mental hospital. And you go into the cell and you see that he scrawled the word sister on the wall. on the wall So Carpenter was also like, well, he was going to reveal that in Halloween too.
00:55:01
Speaker
He sort of went back and planted that. Oh, interesting. In this sort of side version of the original movie. Yeah, that's a good point.
00:55:12
Speaker
typical of what hollywood often does the two women pj soulles and nancy loomis who play her friends two of them were in their late twenties. Uh, when they, Jamie Lee Curtis was 19, but the, her two friends were their late twenties. We, we talked about that on our watch along, but I was actually shocked that Jamie Lee Curtis was so young relative to them.
00:55:33
Speaker
Um, I thought they were all in their twenties, but yeah, she was truly, she has this very mature bearing and she, she somehow, which is perfect for the role that she's this kid. We believe that she's a good actor, so we believe that she's hesitant and sort of a wallflower.
00:55:48
Speaker
And yet we also believe because she's so strong that she has these inner reserves. So, I mean, that that that's another example of her being a really strong performer. So, yeah. so But anyway, and and to finish off that plot line there is that when they did the reboot of Halloween in 2018 and they did retcon that and they pretended that the whole Laurie is his sister thing didn't happen, Jamie Lee Curtis said she never liked that.
00:56:16
Speaker
And eventually Carpenter was kind of on board with, yeah, we probably shouldn't have done um And that's you know that's just a choice. That's just a choice. so that well And in that sense, it does really go back to what was not there. What was not there in the first film is that there was no direct, yeah this information is just simply not there at all. so so but i mean And then it also, in the larger scheme of talking about themes in the genre in the 1970s or that period that begins with Night Living Dead in 68,
00:56:50
Speaker
sixty eight um there is this sense of the unresolved ending and the fact that there's a sense that the evil still lives at the end of the movie. We hear Michael's breathing over shots of the room where this movie has taken place.
00:57:06
Speaker
And there's a sense in those late 60s, 70s horror films that traditional social institutions and social authorities are just helpless.
00:57:16
Speaker
Yeah. that they're either ineffectual or they're just not present. and um and And Halloween carries this through very, very strongly. Dr. Loomis runs around trying to enlist other people to help him catch this escaped lunatic. And no one's particularly interested.
00:57:35
Speaker
I mean, it just seems like that that's a thing that, in a sense, doesn't make sense. but um But it fits with the whole story, just this sense of its kind of societal helplessness.
00:57:46
Speaker
um If you think of the ending of the original Frankenstein in 1931, the mayor and the police organized sort of a couple of posses that go out to hunt down the Frankenstein monster.
00:57:59
Speaker
And you just don't have that in these movies of the the late 60s and 70s. Well, with that, let's get to our wards. So we like to start with our scarometer, which is purely based on how scary the film is, not the quality of the film, how scary the film is. And we do this on a zero to 10 scale, although we've yet to have any zeros and we've yet to have wait we zero as an option.
00:58:25
Speaker
I guess we haven't even had any ones yet though. Have we? I think our lowest was like high destination bloodlines. Was it too? tried to push for bloodlines to get a one, but yeah you, you, you up the average. You can't, you can't go that low yet, man. We got to reserve that. There are films less scary. I'm sure we'll cover Christmas. Yeah.
00:58:43
Speaker
Although that movie is pretty scary. Boogeyman. Um, But with that in mind, I don't know, Dr. Worland, if you'd like to lead us off or if you'd like to hear what Rick and I say with our numbers, so you can anchor off of that.
00:58:55
Speaker
um Happy either way with how I think I'll let you start since this is your since this is your show. Rick, where where are you? So Trav, you actually have helped me do this scarometer, formerly known as the scarometer, scale a little different.
00:59:11
Speaker
um Whereas it's not just about how you feel during the film, but maybe lingering effects you feel after. So like the long walk is a good example of like, was I scared during the movie? No. But was it disturbing?
00:59:23
Speaker
Yes. And did it make me think about my own future, the future of our government, the future of our country and where things are going? haunting. Yes. The good it is haunting. And so with Halloween...
00:59:34
Speaker
it's The disadvantage it has is that it is so early. And so we've refined how people get jump you know big jump scares in your seats. And we're we're almost um spoiled to how how effective it is now. so Very clinical. like Literally, there's a science of studying how to get people's heart rates up. no But i I can't give this less than a five just because of how foreboding Michael Myers is.
00:59:56
Speaker
I don't care if it's 78. I don't care if I'm not jumping out of my seat during him watching. He is haunting back of my head at some point during this holiday season. He has to be the scariest slasher villain, right? Yes, I agree. More so, at least from the 70s, 80s run of him, or even 90s. Scarier than Ghostface, scarier than Jason. Even Leatherface. Leatherface's
01:00:19
Speaker
I think gives him a run for his money. And I think the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre is scarier than Halloween. But there is something just primordial and and otherworldly that you can't just access or grapple on to with Michael Myers, even more so than Leatherface. So I'm going to go with the five just because of the combination of all those things.
01:00:39
Speaker
I was going to say four, and I think you convinced me. I'll agree with you on five for myself there. um Because, yeah, he is he is creepy. So while there's not as many jump scares, especially as you start to establish at the end of the film, and again, spoilers ahead from this point on, even though we've already spoiled a few points already, but this is a very well-known film.
01:00:58
Speaker
um like He doesn't die at the end. And you're like, is this guy more than human? And they that will always be scary and scared me when I was much younger as well. So i'm I'm with you on a five in that regards.
01:01:10
Speaker
Dr. Worland, I know prior to recording, the only feedback I gave you was on this specific point. And so I won't frame where you currently or where you were then, but I'll let you answer now for where you placed this one.
01:01:23
Speaker
Well, you know, I think there are... You mentioned Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is another film I love and have written about and show in classes. And and I think that's a film that's very intense. And it it builds this foreboding mood all through all through the story and then goes completely insane in the second half.
