Halloween (1978) / YMMV

Accidental Aesop:
- For years, people interpreted the film to have the message "don't have premarital sex or else a serial killer will get you", especially considering the Slasher Movie genre spawned by the film made this one of its core rules. Both John Carpenter and Debra Hill were extremely annoyed at this interpretation.
- Another potential Aesop is to take stalking seriously. Laurie noticed Michael very obviously hanging around school, following her home and even standing in her neighbour's garden. Annie doesn't take her seriously, and as a result, Michael is able to sneak up on them.
Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Michael's initial targets (Annie, Lynda, Bob) shirk their babysitting responsibilities to go fool around. Bob even cracks a joke about ripping off a little girl's clothes. Given how Michael spent much of his life in a mental institution, was some part of him venting his own feelings of neglect when he killed them?
- Maybe Laurie was Michael's only intended target because of her putting the key on his house's doorstep, and killing off Annie, Lynda and Bob was to eliminate anyone who might be able to help her. Or maybe Michael wanted to torture Laurie specifically, which is why he waits for her to come to him.
- It’s also possible that Laurie was initially targeted for going up to the house, and then her friends were added to the hit list when Annie yelled at him as he was driving away (which clearly struck a nerve, given the way he slammed on the brakes).
- Jamie Lee Curtis seems to believe that Michael was actually in love with Laurie, falling for her when he first saw her and heard her singing. With that in mind, it's easy to picture that Michael specifically targeted all of Laurie's friends first just to have her all to himself. The song she sings when he first sees her even seems to reflect what he might be feeling.
  Laurie: I wish I had you all alone, just the two of us.
  I would hold you close to me,
  So close to me.
  Just the two of us,
  So close to me...
And You Thought It Would Fail: Throughout the development, the filmmakers were told the movie would never catch on; that it was "disgusting," "not scary," and it was "pretentious to assume it would do well." It ended up becoming the most successful independent film of all time.
Awesome Music: John Carpenter is known for his soundtracks in spite of the fact that he is not a trained musician and can't read sheet music. Memorable pieces from this film include:
- The main theme is considered one of the most bone-chilling pieces ever put on screen. When Carpenter initially screened the movie for one of the producers, the producer called it one of the most boring pieces of film he'd ever endured. After adding the music, he called it the scariest movie he'd ever watched.
- The intense and equally creepy "The Shape Stalks", which plays during the climax, has also become iconic to the series to the point it is Michael's unofficial theme within the films.
Complete Monster: Michael Myers. See here.
Crosses the Line Twice: Before going into the Wallace house to babysit the elementary school-age Lindsey, Bob jokes to Lynda: "First I rip your clothes off, then you rip my clothes off. And then we'll rip Lindsey's clothes off."
Draco in Leather Pants: Critics of the film's apparent Sex Signals Death message (which wasn't intended by John Carpenter or Debra Hill) paint Annie as a young woman who merely got punished for wanting to have premarital sex. While she most certainly didn't deserve to be killed by Michael, she was a straight-up Asshole Victim. She frequently mocked and belittled Laurie, betraying her trust and telling a boy she liked about the crush. She spent the time she was supposed to be watching Lindsey either on the phone or doing other things, and she was already intending to let Bob and Lynda use someone else's house she was trusted to watch to have sex. Then when her boyfriend calls to tell her he's suddenly available, she foists Lindsey onto Laurie across the street, and drives off to be with Paul - presumably again using the Wallace house to fool around. About the only decent thing she does in the film is give Laurie a lift to the Doyle's, and she was going that way anyway.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Lynda gets the least screen time out of the three girls (disappearing for the second act) but is easily the most remembered - for her Catchphrase "totally," her giggling, and her "see anything you like?" moment.
