Tracing The Shape
If I've gotten across anything in my writing about Laurie Strode over the past month, I hope I've gotten across just how much I think is going on in this character's head. Everything about her, from the way Carpenter and Hill scripted her to
Tracing The Shape
One of the more fascinating things about Halloween is how little, for all the backstory and insight it tries to pepper in throughout its runtime, it seems to care about who Michael Myers was before that night in 1963 when he murdered his sister. Those six years, the ones that
Tracing The Shape
Once Laurie has seemingly dealt with Michael, Carpenter briefly pivots the action back to Loomis. I say "action," but really he's not doing much of anything, and yet the way Donald Pleasence plays this brief scene says everything about where the character is right now. We
Tracing The Shape
When you're in the habit of watching Halloween a lot, as I've been for more than two decades now, you tend to end up in situations where people want to watch it with you. And if you're in those situations, you're gonna
Tracing The Shape
The single most frightening moment in Halloween doesn't feature Michael Myers. Here's there, of course. He's always there somewhere, passing like a shadow over Haddonfield, infecting it with his darkness, his menace, his pulsing drive to destroy. But the scariest scene in the movie
Tracing The Shape
It's finally time for our Final Girl and our Slasher to get to know one another intimately. All the pieces are in place, and all that's left is this, a clash between good and evil, light and dark, hope and horror. And Michael Myers completely whiffs
Tracing The Shape
Michael Myers came back to Haddonfield with a plan. It may not have been a complete plan, and it may have depended in no small part on the obliviousness of those around him, but he knew what he wanted to do when he got home. And we know this because
Tracing The Shape
Halloween is 92 minutes long. The opening and closing credits shave roughly five minutes off that, so we're talking about 87 minutes of story, more-or-less. Less than an hour and a half to lay out the complex backstory of a killer, put all the pieces in
Tracing The Shape
It's time for everything to come together. We know where all the pieces are on the board, and the endgame is afoot, but Sam Loomis is still standing in the bushes by the Myers House, frozen half in jittery determination and half in fear that the unthinkable has
Tracing The Shape
Halloween was initially pitched as The Babysitter Murders. Its title was changed, in part, because in the days of drive-ins and rep screenings having a title like Halloween meant you could count on a fresh round of income every October, but it's still The Babysitter Murders. It
Free to All
I met Bob Pastorella, a fellow Texan horror lover, podcaster, and writer, at Ghoulish Book Fest this past spring. He pitched his novel The Small Hours to me, and we talked about vampire movies, and almost immediately Let's Scare Jessica To Death was the thing that bonded us.
Tracing The Shape
We've already talked about my favorite shot in Halloween, and how much I love it as an evocative piece of horror and a simply gorgeous piece of filmmaking. It'll probably be my favorite shot from any horror movie until the day I die, but despite my