IT'S HERE!

 

Halloween Kills (2021)

 

David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018) was a great, perhaps even classic sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher landmark. The 2018 effort stands by itself as a bookend to that watershed, and that fact alone guarantees it a place of honor in the horror film pantheon. 

 

However, at some point, it was decided that the 2018 film would serve as the first in a new trilogy of Halloween films. 

 

This choice may have been a mistake.

 

The decision to go big and create a trilogy, more than anything else, explains Halloween Kills (2021).  

Halloween Kills is a middle chapter, and thus a film with no real beginning and no real ending.  In short, nothing important really happens here, except for one death at film’s end.

 

This sequel basically marks time between the trilogy set-up of the 2018 film and the presumably gut-shattering climax of the long-lived saga that audiences will witness in 2022 (TOMORROW!). 

The trilogy’s legendary final woman, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is mostly sidelined in the hospital, recuperating in Halloween Kills, while her nemesis, Michael Myers cuts a bloody swath to his old home in Haddonfield.  But the enemies don’t even meet face-to-face in this film. 

 

And neither of ‘em dies, either.  

 

It’s all prelude.

 

Certainly, some ‘middle’ films in trilogies have succeeded admirably. One can’t help but remember The Empire Strikes Back (1980) or The Godfather 2 (1974).  On the other hand, there are tiresome efforts like the overlong, under-plotted The Two Towers (2003), which grind on endlessly to little dramatic effect.

 

For the Halloween saga, the matter is even more problematic.  

 

This is a franchise built around a single night of the year, and an unstoppable killer who, mostly, eliminates characters violently.  There’s not a whole lot of room in that formula to grow a new mythology. And any new character in this Michael Myers cinematic universe is almost instantly undone by Michael’s knife. The Halloween films are anti-world building in the strictest sense. 

 

No one can really survive long enough for the audience to get to know and love them.

But Halloween Kills is ambitious. It reaches back to an old Twilight Zone (1959-1961) episode called “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” for inspiration and wishes to serve as a commentary on the mob mentality. 

Characters who we last saw forty-four years ago (at least in-universe), such as Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards), Sheriff Brackett (Charles Cyphers) and Nurse Marion (Nancy Stephens) all return only to become hardcore, weapon-toting vigilantes hunting Michael Myers during his murder spree.  

 

The problem is that these rabble rousers don’t much care who gets caught in the crossfire, and innocent people are harmed by their actions. Just the way Michael Myers harms innocent people. 

 

Get it?

 

This plotline is meant, no doubt, to suggest MHGA (Make Haddonfield Great Again) and remind the audience of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The mob chants of “Evil dies tonight” might as well be that tired old refrain:“Lock her up!”

 

It’s perfectly understandable why this imagery has bubbled up into our cinematic horror dreamscapes. January 6 was a terrifying day for this country. People died, including heroic police officers who defended our lawmakers and our public property from harm. The peaceful transfer of power, for the first time in over 200 years, was jeopardized by armed insurrectionists.

 

Certainly, I admire and seek out sub-text in horror films, but this “vigilante mob” plot in Halloween Kills is not effective sub-text.  

On the contrary, it is ham-handed text.

It feels obvious, belabored, and a bit of a red herring in the saga. It’s a time killer too. Time that could be spent with Laurie’s family, or with Michael on his journey, is wasted instead with the angry mob chanting in Haddonfield Hospital or chasing down an innocent suspect. 

 

So, perhaps, given the context of January 6^th, this is the Halloween film we need right now. Our psyches demand a replay and parsing of the terror that happened that day. As long as those who tried to destroy our country are allowed to escape responsibility for their treason, or play the riot down, that imagery is going to replay in our entertainment.  Over and over.  It is a boogeyman that demands to be exorcised. As the late great Wes Craven often suggested in his horror films, things that are ignored and repressed re-emerge in scary ways.

 

And yet, despite its connection to our everyday lives, Halloween Kills doesn’t feel like the Halloween film we want right now.

 

These are films that should thrive on simplicity. The terror of Halloween is that white mask, that Rorschach Test for our subconscious. We can imprint our own fears on that shape, on that blank, emotionless visage, and we do so. Yet Halloween Kills, despite its intense violence, doesn’t really go for scares or suspense.  

