History Headscratchers / Halloween

*** [[RealityisUnrealistic It's a hardware store in a small town.]] From how the store looks, it might have been there as far back before the start of the film and Michael himself may have been brought there to buy a costume before that Halloween night in 1963. I know that may sound out of place, but it's not uncommon in small towns in the past to expand their stock to include items for holiday items. This troper himself remembers his small town Ace Hardware store selling toys during the Christmas season in addition to it's usual hardware stock.

*** [[RealityisUnrealistic It's a hardware store in a small town.]] From how the store looks, it might have been there as far back before the start of the film and Michael himself have have been brought there to buy a costume before that Halloween night in 1963. I know that may sound out of placed, but it's not uncommon in small towns in the past. This troper himself remembers his small town Ace Hardware store selling toys during the Christmas season in addition to it's usual hardware stock.

*** [[RealityisUnrealistic It's a hardware store in a small town.]] From how the store looks, it might have been there as far back before the start of the film and Michael himself have have been brought there to buy a costume. I know that may sound out of placed, but it's not uncommon in small towns. This troper himself remembers his small town Ace Hardware store selling toys during the Christmas season in addition to it's usual hardware stock.

** Perhaps they're adrenaline junkies and the fact that it's someone else's house is what makes it fun?

* In H4, we learn that rather then die in the explosion from H2, Michael suffered third degree burns all over his body and was in a coma, for 10 years. The only reason we see him coming out of it is because the paramedics talk about Jamie during the transfer. Why did nobody use this to just [[BoomHeadshot blow his brains out while he couldn’t do anything]]?! You’re telling me that Dr. Loomis(and this is ignoring how he survived being in the center of the explosion and coming out with a limp and small facial/hand burns), Laurie, the police, hospital medics, anybody who knew or was related to one of his victims, or just anyone at all didn’t take advantage of the immobile mass murder to just kill him? That the police, state or local, decided that it was probably a good idea to temporarily forget the law, and at least try to kill the psychopath who survived an explosion? I find that rather hard to believe.
** Most likely to both their conscious and the eyes of the general public, it would be a case of IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim . Sure, Laurie and Loomis have tried killing Michael before, but those instances were in self-defense. Killing someone, even a crazed serial killer, while they're in a coma would not only be morally questionable, but there would also be a lot of people angry over that person's constitutional rights being violated.

* Just morbid curiosity, since the first film was one of the early (if not THE FIRST) instalments of the now familiar slasher film genre; putting aside the fact that the next film begins and continues where the first one ends, why did John Carpenter decide to end it [[spoiler:so abruptly after having Loomis shoot Michael, and seemingly finally kill him after so many failed attempts, just to show Michael's body gone, therefore STILL alive]]?

*** Also, that Michael is still out there and could be anywhere. [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou Like inside your house while you're in the theater, waiting for you to come home... Or maybe the back seat of your car...]]
** Because that idea is terrifying. Laurie managed to put up a good fight and so did Loomis. And afterwards Michael still isn't dead. There's no explanation for ''why'' this is happening and there's no resolution either.
** The original plan was to make the Halloween franchise as a series of individual stories, kind of like The Twilight Zone. This is why Halloween’s ending was so abrupt, to keep an unsolved mystery... until Michael Myers was so popular that they decided to make a Halloween II, before going ahead with their original plan when they made Halloween III: Season of the Witch. After that movie got a less than great reception, they decided to bring back Michael Myers in 1988.

** From what I understand, the tiny staff size was more than likely dramatic licensing as patients alone typically have around four staff members dedicated to them, so the hospital is criminally understaffed. This might possibly have to do with a deleted scene where the power goes out in the hospital, thus explaining why it is so dark throughout the film.

** Michael's behavior is often seemingly random. For instance, toward the beginning of Halloween 4, he probably could have killed Loomis at the garage, but let him live for whatever reason. In the seventh movie, he followed that mother and daughter into the bathroom, but just took their keys without killing them, even though there's no reason why he couldn't have.
** Another explanation is that Laurie wasn't at the Myers house in the first film. The Myers were leaving their teenage daughter to keep an eye on their son, who is probably ten or even nine years old. If you were a parent, would you trust your teenager to keep an eye on your ten year old child and your infant at the same time? It'd make more sense to leave the baby with a next door neighbor who may have more experience with babies and let the teenager keep an eye on a more manageable ten year old.
** Perhaps Judith was taking Michael trick-or-treating while the parents went out for the night. So in that case Laurie could have been in someone else's care - or she was with the parents. Maybe the parents were visiting friends or family and took Laurie with them to introduce her? We don't see how the parents got home so maybe Laurie is just there offscreen still in the car?
* Why did no paramedics not notice a man with burnt scarring and a wielding a ''kitchen knife'' after Michael had switched "bodies" in Halloween 8? It just boggles the mind.