Fair for Its Day: Although the Sex Signals Death trope was codified here and slasher films became associated with only virginal girls surviving, Laurie becomes something of an Action Survivor as soon as the situation needs her to be instead of being useless. Notably despite being terrorized by seeing her friends' dead bodies, she's able to fight off Michael three times. Although she's clearly scared, she doesn't fall apart and prepares to defend herself. She demonstrates that she'll do whatever she can to keep Tommy and Lindsey safe. Even if Loomis saves her from Michael the last time, he doesn't stop Michael either.
First Installment Wins: While some of the sequels have their fans, Halloween is the one indisputed classic in the series, having codified an entire Slasher Movie film genre as well as having the highest scores on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB and frequenting many best of lists.
Foe Yay Shipping: At one point, Laurie sings an improvised love song ("I wish I had you all alone, just the two of us...I would hold you close to me") to herself as she's walking down the sidewalk, unaware that Michael is intently watching her. That, coupled with the fact that they're around the same age and their obvious history, makes them a popular ship. Even the cast had fun with it.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- In one scene, Laurie and Tommy are seen watching The Thing from Another World. Four years later, John Carpenter would direct its pseudo-remake.
- There's a behind-the-scenes picture of Jamie Lee Curtis passionately kissing Nick Castle in his Myers mask. In the next John Carpenter film, The Fog (1980), Curtis's character hops into bed with a character called Nick Castle — who is indeed named after the actor.
- Laurie's offscreen love interest is a Ben Tramer (and the sequel says this is short for Bennett). In The Fog (1980), John Carpenter likewise plays a character called Bennett (named after a friend of his likewise). And in this he provides the voice of Annie's boyfriend Paul.
- Charles Cyphers plays the dedicated sheriff, while Nancy Loomis is his reckless and rebellious daughter. Both star in The Fog (1980) with Jamie Lee Curtis, this time where Charles is the slacking off weatherman and Nancy is the hyper-competent assistant. In that, his character dies while hers survives.
- Haddonfield's sheriff Leigh Brackett is named after the science-fiction writer of the same name, who's probably best known today as the co-writer of The Empire Strikes Back. This film's own sequel has almost exactly the same plot twist as The Empire Strikes Back: the hulking, heavy-breathing, masked bad guy is actually a long-lost relative of the hero.
Les Yay: In the novelization of Halloween, the conversation between Annie and Laurie about Laurie's lack of sex life goes on a bit longer than in the movie as Annie tries to theorize what Laurie could want. At one point, she asks Laurie if she prefers girls, and then offers to hook up with her, stating she'll try anything once. Laurie for her part laughs it off, but never outright denies the suggestion.
Love to Hate: Annie is not a nice person by any means, but Nancy Loomis's wonderfully snarky performance, and the character getting plenty of amusing comeuppances before her death means she's very entertaining.
Mandela Effect: When the film came out, it gained a reputation for being a bloody splatterfest...despite having hardly any blood in it whatsoever. It simply scared audiences so much and its kills implied such horror (notably Bob's) that people believed it was bloodier than it really was. The most blood shown on-screen is Laurie's arm wound - and she's one of the survivors!
Memetic Badass: Jamie Lee Curtis, thanks to playing the archetypal Final Girl - and Scream (1996) naming her the "scream queen."
Memetic Mutation: Debra Hill talks about sitting in a theatre while the film was showing, and loads of people saying "totally" whenever Lynda did.
Moral Event Horizon: Myers killing his sister at the age of six. While Annie, Bob and Lynda could be seen as Asshole Victims, Judith seemed to be a caring and responsible older sister (seen worrying about where her brother is when he's hiding outside) - and she's senselessly killed for no reason.
Narm:
- Laurie runs across the street with Michael stalking her. She runs up to the door of the house and reaches into her pocket to find the keys. Her line?
  Laurie: "The keys? OH—THE KEEEEYYYS?!"
- The theme is a bit overplayed in the beginning of the movie.
- The odd way Dr. Loomis turns around to check on Marion Chambers after she gets out of the car.
- Bob's death: He gets impaled on to a piece of wood paneling with a kitchen knife, which doesn't really work logistically - the knife clearly isn't all the way through his body and there is no way it would be able to bear his weight enough to pin him against the wall.