The movie got my blood pumping precisely once. In one scene, Michael dispatches with a Haddonfield posse in a playground, and there is just one survivor, Lindsey. She runs to escape him, and he follows, through the dark park. This scene gets the classic Halloween equation just right: a predator and prey in the dark, in a place where law and order can’t reach, where the mechanisms of modern society can’t save anybody.  There is only the law of the jungle, or the prehistoric law of the cave, perhaps.  

 

There are some memorable moments in Halloween Kills, including a gunshot death that points out -- in a jaw-dropping split-second -- the danger of irresponsible gun ownership, and another virtuoso scene in which Michael uses a stair bannister as a murder weapon. There are some fascinating flashbacks in the movie too, that, to my heart’s delight, resurrect the great Dr. Loomis (and the equally great Donald Pleasence) without resorting to CGI.

 

But none of this material gets at the core fear of Halloween: the fear of being chased in the dark by a relentless predator, one who will not stop, and who cannot be reasoned with.

 

Contrarily, some of the staging of the action in the film is laughable. My son loved Halloween 2018 but he burst out into hysterics during the firefighter battle at the start of Halloween Kills. To set it up, Michael emerges from Laurie’s house brandishing a weapon. The firefighters on the lot, without blinking an eye, grip their hatchets and go after him, one after the other.  

 

There’s not even an instant -- or a single shot -- of those fire fighters registering a ‘WTF’ expression when they see Michael. There is not the slightest pause for the firemen to consider their actions. Instead, they just grip their weapons and go lemming-like, into battle, against Michael.  It’s ridiculous. Any sane fire fighters would have stepped back, not lunged mindlessly into battle. Consequently, a moment that should have led to a kick-ass action scene plays as unintentionally funny.

 

But my son was right about something else. When the film was over, he said he didn’t hate it. He observed instead that the quality and value of Halloween Kills won’t really be assessed until after Halloween Ends (2022). 

If that film proves a great punctuation to this saga, Halloween Kills will be re-evaluated and seen as a bizarre, if ambitious and interesting middle chapter.  If Halloween Ends is terrible, the narrative will be that the trilogy lost its way with Halloween Kills, and just couldn’t recover from it.

 

Again, see how difficult it is being the middle chapter?

 

Halloween Kills didn’t slay me, but it didn’t entirely murder the mystique of Michael Myers, either.

 

The Shape of Things: An Ode to Michael Myers

Forty-four ago, John Carpenter created a masterpiece of the horror genre, Halloween (1978). Although the “slasher” trend has come and gone (and come back and gone again, in the 1990’s), the villain of Carpenter’s film, Michael Myers -- the Shape -- remains a potent terror in 2022.

So the question becomes: what is it, precisely, about John Carpenter's Halloween and its iconic “monster” that stands up to --- and actually encourages – continued study and fascination?

Understand, it’s not just the scrutiny of scholars, authors, bloggers, list-makers and admirers the globe around. Forty-four years after the film's release, Halloween's reputation only continues to grow, a fact evidenced by the premiere of yet another sequel later this week.  

Mainstream audiences feel the same way about Michael. 

Specifically, viewers of Halloween gaze intently at that blank, white, featureless (William Shatner) mask of "The Shape,” and then immediately recognize, at least subconsciously, that in terms of Michael, everyone is missing some crucial aspect of understanding.

Michael's true motives -- just like his concealing, ivory face-mask -- are not entirely filled in; not fully circumscribed. His personality and purpose seems oddly incomplete, and thus the shadowy, featureless mask fully and trenchantly reflects the inability to conceptualize or understand the thing that he represents. 

From this lack of understanding grows the seeds of terror. 

Why does Michael kill? 

Is he the Boogeyman? 

What drives him? How does he survive point-blank bullet strikes? 

As in life itself, Halloween provides no easily digestible answer to myriad questions about mortality and murder, destiny, choice, and chance.  The film itself note this, at least tangentially, in the scene set in Laurie’s high school English class.  The teacher discusses there the concept of fate. Some people just cannot escape their fate, she insists. It is Laurie’s fate to become intertwined, forever, with Michael’s spree.

