Line #14 NightmareFuel/Halloween1978


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6	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/michael_myers_wallpaper.jpg]]
7	[[caption-width-right:350:[[Recap/BeavisAndButtheadS6E01BungholioLordOfTheHarvest TRICK OR TREAT, SON OF A BITCH!]]]]
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9	Yes, everyone's entitled to one good scare on Halloween... and this movie offers ''lots'' of them.
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11	'''As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked [[Administrivia/SpoilersOff as per policy.]] Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.'''
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14	* The [[http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/10/31/halloween/ creepy, floating jack-o'-lantern]] shown in the opening credits. It's actually gotten more eerie with age, as pumpkin-carving becomes more and more elaborate and cartoonish. ''This'' jack-o'-lantern's face, by contrast, looks crude and unsettling.
15	** And the way its light begins to sputter and die before finally snuffing out completely, with John Carpenter's director credit appearing in the ensuing pitch black.
16	* The musical score is both [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic delightful]] and absolutely ''bone-chilling''.
17	* The opening scene where young Michael has just murdered his sister and wandered out into the street, just as his parents are coming home, finding their son wearing a creepy clown mask and clutching a bloody kitchen knife. And once the mask is removed, Michael just has a blank stare of confusion.
18	* Michael's escape from Smith's Grove is a brief scene, but no less nightmarish for it. The mental patients wandering aimlessly outside in the dark, looking eerily like ghosts or zombies. Loomis immediately realizing something is wrong and exiting the vehicle to find out what's happening, only for Michael to leap on top of the car and attack Nurse Marion when she rolls down the window, causing her to spin her car out of control. The way Michael smashes the car window with his bare hand. And it's pitch black, raining hard and thundering during all of this.
19	-->'''Loomis''': He's gone, he's gone from here! The evil is gone!
20	* The moment when Laurie, walking home from school, catches sight of Michael standing in the middle of the sidewalk in the broad daylight, before he steps behind a hedge. It really sets up the predator/prey dynamic between him and Laurie. She is {{being watched}}. Made even scarier by the fact that some real-life serial killers claim to operate in this way.
21	* Laurie glancing out her bedroom window and once again seeing Michael, this time standing in the yard amid the flapping sheets on a clothesline and looking up at her. There's a cut to her startled reaction, then back to the same view of the yard and sheets... and [[OffscreenTeleportation he has vanished]], suggesting early on the possibility that Michael might possess supernatural qualities.
22	* Michael relentlessly stalking Laurie around Haddonfield, first on foot and then in the car he stole from Loomis.
23	* Loomis and the Sheriff checking out the abandoned Myers house while trying to track down Michael.
24	-->'''Loomis''': What is that?\
25	'''Sheriff''': A dog... it's still warm.\
26	'''Loomis''': He got hungry.\
27	'''Sheriff''': Come on, it could have been a skunk.\
28	'''Loomis''': ''Could'' have.\
29	'''Sheriff''': A man wouldn't do that.\
30	'''Loomis''': This isn't a man.
31	* When the rather huge Wallace family dog [[EvilDetectingDog senses Michael]] and tries to attack him, he easily lifts it into the air and strangles it to death.
32	* Annie's death. She heads out to the car, realizes the door is locked, heads back in for her keys, then gets in the car... and you can see the split second where it occurs to her that A) ''she never actually unlocked the car door'', and B) the windshield is fogged up. You know, the way it might be from the breath of someone inside the car. Before she even knows what's happened, Michael springs up from the backseat and strangles her for a good 20 seconds before slitting her throat. (The fact that he just lets her squirm around for that long shows how sadistic Michael really is.)
33	** If you're keeping an eye out, you can trace Michael's movements prior to this scene from brief glimpses. There's even a bit beforehand where Annie is locked out of the house while doing laundry, and it becomes apparent in retrospect that Michael himself locked her out.
34	** And Tommy Doyle looking out his living room window a few moments later and seeing Michael [[TouchOfTheMonster carrying Annie's lifeless body]] back into the house. Imagine being that kid.
35	* The shot after Michael has killed Bob. Michael just looks at the corpse and studies it, tilting his head to one side. What is [[FridgeHorror going through Michael's head?]] The actor was told to look at the corpse like he would a butterfly collection.
36	* Michael wearing the bed sheet. The image of the bedroom door slowly and quietly swinging open to reveal him standing there is bad enough. Then you factor in that he just killed Bob and put his glasses on over the sheet, in order to trick Lynda so he can kill her without her even realizing a killer is in the room. Probably the first genuinely frightening example of a BedsheetGhost.