- Lynda's death: going cross-eyed from being strangled by a telephone wire from behind by Michael wearing a bedsheet and glasses. It even took several takes to film because the actors kept cracking up about the absurdity of the situation.
- Annie also going cross-eyed when she's throat-sliced after being strangled.
- Michael's sister and her boyfriend apparently having the quickest "quickie" in history, lasting exactly as long as it takes Michael to grab a knife in the kitchen, just over a minute of screen time.
Narm Charm:
- Loomis's speeches about Michael are hilariously overwrought and filled with Purple Prose, but they're awesome and terrifying in equal measure.
- The 'WEEEOOOMMM' sound effect made as Michael jumps onto Loomis and Chambers's car is utterly bizarre and repeated elsewhere in the film, but perhaps helps sell how inhuman he's become as The Shape.
- The kills themselves are quite silly, but the tension in the build-up to each one is terrifying.
- As noted above, Bob's corpse being pinned to a wall with a single kitchen knife is not physically possible. But that shot of Michael silently surveying his handiwork in the moonlit kitchen with an inscrutable head tilt is one of the creepiest and most iconic in the whole film.
- Even Michael’s mask can be considered this. A spray painted Captain Kirk mask is completely ridiculous in theory, yet it perfectly evokes The Shape’s lack of humanity and has yet to be surpassed, even with bigger budgets and effects artists on later films.
Never Live It Down: People often point to the Sex Signals Death trope here, ignoring a few crucial details; Annie is not killed off simply for going to have sex. It's more that she's trusted to babysit a child and foists the girl onto her meek friend when she hears her boyfriend can fool around with her - and also promised Lynda and Bob they could use the Wallace house to have sex in. The latter two also have no problem sleeping together in someone else's house and bed (and they were under the impression the young daughter would be downstairs, too).
Offending the Creator's Own: The film has been frequently attacked for being misogynist, though it was co-written by a woman, the character who puts up the hardest fight against Michael is female (Laurie), and there's only one more female victim than male. Male head count: the truck-driver and Bob. Female head count: Judith, Annie, and Lynda.
Once Original, Now Overdone: Even though Michael Myers came first, in the later sequels, he ends up seeming like a rip-off of Jason Voorhees. Also since all the cliches Halloween created (or in some cases popularized) have now become cliches they are no longer frightening or even brilliant to younger viewers.
One-Scene Wonder:
- Bob is off-screen for most of the film, only appearing for around ten minutes. But he's still memorable for a couple of good lines, and those funky glasses (which his actor still has to this day).
- Tommy Lee Wallace as Michael Myers in the closet scene, in which he absolutely steals the show with his phenomenal acting in an already iconic scene.
Retroactive Recognition: Kyle Richards, of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills infamy, portrays Lindsey here.
Signature Scene: Being one of the most iconic horror films of all time, it naturally has quite a few iconic moments, all of them having to do with the Shape himself:
- The opening where a young Michael stabs his sister from his POV.
- Michael's multiple Stealth Hi/Bye moments as he stalks Laurie in broad daylight.
- Michael pinning Bob to the wall with his knife and his subsequent Quizzical Tilt.
- Michael slowly appearing in the shadows behind Laurie^note
- Dr. Loomis' monologue to Sheriff Brackett on how over the years of interacting with Michael has lead him to believe that he is pure evil.
- The Enemy Rising Behind moment of Michael sitting up without using his arms for leverage.
- The final scene where Michael has disappeared after being shot off a balcony and his Vader Breath gradually becomes louder.
Special Effect Failure:
- When Michael smashes one of Marion's car windows, he obviously has a wrench taped to his hand. The novelization says the wrench is meant to be there, as it was how Michael managed to escape the sanitarium.
- When Michael's mask is briefly taken off at the end of the movie, the make up used for his wounded left eye has no blood or bruising. It looks more like a birth defect than an injury.