But even the idea of fate does not explain perfectly Michael’s existence or nature.

Yet Halloween does brilliantly provide the attentive viewers some intriguing clues about Michael Myers and the things he signifies. Some of these hints actually seem to conflict with one another; and some are just barely enunciated. But again, this very facet of ambiguity makes the film and the iconic character himself  resonate more powerfully in the mind of the viewers. 

Stated simply, Halloween permits the imagination to fill in the narrative, explanatory gaps, and again, a sense of terror takes hold. Audiences see reflected in that blank, chilling mask all the things it fears -- all the things it doesn't understand -- about our lives in this mortal coil.

To boil this down Halloween provides us at least four important "leads" about Michael Myers true and highly unusual nature.  And it is important to remember that all of these clues don't take into account the "Laurie is his sister"-revisionism of the sequels. and the Zombie remakes).

These clues are, in no specific order:

1. Michael Myers is a Physical Representation of Laurie's Id.

This is the Freudian interpretation of John Carpenter's Halloween.  The Id is a component of Freud's so-called "psychic apparatus" or "structural model for the human psyche,” and basically, it houses the unconscious, basic drives, and instincts of the human animal. It controls the desire for sex and our other appetites too. It is amoral, chaotic, and egocentric.

Consider now the buttoned-down, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). She is both a good student and a responsible babysitter. She symbolizes the rationalist Ego, the part of the brain that holds the reins of control over our lives and seeks to "please" the Id in a socially and culturally acceptable fashion. The Ego represents common sense; even consciousness itself. This is the Freudian "borrowed face," the veneer of appropriateness plastered over the Id.

Accordingly, underneath the mask, Michael represents Laurie's Id, unfettered and on-the-loose, lashing out at those around her who more "honestly" contend with their drives and libidos (Annie and Linda) than does the Ego. 

Laurie even seems to "activate" Michael Myers, at least in a sense, by singing aloud a modern magical incantation (a ballad) on the day he stalks her. The lyrics to that ballad go: "I wish I had you all alone, just the two of us," and set up, rather nicely, the thrust of Michael's murderous mission on October 31st. He systematically kills all of Laurie's friends and acquaintances until it is, indeed, just the two of them. Laurie’s friends have sex (or hope to have sex), and Michael destroys them because they express what Laurie cannot.

Now, of course, some readers may rightly remind me that Michael cannot possibly be a product of Laurie's Id, since Michael was alive and killing before she was even born (back in 1963). That's correct. But do we know for certain that Laurie's mission of murder isn't the very thing imprinted upon that mentally-deranged mind behind the blank-white mask?

Horror scholar and professor Vera Dika wrote that "Carpenter openly represents Michael as Laurie's "id." This reading is supported by the inclusion of footage from Forbidden Planet (1956)...The earlier film had portrayed a situation in which the unconscious desires, or the id, of the main character became manifest and threatened to destroy him and his world. Similarly, Laurie is almost destroyed by the strength of her repressed unconscious impulses. Her battle with Michael is a substitute for the sexual act." (Vera Dika, Games of Terror: Halloween, Friday the 13th and the Films of the Stalker Cycle. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, page 51).

John Carpenter himself lends some credence to this Freudian interpretation of Halloween by noting that Laurie, "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife...Not because she's a virgin but because all that repressed sexual energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy...she doesn't have a boyfriend, and she finds someone -- him." (Danny Peary, Cult Movies. Delacorte Press, 1981, page 126).

This theory won't exactly find popularity with feminists or "Final Girl" proponents, since it positions Laurie as the repressed "creator" of the monster in Halloween, not a Girl-Powered heroine. In this reading, Laurie’s suppressed sexual appetite and longing is the drive that brings Michael to life as “The Shape” and even selects his victims. In this way, the noble Laurie somehow becomes responsible for Michael; or at the very least, connected to him in a very intimate, very personal way.

2. Michael Myers is Just a Developmentally Arrested Child Playing Halloween Tricks.

There's a such a thing as "psychological neoteny," the retention by adults of what are generally considered juvenile traits. In Halloween, Michael Myers seems "arrested" n an early point of childhood, acting out instances of so-called play but, because of his delayed maturity, failing to understand the true consequences of his actions.