01:01:42
Speaker
um I think a Halloween keeps you tense all the way through it. So I would say probably six or seven at least. um It's... um and And then it really isn't. i mean, it it has this amazing opening that's really chilling that sort of keeps you on edge.
01:01:59
Speaker
And you and you really the film is astute enough that you don't have to top that in the rest of the movie because it sets you off in such a point of being.
01:02:10
Speaker
This is just terrifying um that this guy that this unknown person killed us cha this young teenage girl in her room, et cetera. And so they don't have to top that. and but So finally, that's why you can have go through most of the first and second act for like 47, 8 minutes and not have any any murders at all. and so But it it maintains the tension. The difference between Halloween and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is that is the character building that you care about jimmy lee curtis's right yes not dr loomis and it's not like they're it's it's not a point in in chainsaw massacre but i think the
01:02:49
Speaker
the killers, the monster family are more, are characterized more so than the victim. yeah Yeah, I'd agree. I'd agree. yeah So that's about the decay of the rural, ah America and yeah and factories out, out, you replacing them. The protagonists, if you want to call them in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, feel more expendable from the get-go and as invested.
01:03:10
Speaker
Um, yeah, I, I like that. Um, Well, let's pivot to our highlights of the film. this is favorite scene or set piece typically that we associate with the film.
01:03:20
Speaker
Dr. Roiland, you can start again as our guest if you'd like to. Well, to me, I like, again, in terms of the building of suspense and the craft, the scene that starts, it's in the first act that starts with Our first glimpse that Michael is back inside the old Myers house, which the little boy that that she's babysitting, Tommy, Tommy is afraid to go up to the witch house or the ghost house or whatever he calls it. boeyman The boogeyman lives there and she's, you know, he does.
01:03:48
Speaker
And so from that moment where Michael appears like inside, like his his shoulder and his side of his head comes in in silhouette looking out the window. And then we realize he's following her and it culminates in, ah in Lori being upstairs in the bedroom and looking down in the, down below out the window and sees Michael standing there with this white face in among all the billowing sheets on the clothesline. That's just true. And then the phone race.
01:04:14
Speaker
yeah And thats that's, that's a really terrific, uh, that's a terrific moment. And I, in fact, we'll get to the jump scare thing, but. You've already mentioned, Travis, that this is not really a film that relies on it very much. And that I think the phone ringing at the end of that sequence is, is the closest thing that qualifies as. Yeah. there Yeah.
01:04:33
Speaker
Yeah. Rick, what about yourself for highlights? Well, I'm going to pick one that is, and I think I mentioned during our watch along, but I know ah Dr. Worland, you've had something to say about this as well, just based on my memory of your class and us talking pre-pod, but the killing of Bob is one of my favorite things in the movie.
01:04:51
Speaker
um Just because it's really the whole scene. It starts with Bob and i think Linda, they're starting to have sex and and they're occupying this empty home and Michael Myers is arrives and ah Bob goes downstairs to get a beer and ah the whole set piece of of a the killing of Bob. So he picks him up and ah with with one hand brutal strength by the neck and is able to lift him, which is an incredible feat of strength.
01:05:20
Speaker
well and not a human it was two It was two feats of strength. One was picking him up with one hand, but the other was driving the knife through his body with such force that it sticks him against the wall. It holds him up. yep yeah right ah Gravity cannot ah run its effect on letting him slump back to the floor.
01:05:37
Speaker
And then, um of course, it's like that famous head tilt, ah just looking, looking at what he just did. Look, he's just proud, proud of admiring his handiwork. Right.
01:05:48
Speaker
um And so it's that and then that I don't know if I'm cheating by by going beyond that killing, but it's then leads up to this. It's the most playful that we see. Michael Myers is the most playful where he dons a bed sheet as to to look like a ghost.
01:06:03
Speaker
And then puts on glasses to really sell it. And it both tickles and freaks me out. It tickles me and it freaks me out because it's like this psychopath just killed this guy.
01:06:15
Speaker
And now he's going to take the time to don a costume. And just like, is it to is it like a is it like a lion playing with its meal before it kills them? I i don't know.
01:06:26
Speaker
And granted, he's already wearing a mask. So his face is already obfuscated. And so his girlfriend, was it Linda, might like not recognize him already, but he's like, okay, on top of the mask, I'm also going to put a sheet and just put a ghost. right He's got layers there. yeah um That's great. yeah I really love the ending. I've brought it up a few times, but...
01:06:46
Speaker
you know In summary, like at this point, Laurie has stabbed him with his own knife. ah Loomis fires a few rounds into him, and then he falls out of a second story window. And you're like, this guy is done for, right? like he's He's just got through plenty of injuries where any one of them in isolation could have easily killed someone.
01:07:02
Speaker
um And when they go outside around the corner, he's disappeared. So I just love the film ending on that note. And that's what I remember from the first time I watched it. is this disbelief at, oh my goodness, like he's still out there. Cause just like you said, Dr. Worland early in the episode, I was so used to up until this point of horror movies, nicely wrapping themselves up and usually on a more positive note, then all of a sudden be like, oh no, this is like definitely to be continued or who knows he could still be out there today.
01:07:29
Speaker
Yeah. um Awesome. Okay. From highlights, we we typically like to go to our ah are Ben Gardner Jump Scare Award. Do you know why we call it the Ben Gardner Award? Have we got over this with you? No, I don't think so.
01:07:43
Speaker
Do you know who Ben Gardner is? No. you It'd be very odd if you did, honestly. That is the name of the fisherman in the movie Jaws who has gone missing late one night. So Richard Dreyfuss and, oh, geez, who's the lead in Jaws?