** I always assumed it has something to do with the supernatural-esque aspects Michael seems to have. He walks straight past a bunch of paramedics holding a bloodied knife and (presumably) covered in burn scars...then just seems to just ''fade'' into the bushes. As if he was never there.
** I assumed the reason why no one noticed him at that moment was because everyone was focused on Laurie stealing the van, after stealing the gun from an officer and holding them up to steal the van. After driving off, they were more concerned about the woman who is acting a bit crazy than the people around in the area.
* In Halloween: H20, Michael drove from Illinois to California. So he would have had to refill the car a few times on the way to California. Would he have taken off his mask and just refilled at a gas station like any regular person, or was he leaving a trail of bloodied gas attendant corpses behind him? If the latter is correct, then you'd think the police would have found the trail and followed it back to Haddonfield. Especially since they were already on the look-out for Michael after he killed the nurse in California.
** It is shown in Halloween H20 that Michael has no problem stealing cars from people, without causing them any injury. Any time he runs out of gas, he can simply steal a car. If he doesn't murder people, he doesn't leave a bloody trail and since he is known as a murderer and not a car thief, the police probably don't suspect it is Michael Myers when the reports say a masked man stole a car.

* How did Michael end up on the truck at the end of Halloween 4? When did he cling to it? We seen the truck pull up, load the girls onto it, and leave. If Michael clung onto the bottom, he would have had to come out of the school before the girls did, at which point the people pulling up probably should have been able to notice him.

** More mundanely: In the scene in question all four rednecks disembark the truck to converse with Rachel at the entrance to the school. This gives Michael an opportunity to make an end-around from the other side of the school, and hide himself on the truck while everyone's attention is elsewhere.
* If the Cult of Thorn wanted to Michael to kill his entire family for the unexplained ritual, why did Dr. Wyn impregnate Jamie instead of allowing Michael to kill her? Why create a new member of a family that he should want completely destroyed?

* In the first movie, high school students Bob and Lynda run happily into the house where Annie was supposed to be babysitting little Lindsey Wallace. Where they have passionate sex in what is presumably the Wallaces' master bedroom, and Bob goes down to fetch beers out of the Wallaces' refrigerator (that's where he is ambushed). And there's no indication they were planning to launder the sheets or air out the room, or too drunk to think out the consequences. So what ''were'' they thinking? They were old enough to have cars and bedrooms of their own, and this is a semi-rural small town with its share of outdoor spots. They could've found a safer place...safer from adult discovery, I mean.
** They're teenagers. First off, they brought their own beer (you can see them drinking it in Bob's van prior to heading inside). There's a good chance that they would have had sex on the bed and then leave everything the way they found it (without washing the sheets. There are teenagers who have had sex on the beds of adults and not think about doing it). Or, since it'd be the kind of thing they would have done if Michael hadn't turned up and killed everyone, they would have left Anne to actually do the laundering, where she would have griped about not being able to hook up with Paul that night and having to do the dirty work to clean up Linda's mess.
** Perhaps they're adrenaline junkies and the fact that it's someone else's house - with their young daughter downstairs - is what makes it fun?

** More accurately, it WAS a William Shatner mask -- the crew did modify it (notably painting it white). Within the films, it's a generic mass-produced mask, sufficiently popular that Ben Tramer wears the same thing.
* People dislike the supernatural explanation for Michael's origins and abilities? Why? How else do you explain the fact that nothing can kill him? In the first two films alone he was shot multiple times, stabbed in the eyes and finally blown up. I'm calling the explanation a perfectly justified one.
** Not so much that the explanation is supernatural, but that there's an explanation at all. Any attempts to explain what Micheal is or why tend to simply make him less scary.
* Why do people think Michael having any kind of a backstory that explains why he kills people or how he's able to sustain fatal injuries makes him less scary? Yes, there's something to be said about the "fear of the unknown", but then why even give him a name or show his face in the original movie? Personally, the idea of having no explanation for Michael doesn't scream fear, but instead screams "[[AssPull the writers were too lazy to think of anything good]]".
** The problem people have with the added backstory in later films is that it was not very well thought out. Carpenter infamously stated he thought of him being Laurie's sister late at night drinking after all. The other issue is that it becomes needlessly convoluted. Before Halloween 6, Michael just randomly killed people, but now it was because of a curse being carried out by a cult that has never appeared before this film. People tend to take issue with the backstories because of the on-the-fly nature of them combined with the "fear of the unknown" being sometimes more effective than knowing. Sometimes it's scarier for just any average joe to be depraved killer for no reason than for a convoluted explanation as to why they kill.