A hallmark of childhood is the total and immersive interface with a world of make-believe play. In theory, make-believe play should teach a child to self-regulate and even learn self-discipline; a quality known as "executive function." But in Michael's specific case, nothing positive results from the fact that his mind is "frozen," essentially, in childhood. It's as though he's an overgrown kid, playing an elaborate trick-or-treat game without any acknowledgment of the harm that very game is causing to others outside himself.

It is impossible to deny the "game"-like aspects of Myers' behavior in the original Halloween. He sets a "stage" or "show "for Laurie in Lindsey's house: a prank involving the corpses of her friends and a stolen grave marking/head-stone. 

Also, at least to some extent, it seems that Michael strongly identifies with young Tommy Doyle...since he follows the boy home from school too. Halloween II and later films seem to forget that Michael actually stalked two people on October 31st, 1978: Laurie and Tommy. Perhaps this is because Michael is essentially delayed at Tommy's age, and sees Doyle as a contemporary; or surrogate. 

Michael evidences some interesting physical reactions after he kills the teenagers on Halloween night that also, if interpreted in a certain way, bolster this theory. He just stares and looks at them, tilting his head to one side. One must wonder if this Michael acts this way because the dead are -- counter to his  childish expectations -- not getting up and continuing to play. 

Michael has killed them, but doesn't really understand the finality of death. He is thus quizzical and curious over the corpses, wondering why the teens don't want to play anymore.

We can also judge that Michael is developmentally arrested at/or around 1963, the time when he committed his first murder (an action that no doubt also slowed down his formal education, another characteristic of many with delayed maturity.) 

3. Michael Myers is the Physical Embodiment of Fate

As note above, early in Halloween, there is a fascinating if brief scene set in a high school English class. Laurie is in attendance, listening only sporadically as an off-screen teacher drones on endlessly about the concept of fate in literature.

The unseen instructor then asks Laurie about her reading assignment, and Laurie answers by making a distinction between two authors, Samuels and Costaine. 

She notes that "Costaine wrote that fate was only somehow related to religion, where Samuels felt that fate was like a natural element; like Earth, Air, Fire and Water." 

The teacher further notes that Laurie is correct, that Samuels definitely "personified" fate. "It [fate[ stands" where a "man passes away."

Who else stands where a man passes away? 

Michael, of course, a character who survives stabbings and shootings and keeps on coming like a runaway freight train. He is Fate "Personified" (as Samuels dictated) and you can't kill something like Earth, Air, Fire or Water, can you?

This revelation of Michael as Agent of Fate opens up the whole "Boogeyman" Argument; that perhaps there is actually a fifth natural element, Earth, Air, Fire, Water...And Evil.  

If so, then Michael as a representative of this natural force and thus unstoppable; in kiddie slang, The Boogeyman.

The film's discussion of fate contextualizes Michael not as a supernatural avenger, but as a heightened, natural one. He is not magical, but rather a force as natural (and as essential?) as Air or Water.

So there is an order to the universe, it's not just what we had in mind, to quote another John Carpenter film.

4. Michael Myers is an Indictment of Contemporary, Rational Society: The Inexplicable and Undiagnosable Run Amok in The Scientific World

Finally,  John Carpenter’ Halloween suggests (or at least implies...) that Michael Myers represents some kind of modern-day "dragon" in a society that no longer recognizes dragons as real monsters.

As I wrote in The Films of John Carpenter, Halloween willfully "deconstructs" the technological, contemporary world so that, as viewers experiencing the film, we actually appear have more in common with ancient proto-humans huddling in caves than with our rational, 21st century brethren. In particularly, nothing in Halloween works the way it is supposed to work by our "rationalist," "daylight" standard of thinking.

From a certain standpoint, after all, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is a total and complete failure as a psychologist, unable not only to heal Michael Myers, but to understand what drives his murderous impulse. Loomis's role in Halloween is not that of a doctor, nor of a psychiatrist, but explicitly that of St. George: hunting down and slaying the dragon.

Similarly, Michael Myers suffers from no diagnosable or treatable psychological disorder. He is "purely and simply Evil." 

If you look in the DSM-V, you won't find "Evil" listed as a malady.