01:07:59
Speaker
and Roy Scheider. And Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss go out looking for him and they find his head. um underwater and they find his body underwater. And it's a great jump scare. Yeah, it's it is very, so I mean, it it does, it's probably the last jump scare in Jaws. All of a sudden this head reveals, oh wow and so he's our honorary jump scare award. yeah amy So I'm with you. there's There's not many in this film, right? It doesn't rely on it, which is a testament to how good of a horror film it is without jump scares.
01:08:25
Speaker
um Rick, you brought this up. So I should give you credit, but agree with you that early in the film, When Loomis is arriving to the Sane Asylum, this is 15 years after original murder.
01:08:37
Speaker
And he has his nurse riding shotgun. And for some reason, all the patients are just like, he's entering around. He's writing shotgun. She's driving. That was, that was a pivotal point. You are right.
01:08:49
Speaker
And for some reason, all the patients are just meandering around like in this field in a big like thunderstorm. And then all of a sudden you see Michael Myers just jump on the ah the hood of the car, or the windshield of the car is the only other jump I can really think of in this movie that but surprised me.
01:09:05
Speaker
I think i like that one a lot. And, you know, the music has a big has a ah lot to do with any jump scares in this because you'll hear that family or the just I don't know what the instrument is, but it's very loud.
01:09:18
Speaker
The other one I thought of and going back to my favorite scene um is is when Lori discovers Bob's body when it swings down. Yeah, um but she opens the cupboard or something and and he's there. So that's what i picked. Dr. or Did you did you have any that? ah Yeah, you as I said, I think maybe, I think the ones that you mentioned are both really good ones. But ah as I said, that the the climax of that ah initial stalking sequence where the telephone rings just after she's seen Michael down below, it's like we're like unsettled at that point. But yeah, it's, you know, the thing, and what I say about...
01:09:55
Speaker
talking about the horror genre, is that horror is similar. People making horror films are similar to comedians. In that, in a comic film, you this may mostly be sort of verbal wit and the situation is funny, but that doesn't mean that you're not going to throw in some slapstick jokes and gags if it works. You may you do whatever technique you can summon to make people laugh.
01:10:19
Speaker
And the same thing is true with horror films, only it's whatever you can do to make people frightened, apprehensive, jump, et cetera, you'll try everything because you that you want to get that reaction. Mm-hmm.
01:10:32
Speaker
So on that note, with another type of scare, we have another award called our cantaloupe award, which i imagine is even if you didn't know Ben Gardner, there's no way you're going to understand this one without the reference of there was a very frightening film called Bring Her Back that came out earlier this year.
01:10:48
Speaker
The very harrowing scene with a piece of cantaloupe. um And so what this award is supposed to represent is a moment where you almost can't help but cover your eyes with your fingers or your ears because it's, it's tense. It's dread inducing.
01:11:05
Speaker
um It's hard to watch. It raises your heart rate a bit. And so I'm curious, do you have a specific scene in mind where you get that feeling from this movie? i I think probably for me, the,
01:11:17
Speaker
the scene that's the most like that, uh, is the continuing where we were talking before about the killing then of Linda when, but when ghost Michael with the glasses strangles her with the telephone cord, it's just like this brutal, very kind of realistic strangulation and it's not fast.
01:11:36
Speaker
That's the most drawn out one. And yeah, and it's, it's very, very brutal. Um, and that's kind of the most disturbing one in the movie for me. Yeah. um Sometimes for these we'll do disturbing. Sometimes it'll be gross.
01:11:49
Speaker
Other times it's what's just tense. And I think the the part of the movie that I'm the most tense and it's a classic setup that you see done in many films with, and this one it's done so well is, is where Michael sees Lori. She can't get inside of the house.
01:12:02
Speaker
She's locked out. She's at at ah somebody else's house, I believe, or something. But he's, it's that scene where he's walking across the street and, slowly, methodically. And he's just this like force that's not going to be reckoned with.
01:12:15
Speaker
And yes, just like a shark going to its prey. And I, like I think the home where the, other girl was being watched, um babysat. And what was her name? I should have wrote it down. Lindsay. She is leaving Lindsay's home, going back to Tommy's home, the other babysitting home.
01:12:33
Speaker
And she is trying to get into the house and Mike Myers is slowly paced across the street in the third act. And this is a scene that's been parodied a lot, especially recently with um different like social media challenges where people will try to you know I've seen it for real estate agents where they'll try to like get a key in the door and unlock it while someone's slowly pacing at them with Michael Myers mask to see like, can it be done if you have roughly like 15 seconds or so that this person is not running you down, but it's still dread inducing enough where you might fumble the key or, or, or the Dallas Mavericks they're in their halftime show. Yes. Shout out to my buddy, Ryan Rosenbaum. Yes.
01:13:07
Speaker
He's the director of in-game entertainment for the Dallas Mavs, and he ah created a little a little promo with a similar concept where he dressed up as Michael Myers and he's slowly walking towards somebody trying to shoot free throws. And it's how many free throws they can hit before he goes and kills them with a foam knife.
01:13:25
Speaker
It's very funny. um Awesome. Well, let's go to best death. I think you already completely captured mine, Rick, which is the death of Bob um is the most entertaining piece. I think we just described that scene in detail. so that is it for me. i wanted I wanted to know if Dr. Orland had anything to add about the death of Bob and why that was, because I know that was your choice as well, but we you didn't get to talk about it.
01:13:44
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's, I think you guys covered it very well. And I think that's another perfect example of of Carpenter carefully designing and shooting and editing Carpenter. the development of that entire long sequence that starts with him going downstairs. We get, it's very dark in the kitchen. he opens this drawer and that door and, you know, and it builds it up. And then finally he comes out of the cupboard or whatever it is.
01:14:12
Speaker
So, and then, ah then with him going upstairs. So I think that that whole sequence again is so carefully planned and executed is why we remember it so well. Yeah. Yeah, I think between the opening scene and Bob death, it's kind of those are the ah two that we're going to probably all agree on. Yeah, yeah. Killing his
Slasher Film Tropes and 'Friday the 13th'
01:14:29
Speaker
sister at the start, too. That but definitely deserves to be mentioned.