** My main issue with Zombie's remakes was how horribly unlikeable ''every single character'' was. Nobody felt like a real person - they were all just annoying redneck stereotypes or awful caricatures. The rapist orderlies, the necrophiliac ambulance driver, Michael's abusive stepdad, the stereotypical stripper mom, etc. Even the teens were unlikeable...Rob Zombie seems to have it in his head that female teens only talk about fucking, fucking and more fucking...oh, and apparently they can't speak a single sentence without swearing like sailors. (I miss the days when I ''didn't'' want to see every teen in a horror movie be killed.)
** I always figured Zombie was trying to play on the coralation/causality assumption people make when they talk about child abuse and bad upbringings leading to Michael's kind of behavior. If there's no reason for Michael to go batshit, then it could happen regardless of whether his life was normal or horribly abusive. I figured Zombie was trying to subvert both the blaming it on the upbringing and the common subversion of that (giving the monster an ideal upbringing) at the same time. As for the unlikable characters, Zombie tends to write people as over the top parodies. You have to look at them from a black comedy slant.

** Depends on the source. For just the original film alone, it may have been him just realizing there was no reaching Michael and came to the conclusion he was evil just by the look in his eyes (as Loomis has stated in the film). For the ''Halloween'' comic book by Chaos! Comics, it details Michael's time in the asylum. Michael killed a female patient during a blackout that occurs during a Halloween party (she was found in the barrel for apple bobbing, and people assumed that she slipped, hit her head and drown by accident). But, Michael also targeted and killed Loomis' fiancée, who also worked with him as a nurse in the asylum. Again, people assumed it was an accident, but Loomis knew for sure it was Michael who did it and saw Michael as being unable to be redeemed.
* In the original, why didn't Michael kill Laurie when she was a helpless baby. I'm sure he had some time to kill her. I mean, at least the remake explained that he just wanted to be with her.

*** Also, that Michael is still out there and could be anywhere. Like inside your house while you're in the theater, waiting for you to come home... Or maybe the back seat of your car...

** Because that idea is terrifying. Laurie managed to put up a good fight and so did Loomis. And afterwards Michael still isn't dead. There's no explanation for ''why'' this is happening and there's no resolution either.

** They also showed you how Michael escaped that pit. Still a cop-out if you ask me. I think the ending of Part IV was [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome the ideal ending for the whole series and franchise]].

* Why didn't they follow up the ending of Halloween 4?

** Yeah, this bugged me to. The only explanation I have is that Michael may have healed enough to pass for normal over the last twenty or so years.

*** Also, that Michael is still out there and could be anywhere. Like inside your house while you're in the theater, waiting for you to come home... Or maybe the back seat of your car...

** To show that evil never dies.

** Offscreen Teleportation. All slasher film villains have this power. It's how people like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers can suddenly appear in front of their intended victims despite said victims clearly being able to out-run them.

* Just morbid curiosity, since the first film was one of the early (if not THE FIRST) instalments of the now familiar slasher film genre; putting aside the fact that the next film begins and continues where the first one ends, why did John Carpenter decide to end it [[spoiler:so abruptly after having Loomis shoot Michael, and seemingly finally kill him after so many failed attempts, just to show Michael's body gone, therefore STILL alive]]?

* The troper asking this question works at a modern hospital in a small town probably smaller than Haddenfield, and gets that it may be by design by Carpenter and Hill this way, but why is the hospital in Halloween II (1981) so understaffed? With how big the town of Haddenfield is portrayed and with the notable size of the hospital, it seems rather odd that you have at least three nurses pulling double duty (including two nurses that appear to work Inpatient and Mrs. Alves who seems to run the NICU portion of the hospital, all working in the ER as well) and, just as odd, one security guard on duty. Typically, there'd be more than the number of medical staff seen in the film not only during a night shift, but during a night shift and a holiday no less. And each department being covered by individual teams of staff (meaning Mrs. Ales would be handling NICU while the staff in the ER handling Laurie's injuries). Is this how hospitals typically worked in a town the size of Haddenfield circa 1978 or was this just dramatic licensing by Carpenter and Hill to keep not only the cost of hiring additional actors down, but to make the numbers easier for Michael to kill?

** Frankly, at this point constitutional rights should have gone out the window when he survived an explosion. Also, how do you kill a guy who survived that?