It is utterly unacceptable that rational, middle-class teenagers in Haddonfield should die at the knife of Michael Myers on the eve of the 21st century. That's just not supposed to happen in modern-day America. 

For one thing, there is the blanket of parental protection and love, which should shield children, right? Yet in Halloween, the parents (and most adults for that matter...) are mostly an afterthought. We see Laurie's father only briefly, never see the school teacher, and never get to meet the parents of Lynda, Annie, or even Tommy Doyle. 

Adults do not represent a positive, let alone helpful force in this horror vision.

Well, okay, if parents can't help save the children (who represent our tomorrows...), then there's modern medicine and cutting-edge science, which should not only diagnose Michael, but keep him behind bars. Right? 

Not surprisingly, it fails too. The "system" fails, and Michael escapes.

What about another important societal construct then: the law? Well, kindly Sheriff Brackett can't even protect his own daughter, let alone capture a mad-dog killer. Not a single cop on patrol even notices Michael's car parked on the street!

All the carefully-constructed traditional bureaucracies and cherished codes of justice, belief, and conduct ultimately offer Annie, Lynda and Bob zero protection. These kids are on their own. 

They are prey.

In fact, these teens have it much worse than our cave-men ancestors in pre-history. At least the cave-men knew to be afraid, knew to fear the forces in the dark that they could not comprehend. 

The characters in Halloween are thoroughly unprepared and unable to conceive of a reality that includes Michael Myers, and that's why they are such easy pickings. The movie thus indicts modern society rather fully: it is woefully unprepared to combat what may be a "natural force," Evil Itself.

J.P. Telotte wrote that "What Carpenter seems intent on demonstrating is how consistently our perceptions and our understandings of the world around us fall short...We are conditioned by our experience and culture to see less...to dismiss from our image contents those visions for which we might not be able to account..."(American Horrors: Essays on the Modern American Horror Film: "Through a Pumpkin's Eye: The Reflexive Nature of Horror." University of Illinois Press, 1987, page 122).

This reading takes on a specific relevance today, in 2018, in a world of so many school shootings, when the law, the government, and the media can’t save our children from being senselessly struck down in their classroom on a regular basis. Halloween in some way feels like a canary in the coal mine, a warning that our American institutions are failing, in no small part because they can’t or won’t reckon with a threat like Michael Myers.

Finally, one must reckon with the idea that not any one of these four interpretations above is absolutely the "right one" to come to a perfect understanding of Carpenter's film.

Rather, Halloween retains such power because the truth of Michael Myers seems to dwell in all these interpretations.

Ultimately, Halloween preserves the Shape's mystery and permits the audience to decide about the important things like meaning. 

Many of the sequels and indeed the Rob Zombie 2007 remake fail to live up to the original Carpenter film because they work diligently towards an opposite and inferior end; because they seek to diagram in details the answers about Michael for the audience's consumption and peace of mind. 

Yet peace of mind -- closure itself -- runs counter to what good horror ought to be.  Who wants to leave a horror movie content that everything is known; that everything fits into a neat little box? 

Personally, I want my slumber troubled; I want my mind bothered by the things only the genre can show me and tell me. If I desire peace of mind or resolution from ambiguity, I'll watch network television.

As a direct result of all the well-meaning but psychologically facile explanations of the sequels and the remake, the magic of Michael Myers is somehow bled away. 

When one understands that Michael is simply hunting his biological sister down, he becomes nothing but a garden variety wacko with a tough hide. 

When he is infused with supernatural powers and becomes a genetically-engineered Druid observing Samhain, he's just another easily explainable Devil, only one with an alternate religious belief system.

And finally, the magic of Michael Myers is totally squandered when viewers bear witness to the peculiarities of his abusive childhood; when they come to understand that he was raised in a violent, redneck household and is merely carrying on in the family tradition. 

Thus the later movies, and especially the re-imaginations nullify The Shape's Power. They turn it to ashes.

When considering "The Shape," it is better to ponder and speculate about Evil's True Nature than to know it all. 

Oscar Wilde once wrote that the greatest mystery in life is actually "one's self," and Halloween remains such an indelible viewing experience 43 years later because -- in addition to technical expertise and canny imagery – the Carpenter film leaves more than abundant psychic space for our imaginations to ponder the story, and the enigmatic man in the Shatner mask.