01:14:32
Speaker
All right. And then we get to cannon fodder. When we talked previously, Dr. Rowling, I think you mentioned that you you didn't think you could find cannon fodder award here because of of the way that the film is structured. Can you unpack that a little bit Yeah, I think it it really just goes back to what I was been saying all along, really, is that the film is so carefully wrought in every way that there just isn't any gratuitous murder scenes. and and And again, if you go back and look at the original, I always show it in the class. if you look at the original theatrical trailer for Friday the 13th in 1980. And nineteen eighty s and it it has this, but it's the origin of the body count idea because you see at least 13 murders in the film and then you get one, two, three, you know, flashes on screen and it goes all the way up to to Friday the 13th. And
01:15:24
Speaker
and So, so many of those movies were just about creating cannon fodder so you can find inventive ways to kill people. Oh, and that said, by the way, one thing I think I'll say something nicer about Friday the 13th. But one of the people who worked on the original Friday the 13th was the great makeup artist Tom Savini.
01:15:42
Speaker
who worked yes who worked with George Romero a lot, and starting with Dawn of the Dead, I think. Yes, he acts in a few of those films as well. Yes, he does. He has little bits in them. And when they brought Tom Savini to do the effects for Friday the 13th, he and Sean Cunningham, the director and the screenwriter, whose name was Victor Miller, I think,
01:16:03
Speaker
The three of them sat down and Tom Savini becomes like a writer of the screenplay in the sense of saying, I think it would be cool if if a screwdriver went through somebody's head because I could do that effect. you know it's that kind of that's I like that idea. just like i can think of some cool ways to kill people that I can actually execute with practical effects. And so that was part of the the planning of those of that particular film.
01:16:33
Speaker
That's awesome. I did not know that. And that is that I am with you where i am not as um crazy about Friday the 13th franchise as some of the other big slasher franchises. I like it more than Chucky.
01:16:45
Speaker
Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. I will say that I like the one that's called Jason 10, Jason X, that's that's set on a spaceship and is a completely unashamed remake of Alien and is funny in certain ways. And I really like that one. yeah Oh, I gotta watch that. Oh, if you've not seen it, it's really good. I'm not going to give away the big joke in the film for you. okay That's great. It's it's that it's that knowing, ah self self-aware ah ah element that I think makes those later sequels fun.
01:17:17
Speaker
I think Halloween does struggle with it. there i think I mentioned both of you. I think I like the later sequels more than you guys, but um they become so bad they're good, and I'm kind of i'm obsessed with Thorne trilogy for that reason.
01:17:29
Speaker
ah So... But ah yeah, it depends on what you're looking for. But Michael Myers goes, jumped the shark quite a bit later. When you thought it couldn't be jumped anymore. Right.
01:17:41
Speaker
Well, let's go to best, our M. Night Shyamalan twist of the film. So you don't find out Laurie is a sister till Halloween 2. So that cannot qualify here.
Michael Myers' Intrigue and Horror Tropes
01:17:51
Speaker
um So with that said, did you guys have, what did you think the biggest reveal was, if any, in the film?
01:17:58
Speaker
Dr. Rowland? It would probably be the ending where we believe that Michael was a human psychopath. And we even, they I love the bit of like, pull she pulls the mask off his face and it looks like a man. It's a young man with sort of wounded eye because she stuck him with a knitting needle.
01:18:15
Speaker
And then we find out he's seemingly invulnerable at the end. So that's, to me, would be the biggest twist. Mm-hmm. Yeah, just his his ah inability to die. um mine's simple but well i Mine's on the other end. I'll bookend this. I think it's the beginning. And and if you read the logline, this is spoiled, but ah I think the fact that it you pull the mask off and it's a kid yeah in the beginning.
01:18:38
Speaker
um If you're watching this for the first time and you're seeing somebody creep through the back of a house and upstairs, you're you're assuming this is going to be some grizzled murderer.
01:18:48
Speaker
And so to pull off, to get the reverse shot to see a child, I think that was a... I'm assuming a big twist for the audiences back in 70. Yeah, that's exactly what I had, Rick, because it's all from that long steadicam shot from like the point of view of the killer. Yeah. And then finally after the murder, you realize, oh, this was just a child who did this.
01:19:06
Speaker
right And for no motive that we ever know. And and that's another element that I really like really like about the film. i think that ah I think I read Dr. Will or heard, it jogged my memory when you're talking about Halloween 2018 and that they didn't include Laurie as the sister, that one of the reasons they didn't do that was because they find it's much scarier that we don't really know why he's obsessed with killing her.
01:19:30
Speaker
that it's just evil for evil's sake, or it's just this this drive that he has, or who knows, but like that mystery. Sometimes you know you can do that the wrong way, and people are like, well, this doesn't make sense, but it's constructed here where it's just like, we don't it doesn't matter. it's just he's just this killing machine. Yeah, and if you like you mentioned Suspiria earlier when we were talking about Italian horror films, that's one of my favorite films too, and it's mostly supernatural, but it has a couple of...
01:19:58
Speaker
psycho killer slasher sequences in in that that are really important and they're really well done. But in a lot of those Italian giallo horror films, very often they especially the ones done by dario argento they have really convoluted plots and then we they exchange who the killer is two or three times in the movie um and it's you don't need explanation because the the sequences are like these really well done set pieces and it just adds to the irrationality of it if we don't have a neat explanation yeah
01:20:32
Speaker
All right, don't go in there, Ward. This is, like we were talking about earlier in the episode, poor character decisions, right? ah but But they're required, like you were talking about with like old gothic fiction.