Spiritual Successor:
- In many ways, this film can be seen as one to Psycho. One of the two main characters is played by Janet "Marion Crane" Leigh's daughter, and the other has the same name as Marion's lover. Many of the stylistic choices are also clearly influenced by Hitchcock, like a repetitive Leitmotif used for a butcher knife-wielding bad guy, and the camera work, such as in Michael's first kill where we never see knife penetrate flesh, and the cuts between the Wallace house and the approaching Laurie echoes the scene where Lila walks toward the Bates home.
- Carpenter stated that much of the film was strongly inspired by The Thing from Another World, one of his favorite films. Naturally, the characters are watching it on television. Carpenter would go on to film his own version of the film with The Thing (1982). invoked
- It's also one to Black Christmas (1974), to the point where Halloween was originally intended to be a sequel to the former.
Tear Jerker:
- When the bullies push Tommy, making him smash his pumpkin.
- After Laurie has finally killed Michael (as far as she knows) she doesn't run or keep stabbing; she just sits against the doorframe and silently cries, wiping tears with a finger.
- Annie's death is very sad, as we spend so much time with her in the film.
- Lynda is shown to be a Nice Girl and a good friend to Laurie in spite of her flaws, like Annie, her death is rather drawn out and she dies trying to fight Michael off her, and without being able to warn Laurie about Michael but still hearing her on the other side of the phone who assumes her terrified noises of struggle is Annie playing a prank. Worse still, prior to her death she thinks it's her boyfriend Bob behind the sheet, meaning that there's a high chance she thought it was Bob choking the life out of her.
- Judith's murder in the opening is both horrifying and sad. And what's more, look at Michael's face. Instead of a cold Death Glare, he looks like a confused, scared little boy who can't comprehend what he just did. Knowing what he becomes as an adult, it's still very sad to think this is the first glimpse of an innocent kid becoming the murderous, unfeeling Shape.
Testosterone Brigade: With a beautiful young Jamie Lee Curtis, the film helped her gain a significant male following as the 'Scream Queen' in the 80s.
Toy Ship: Tommy and Lindsey. Their Children Are Innocent behavior is adorable and the two seem to get along well, and Lindsey seemed pretty excited when Annie said she'd arrange for her to spend the evening with Tommy.
Unintentional Period Piece: The fashions are obviously dated. Other than that, it's mostly the phones. Characters use rotary-dial phones, which largely vanished by the 1980s. Lynda is strangled with a phone cord, whereas most modern landline phones are cordless. The sequence where Laurie struggles to get to a phone, only to find the lines cut, would not be very likely in the age of cell phones. Also when Annie tells Laurie she can't call Ben because he went out to a party, a problem alleviated by the invention of the cell phone.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: While this doesn't apply to Michael as an adult, to some his confused, almost catatonic state after killing his sister implies there was something genuinely unwell with him mentally as a child. The novelization also claims he was Hearing Voices prior to this and that nobody saw the warning signs. There's also the fact that he spent the next 15 years in a psychiatric ward (the 70s wouldn't be the best era for mental health) which only further stunted his development and didn't help his inexplicable bloodlust. Because of this, some viewers argue Michael may not have become what he is if someone had picked up on what was wrong before it was too late.
Values Dissonance: A minor one, but Tommy's comic books. He says that his mother doesn't like them, and Laurie says she can "see why." From what we see they're just a pile of mundane superhero comics without any sex or violence, leaving modern audience to wonder what parent or babysitter could possibly object to them.
Vanilla Protagonist: Laurie. She's the rule abiding good girl who prefers babysitting to parties, in contrast to her wilder friends. PJ Soles joked that Jamie Lee Curtis told her she was lucky she wasn't playing "the boring one." Still, Curtis uses her acting to make Laurie likable and she does still go Mama Bear on Michael when he threatens the children.
The Woobie: It’s hard not to feel bad for poor Laurie, considering all that she goes through in this film and the state she’s in by the end of it all. To make matters worse, this is only the beginning of her troubles.

YMMV / Halloween (1978)

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