Ode to (Laurie) Strode

Carol J. Clover, the horror scholar who coined and defined the term "final girl" in 1992, wrote of Laurie Strode as the "original" of the form, or the prototype. Historically, this categorization is borne out by the fact that Laurie arrives in film history before such heroes as Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien (1979), or Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). A final girl is, broadly, defined as the one (always female) character in a horror movie who survives to battle the villain, and often defeats it. 

Pop culture's on-going love affair with Laurie Strode is partly about the charm and talent of the actor who embodies this final girl: Jamie Lee Curtis. But the admiration runs deeper than that as well.  Jamie Lee Curtis brings the character to life with humanity, and empathy, and has revisited the character at various stages of her life (in Laurie's forties, and in Laurie's sixties, too), in a meaningful way.  But Laurie is more than the efforts of an actor. Laurie is an archetype, a role model, and a person of tremendous individuality.

As is plain from Halloween (1978), Halloween 2 (1981), Halloween: H20 (1998), Halloween: Resurrection (2002), and Halloween (2018), Laurie is alo Michael Myer's equal, or opposite. She is certainly his equal both in terms of etymology and action. 

Etymology is the study of words and their meaning, and perhaps the place to commence any look at Laurie is with a dissection of her name. 

"Laurie" is derived from the name "Laura," and means "from the place of laurel leaves."  Famously, the ancient Greeks used laurel leaves to create wreaths. They would then use those wreaths to crown the victors in athletic contests requiring great skill or endurance .So the name Laurie explicitly involves victory, something that Halloween's Laurie knows something about, having survived several encounters with The Shape.

Meanwhile, "Strode" is the past tense of the word "stride," which might be defined as "crossing an obstacle with one long step."  

Once more, it is not difficult to see the relevance of this name, as it applies to the horror movie character. Laurie Strode has crossed the greatest obstacle imaginable, surviving an attack by Michael Myers.  

The "long step" in that name might even be parsed to suggest a forty year obstacle, as the new movie suggests.  Maybe Laurie wears her crown of laurel leaves not for a spring (one night of terror), but for a marathon, a life of trauma, and PTSD.

A fascinating element of this etymological game is that "strode" is past tense, meaning, perhaps, that Laurie's fate -- a key element in Halloween -- is ordained from the very beginning.  She WILL overcome the challenge of Michael Myers. He may kill her eventually (as he does in the continuity of Halloween: Resurrection) but she somehow still manages to overcome the challenge he poses to her.  After all, winning isn't always about surviving.  Maybe it's about Laurie winning the battle against fear, against trauma.

If assembled, the elements of Laurie Strode's name suggest a competitor, a challenge, and a winner. Thus Laurie Strode, in her very name, was designed to be the equal, or superior, of The Shape.

Why else do audiences identify so closely with Laurie Strode? One key quality of the final girl "type" that Laurie embodies is insight. 

As Mathias Clasen writes in Why Horror Seduces (Oxford University Press, 2017), the "proximal narrative motivation for her survival is that Laurie Strode is the only character who detects and responds adequately" to her surroundings.  

Consider that Michael Myers is present in Haddonfield throughout much of the original film, and in often lurks in the plain sight, for intervals, of characters from Sheriff Brackett, to Annie and Lynda, and even Dr. Loomis. 

Yet out of all of these characters, only two people detect Michael. One is little Tommy Doyle, who is overcome by fear (as any child would be), and the other is Laurie Strode, who spies Michael several times, and begins to develop a kind of defensive posture because of the invasion he represents. 

Laurie spots Michael in a row of bushes on a suburban street. She sees him (or at least his stolen car), outside her high school English classroom too. And finally, she sees him standing, staring up at her, from a backyard clothes line.

The other characters in the film are locked in their own narrow silos of normality and routine, unable to conceive of a threat to their lives. Sheriff Brackett is dismissive of Loomis's belief that Michael has returned to Haddonfield. And Annie, Bob, and Lynda are so consumed with their own personal dramas that they can't conceive of a wolf in the fold.

But Laurie can detect the truth. She puts the pieces together. She sees the danger in everyday life that others do not.  "Not only is she vigilant," writes Clasen, "but she is bright and conscientious." 