01:20:46
Speaker
It's required to make the story go forward. So you have to indulge characters making poor decisions. Absolutely. What was the worst character decision in this film? Well, probably it would be, and again, he's...
01:20:57
Speaker
controlling what's going on. Carpenter's controlling it very well is when Annie has to go clean her clothing and she's putting it in the, putting in the laundry room, which is like in this, a detached room. some Yes. It's like another structure, I guess. It's like a guest house maybe or something, but this is an LA thing.
01:21:13
Speaker
um And she goes out there and of course you go, Oh no, this is where she's going to be killed. But she doesn't, she does, she does survive that and comes back in the house. But then when she goes and gets in her car, that's when that's when she's killed. so yeah but I always say, when you know horror films are working when the audience wants to talk back to the screen.
01:21:35
Speaker
That's exactly the mark of this is absolutely working the way the filmmakers want it to.
Humor in 'Halloween'
01:21:41
Speaker
So when she goes over to Lindsay's home, and she as in when Lori goes over there to figure out where is everyone, what's going on,
01:21:49
Speaker
she finds Bob's body and she finds Linda's body and she's finding all the bodies. And to me, she just lingers there for way too long where that's where I'm like yelling at my TV, like clearly get out of the house. Like something is going down there and you don't want to be just hanging around finding, yeah you know, one body is enough bodies to find where I would be out of there. You don't, I don't need three.
01:22:11
Speaker
and don't need three to flee the house. So that was my don't go in there. It's like, right, get the, get the heck out of there. Yeah. Um, Trav, mine is, is, uh, something I never noticed until you pointed it out during our watch along, uh, during our watch along, which is where, uh, she, Annie goes and leaves. She can't get inside the car.
01:22:30
Speaker
And so he goes and gets the key cause it's locked, right? Then as she leaves, Michael go somehow gets into the vehicle. well I don't know if he breaks it or what, but he opens the car and right. he And he gets inside. yeah And then when she comes back,
01:22:44
Speaker
she just opens the car as in like, shouldn't she in her head think, well, if it's open, that means somebody else opened this. I should maybe not go in that car. Exactly. She went to get the keys and then doesn't think twice when it's now unlocked.
01:22:57
Speaker
Yeah. Well, yeah. Annie, I, you know, I think it's no surprise that, uh, two of our three don't go in. There's are associated with Annie. Laurie is the smart one. Annie's got boys on the mind. right She doesn't have time to think about boys.
01:23:09
Speaker
how the door came unlocked. and And as we know, if you're, if you're too promiscuous in these types of movies, you're going down. Oh, yeah. I'm sure we could talk more on that in just a minute, but best line.
01:23:22
Speaker
i
Plot Holes and Logical Issues in 'Halloween'
01:23:23
Speaker
Rick, I want you to start with best line because I think you, you have mine. You turned me onto it. ah Favorite line in the movie. It will always be this line is for some odd reason.
01:23:36
Speaker
Dr. Loomis is hanging out in the bushes, watching some kids go up to the Myers house. He's hiding in the bushes. and He's not making himself announced. He's hiding. it's then it's The only time he smiles in the entire movie.
01:23:47
Speaker
And he he puts these cups his hand ah ah he cut his hand over his mouth and he goes...
01:23:55
Speaker
And it just like cracks me up. It comes out and it gets such so pleased with himself. And I don't know why he does it. I think he's just bored. He's been standing watch for like eight hours and he just needed a kick or something. But that's the line to get your ass away from there. It's got to be my favorite line. Dr. Orland, do you have do you have ah another line that you want to add to that? I think probably it's the last one, the last lines of the film when when Laurie is in is in tears and she says...
01:24:21
Speaker
was the boogie man and he says in fact it was really doubling down um own stavises all the best lines he also has the like death has come to your town sheriff like oh that's why again it reminds me that it makes sense if uh john carpenter only the screenwriting for all the male lines get his dialogues just seems so much different than like all the female teenagers um Anyways, let's go to Dole Knives.
01:24:49
Speaker
So this is, again, a masterpiece in its own right, one of the pinnacles of horror films. But that doesn't mean that we can't just point out a few things that that still have us just questioning, wait, how did that happen or what's going on here?
01:25:02
Speaker
And so that's the point of this category. I have a few, but I'd like to, before I start rambling too much, I've spoken plenty this episode. I'm curious if you guys have anything you want to lead us off with.
01:25:14
Speaker
I'll let Dr. Morling again. Well, I actually mentioned it a little earlier, but the fact that it seems but it's the pace of the film is keeps you from thinking too hard about these kind of questions. But why isn't there a more general alert for an escaped film?
01:25:29
Speaker
lunatic, an escaped mental patient. And why does Dr. Loomis have to run around kind of trying to you know persuade people that they ought to look for this crazy person? Yes. um So that doesn't make sense. And that's the kind of thing that occurs to you later. Alfred Hitchcock actually called that the icebox conversation, which is for an old type of refrigerator. And he said, that's the thing that you think about when you're at home after the movie talking to your friend or your spouse or whoever about, Oh, you know, there's one thing I didn't quite get. And you're making a snack and you're getting it out of the ice box and refrigerator.
01:26:05
Speaker
And it's, and if you don't, and Hitchcock says, and that doesn't matter. if If they, if this is something that doesn't occur to you till you get home, that means the movie was successful essentially. Yes. Right. Right.
01:26:17
Speaker
um Yeah. That's a great point though. Like his whole screen time up until the very end of the film is him just going person to person being like, i've known him for 15 years like this is a huge threat what makes it even more improbable and more of a dull knife is that he has the one chance he's trying to spread the word about this killer and then the sheriff bracket even recommends that he puts the call out on the radio and he stops him he's like no no then they'll see him on every street corner no we must wait i'm like wait weren't you just trying to like get the word out buddy like what what's What's happening wants like a grassroots effort, more like traditional word of mouth. Right. Don't broadcast it.
