While I was trying to figure out exactly what I needed to watch to get a Proper Horror Movie Education, the three that kept coming back to me as the foundation of the slasher genre were Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween. Well, now I’ve seen Halloween.
Halloween is the slasher movie. Every bit of the formula is here: mysterious killer slowly picking off the cast, sex shaming/morality kills, and that good ole final girl trope.
Laurie Strode (played by Jamie Lee Curtis) is impossible to hate. I just love her so much. It might have to do with that part where she stabs Michael Myers with a knitting needle. That’s how you steal my heart, Laurie.
She is, however, textbook final girl, being the pure, innocent geek that we all end up rooting for. Which, of course she is. She’s who all the other final girls were based on. There’s not much to her beyond that she’s not a Huge Slut like all her friends, she likes books, and she’s good with kids.
Speaking of Huge Sluts, I know morality killing in slashers was partly put there to appease people, but holy shit does this movie lay it on thicccccc. “Hey teens, don’t bang. That’s how you get yourself murdered by an unkillable crazy person.”
The movie opens with 6-year-old Michael Myers murdering his sister after she has sex with her boyfriend. Laurie’s friends are killed either on their way to or post banging.
It’s almost like Michael Myers has a problem with sex. I wonder who could help him with that. His psychiatrist, maybe?
Nah, that guy is too busy muttering about how “evil” Michael is. He’s just so evil, you guys. So. Evil. I swear, so many of these slasher movies could have been avoided with a competent therapist.
Death by Sex is one of the big parts of the slasher formula that I wanted to dissect with the story I’m planning. Halloween definitely gave me a lot to work with.
The scene I loved most in this movie was when Laurie is escaping from her first Michael encounter and banging on doors, crying for help. She’s pounding on a neighbor’s door, screaming. She sees the lights turn on, someone opening the blinds, and then the lights go out. This is a small, everyone-knows-everyone suburb. They probably know Laurie or at least know of her. But still, they turn off their lights. No one is coming to help her. Not only that, they’re ignoring her. That is the most horrific (and probably realistic) moment in the entire movie. It was tense, scary, and it broke my heart.
In general, I think one of the big issues I’m going to run into during this whole project is that I’ve seen what the slasher and horror genre have become, so going back to the building blocks feels a little…old? Nothing about this movie really surprised me. I don’t have the nostalgia attachment that most fans have. I can understand and appreciate it in context, but as a viewer this late in the game, Halloween felt like a story I’ve heard a million times before, even though it technically told this story for the first time.
But get this straight: I’d stab a million murderers with a million knitting needles for Laurie Strode.
Sad Magical Creatures 
One response to “TIL I Have a Murder Weapon in My Purse: Halloween”
Love this post! I’m not super into horror movies, but I watch them because I think they are cinematic-ly important, which tend to be culturally significant. It’s a really interesting way to approach recent history. And let’s be honest, there are some movies that aren’t just good horror movies, they are just plain good movies.
I actually watched 2 of those movies in 2019, and Halloween… maybe? It could have been 2018. I have similar feelings watching old movies, but with a little bit of “Oh, that’s were that came from.”
The rhythm of horror movies has changed. Jump scares are more honest for lack of a better word. Now there’s the expected “turn a corner, tense music! Silence… nothing there. They turn around {JUMP SCARE!!!!}” But Psycho, it’s like 2 different movies! Which I didn’t expect, and I was really disappointed that it’s so entrenched in the culture, because I knew the ending, and I could only imagine what a twist that ending would’ve been at the time. I didn’t want to like that movie as much as I did (ditto The Birds, but Psycho is better IMO).
TCM – I hated this movie. I don’t think it was bad, I just didn’t know what to expect. It was scary, but the tropes of everyone being an idiot – not sure if people just weren’t as on guard back then. I felt bad for leather face…? Is that weird? I didn’t feel scared as much as I felt annoyed that they kept making bad decisions. I was surprised multiple times, and by the end, I was rooting for the truck driver way more than I was rooting for the heroine.
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