What makes Laurie able to see where others do not?  Simply stated, Laurie is present and engaged in her life. And if you'll forgive the teacher in me for this next statement, she is clearly a reader. In the scene set in the classroom, Laurie is able to verbalize a literary comparison between two authors, and the individual ways they interpret life in their works.  This ability suggests not only that Laurie is smart, but that she is an effective critical thinker. Laurie is able to understand and interpret different concepts or meanings of the word "fate," specifically.  It's pretty clear that this comparison is not something that would interest Annie or Lynda. They don't contextualize their lives in that way, whereas Laurie pretty clearly does so.

In Halloween: H20 (1998), Laurie repeats this feat, lecturing as, a teacher, to a classroom full of students about the connection between Victor and the Monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Laurie is then able to understand and contextualize her connection to her own monster, Michael.

The next point to make about Laurie and her popularity/significance is one that is related, perhaps, to her engagement and vigilance. Laurie might be described aptly as the horror movie equivalent of the catcher in the rye. 

She is not merely a survivor of a massacre, but she takes great efforts to rescue two endangered children, Tommy and Lindsey. She must save not just their innocence, but their lives. Loomis possesses good motives. He wants to do good. But as an avatar for a failed aspect of 20th century society (medicine or science, basically), he is ineffective. 

By contrast, Laurie gets her wards, the children, to safety. 

It's true that Loomis shows up at the last moment to shoot Myers, (which is again, ineffective), but Laurie plays the cat-and-mouse game with Myers long enough, and successfully enough, to protect the children she babysits. Again, one need only contrast Laurie's behavior as a babysitter with Annie's approach to that task.  By comparing the two characters, one can see that it is Laurie who is a full person, not just a shallow or superficial teenager.

Laurie is etymologically and psychologically Michael Myers perfect nemesis. She is the only one who can stop The Shape. But perhaps the real reason so many people have loved this final girl for so long is that they are acutely aware that for Laurie, the battle comes with a cost. Laurie keeps Michael from the children. She survives when he wants to kill her, it is true.  But in her survival, Laurie faces year and decades of trauma. She stands up and fights, but even when the battle is done, it continues for Laurie, if only in her head.

A reluctant warrior, Laurie always fights for us, even though the cost to herself is brutal. In different iterations of the Halloween myth, the audience sees Laurie succumb to alcoholism, and pills to overcome the presence of Michael Myers in her mind. In the new legacy sequels (2018 - 2022) the audience registers fully what Laurie gives up -- the love of family -- to protect it from Michael.

Laurie fights, and wins, but she always suffers. 

That is the fate she, finally, reckons with. It is also the reason so many of us love the character. Michael is a character untroubled by conscience, guilt, remorse, or regret. He is solitary, and alone, and that is fine by him. 

Laurie is the opposite. She reckons with loss and loneliness, and realizes fully that sadness and trauma are now her fate.

35 Years Ago: Friday the 13th: The Series

Friday the 13^th: The Series ran for three seasons and seventy-one hour-long episodes...thirty-five years ago. The series involves two unlucky souls, Micki (Robey) and Ryan (John D. Le May), who inherit their dead uncle’s antique shop. 

They are unlucky because Uncle Lewis Vendredi (R.G. Armstrong) made a pact with the Devil to become immortal, but then attempted to back out on his end of the bargain. Dragged down to Hell, Vendredi leaves behind on Earth hundreds of cursed antiques in his shop.  Each one is imbued with a murderous, monstrous spirit.   

Alas, many of these cursed items are soon sold during a going-out-of-business sale held by Vendredi’s niece and nephew, meaning it is their responsibility -- with the help of occult expert Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins) -- to retrieve them. 

For the buyers, it is literally a matter of life and death.

The Curious Goods Team

Thus, in most of the seventy or so episodes of the series, the action involves the team from “Curious Goods” attempting to recover an evil relic, collectible, or antique. During the run of the series, these objects came in all shapes and sizes, from an evil tea cup (“A Cup of Time”) and cursed make-up compact (“Vanity’s Mirror”) to sinister comic-books (“Tales of the Undead”) and even a diabolical weed-mulcher (“The Root of All Evil.”)