01:26:54
Speaker
He doesn't want to sell out. um um i guess I guess mine is is one I knew we'd eventually get into. And that Carpenter even kind of tries to sharpen the knife, if you will, by having having a throwaway line to explain why it's this way. But it's It's where Michael is seemingly a pretty good driver, ah despite being locked away at age six and then getting out at, what, 21 or something.
01:27:18
Speaker
15, 16 years later. Yeah, he's 21 or 22. And he's handling the car pretty well. ah There was no... driver's permit uh you know span of time where he was getting those hours with an instructor um i have he presumably has never been behind the wheel of an automobile right before and just instantly picks it but but loomis loomis's line he he mutters this uh as he's driving away or at some point i forget but he just goes someone must have taught him which i feel like carpenters that's his way of being like it don't worry yeah about it like it's not somehow this happened he read a book or something
01:27:52
Speaker
ah Yes, yes. that That was my biggest. I'm glad you bring it up. um yeah Rick, you brought this one up when we were just watching it together on i watch along. But
Real Estate Critique and Film Influences
01:28:01
Speaker
the intro scene, when you discover they pull the mask off, young Michael, his parents have arrived. You see it's just a child and the camera slowly starts to pan out.
01:28:11
Speaker
The characters like freeze. They're like holding a pose for like five, 10 seconds. It zooms out on a crane. Yes. They're not talking. They're just kind of standing in silence looking at him for, yeah know, one second or two second is good for shock value, but like five seconds plus, I think you almost get to 10 is just like...
01:28:29
Speaker
Is someone going to say something eventually? What's going on here? Yeah. They're all frozen. oh Hey, Trav, just just so ah you you don't get critiqued by the the film nerds on here, you said pan out. Did I say pan out? I like to use pan interchangeably with every camera movement type. and i know it's It's on a crane, so it's a pullback. That's what he meant. Yes, a pullback.
01:28:51
Speaker
um And then my only other one, I think these we all discussed on watch-along, Rick, but I have three girls. We've had babysitters before, so I know how that goes. I babysat a little bit when I was younger as well.
01:29:03
Speaker
I am surprised at how willingly um they move Lindsay over to Tommy's house without notifying anyone, even to the point where they're like, Lindsay, you could just sleep here now. I'm sure no one will even worry that I've now, again, Annie's kicked her out of the home because she wants to ah have her boy over.
01:29:22
Speaker
But I've just been very shocked by that because like if I came back to my house one evening where I thought my babysitter was watching my kids just to find out my kids aren't there, that's like the one thing you can't do as a babysitter where I would freeze out.
01:29:34
Speaker
Aren't all the kids in this movie, they would grow up to be Gen X, right? So isn't this the latchkey generation where it's just like, eh, They're somewhere. yeah that's That's what I've wondered is, yeah, just a different time back then, right? Well, I mean, remember, we we didn't wear seatbelts in the 70s. We were on the air Riding the lightning.
01:29:54
Speaker
On the edge of death very often. Good point. that Maybe that's just one that didn't age well then. That was it for me. I do have one more that I'm i'm surprised you didn't bring up. Oh, okay.
01:30:05
Speaker
And I'll let you even expound on it because you have the real estate background. But I'm not too sure I'm very... confident in and strode real estate's uh business efforts here because the only listing we see is this dilapidated home that had a grisly murder occur and he's like yeah laurie like take the keys over there it's like he's really excited about this listing he has i just not sure that's the gutter hanging down at an angle yeah it looks like it's been sitting on the market for 15 years and they're like do we need to improve it like do we need to go in there do it it no no just leave it it's
01:30:38
Speaker
It's a good part of town. It's the land that holds the value. yeah it so It's been like spray painted, completely beat up. Location, location, location. At least fix that gutter. gutter on the second story is just hanging down.
01:30:50
Speaker
Oh, I never noticed that. I question Lori's dad's success in the field of real estate if it's been 15 years and he hasn't sold that home. We don't have a chance to see his success. It's the only time we see him and it's the only listing we know about. yeah it's like We need to see his portfolio, but I'm not too confident in it.
01:31:06
Speaker
That's a good point. um All right. Well, winners and losers. This is kind of just our tack on category for anything else of note that we think is something we should call out. I'll head us off with just winner was this is this comes out again in 78, which is which is years before Carpenter would release The Thing.
01:31:28
Speaker
But you see the original The Thing from outer space, the Howard Hawks film um on the VHS. And that's what Lindsay's watching, which I think is so cool that that was such a big influence to Carpenter that they have some footage there. I mean, i think we talked about it earlier in the episode, but Assault on Precinct 13, also a Howard Hawks film.
01:31:46
Speaker
that carpenter that remakes later as well. So it's like a really big influence. yeah And Travis, not just VHS, the whole town's watching It's on broadcast. You're right. That's not VHS. Multiple, yeah multiple homes. Yes. Good correction.
01:31:58
Speaker
Um, I, that was my winner for me as well. And it was a springboard to ask Dr. Whirland if, you know, if did, did, Carpenter didn't have designs to make that film at the time, right? Is this just a loving homage to
'Halloween's' Influence and Misinterpretations
01:32:09
Speaker
one his favorites? I don't know if he was thinking... I saw a thing on TCM just a while back, those little interstitial things, and it was John Carpenter talking about how the the original Hawks production of The Thing was his favorite movie when he was a small kid. He was born in 1948, and the movie came out in 51, so I'm guessing he saw it on television probably in the late mid to late fifty s
01:32:34
Speaker
And he said that was his favorite movie. And he said, that's literally what inspired me to want to be a filmmaker. Wow. Okay. So it doesn't really matter it's if he had designs to make it or not. It was always that. And then the other one that's there too is a little bit of Forbidden Planet from 1956. So which is both involves this like sort of stalking monster that's in the shadows and the people are are being killed, et cetera.