37	* Then Michael starts violently strangling Lynda as she tries to phone Laurie. Laurie listens to Lynda crying out in pain, and initially assumes that her friends are playing a joke on her before becoming genuinely worried. Once Lynda's dead, Michael picks up the phone and silently listens to Laurie as she starts to panic.
38	** Lynda dies possibly believing it's her own boyfriend who's strangling her.
39	* The scene where Laurie finds the corpses of all her friends in the Wallace house. As she collapses into horrified sobbing, you see Michael slowly materialize from the darkness ''right behind'' her in the closet. WordOfGod[[invoked]] makes it even scarier; it's simulating your eyes adjusting to the darkness, not him walking into the light. He was standing there '''''[[HeWasRightThereAllAlong the whole time]]'''''.
40	* An injured and terrified Laurie runs to a neighbor's house, bangs on the door, and screams for help. Someone inside turns on the lights, goes to the window... and then drops the blinds and turns the lights off, ''[[BystanderSyndrome completely ignoring her]]''. Realistic? Unfortunately... yes. Therefore all the more terrifying.
41	* Laurie is able to grab the knife away from Michael and stab him, and he falls to one side. Laurie tells the kids to run out of the house and get help, and then just rests there in the doorway, thinking it's all over. And then Michael slowly sits up behind her and turns his masked head at her. (This is really sold by the score, which is nightmare fuel in itself in some ways; just how perfectly timed that ''dun ... dun ... dun ... dun '' piano motif fits the action is stunning, but then that ''is'' a Carpenter trademark.) Even the ''way'' Michael sits up is unnatural and creepy -- he doesn't use his arms to get leverage or prop himself up as a normal person would.
42	* Rare heroic example: Laurie stabbing Michael in the [[EyeScream eye]] with a coat-hanger hook during the finale. It can certainly make a viewer wince, especially if they themselves have ever had a similar injury.
43	* The scene just before the end credits is especially unnerving. After Loomis shoots Myers off of the balcony and we see his lifeless body resting below, he takes a second look and [[OffscreenTeleportation he's gone]]. [[NothingIsScarier The final scene of the film is a montage of the various places where Michael has been throughout the movie, with Michael's breathing heard over the main theme, practically stating that he could be anywhere.]]
44	--> '''Laurie''': It ''was'' the Boogeyman.
45	--> '''Dr. Loomis''': As a matter of fact... it was.
46	* Loomis's look of resignation and completely unhappy acknowledgement that he was ''right'' at the end of the film; his speeches to the police chief aren't hyperbole, he was ''right'', and the monster he's tried his best to keep locked up is now loose.
47	** Notably, an earlier version of this scene had Loomis reacting with shock to not seeing Michael's body. However, it was decided that Loomis reacting with deadpan acknowledgement was even scarier.
48	* Michael himself qualifies. A man who kills for the sake of killing, plus the eerily expressionless mask he wears. How Dr. Loomis describes him doesn't help. At all.
49	--> "I met him fifteen years ago. [[TheSoulless I was told there was nothing left; no reason, no conscience, no understanding — in even the most rudimentary sense — of life or death, of good or evil, of right or wrong.]] I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and [[BlackEyesOfEvil the blackest eyes... the Devil's eyes]]. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... '''evil'''."
50	** The "blank, pale, emotionless face with the blackest eyes"? That's not really a description that could fit Michael's face... but it does fit the mask he wears. The mask is Michael's true face.
51	* The fact that he's got no reason to kill. While most {{serial killer}}s generally have [[FreudianExcuse something]] motivating their murders, Myers has been messed up since childhood. He doesn't even kill ForTheEvulz. Instead, it's extremely unsettling and pure nightmare fuel. When six-year-old Michael is unmasked, he has this sort of confused look on his face, like even ''he'' doesn't know why he did what he did.
52	* The way Michael is integrated into so many shots. There's one scene where Annie is in the kitchen talking on the phone. Directly behind her is a pair of glass doors leading outside. Michael can be briefly seen watching her through the glass.
53	** Another example is when Loomis introduces himself to Sheriff Brackett. Michael can be seen driving by in the stolen car [[MeaningfulBackgroundEvent right behind them]], with Loomis none the wiser.
54	* Every murder in the movie is filmed in a particularly unnerving way. Whether it's the disturbing POV sequence as young Michael stalks and stabs his own sister to death, the incredibly creepy manner in which he kills Annie and Lynda, or the way he easily overpowers Bob, lifts him off the ground and impales him into the wall.
55	* We just expect Michael to look horrific or grotesque, except [[TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse he looks like a normal person]]. Talk about ParanoiaFuel...

Context NightmareFuel / Halloween1978