If this format sounds a little bit familiar, it may be because it echoes the details of an Amicus horror anthology film from the 1970s directed by Kevin Connor, From Beyond the Grave (1973). There, Peter Cushing was the antique shop owner selling dangerous goods.

Friday the 13^th: The Series received mixed reviews during its original run, but has nonetheless become a cult treasure to horror aficionados today. Writing in 1987, Variety opined that the series was “a successful terror tease blissfully devoid of blood and full of the supernatural and imagination.”  

Meanwhile, Time Magazine’s Richard Zoglin concluded that “Friday the 13^th’s worst sin “is an obsession with clunky, over-explanatory dialogue…but the show delivers a stronger dose of pure horror than anything else on TV.” (November 6, 1989).

“The Inheritance” is Friday the 13^th’s premiere episode, and it first aired the week of October 3, 1987.  Written by William Taub and directed by William Fruet, “The Inheritance” quickly sets up the premise of the series by first introducing viewers to mean old Uncle Lewis, and then to his niece and nephew/odd couple, Micki Foster and Ryan Dallian.  

Micki is engaged to a wealthy (and snooty…) attorney, and sees Curious Goods as a detour from her appointed destiny. Ryan, meanwhile, is one of cult-television’s early “geeks,” a comic-book collector and science fiction fan. 

The first order of business for Ryan and Micki is the recovery of an evil doll, named Vita, who has fallen into the possession of a little girl, Mary, played by a very young Sarah Polley (Dawn of the Dead [2004]).  Before, Ryan and Micki can recover the doll, it murders her cruel stepmother.

Sarah Polley plays Mary in "The Inheritance."

While Ryan and Micki attempt to recover the doll (and place it safely in a locked vault in Curious Goods’ basement…), they must also countenance Jack Marshak’s belief that we are all surrounded by a “world of spirits, of a netherworld,” and that Vendredi tapped into that world to dabble in deviltry. For Micki and Ryan, this means a rude awakening about the nature of reality itself…

Looking back today, Friday the 13^th and its series premise seem to comment deliberately on avaricious and materialistic nature of the late 1980s.  For instance, Lewis Vendredi is described as a man who is passionate about two things: wealth, and etrnal life.   

If you consider the “wealth” part of that equation as the era’s obsession with upward mobility and the “not growing old” part a comment on the pervasive 1980s aerobics/fitness craze, you see how the problems faced here stem from two central pillars of the yuppie movement. Micki herself seems a bit like a callow yuppie, though over the course of the series she grows and matures, and eventually leaves her judgmental and elitist beliefs behind. In some sense, the events of the series teach her how to care about other people, and not just herself.

There have been a plenty of evil dolls in cult-television history, and Vita makes a fine heir to The Twilight Zone’s Talking Tina. There is a truly horrifying quality to her porcelain white face – especially as it looms in the blackness -- and “The Inheritance” also imbues the monster with a horrible, raspy voice. During the course of the episode, the malevolent doll rips out a man’s throat, suffocates Mary’s stepmother, and pushes a heavy piece of furniture over on an elderly neighbor, proving herself a real menace.  

Evil Doll.

Many folks who remember Friday the 13^th: The Series remember this scary doll well, and thus this particular episode. That seems about right given Vita’s monstrous nature. In terms of writing, acting and direction, however, “The Inheritance” seems somewhat primitive today, in some ways even more dated than older horror series such as Ghost Story/Circle of Fear (1972 – 1973) or Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974).

In part this may be so because the DVD prints are muddy and cheap-looking. A re-mastering would certainly seem to be in order.  

But contrarily, Friday the 13^th: The Series in some moments feels like a gonzo low-budget horror movie.  That means that it sometimes takes detours into weird horror that feel far afield from homogenized television standards. I remember watching the series late at night when I was senior in high school, for example, and feeling that anything was possible, and that -- at any moment -- something truly horrible might happen.

Taken on a whole, “The Inheritance” is a solid start for Friday the 13^th: The Series, and the presence of Vita as the cursed object of the week helps it rank a cut-above some of the other first season installments.  Also, the late R.G. Armstrong remains a delight in this series.

R.G. Armstrong as Uncle Lewis Vendredi.