01:33:00
Speaker
OK, so Trav, you were right, because at one point you are watching along, you're like, what movie is this? And I just ah probably incorrectly assumed it was still the thing from outer space, but it was a bit more cosmic. I think we saw ah i've never seen the original i've never seen either of of those filmams yeah oh well the the thing is a kind of movie in every way and and i recommend it it's so if you know hawks's work it's even though hawks produced it and he didn't direct it but it's a hawksey and movie and it's really terrific script there are no stars in it and it has a great script everybody gets good lines
01:33:36
Speaker
um it's it's a really well- done film forbidden planet was a special effects movie it was kind of the quote star wars of the nineteen fifty s it it was the the biggest kind of scale movie of of the new of the newly popular science fiction show any other winners dr orland that was the only one i wrote um that's that's a good one though no i said just my my joking response to this was to say that the losers were that local hardware store that in had andfield that only sells murder weapons and
01:34:09
Speaker
halloween mask that can be used as a disguise again with that kind of throwway scene with the truck driver that's where he could have gotten in his coveralls as well like it's a hardware fake the heart yeah just pick him up there yeah and don't need make moton they've got this captain kirk mask just turn that inside yeah yeah yeah i am curious what the business model of that hardware store and like what is very niche very eclectic it was before spirit halloween existed so they had to cut a multitask yeah exactly have costumes plus hardwarework and then the other thing that i pointed out
01:34:42
Speaker
just for myself was that i really like as ah as a guy who in high school in the seventy s i really like annie's nineteen seventy four chevy mont carla oh ah because that she gets murdered that she gets unfortunately murdered in and my dad had a seventy three monte carla which i absolutely love beautiful great car and so i just always get happy see well i mean that seventy s monte carlo i'm sure some of our listeners are happy to hear this cause nor traver i are a big car guys and so we probably miss a lot of opportunities to mention in cool cars and so i'm i'm glad you're here to
01:35:17
Speaker
that pretty much all i've got on the side really but that but yeah it was a great card what ah one of my winners is seemingly all of the high school males in this town they are not studs at all they last less than a minute in bed they like bring three beers to a party and that's it they don't call back and yet all these girls love them they're just like and the guys have so much confidence too like i would kill for that self-confidence bob is just doing his own thing and
01:35:47
Speaker
the only guy that seemingly has any redeeming qualities we never see it's this this this ben tramer who sounds amazing but even he's probably in real life a loser just based on the crop that's out there so these way but the knows at them it is very akin to smu where we at attend did and dr roley you teach where there's a lot of beautiful girls so that's why i went the the the girls are absolutely beautiful the guys are yeah they look like rick and i we the it was it was slim pickens and it really i think it helped the ratio for guys like ah
01:36:19
Speaker
very fortuitous for us to go there i have no comment yeah you can't write comment on that doctor i my my wife is an sm oumni star i was like got one yeah me at no yeah i do have idea have two of our losers um ah one is that ah premierit little sex as a loser because it seems yeah well that's yeah let's talk about that because we didn't bring it up during themes and john carpenter is on the record saying that this was not supposed to be a film about punishing horny teenagers
01:36:50
Speaker
but this really sets the blueprint for years to come we're in any slasher film like the promiscuous ones the ones who are going to get killed and so i think this is just a ah funny loser because you know laurie i'd say the most chased out of the the woman yes she just smokes some pot if we're mad yeah to like just being being edgy but yeah she's clearly love virgin i think yes it says she is the one who survives where all her friends are all the ones who get murdered where i've always thought that was very funny again it was supposedly unintentional
01:37:22
Speaker
ah carpenter he didn't want that to be what the film was about i mean there is that exchange of dialogue when she's on the phone with annie after you know the jumps scare phone call and and she says and he says oh you're losing it laurie and she says i already lost it and and he so and and he says i doubt that oh i've never caught that yes that that is great that's a great line um i'm gonna again i like i'm gonna quote another one of your ah let me quote your book again dr rowland but you say as often happens though the movie that sparked this profitable cycle
01:37:56
Speaker
displayed far greater formal and thematic integrity than many of its imitators and i think this is an example of that that like travis is saying and he he wasn't planning on this being a continuous cycle of punishment of the che ah of the ah the promiscuous but it does seem to be something that the imitators latched onto and really exploited over the next ten years probably up until scream when finally scream was like hey everybody youre this is really silly let's show you what's silly and then it kind of i think heighten the intelligence of some of these movies but would you agree though that's that's kind of what happened they they looked they they saw this trope and they
01:38:30
Speaker
pounced on it oh yeah but
Carpenter's View on Sequels and 'Halloween III'
01:38:32
Speaker
no question because i you know i was reading an interview with john carpenter from ten years ago or something and and he said well the reason all those movies came out is because they looked at halloween and they saw it was a cheap movie and it made a ton of money and so they isolated elements that that they thought they could sell and repeat these things and that's why you could have these completely gratuitously you know gratuitous nudity scenes in in friday the thirteenth and all the imitators followed by bloody murder
01:39:01
Speaker
and not and not have it really worked out in the kind of integrated fashion that where the story right well based around these things and you ah you know logical way i think i think the same thing happened to toby hooper's texas chanceor massacre and and one of my favorite things about that story and about that dynamic is that he responds to that to that reaction with nineteen eighty six s texas chain of massacre two by pretty much making a satirical look at how dumb and silly these movies are by going so over the top and making it
01:39:37
Speaker
so colorful and like gratuitous and there's blood everywhere and it's just like sexed up and like toby hooper like had that same energy that john carper is talking about like like you guys don't understand what made the first one work and i wish john carpperer got his chance to make one of those satirical like let me just poke fun at you because that i that is one of my favorite movies i know it's not everybody's ah style but texas chancellor massaccar two i think is such a great response to that to that those trends and i'll also say that before that you're right and and there is that comic self
01:40:07
Speaker
awareness about it but another film of his i'll do a shoutout for that i really like is the fun house which he did nineteen eighty one which is a smart well-conructed little movie that kind of seems like it's going to be a teenage slasher film and has elements of that and then does something else but that's another move it also has references to horror film history and and specific specific things that that sort of call back to our expectations of the genre but that that the funhouses are really
01:40:40
Speaker
i am getting called to leave here momentarily because we're having people over thirty minutes just bring them into the closet it'll be fun yeah everyone give in there ah rick you had one other loser well um i'm goingnna replace that with i had a winner as well and the winner is more important to talk about and since we have limited time i'm going to pick one but um it's the franchise itself now i know i think between the three of us we have varying degrees of patience or enjoyment of the whole franchise as a whole um i've seen all of them except the last two kills and end and ah i just i had a
01:41:11
Speaker
joy a few years ago binging this whole franchise and um i'm glad it it exists it gets weird it gets um there's a lot of different interpretations and i think rob zombie halloween two is a high point and the pre-elevated horror focus on trauma i think if you i think halloween two is very much akin to twin peaks' fire walk with me in like a really interesting look at trauma and grief and the abstract nature of that and the dreamlike nature of that so wanted to call that movie out
01:41:42
Speaker
and then i'm sure you guys saw this coming but halloween three season of the which ah yeah is just one um one of the was my one of points of joy for me it's it's one of the most halloween e movies even though literally as nothing to do with this franchise because carpenter and team had an idea to make this an anthology type um ah type installments where every year during halloween it's a different story clearly since they left michael myyers on the cutting room floor um and it didn't work but i think that movie over the years has garnered a lot of fans because if it's weird
01:42:16
Speaker
sci-fi elements it's it's capturing of the halloween um tone with mass and conspiracy and the score is great i think it's done my tangine dream if i'm not mistaken i think that's right yeah and i i just love it i know dr weland you just recently saw it for the first time i wanted to get your take on unseason the wind yes well let me speak authoritatively about this movie i saw like five days ago and no i really liked it and it's really funny that this is one that i've missed over the years i thought it was really interesting as ah as a film in its own right
01:42:47
Speaker
and it it's shot by
Reflection on the Halloween Franchise
01:42:49
Speaker
the same guy dean cudy who's the dp of halloween and yeah absolutely's hit to forgot that deborah hill and carpenter produced it and together and wrote it and feels so much like one of their films the thing that i love though is that i don't know if i was talking to you about this earlier but i read another interview with carpenter a year or so ago where he's retired now and he hast done anything for about more than ten years actually the last movie he did was called the ward
01:43:20
Speaker
which was also written by one of my really good smus so film students oh no way from from yeah mike rasmus who was graduated in the mid ninety s and he and his brother wrote that film and car yeah yeah it's s theu pony up yeah yeah and carpenter produced it or carpenter directed it anyway carenter said he's retired what he really loves to do now is watch basketball he loves the lakers and he watches basketball on tv and person asking like ah does it really bother you that they keep making these bad sequels or these bad reboots of halloween and he said not at all
01:43:55
Speaker
all white he's there welcome to keep making them because every time all i know is every time they make one i get a financial check in the mail and i'm happy about well but from from interviews i've read too it sounds like the two other activities including watching basketball are smoking pot and playing video games so he's he's having a good retirement he's yes as ah he's having he's a teenager yes right right he's a seventy five year old teenager now right so yeah good
01:44:23
Speaker
right trav you want to get us to a awesome but yeah i think our last award we here we call it our scream king or scream queen it's simply who won the movie it could be crew it could be cast i guess it could be concept have we had a concept one not yet we almost did it and we we toyed around with it i think just the franchise itself for the condjuring but we ended up going okay yeah yeah ah of i'll go first just to make set the tone go quickly i almost picked jamieie curtis because she literally is probably the best green queen out there
01:44:54
Speaker
but it's i'm hard pressed i gotta go with john carpenter because he is my favorite horror filmmaker his direction here his writing his score it's almost a no- braininer despite jamie lee curtis being in the mix but just john carpenter is my guy and i think this was just an amazing accomplishment that's my answer yeah and i'm going to say jamie lee curtis because this was clearly she got the big break and she absolutely made good on it and i also really like the fact that over the years she's been kind of a good sport about
01:45:25
Speaker
coming back and doing laurie when they ask her to and she she yeah under absolutely no obligation of any kind to do that and i think that's a really classy professional gesture to go this is how i got started unless it's absolutely terrible i'm not going to you know i'll yeah i'll come and do a cany i will do it i i love that
Closing Remarks and Guest Appreciation
01:45:47
Speaker
i love both of them because this is where they both really made their names and started their careers and so i think those are great um awesome dr woland thank you so much for being here and it's
01:45:57
Speaker
brought up some fond memories from being in class with you and rereading your book and please everybody go check out the the new version of the horror film and introduction by rick warland um it's just an awesome time having you here thank you so much i enjoyed this a lot last lot thanks for joining us setting a high standard for future guys right um trav i as i don't know if you have anything to tease i will say quickly that we don't know what we're covering next week um because it's going to be dependent on it frankenstein gets a release in our two respective cities so we'll either be covering yeah toros
01:46:28
Speaker
frankenstein adaptation and if that's not available in our cities we'll be doing ozga perkins long legs in prep for his new film keeper so we don't know yet yeah thank you guys for listening as always follow us on social subscribe to wherever you listen your podcasts and if you like what we're saying give us a fivetar review or some feedback for how we can improve this we will see you guys next week thank you for listening i
01:47:07
Speaker
and
01:47:10
Speaker
we call it our scream king or scream queen i'm about to be oh yeah sorry my wife is calling me so yeah at last and four he yeah yeah i need like three minutes wrap and what a bodyian audit screen queen is anna for this one